Warning: SPOILERS for Legends of Tomorrow season 6, episode 11, "The Final Frame".
The Legends of Tomorrow saved the Earth from a trio of bowling enthusiast aliens known as the Pin Killers, who may have been members of the New Gods. While the Pin Killers' leader, Mike The Strike, specifically denied being a god, describing himself as "just an average Joe who loves to bowl and destroy countless worlds," there is ample evidence not to take him at his word. Chief among this evidence is the technology the Pin Killers employed to add to their collection of trophy worlds and the fact that their hangout of choice, Galaxy Lanes, was managed by another being of incalculable cosmic power on the level of a New God.
Created and designed by comics' legend Jack Kirby in 1971, the New Gods grew to become a major part of DC Comics' mythology. Originally crafted as an independent series, Kirby's creations were drawn into the cosmology of the Superman books, with the celestial tyrant Darkseid becoming one of the greatest enemies of Superman and the Justice League. While Darkseid and his followers on the corrupt world of Apokolips are the most famous of the New Gods (having been featured prominently in Zack Snyder's Justice League) their ranks include a wide variety of characters, from the escape artist Mister Miracle and the all-knowing Metron, New God of Knowledge, to the hippie-like Forever People.
Many of the New Gods drew inspiration from Earth culture, with the Forever People's Serifan taking on the persona of an Old West cowboy and arming himself with a revolver and special cosmic cartridges. There was also a servant of Darkseid, known as Sleez, who was obsessed with adult movies and tried to brainwash Superman into making such a film with the New God heroine Big Barda. Given that, it is not unbelievable that a trio of evil New Gods might develop a fixation on bowling and seek to indulge their favorite hobby in a way that allowed them to claim whole worlds for their collection.
The Pin Killers Used Motherboxes
The Legends of Tomorrow were drawn into a battle with the Pin Killers while searching for a life support pod from an alien ship that became displaced in time. They discovered the pod in Kansas City, Kansas in the year 2021, but found nothing inside the pod but a strange cube covered in alien writing. The cube responded to being touched and repeated handling of the box caused it to transport the Legends to the Galaxy Lanes bowling alley, somewhere in deep space, were they were forced into a match against the Pin Killers. The cube that delivered the Pin Killer's "invitation" resembled some designs of a Motherbox, the advanced computers used by the New Gods for various tasks. While the exact abilities of a Motherbox in the comics are decidedly vague, one of their most famous functions is opening gateways called Boom Tubes and the box handled by the Legends made a loud booming noise when it teleported them to Galaxy Lanes.
The Pin Killers Used Advanced Planet-Stealing Tech
The Legends soon discovered that they were playing for higher stakes than a ride back to Earth and that the Pin Killers collected the home planets of anyone who dared challenge their supremacy in the alleys of Galaxy Lanes. Beyond taking the planets and turning them into bowling balls, the Pin Killer's leader, Mike The Strike, bowled with the captive worlds during the match. The technology the Pin Killers employed to capture the planets and change them into bowling balls resembled the process used by the alien Coluans to trap worlds and cities in glass bottles, like the famous Kryptonian city of Kandor. One episode of Supergirl, "The Bottle Episode," confirmed that this technology exists in the Arrowverse, as one Brainiac-5 doppelganger was able to use it to save his Earth by storing it in a bottle during the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths. While there's no record of the New Gods doing something similar in the comics, it would certainly be within their capabilities to replicate the technology of the less-advanced Coluans.
What Is Buddy The Bowling Alley Owner?
The Legends of Tomorrow have confronted a number of strange beings of undefined power over the course of season 6. These have included a variety of aliens and other oddities, such as a seemingly omniscient cowboy narrator. "The Final Frame" presents another enigmatic figure in the form of Buddy, the manager of Galaxy Lanes, who subtly aided the Legends in their match against the Pin Killers despite apparently being bound by rules that required him to act as a fair arbiter of the tournament and prevented him from simply kicking the obnoxious Pin Killers out of his establishment until someone beat them in a fair match. Various New Gods stories have made reference to the New Gods being bound by unknowable cosmic laws in their dealings with mortals, raising the possibility that Buddy is a New God himself. Whatever Buddy is, his status as a being of power was confirmed at the episode's end, when he met John Constantine for the first time and commented that he sensed "powers both mighty and abundant" within him. Buddy then quietly added to himself those powers would lead to Constantine's death.
The Pin Killers Might've Been New Gods
The Pin Killers were undoubtedly among the most powerful beings that the Legends of Tomorrow had ever confronted, but were they members of the New Gods? While the evidence is circumstantial beyond the fact that the invitations they employed to lure unfortunate souls into Galaxy Lanes to play against them resemble the Motherboxes of the comics in design and function, this would not be the first time that the series made reference to the wider DC Universe in an indirect fashion due to the rights to certain characters being off-limits to the Arrowverse.
One prime example of this was Legends of Tomorrow establishing the existence of Wonder Woman and the Amazons of Themyscira in the Arrowverse in the episode "Helen Hunt," after Zari Tomaz took Helen of Troy (who was cursed by the gods to always have men fighting over her) to an island where it was said she would be free of her curse and able to learn how to fight for herself. Given that, it's entirely possible that the Pin Killers are a similar sly but subtle nod to New Gods existing in the Arrowverse.