Legends of Tomorrow is here!

Rip Hunter is addressing the Time Masters Council about the Second Blitz in London 2166 and Vandal Savage who has conquered the entire planet. Hunter demands the council get over their non-interference policy and stop Savage before he gets to the point of destroying the world. The next we see Hunter he is jumping through time and space gathering the troops. 

The pilot lays the groundwork for the major arc of the show: how do you defeat a guy who cannot be killed? It also gives us hints of Hunter’s complicated history, no puns intended, with the Council in general and Savage in particular. We also see how the events of the last year of Arrow have thoroughly messed up Ray on a fundamental level and left Sara aimless, though we get no explanation for why she didn’t immediately go back to Nyssa. Leonard, who has been turning into a good guy despite his best efforts to avoid it on The Flash, slowly comes around to embracing the pull towards heroism.

Overall the episode is okay. Clunky in the beginning, especially for those of us who watch Arrow and The Flash and know everyone’s stories, it’s not until Professor Aldus Boardman comes into play that things really start taking off. Acting-wise, my initial prediction that this show would live or die on Arthur Darvill and Wentworth Miller stands – they’re the most magnetic of the cast and the strongest actors. Darvill’s acting choices at the beginning of the episode make much more sense towards the end and are actually hilarious in hindsight. Miller, while he doesn’t actually have that much to do, is extremely charismatic and as always makes the most of what he’s given. The big surprise here is Caity Lotz who is fantastic and makes me enjoy Sara Lance more in this one episode than I have in her entire run on Arrow.

As for everyone else, Drameh and Garber’s chemistry makes up for a lot of really, really unpleasant choices that the writers make regarding their relationship dynamics, as does Dominic Purcell’s scenery-chewing glee as Heat Wave. The less said about the Hawks and Savage the better.

The look of the show is…odd. A combination of CGI and actual locations, it definitely works better when everyone is not onboard the ship and instead interacting in the ‘real’ world in awesome costumes. I will say that the opening sequence is where the major money was spent and it’s worth it as it establishes, in terms of emotional heft and actual destruction, just what is at stake if the team fails in taking Savage out.

As RPB said, ‘I enjoyed it more than Heroes Reborn.’

I give this episode 3  WaveRiders out of 5