Are you ready for the Waverider crew to get even weirder? DC’s absurd time-travel series Legends Of Tomorrow will return to The CW for its third season in the fall, and all bets are off thanks to the cliffhanger ending of season 2.
Time is broken now, because Caity Lotz’s Sara Lance allowed her team to interact with their younger selves, creating a paradox of problematic proportions. Dinosaurs now roam free in New York, and according to the season 3 synopsis, Arthur Darvill’s Rip Hunter will create a "Time Bureau" to clean up the mess. The Legends, once again, will be disbanded.
If season 2 is anything to go by, the reality-ruining heroes will reunite before long, and they’ll probably make a bunch of new friends. This seems to be the series’ formula for keeping things fresh, and it also provides a constant stream of disposable characters who can get killed off to increase the stakes.
It’s already been confirmed that Tala Ashe will join the show as Zari Adrianna Tomaz, who, in the comics, uses an ancient Egyptian amulet to gain the powers of Isis (the Egyptian goddess of love).
There are bound to be more strange characters popping up throughout season 3, so here are our suggestions for the 15 New Heroes For Legends Of Tomorrow Season 3.
15. Booster Gold
Booster Gold has to be added. DC TV overlord Greg Berlanti is a well-publicized fan of this futuristic and somewhat farcical superhero. He’s even developing a movie adaptation with Warner Bros (which will apparently exist outside of the DCEU), with occasional The Flash scribe Zack Stentz.
Someone in Berlanti’s leveraging position could surely convince DC and Warners that giving Booster Gold a small role in The CW’s superhero time-travel show could do a lot to up the character’s name recognition ahead of a movie.
If you’re unfamiliar, Booster Gold (real name Michael Jon Carter) is a showboating superhero from the future. He travelled back to the present day, and used his knowledge of historical events and an arsenal of future tech to make light work of saving lives. Over time, he developed into a genuine hero, but he started out in a highly humorous place.
It could make for a terrific standalone episode, to have the Legends popping into an alternate timeline - where Booster gold is a much-sponsored super celebrity – and questioning his dubious time-trickery techniques.
14. Blue Beetle
Where there’s Booster Gold, there’s often Blue Beetle. The pair of heroes formed a partnership in the comics not that long ago, providing some comedic chemistry that fans really connected with. If Legends Of Tomorrow season 3 does venture to a timeline featuring Booster Gold, it would be doubly fan-pleasing to throw Blue Beetle into the mix as well.
Jaime Reyes is the version of this character that ended up paired with Booster Gold. He’s a teenager who came into the possession of an alien scarab, which gifted him with a snazzy suit of armour, the powers of flight, enhanced strength, and energy blasts.
Once again, it wouldn’t be too difficult to work Blue Beetle in. They’ve already travelled to alternate timelines (like that dystopian Arrow one, for example), so why not visit a version of the modern day where Booster Gold and Blue Beetle are abusing their foreknowledge to become famous heroes?
The fact that time is broken at the moment would make it doubly easy to engineer a story like this.
13. Kamandi
“We have talked about Kamandi in the writers’ room,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim told Entertainment Weekly back in April, making this Tarzan-esque character one of the surest character additions to the show. “He’s definitely a character that we love and a concept that we love,” he added.
If you’re not a comic book super fan, you might be in need of a primer. Jack Kirby created Kamandi back in 1972. He’s a young hero - who is adept in karate and tracking - in a post-apocalyptic future where humans are savages and intelligent animals rule the Earth. It's all a bit Planet Of The Apes.
Again, screwing up time – as the Legends did in the season 2 finale – allows the writers to go off in weird directions. There’s no reason they can’t say that, somewhere in the timeline, there’s a young boy in a loin cloth mounting a resistance against some highly intelligent animals. It could make for a very fun episode.
12. Elongated Man
Part of the fun with Legends Of Tomorrow is the sheer weirdness of it. Over the course of two relatively short seasons, the central heroes have met cowboys, time pirates, immortal savages, their younger selves, and many more madcap characters. With season 3, it would be great to see the wackiness dialled up even higher.
One character they could chuck in to help achieve this is Elongated Man, who - in the comics - used a rare fruit to make himself super stretchy.
He may have a bendy body, but his mind is sharp. Elongated Man first appeared in 1960, and was established as a genius detective. He could make for a fun superhero for the Waverider crew to visit.
The Justice Society Of America showcased some super serious 1940s crime fighters during season 2. Perhaps, to give season 3 its own unique team, the writers can establish Elongated Man as one of many wacky heroes operating in the 1960s. With a stretchy sleuth among their ranks, they could be even stranger.
11. Sergeant Rock And Easy Company
Sergeant Rock and Easy Company were teased once in a piece of official Instagram art, but this wasn’t enough. It’s high time that Legends Of Tomorrow introduced the wartime hero Sgt. Rock, and his iconic comrade Easy Company, to its roster of established heroes. The show has ventured into World War II before, but never shown this corner of it.
Sgt. Franklin Rock was created in 1959 by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert, with the former drawing on his own experiences of war to send Sgt. Rock to real battlegrounds. The missions were violent, and often deadly, serving up a more realistic vision of war than many comic books.
Of course, in time, other writers took over and gave these soldiers more fantastical foes to face, but it would be nice for Legends season 3 to stick to the characters’ roots and entrench them in some realistic WWII warfare. Like the slavery-themed episode from season 2, they could address some big real-world issues with this lot.
10. Deadman
Justice League Dark is another property that will be joining the DCEU in the future. A lot of its characters aren’t household names, though, so DC and Warners could use Legends to test the waters a bit.
Plus, for fans, it would be a whole lot of fun – and a nice change of pace - to see the Legends dabbling in some dark magic. Deadman would be a fine choice, if they did decide to go down that path.
Deadman is the ghost of a trapeze artist named Boston Brand, who was murdered before being ghoul-ified by a Hindu god. He can fly, become invisible, and possess any sentient being.
It’s about time that DC TV universe dove into darker material like this, since they’ve pretty much exhausted crime lords, metahumans, and time aberrations at this point.
Putting the Legends up against a vengeful ghost could liven things up significantly. Again, the writers could keep this story where it originally took place – in the 1960s – if they wanted to.
9. Phantom Girl
How about a trip to the future for some supernatural action? In the comics, Phantom Girl operated as part of The Legion Of Superheroes in the 30th and 31st centuries.
She’s an alien from the planet Bgztl who can become intangible and phase through solid objects. She sometimes went by the alias Apparition.
The writers could decide to introduce another team of heroes, to place the Justice Society Of America in the supporting superheroes role. Bringing in a future team like the Legion would be one way to keep things fresh.
The existence of the Legion has been teased before in the DC TV universe. Their eye-catching "flight rings" have been spotted twice: once in the Speed Force, and once in the Fortress Of Solitude. If they do ever bring the team in for real, let’s hope that Phantom Girl is on the roster.
8. Sandman
No, not that Sandman. No one is expecting Legends Of Tomorrow to infringe on Neil Gaiman’s dreamscape, which is meant to be getting its own live-action adaptation at some point. Rather, it’s the Wesley Dodds pulp detective character of the same name that could slot brilliantly into Legends of Tomorrow.
Created in 1939 by DC legend Gardner Fox and artist Bert Christman, this gas-mask-and-fedora-sporting vigilante operated before, during, and after World War II, bringing street level heroics to a noir-ish Manhattan. He used sleeping gas to sedate his enemies, and also had prophetic dreams.
As with the aforementioned Sgt. Rock, the Legends production team previously teased Sandman in a cryptic Instagram post. Fingers remain crossed that they will eventually follow through on this, bringing Sandman in as a guest star or perhaps even adding him to the Waverider crew.
7. Plastic Man
As much as everyone would love to see Legends go noir for a week or two, the fan base has united in its love for the wackier side of life. One way to embrace this would be to bring in Plastic Man, one of the first superhero characters to present a comedic spin on saving the world.
Plastic Man was created by Jack Cole at Quality Comics in 1941, and was eventually bought by DC in 1956. His powers involve elasticity and a healing factor, as well as immortality and invulnerability. Despite that outrageous set of skills, many of his adventures were silly slapstick stories.
Admittedly, Legends couldn’t have both Elongated Man and Plastic Man, unless they wanted to make them a ridiculous double act. However, it might be easier to just pick one and build a weird period piece episode around him, high on laughs and levity.
6. Zatanna
As touched upon earlier, it would be cool to see some version of the Justice League Dark team on The CW, before they become a big screen movie franchise. (Much like the Suicide Squad side arc that Arrow served up, long before David Ayer’s film came together.)
Zatanna would be a great character to bring in, and a real opportunity for a guest star to sizzle. She’s a stage illusionist with genuine magical powers, who has teamed up with Batman and Constantine on numerous occasions.
Her origin story – involving a mystery about the disappearance/death of her father – could make for an enjoyable standalone episode.
Although Legends has done zombies before, it’s never tackled the dark mythos of death in the way that Zatanna could (she had to fight an undead version of her dad at one point).
Again, they could keep Zatanna in the time of her comic book origins (the 1960s) or update her for the modern day, or they could even reposition her in a dark future.
5. Manhunter (Kate Spencer)
Another powerful character that they could add to the show is Kate Spencer, the eighth DC character to hold the vigilante name Manhunter (which dates back to 1942 and Quality Comics). She’s a federal prosecutor who takes the law into her own hands, as she's fed up with seeing criminals walk free.
The Kate Spencer version is a modern day hero (added to the DC roster in 2006), but the fact that the Manhunter name has been held by many different people across various eras provides potential for time travel fun.
What fans would really want to see is Kate filling crooks with bullets, and beating down on them in her eye-catching red suit, which increases her strength and agility. We can imagine her being good friends with Sara.
Legends needs to be serious every once in a while, and seeing the gang clash ideologically with Kate would be one way to do this.
4. Detective Chimp
On a week when the writers are feeling strongly anti-serious, it’s about time that The CW gave the fans what they want: a live-action (well, CGI) version of Detective Chimp. If Grodd can work, then why can’t this adorable simian sleuth?
Detective Chimp feels like the ideal guest star for an early episode in the season, where time and reality have gone wonky. The Waverider crew could try to check in with the authorities, only to find an ape in a Sherlock Holmes hat. It would be the typical crazy Legends that fans love.
In the comics, Detective Chimp, aka Bobo T. Chimpanzee, fights crime with the Bureau of Amplified Animals (some sheep probably chose the acronym). He can speak, crack cases, and take an ordinary human in a fight. Imagine Mick's reaction.
3. Ma Hunkel
Ma Hunkel is another absolutely absurd character that could help make the "time is screwed" chunk of the season seem even weirder than your average Legends episode. She’s also another hero that has been teased before on the official Instagram account, which may or may not mean anything.
She was one of the first female superheroes, and one of the earliest parody characters in the genre. Ma Hunkel was created in 1939, as a working mother who wears a pot on her head to battle local criminals in New York City. She chose the name Red Tornado, which was later repurposed for a powerful android (seen on screen in Supergirl season 1).
It would be great if – despite being played for laughs, and/or established as a consequence of time being broken – Ma Hunkel still managed to help the Legends save the day in some way.
2. Power Girl
A couple of truly wacky heroes, some gritty noir-ish guest stars, and possibly an allusion or two to Justice League Dark would be amazing... but nothing would excite fans more than an appearance from a genuine DC Comics A-lister. For proof, just look how much hype Superman’s casting garnered for Supergirl.
Now could be the time for Melissa Benoist to step up and become the guest star that gets the headlines. In the comics, the Supergirl of Earth-2 changed her super-identity to Power Girl after moving to a new universe. This alternative version of Kara Zor-El became a major hero in her own right.
Since Legends season 2 will begin in a reality where everything has gone haywire, now could be the time for a Benoist-as-Power-Girl guest spot. Like the alternate versions of Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen and Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen that have come before, it could be a lot of fun to see an alternative Kara fighting baddies in this strange new timeline.
1. Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)
A fan dream that’s been fantasized a thousand times: wouldn’t it be cool if Green Lantern joined the DC TV universe? There have been plenty of allusions to Coast City, and the Hal Jordan Easter egg from Arrow was a complete showstopper. The only thing left is to properly introduce him.
Hal Jordan is one of Earth’s representatives within Green Lantern Corps. Utilizing his willpower and snazzy ring, he can create anything his imagination can muster. Greg Berlanti is known to be a huge fan, and he even worked on the script for the much-maligned Ryan Reynolds-starring movie.
Berlanti, having made a haven for DC fans on The CW, would surely fancy a second bite of the green cherry. Warner Bros. likely wouldn’t mind, as long as the result garnered some rave reviews and hype for the upcoming movie reboot. The Legends, having screwed up Earth – its timeline, at least – could have created the perfect opportunity for a disgruntled Hal to intervene.
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Who do you want to see in Legends of Tomorrow season 3? Let us know in the comment section.