Tuesday 11 May 2021

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 2 (2016)



Having been told that they should absolutely not ever travel to 1942, it's exactly zero surprise that the misfit crew of the timeship Waverider pretty quickly find their way to exactly that year. They have what seem to be good reasons for this, of course - these self-styled "Legends" always do.  It's execution, not motivation, that's generally their issue.

Points for the team, though: they actually resolve the crisis that lured them back to World War Two!  More problematically, they find themselves now not just trying to protect Time, but Reality itself, which is under threat from the machinations of a trio of former Big Bads from Arrow and Flash.  Because as every comic book villain knows, if at first you don't succeed, team up with your fellow failures and fail together!

Okay, maybe that's not quite how the villains themselves think about these things, but "let's team up to finally defeat <hero name>!" is definitely a tried and true comic book plotline.  And hey, when you're facing a team of hero-types (even a team as dysfunctional as the Legends tend to be), then evening the odds by getting some allies of your own makes good sense.

For me, the first season of Legends of Tomorrow was definitely the weakest Arrowverse show in 2015.  I'm pleased to say that the reverse is true in 2016, and it was my favourite of the four programs.  The writing team seems to have identified what does and does not work about this group of characters and leaned into it quite hard here.  There's lots of wacky hijinks and banter, and 'failing forward' as things go awry and the team scramble to rectify them.

Enjoyable superhero silliness.

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