‘Legends of Tomorrow’ doesn’t arrive until next year, but fans are already looking forward to the ensemble adventure, spinning off from ‘Arrow‘ and ‘The Flash.’  The show assembles a ragtag gang of heroes and villains from the two existing shows as they travel through time, thanks to the futuristic hero Rip Hunter, in order to stop the immortal conqueror Vandal Savage.

At SDCC, showrunner Phil Klemmer and stars Wentworth Miller (Leonard Snart/Captain Cold), Dominic Purcell (Mick Rory/Heat Wave) and Ciara Renée (Kendra Saunders/Hawkgirl)spoke about their new series and how it relates to ‘The Flash’ and ‘Arrow.’

First of all, the fact that the team consists of heroes and villains should already give viewers a clue that this team is no Justice League.  Klemmer states, “The pilot is all about assembling a disparate team, a sort of rag-tag ‘Dirty Dozen’ forced to save the world from future Hitler, a.k.a. Vandal Savage… It’s like ‘The Real World’: they don’t select people because they’re mild-mannered and they’re good at sharing. We put these people in a spaceship and sent them throughout time because they are bulls in a china shop… if you invited them to a party they would be the most likely to burn the house down — but to have, like, a really good party before that happens.”

As for how these characters will muck around with time travel, he remarked, “Sure, you want to stop Vandal, but while you’re back there, who can resist the temptation of buying a little Apple stock, assassinating Dick Cheney…”

Although time travel is a major factor on the show, due to budget restrictions, “we’re going to be confined to post-war to the very near future,” says Klemmer.  There will be one exception, though and it has to do with Hawkgirl’s past… which may actually have something to do with Vandal Savage’s when all is said and done.  “We will be seeing some Ancient Egypt in the ‘Arrow’ crossover and get into the origin story of Kendra and Carter [Hall, Hawkman] and the intersection with Vandal’s acquiring of immortality.”

Hawkgirl of course is a character who began as a slain Egyptian princess only to be reincarnated throughout history.  In the present she is Kendra Saunders, who popped up for a second in the season finale of ‘The Flash.’  Of the cast, she is the one that is the biggest mystery to viewers, but don’t expect that to last.

“Definitely I’ll be on ‘The Flash’,” said Renée. “There’s definitely going to be some introductions to characters that you don’t know very well, so that by the time you get to January you’re not swarmed with all this information about the team.”

Renée is excited by the possibility of exploring her character’s past in different time periods.  “I’ll get to play all these characters, I’ll never get bored!”

And what about her costume, which has yet to be revealed?  “There’s no [exposed] midriff, thank the lord for that!  But I do know that it’s a smokin’ costume.”  Her wings are likely to be entirely CGI, as Renée commented “Hearing stories of Hawkman on ‘Smallville’ with the 50-pound attachment, I’m like nooooooo. I have scoliosis, I don’t need to add to that!”

Renée won’t be the only one popping up on an existing CW super hero show.  Just because they are becoming ‘Legends of Tomorrow‘ doesn’t mean that Miller, Purcell and the rest are history when it comes to the shows that spawned them. “All of us will continue on ‘The Flash’ and ‘Arrow’ and in crossovers next fall leading up to the debut of the new show,” Miller said. “[These appearances are] meant to be sort of a launching pad for ‘Legends’.”

If you were worried that tagging along with a bunch of heroes will tame Captain Cold, Miller assures, “I don’t think Snart will ever become a full-on good guy; I think he may become shades of grey.  I hope he kind of teeter-totters.”

Purcell called his character Heat Wave “a dumber version of the Joker” but said “Yeah, we get that you’re a psychopath but we want to bring that vulnerability.”

Klemmer describes the show’s structure as “super serialized– It will be divided into mini arcs where we’ll land in a time period to fix a discrete problem — something along the way that leads to Vandal’s ultimate rise… every episode will probably have a focal point of one character.”  But expect to see “odd combinations” to keep things spicy.  “Part of the fun is that when we go back to fix something, obviously we won’t [always] succeed.  Sometimes in not succeeding we’ll screw up in ways that make the future a place we can’t return to.”

“Heroes who are driven and single-minded are boring, I want them flawed and f’d up and utterly human. Not all of our team’s going to get back to 2016 and people will die and people will be left behind in other time periods.  People will be tempted to the dark side and eventually turn to the dark side.”

Any guesses?  Will Heat Wave give in to his greed?  Will Snart quit being a hero cold?  Or will producers surprise us and have an established hero switch paths?

Are you excited about ‘Legends of Tomorrow’?


(Video courtesy of Flick in the City)

Source: Collider