Last week saw the end of the Arrowverse, The CW’s shared universe of superhero shows taking place in DC’s multiverse. Although Superman & Lois and Gotham Knights are still on the air (though on the cancellation bubble), those shows have been explicitly distanced from the likes of Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Black Lightning, Batwoman, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. With the finale of The Flash now in the rear view mirror, fans are looking back on the Arrowverse, which marks one of the most ambitious projects in the history of live-action superhero media. One way they’re looking back, is by bringing up some of the most bizarre moments from the shows.
Legends of Tomorrow provides plenty of those, and it’s an out-of-context clip from Legends that has been making the rounds on social media over the weekend. In it, Gorilla Grodd launches an attack on a college-aged Barack Obama (Lovell Adams-Gray), telling the future President of the United States that it’s time to “make America Grodd again.”
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You can see it here:
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow was a character-driven time-travel superhero comedy, which is a lot of words, but even that doesn’t quite get to the core of what makes it both so appealing and, at times, so absolutely bonkers. Originally conceived as the Arrowverse’s answer to the Avengers, and starring popular guest stars whose arcs on Arrow and The Flash had come to an end, Legends became more like the Arrowverse’s own Guardians of the Galaxy, with an unofficial motto that said, “Sometimes, we screw things up for the better.”
The series changed the team’s underlying mission every season, but in the third season, they were fighting Mallus, a “time demon” that was inadvertently freed from his prison after the events of the season two finale. Mallus teamed up with Damien and Nora Darhk, and in this case with Grodd, to create temporal anomalies that would keep the Legends distracted as well as weakening the fabric of reality. Killing a President of the United States would certainly create a massive ripple in the timeline, so that was the idea behind sending Grodd to that point in time.
Out of context, though? It’s just a truly absurd moment, with a talking gorilla saying silly things at a young Obama. It’s easy to see why this clip has taken on a life of its own, and periodically trends even outside of the Arrowverse fandom. What’s funny is that it’s arguably not even the strangest thing to happen in that every episode.
Mallus was voiced by veteran character actor John Noble, and when the Legends needed to trick his underlings into aborting their missions, they were stumped. A solution came in an unlikely way: Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell) was watching Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and the Legends noticed that John Noble sounded just like Mallus. So they traveled back in time, visiting him on the set of Lord of the Rings, where Noble (dressed as Denethor) read some lines from a script presented to him by Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh) and helped the Legends win the day.
And, you know — in the following week’s finale, a stuffed animal came to life, became 30 or so feet tall, and cuddled Mallus to death. So…it’s that kind of show.
You can see all seven seasons of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow on Netflix. The show ended on a cliffhanger, which has led to far and away the most aggressive “save our show” campaign for any Arrowverse series. Most recently, supporters of the #SaveLegendsOfTomorrow campaign rented an ice cream truck and sent it to the WGA West picket line outside of Warner Bros. in Burbank to support striking writers.
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