Spoilers DC's Legends of Tomorrow - Season 1

[slappy]

I'm just about done with this stupid show.

It's clear the writers have no plan and just make things up as they go along. Even for a concept as fundamentally flawed as time travel, Legends makes no sense whatsoever on pretty much any level. I'm rather surprised at how many people saw this last episode and are perfectly ok with the fact that it renders every previous episode null.

 

[Icemizer]

But it does not render them null. It just lets you know they were being manipulated in order to get Vandal Savage to a certain point of power. The Time Masters set up the entirety of Rips life to get him to the place they needed him and the team to be to do their dirty work. It actually makes the series make more sense rather than less.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Oh, was there an oculus reference in the show? My attention wanders while watching Legends.

Not sure if this was answered specifically, it was the Time Master's device that the team destroyed.

 

[dahj]

This show is much more enjoyable if you just phase out whenever they try to explain anything related to time travel.

 

[Christopher]

Likewise, since Rip did not know about the Occulus, he assumed that events were happening a certain way because of an almost mystical "Time wanting it to happen" explanation but then we learn the truth that Time was simply being manipulating by the Time Masters.

Except it's not mystical at all, really. It makes sense that history would resist change. Any event is the result of thousands of converging factors that lead up to it, and there are few instances where changing just one thing will divert the overall flow of history. For instance, if you went back in time and killed Hitler, there'd probably just have been someone else who would've taken his place and done much the same things. Because Hitler didn't make Nazi Germany happen singlehandedly; he just provided a focus for the widespread anger and dysfunction that already existed among the people. And he himself was a product of his upbringing and environment, so there were probably numerous others much like him in that same place and time. It would probably take a lot more interventions going back much further in time to undo the entire chain of circumstances that led to WWII and the Holocaust. Or else it would take a particularly massive change to alter things in one go, like, say, giving England nuclear weapons in 1917. (And yes, I'm sure one could nitpick the specifics of these examples, and they're probably far from perfect, but I'm just using them to illustrate the idea, so let's try not to get into that.)

It also makes sense dramatically for a time-travel series, which is why the same basic assumption is used on many such shows, including FlashForward, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Continuum, and 12 Monkeys. On the one hand, you want it to be at least possible to change history, or there's no point to the heroes' quest at all; but on the other hand, you want it to be really hard, because if the heroes could do it easily, you couldn't sustain the show for multiple seasons. So the ideal approach for a time-travel series is exactly the one this show is using, that history resists major changes unless you manage to change just the right thing(s) in just the right way. "Time wants to happen" is just a poetic way of expressing that principle.

 

[Romulan_spy]

But it does not render them null. It just lets you know they were being manipulated in order to get Vandal Savage to a certain point of power. The Time Masters set up the entirety of Rips life to get him to the place they needed him and the team to be to do their dirty work. It actually makes the series make more sense rather than less.

I thought the Head Time Master's explanation that Savage is the only one who could save Earth from the Thanagar rang false. Surely with the Occulus, the Time Masters could help another powerful leader unify Earth. There certainly have been a lot throughout history. If you can manipulate Time, surely you could find a way.

 

[Romulan_spy]

Except it's not mystical at all, really. It makes sense that history would resist change. Any event is the result of thousands of converging factors that lead up to it, and there are few instances where changing just one thing will divert the overall flow of history.

Everything you say is true. I guess I am looking at it from the perspective of the show. The writers purposely introduced a key plot point that the timeline was being manipulated the whole time so every time Rip thought that Time was against him, we now know that there was someone deliberately making things happen a certain way.

 

[Morpheus 02]

Real quick... the deal with bowing up the Oculus.... I thought the problem was someone had to MANUALLY release the trigger, so that just ONE of our team would die. Freezing it would give the Time Masters time to fix the problem.

Holding it down until the team was safe was the plan they had to go with.

But being at the center of the explosion -- could that have turned Cold into a time master? If so, he could command his own ship...as Captain Cold!

Or if not a timemaster... something else, for sure. But that is a bit disappointing .. I would like his sacrifice to mean something.

I would also like Caity Lotz to come back to Arrow as Black Canary. At the very least, she's going to have to deal with that loss. (And with Snart gone, there goes a possible way to do identity theft with Laurel -- but to help Sara set up a modest new life to make ends meet while she does her superhero thing -- like set up a flower shop).

 

[sojourner]

Real quick... the deal with bowing up the Oculus.... I thought the problem was someone had to MANUALLY release the trigger, so that just ONE of our team would die. Freezing it would give the Time Masters time to fix the problem.

Nope, they repeatedly said that the failsafe trigger had to be held down to keep from engaging.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I thought the Head Time Master's explanation that Savage is the only one who could save Earth from the Thanagar rang false. Surely with the Occulus, the Time Masters could help another powerful leader unify Earth.

The Time Masters knew that the Thanagarians' one great weakness was cringeworthy line delivery. Savage was the right man for the job.

 

[Christopher]

I bet we'll find that the phenomenon that gave Savage his immortality and the Hawks their powers is connected to the Thanagarians somehow. I mean, it is the Thanagarians, after all, the species that Hawkman and Hawkgirl belonged to in the comics from 1961 onward, until they brought back the Golden Age reincarnation origin for some reason. So Savage's key role in stopping the Thanagarians is probably due to his unique connection to them, or to the power he gets from the Hawks. So maybe the Time Masters had it wrong, and it's not Savage who's key to saving the world, it's the Hawks.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Darkmatter has to be a significant powersource, ever if poor safety standards lead to disturbing and unpredictable mutations. Although, maybe Humans are more "mutatable" than Thanagarians?

1. Thawne's proccess draws dark matter into out universe extradimensionally.

2. The Hawks were struck by dark matter (seemingly) native to our universe, ditto for the much smaller dark matter meteor that hit America in 1959.

 

[Reverend]

I'm curious to see if they go anywhere with the Thanagarians, or if it was just a name drop for fans. If it's the former, then are they going to try and tie to two different versions of the Hawk's origins together as the DCAU sort of did?
Maybe that nth metal meteor wasn't just some random space rock, but some ancient Thanagarian technology that kicked the whole thing off?

I mean of the various alien races they could have named: Gordanians, Tamaraneans, Daxamites, White Martians or even Darkseid, they picked the one that happened to be tied to two of their main characters. If they don't do anything with it, then it's one hell of a tease.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Vandal Savage has abandoned his present in 2166.

He's not going to unite the world to fight the Thanagrians with "conventional" weapons, or maybe at all.

Why start building counter measures to Thanagar, 10 years before their invasion, when it's as easy, with time travel, to start building ice cannons in orbit of Jupiter 10 years before Christ.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I'm curious to see if they go anywhere with the Thanagarians, or if it was just a name drop for fans. If it's the former, then are they going to try and tie to two different versions of the Hawk's origins together as the DCAU sort of did?

The comics did the same thing back in the 80s/90s. Nth metal came from a Thanagarian ship that crashed in Ancient Egypt.

 

[Mr Light]

I wonder if this is leading into Season 2 being about the Thanagarian Invasion, with the main setting being in the future and involving less time travel.

 

[Christopher]

I wonder if this is leading into Season 2 being about the Thanagarian Invasion, with the main setting being in the future and involving less time travel.

Seems a reasonable surmise. If so, it's a good sign that they intend to keep Hawkgirl in the cast.

 

[Commander Richard]

I thought they were doing something around WWII.

 

[Vendikarr]

I thought they were doing something around WWII.

They're adding a female character from WWII. So they will probably be making a pit stop there, but it's doubtful they will keep the series centered around then.

 

[dahj]

They're adding a female character from WWII.

Agent Carter?