Legends of Tomorrow is closing out another season as the wildest and most unpredictable superhero series on The CW. The show delved into the supernatural more than ever in Season 4 with Constantine on board, and there have been magical creatures aplenty in the mix. The Season 4 finale should be a doozy.
Sara is in a committed relationship with Ava and as badass as always, Mick is a romance novelist, Nate and Zari teamed up to incubate a dragon egg, Charlie found her place among the Legends, a demon is threatening humanity, and Gary betrayed his friends because that demon could restore his lost nipple. Throw in that Mona twist, the romance between Ray (whose body is now possessed by Neron) and Nora, and the trip down to Hell, and there's a lot to be covered in the Season 4 finale.
The trailer for the Season 4 finale revealed that the dragon egg is indeed going to hatch into a baby dragon, but perhaps not the kind of baby dragon the Legends were hoping for, as he'll seemingly be under the control of the dastardly Tabitha. The footage shows Tabitha telling the dragon to "Burn them all," which is a sentiment familiar to Game of Thrones fans everywhere.
Spoilers ahead for Game of Thrones Season 8. Legends of Tomorrow showrunner Phil Klemmer chatted with CinemaBlend about the series finale, and when I asked if Tabitha's "Burn them all!" was a nod to Thrones, he said this:
It was subconscious, perhaps. Again, Game of Thrones had been down for like a year and a half when we were writing this stuff. I think it was probably only later that we realized that we were going to be going up against the most expensive and anticipated event in recent television history. But I wouldn't take it back for the world. It seems like we are the classic David to their Goliath, and we're certainly not trying to breathe the same air as Game of Thrones. We're not goofing on them. We function in such a different sphere that hopefully, you can enjoy both shows! They each have a very different function. After watching the penultimate Game of Thrones, it wouldn't be a bad idea to watch the final Legends, because it's kind of a little more hopeful.
As Phil Klemmer said, it would not be a bad idea for Thrones fans to tune in to Legends' finale for a different take on a dragon roasting a location! In the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen embraced her mad father's vision for King's Landing and burned the city on the back of her dragon, civilians and soldiers alike.
In the series finale, which just so happened to air less than 24 hours before the Legends Season 4 finale, Dany showed no remorse for burning King's Landing, which seemed villainous enough to her former allies that she was killed for it.
Obviously Game of Thrones and Legends of Tomorrow are quite different, and not just because Game of Thrones frontal nudity is very different from that on Legends of Tomorrow. After all, Game of Thrones was quickly known for its "sexposition" in the early seasons, whereas Legends of Tomorrow coined the term "nipnotize" for the magical properties of Gary's replacement nipple, and one of those two is certainly much funnier than the other.
I for one can vouch for the fact that both Game of Thrones and Legends of Tomorrow can be enjoyed for their similarities and their differences, and there was no way Phil Klemmer and Co. could have known that Daenerys would be "burning them all" shortly before Legends unleashed its dragon. Klemmer did go on to explain how he sees Tabitha's actions as different from Dany's actions in their decisions to start roasting:
It's pretty wild! Again, Tabitha is a villain on our show, I don't think of Daenerys as a villain. I know this shouldn't turn into Game of Thrones interview, but it's pretty wild how that worked out.
The idea of a dragon is certainly relatively new to Legends of Tomorrow, whereas dragons were at least mentioned on Thrones as far back as the series premiere. Thrones was also experienced with creating dragons by the time Dany attacked King's Landing, whereas a dragon was something new for Legends of Tomorrow, and it's not like the other Earth-1 Arrow-verse series ever included dragons either.
Phil Klemmer explained what it was like to finally see the dragon after the visual effects team perfected it, saying this:
It's pretty funny, because in order to create things like dragons, it requires months of R&D. And so that was one of the first assignments that we gave our visual effects house, Zoic. And so by the time the dragon is hatched, in visual effects land, it's like Beebo. It's too late. If you don't like Beebo, it's such a massive undertaking, and so like it is like watching an actual egg hatch. Because you don't exactly know what's going to pop out of it, and we were delighted. In fact, we get to meet technically two sort of dragons. We get to meet two Wixtables in the finale, two very different versions of that dragon. It's pretty crazy when you do anything with that many visual effects. I feel bad for poor actors who have to like point up into the sky and pretend to be running from a tennis ball on a string and all that kind of stuff.
Beebo was a showstopper in the Season 3 finale of Legends of Tomorrow, and all signs point toward Wixtable the dragon as one of the most unforgettable parts of the Season 4 finale. Fans will have to wait until the episode airs in entirety to see the Legends dragon design in action beyond the few glimpses in the trailer, though.
Still, Phil Klemmer's tease that "two very different versions" of Wixtable will appear in the finale is quite intriguing. Hopefully that means there's a version of Wixtable that's not burning everything around him on behalf of Tabitha!
Fortunately, the actors playing the Legends know what they're doing when it comes to acting up against creatures that won't be added until the visual effects team does their part. If they could react to a giant Beebo who arrives to save the day, they can react to a burning baby dragon!
Speaking of Beebo, I asked Phil Klemmer whether Legends of Tomorrow would somehow manage to top the Beebo twist from the Season 3 finale in the Season 4 finale, and this was his promising answer:
It's very hard to top Beebo because I think we surprised ourselves with that. I guess we just want to try to outdo ourselves. Sometimes if you make something completely surprising, it feels like arbitrary. I guess what I would say is that like it's different, I think it's Legends-esque. It's definitely heartwarming like Beebo, but in more of a bittersweet kind of way. That's my sweet spot. Beebo made you just smile and it was pure joy, but unfortunately in life those moments are few and far between. This one's a little bit more grounded. It's possibly no less absurd. May be arguably more absurd, but yeah. It's a tough precedent we've set for ourselves, but I was really pleased.
Hey, I think there are a lot of Game of Thrones fans out there after the series finale who think that the episode was pretty absurd, and Legends generally handles absurd with a lot more humor than Thrones. Legends clearly also won't tie everything up in a neat little bow with happy endings aplenty, if the season ender is bittersweet.
All things considered, it sounds like the finale ends on a twist that will leave viewers dying to see Season 5, which unfortunately won't premiere for quite a while, as The CW is holding the next batch of episodes until midseason. At least it should kick off with a bang, thanks to the big Arrow-verse event that's on the way.
Phil Klemmer shared his thoughts on the show not coming back until 2020:
Watching the end of this, I guess it's the sort of thing that like we could have played for just yuks, but we played it pretty straight and I find it really emotional and that's amazing. People just have to hold onto their emotions for a long, long time! Obviously we're not going to have any new Legends for at least half a year, so we had to leave an indelible emotional impression, and we also had to have a pretty big cliffhanger. And thank god we did, because people are just going to have to savor.
Legends of Tomorrow does know how to deliver a cliffhanger, so hopefully fans will have plenty to speculate and think about in the months before Season 5 finally debuts. There may be some changes to the Legends crew, and of course there's the question of what will happen with Wixtable.
Find out how Legends of Tomorrow ends its fourth season with the finale on Monday, May 20 at 8 p.m. ET on The CW. It will be the fourth and final Arrow-verse superhero series to air its finale in the 2018-2019 TV season, and it will deliver a dose of dragons for Game of Thrones fans already missing the sight of dragonfire being blasted all over the place. Be sure to tune in.
