Legends of Tomorrow Episode 1 Review - Pilot (part 1)

Are you ready for the first Comic book super team? Well, unless you think the Secret Warriors are fully formed on S.H.I.E.L.D. in which case I hate to disillusion you because it isn't yet. Let's take a look at Legends of Tomorrow

Pilot (Part 1)

No, I’m not calling it DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (outside copyright notes) any more than I would with any Marvel show.

So, with that said. Let’s take a look at this week’s episode

The story, Rip Hunter, after the death of his wife and son seeks to change the timeline by recruiting 8 people whose impact on the current timestream in negligible and form a team to defeat Vandal Savage: Ray Palmer AKA The Atom, Sara Lance now AKA the White Canary (I don’t like this adding a colour to the name and thinking it makes a difference, Red Robin, Green Arrow and now White Canary), Shayera (OK, Chay-Ara) and Prince Khufu AKA Kendra Saunders and Carter Hall AKA Hawkgirl and Hawkman. Leonard Snart AKA Captain Cold (go figure), Mick Rory AKA Heatwave and Jefferson Jackson and Martin Stein AKA Firestorm. They travel to 1975 to find information about Savage’s whereabouts from someone who has tracked his movements, in a past life he was the son of Hawkman and Hawkgirl.

I revealed the lie that Rip Hunter told them straight off just for ease of summary, to be honest revealing that in the first episode may have robbed this of some real drama. I’m not usually a fan of secrets and lies if it feels like it’s kept for ill-explained reasons. Here the reason is pretty cut and dry and that sews good seeds for a big blowout that didn’t come because they played their hand so soon.

This episode has a lot of setup, not only has it to establish its basic premise, it needs to catch everyone up who hasn’t seen the Arrow or the Flash episodes that lead to this, provide motivations for these people to remain a team, even after the revelations. And for some reason, it’s self-contained despite the fact that this episode is supposed to be a 2-parter.

As such it is a tad heavy on the exposition and whilst there is some action it’s mostly towards the end of the episode with most of the middle lent to exposition and character work. (Although, Sara did get into 2 bar fights in the course of 40 minutes, that’s impressive) in fact, they don’t interact at all with Vandal Savage in this episode, instead opting for the Time Master’s bounty hunter, Chronos (a villain of the Atom in the comics, not sure which incarnation this is) again, I feel they played their cards a little early with him

When it comes to motivations, I have 1 issue and that’s with Jefferson Jackson. Martin Stein DRUGGED HIM to initially made to come on board the mission. Once the lie was revealed his motivations for staying become ever more dubious as he makes an allegory to someone taking a tackle for him in “Football” (sorry Americans, you use your hands, that’s not football!) referring to when Martin rushed through the fire to merge with him to lend a hand against Chronos. Yeah… Football teams tend not to drug you.

This is a standard episode, it’s not there yet but at this stage, you can’t expect perfection, especially with such a large cast to establish. Hopefully better things are still to come.

Rating 7/10 

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Images/clips used in this review are from DC's Legends of Tomorrow and belong to their respective owners. All images/clips in this review are subject to fair use