The world of comic book television is good for a lot of things, from fight scenes to cheeky humor to thrilling adventures. Still, there’s always that lurking feeling that even though the stakes can feel high during any given moment, viewers can almost always feel assured that everything will be okay and our main characters will live to fight another day. But it’s starting to sound like the super-spinoff Legends of Tomorrow will be using its limited series status to inject some massive repercussions into the story, and we’re probably going to see more characters getting killed off than we’re used to.
Legends of Tomorrow showrunner Phil Klemmer spoke with ScreenRant about the show’s place in this super-universe, even comparing the spinoff to Ocean’s Eleven. After calling the heroes-‘n-villains mash-up “essentially a suicide mission,” which brings to mind David Ayer’s upcoming film, Klemmer talks about how the group’s building tension will be a driving force, and then says this:
At a certain point, we will have darkness emerge and characters will betray one another and be tempted by the dark side. And others might not make it along for the full trip. And others might be lost in weird time periods.
Given that the time-traveling hero Rip Hunter is the one bringing everyone together, mixed with The Flash’s established path toward multiverses and alternate timelines, it’s definitely not out of the realm of belief that one or more characters will end up defending themselves in a completely unfamiliar location or era in time. And if no one has plans on going to save them, they’re as good as dead in my book. Also, if we’re being completely literal, it’s possible that Klemmer’s “full trip” reference only meant that one or more leads will opt out of the mission and stop traveling with the group, it certainly sounds to me like someone may bite the bullet (or some other projectile) during the course of the show.
Klemmer returned to that point a little later, where he used the show’s format to justify doing something a little different than a mission-of-the-week scenario for Legends of Tomorrow.
It’s an anthology show. This is not designed to go forever. This season is meant to be standalone… I mean not as anthological as True Detective. But not everybody will be continuing on this journey… It’s not going to begin Season 2 with us all hopping back on the same ship and like ‘Let’s get Vandal! Let’s get him for real this time!’ This is not traditional episodic television.
Obviously the show isn’t going to do anything detrimental to The Flash or Arrow (or whatever Oliver Queen will be going by at that point), but who’s to say that Hawkgirl is going to be around forever, or that Sara Lance and her White Canary persona won’t just die all over again? I mean, when a Lazarus Pit is involved, death loses some of its spark, but it’s not as if just anyone can take a dip.
Will Vandal Savage do permanent damage to any of the titular super squad, which also includes Captain Cold, Heat Wave, Firestorm and Atom? Find out when Legends of Tomorrow premieres in early 2016.
