Legends of Tomorrow burst back onto the small screen with an episode that introduced a whole new organization to the Arrowverse... and hints at a new big bad for the third season. Legends also comes back in a whole new time slot, moving to Tuesday nights immediately after The Flash, a move designed to help bump its popularity. The show has, so far, struggled to find its feet in the Arrowverse, with a rotating cast that took nearly two seasons to find a clear leader. While the show hasn't been as successful as the rest of the DC TV universe, the season three premiere includes all the best ingredients of the show, along with hints at a new big bad and a whole new role for Rip Hunter that promises to create a little more complex tension in the near future.
Season two wrapped up with the team saving reality from the Legion of Doom, destroying the Spear of Destiny and saving the day... before heading back to a reality that had been completely destroyed. The final moments of the season 2 finale included dinosaurs roaming the streets of the modern world, as the crew of the Waverider realised that they had managed to really, really mess things up.
Fixing The Dinosaurs
The premiere picks up exactly where the finale ended, as the crew lands the Waverider in a complete mess of a city, with dinosaurs roaming the streets. As Amaya (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) turns to face off against a T-Rex and use her power to save them, however, Rip Hunter (Arther Darvill) steps out of a portal that suddenly appears. Wearing a natty blue suit and with a particularly severe haircut, this new Rip starts opening portals to pop dinosaurs (and other abberations) back to where they belong. He explains that in his life, it has been five years since he left the Waverider with Sara (Caity Lotz) in charge, and he's set up an organization specifically to deal with time displacements and anachronisms created when the Legends broke the first rule of time travel. After dropping the good news that he is already fixing time, he then fires the Legends and confiscates their ship, telling them that they are no longer needed.
Six Months Later
Legends then does a little time-jumping of its own, to a point six months in the future, where each of the Legends are failing to readjust to civilian life. It's the saddest part of the premiere, as each of these superheroes struggles to find a way to live normally - a callout to the original formation of the team, and the fact that Rip initially chose them because they simply weren't important in the grand scheme of things.
Sara is working at a big box store, struggling not to kill her boss (literally), Ray (Brandon Routh) is working at an app, frustrated at his inability to get people to take his tech seriously, Nate (Nick Zano) is working as a superhero, but is rendered unnecessary by the vastly superior skills of the Flash, and Jax (Franz Drameh) is dropping out of engineering school, frustrated that he isn't actually doing any engineering. Even the Legends who seem to be doing well, like Martin Stein (Victor Garber), at home with his family, or Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell) hanging out in Aruba, aren't as happy as they were with the Legends.
Don't Do The Thing (They Did The Thing)
As sad as the opening scenes are, the show quickly returns to its madcap ways when Mick's Aruba vacation is cut short by the appearance of Julius Caesar. Clearly an anachronism, Mick makes the decision to knock Caeser out and tie him up in his Cabana, before calling his old Captain, Sara, to tell him what to do. Bored of their new lives, the team decides to get together, break into the Time Bureau, and try and convince Rip to let them handle the situation. Rip, sensibly enough, says that his men will take care of things, something the Legends handle in typical style. Instead of allowing this to happen, they decide to steal the Waverider, go after Ceaser themselves, drop him back off in him own time, and prove that they are still needed. Of course, it all goes horribly (and hilariously) wrong, and while they manage to even things out again in the end, it only happens after a big ol' battle in 49AD, and a quick look at the world had Caeser managed to conquer the whole thing.
One of the most intersting parts of this whole set up is the way that it pits Rip against the Legends... yet again. While he was originall seen as the Captain and the leader of the team, he has actually spent a lot of time up against them over the past two seasons, and it looks like this is going to be a whole lot more pronounced in season 3. His Time Bureau, while incredibly effective, looks down on the Legends and treats them as inferior. They use portals to jump to exactly the right points in time, guns that erase memory so that displaced people can be dropped neatly back with no knowledge of what happened to them, and they've turned the Waverider into a simulator to train more agents.
They also make jokes about the ineptitude of the Legends, and make it clear that they are not welcome in the Bureau - hardly the welcome that the team might expect from their old Captain. This creates a dynamic that is going to really let Sara shine as leader, but could also develop Rip's character significantly. From the rebellious Time Master in season 1, Rip has now become leader of a new kind of Time Master, up against his own rebellious protege. It's a huge about-face, and one that will undoubtedly lead to some great interactions with the team over the course of the season.
The Legends Are Back
By the end of the episode, the Legends have fixed both time and the Waverider, and pretty much everyone has decided that they would rather be time-travelling superheroes than stay at home. It's obvious why the majority stick around, and while Stein has good reason to actually want to return to normal life (and his newly pregnant daughter), he decides to stick it out for Jax. Thus, the Legends are back, and ready to continue adventuring through time and clearing up anachronisms.
That the Time Bureau is willing to allow this seems illogical at first, but two explanations are given for why the Legends are allowed to keep rampaging through time. The Legends themselves are told that they are being allowed to keep 'fixing their mistakes' because Rip and the Bureau realize that there's not a whole lot they can do to stop it - arguably untrue, given the Bureau's ability to portal right onto the ship, and Rip's knowledge of the team and the ship itself. However, as Sara and Mick swig beer on the bridge, it's clear that they are accepting this explanation. Moments later, however, the audience gets to hear the real explanation, as told by Rip to one of his Time Bureau cronies: the Legends may be useful 'against what's coming'.
Mallus, Constantine, And The Legends' Future
'What's coming' is, of course, the new big bad for season 3: Mallus. Not recognizably a comic book big bad, nothing has yet been revealed about Mallus, except for the fact that he is going to have some kind of connected to a new hero joining the team: Constantine (Matt Ryan). It seems that the big bad is going to have something to do with magic, and something to do with the Time Bureau - perhaps this is the larger consequence of the Legends' decision to break the first rule of time travel? The premiere shows that Rip knows something is coming, but isn't able to do anything about it just yet - and that he doesn't trust his old team enough to tell them about it. Instead, he is letting them loose in the hope that they may be able to help in some unforseen way.
It's a risky plan, which fits perfectly with the Legends themselves, as the kings of winging it! The combination of a clear (and solo) big bad, the addition of fan-favorite Constantine, and Rip's new position at the head of the Time Bureau (who are sure to bump heads with the Legends more than once over the coming weeks) promises a third season that could be the best one yet.
Legends of Tomorrow continues next Tuesday with 'Freakshow' at 9/8c on the CW.