DC's Legends of Tomorrow

The Beautiful Absurdity of the Waverider

I gave up on *DC's Legends of Tomorrow* halfway through its first season. Honestly, who did not? Greg Berlanti and Phil Klemmer's 2016 superhero team-up started as a dreary chore. Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) gathered a bunch of B-tier heroes and villains to save the timeline. It was stiff. It was self-serious. Then, somewhere around season two, the bottom dropped out and the writers realized something crucial. They were making a comedy.



Whether that pivot was an act of desperation or genius, I am not entirely sure. (Probably a bit of both). But it saved the series. Over the course of its seven seasons and 110 episodes, the show mutated. It shed the grim leather aesthetic of its older sibling, *Arrow*, and embraced total structural anarchy. A giant plush toy fighting a time demon? Sure. A Bollywood musical number? Why not. The AV Club once affectionately called its crossover efforts "fanbait," but that undersells what the show actually does week to week. It functions as a high-speed screwball comedy wearing a cape.



Look closely at Caity Lotz. She plays Sara Lance, the White Canary, and her performance anchors the entire circus. On *Arrow*, Lotz was tasked with playing a traumatized, formerly dead assassin. Here, you can physically see the tension leave her shoulders. Watch the way she leans against the ship's console—there is an exhausted, dry patience to her posture. She fights like a dancer who is annoyed that she has to ruin her good boots. When Tala Ashe joined the cast in season three as Zari, a Muslim-American hacktivist from a dystopian future, the chemistry clicked perfectly. Ashe brings a wry, combative energy that cuts right through the superhero posturing.



There is a specific scene in the season two finale that still sticks with me. The crew is forced to break the cardinal rule of time travel: returning to a moment they've already visited. The camera does not focus on the CGI temporal anomalies outside the window. Instead, it lingers on the tight, panicked faces of the crew as the ship rattles around them. The lighting on the Waverider shifts from its usual cool blue to a sickly, emergency red. You feel the tactile, shaking danger of their mistake. We expect superhero media to be about saving the world, but *Legends* is mostly about fixing the messes we make ourselves. It is a deeply human show hiding in plain sight.