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*****Published in January 2016

It’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s…another superhero show.

Don’t get me wrong, I love superheroes.  I spent most of this winter break binge-watching The Flash and Arrow.  The Avengers is one of my favorite movies, and I have a Captain America PopVinyl.  But today, we see an overabundance of superheroes.  Another Batman movie—with a new actor—only four years after The Dark Knight Rises.  An anticipated Spider-Man “franchise” cut short to make room for another Spider-Man franchise, again with a new actor.  Superhero sequels in the threes and fours.  People want superheroes, and they’re getting superheroes.  Lots and lots of them.

I heard about the most recent small-screen superhero endeavor, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, months before its premiere.  I thought there were a lot of unusual elements to the show, and I was a little skeptical.  The show is already unique because it is the first superhero team-up ever attempted on TV.  Legends seems to be DC’s attempt at creating an Avengers-like superhero team-up.  Cramming multiple superheroes into a full-length movie, as The Avengers did, seemed difficult enough; I found myself wondering how well a team-up of eight superheroes would possibly work as a TV show.  That in itself is unusual; plus, unlike The Avengers, which features superhero headliners like Iron Man and Captain America, all of the superheroes in Legends have been, until now, sidekicks and background players on DC’s other CW shows, Arrow and The Flash.

The show focuses on a motley crew of characters, ranging from scientists-turned-superheroes to reincarnated demigods to outright criminals, who are recruited by a Time Master from the future (the year 2166, to be precise) to travel through time to stop the immortal Vandal Savage (with a name like that, I’m pretty sure he’s a bad guy…).  Savage reincarnates over and over again, causing damage and gaining power, and by the time 2166 rolls around, he’s managed to conquer the entire world.  It’s up to the show’s eight (!) headliners to prevent that future from coming to pass.

The show itself has even addressed the abundance of superhero shows through its advertisements, using the tagline, “When heroes alone are not enough… the world needs legends.”  But are those just the same thing?  Or will this show bring something new to the table?

*****Updated January 2021

So, in case you missed it, the Avengers did not defeat Thanos by turning the Infinity Stones into a giant cuddly stuffed animal warrior (which, yes, is basically how the Legends took down their Season 3 big bad). So, for better or worse, Legends is most definitely not The Avengers—or any of its fellow Arrowverse shows, for that matter. The end of Season 3 seemed to dispense with any and all notions that Legends had to be like any of the other shows—or even like itself in previous seasons.

It’s reached a level of absurdity and self-awareness that’s right up there with Guardians of the Galaxy. Guardians Vol. 2 had Ego vs. Pac-Man; Legends had Mallus vs. Beebo. Guardians had the dance-off to save the universe; Legends had a James Taylor sing-along to bring one of their own back from the brink of death. Going into its sixth season, it’s hilariously self-aware, surprisingly well-paced (more so than its fellow Arrowverse shows, in my opinion), and just plain fun. Every season, if not better than the last, seems to actively improve on some aspect of the show, and bring surprises not just with its hit-or-miss-but-mostly-hit outlandish concepts, but with the way it balances and grounds those in genuinely moving threads. (Can you tell it’s been a very long time since this show’s been on the air? I miss this show.)

images by The CW and Marvel LLC