Apparently I'm just gonna do nothing but talk about Legends

I really want to try to be a calm, semi-rational (I don’t get any more rational than semi-rational; that is the best I can do), reasonable human being right now, but I finished the season four premiere of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow tonight and I am just so happy. It was everything that a season premiere of Legends should be in my opinion.

Now listen, I’m not talking about first season Legends. I barely count season one as being part of the same show and if you’ve been watching from the beginning I think you understand why I say that. Season One had its moments and it had Captain Cold, but it really wasn’t what the show was going to become.

Side tangent here: I’ve noticed that my favorite shows and characters are often either redemption arcs OR human dumpster fires with hearts of gold. And honestly, if a character goes from being questionable in the ethics department to being good, but is overall a garbage fire I’m going to want to adopt them. That’s just who I am as a person. Clint Barton as a character from Matt Faction’s series--the Hawkeye/Clint Barton I love best--is a well-intentioned, massively depressed, barely functioning idiot and I cannot abide a word against him.

DC Legends (postseason one) is an entire team of these types of characters pulling in other similar characters lead by one of the most dumpster-fire, heart of gold, looking for redemption badass former assassin women ever. Like, it’s no wonder I love it so much.

During season one, they attempted to make them seem like proper heroes. And yes, they still do incredibly heroic things, but they’re really not heroes. They’re more like teenagers who try to raise money for new gym equipment by washing cars, but somehow do it in such a way that someone’s car gets banged up and the gym floor now has flood damage and they have to spend every Saturday for the rest of the year working to fix the things that went wrong again. Or they used duct tape to hold parts of a TV that got busted together and now the whole screen is a disaster.

It was the second season when it found its groove, in my opinion. This is all my opinion really, but I like to pretend it’s fact so I’m probably going to talk like my opinions on the show are fact.

The Hawk superheroes were too legitimate to work as well-intentioned dumpster fires, but also not weighty enough to work as serious heroes and they were a very central part of season one.

For me, the show was trying to find its own rhythm and tone, but it was still trying to connect with the audiences watching Arrow and The Flash by pulling in the tone from those shows too. I get why. The CW/Greg whatshisface that is the showrunner producer type for all those superhero-type CW shows (for the most part) was having tremendous success (for non-network shows) with Arrow and The Flash. Legends was a direct spin-off of those shows (most especially Arrow, considering the origin of Ray Palmer and Sarah Lance; sure Leo and Mick were from The Flash but story arc wise Ray and Sarah had bigger arcs before and after joining the Legends cast than Mick and Leo did), and Arrow is a fairly “serious” show ‘tone’ wise. It may not be going up for any Emmy’s any time soon, but it isn’t a whimsical show. There was no reason to think that they shouldn’t follow the same pattern with Legends.

I believe in one of the many “behind the scenes” videos I watched, I saw Brandon Routh talk about how they were locked in, from the conception of the show, on how season one was going to play out and how it was going to end. I don’t think there was any detail about why, but I still find it really interesting. I think the show suffered for that staunch adherence. I think once it was able to get out of that plan, it was really able to blossom.

It isn’t Arrow and it isn’t The Flash and it isn’t Supergirl. These shows are well-loved for good reasons, but Legends only really works when it’s being absolutely corkers.

“We screwed things up for the magical” is exactly the kind of opener Legends needs and deserves. I can’t begin to say how much I loved having John Constantine around again. I know I’ve been talking about Constantine for … I don’t know how long it’s been, but I’m suspecting it’s been months. I just can’t help myself. I love that he was telling Sarah to be good to Ava when we last saw him and now he’s like, “Leave her before you both die horrible deaths OR WORSE.” I love that whatever little modicum of peace he’d worked out for himself is gone and I’m dying to see him getting back on the team with the others. I want him to be tortured, of course, but I want him to get help and support from the Legends crew and end up growing and healing a little because of it.

There’s no way he’ll be with the team more than a season if they can’t help him grow.

Shit, I don’t know how they’re going (or even if ‘they’ plan) to keep JC on for more than a season. If they draw out the magical escapees or bring out more demons, they could keep him on, but I don’t know that the writing wouldn’t suffer in other ways. I really want him to stay on, I just don’t know how that would work.

Dammit, I wanted to talk more about how much and why I loved the episode one of season four, but I can’t hold my eyes open.

Yeah, I'm just Legends Fan Girl Trash

 

I was laying in bed last night thinking about Constantine and his feelings about Gary. Also, I think Gary may be demi-sexual. Yes, Gary has been portrayed as a bit of a dufus, but he’s also super cute, super sweet, and, while gullible, he’s not actually an idiot. Not to mention, he’s brave as hell and you can fucking fight me on that. Sure, he’s a bit of a dork. He loves his Dungeons and Dragons enough that he’s a Dungeon Master for his group of friends. But being pantsed by a Speedster or being naive enough to be stolen from by the most thieving group of people on television since the Leverage doesn’t make you an idiot. I’m hoping that Gary will get a little better treatment.

I want to write a story about Gary and JC (yeah, I’m calling him that still because his first name is too generic and his last name is too long and honestly, it makes me giggle) and their moment of “whatever” that Gary asks about when they have the “is he a virgin” discussion because I just feel there is such a goldmine there for both characters. But I also know if I write it now, it’s gonna get Jossed next week.

Granted I could just say “eff it” and just go for it anyway. It’s likely that even if I can sort of make it fit with canon that it’s still gonna get Jossed eventually. I guess there’s just always going to be part of me that wants my stories to at least fit as headcanon.

Speaking of headcanons, I really hope that Helen of Troy is back again this season. I’d really like to see more of her with the Legends. I think she’d be a great person to team up with them now and then. Part of me wants her to show up with a girlfriend from Themyscira, but my headcanon is that she’s an asexual aromantic. I may have written about this previously, but if you’ve watched the episodes she’s in, she portrays zero interest in any of the men coming onto her and no interest in the women besides loving that they are warriors. When she becomes a warrior herself, her admiration shifts some, but it never seems romantic or sexual in nature. I really want them to make that part of her character. And not in a “men have scarred me for life” kind of way, though men certainly have been the cause of a great deal of her suffering. I want part of the reason that she’s suffered so much to have been because she has never and will never return any of the (weird and creepy, tbh) romantic and sexual interest men have shown her over the course of her life.

Helen gets transported to a new millennium and she’s like, “well, at least there isn’t an actual war going on over me.” She’s just so done with everyone and everything. I love her transformation when they’re able to take her somewhere safe for her. Man, I just really love her and want her to be happy and to see her all the time.