Obama v a giant gorilla: here’s why you should watch Legends of Tomorrow – The Guardian

No tights, no flights: so far this has been a summer unusually light on blockbuster superhero entertainment. Amazonian sequel Wonder Woman 1984 was originally scheduled to hit cinemas in June before being pushed to October. The Marvel Cinematic Steamroller has hit pause: when Scarlett Johanssons Black Widow belatedly arrives in November, it will be the longest gap between Marvel movies in a decade.
Thankfully, one small-screen superhero series has overlapped neatly with lockdown, even if its oddball cast of boozy do-gooders and aggrieved demon-slayers cannot boast the kind of brand recognition that gets your likeness plastered on pyjamas and lunchboxes. DCs Legends of Tomorrow recently wrapped up its fifth season on Sky, bringing some much-needed levity to the often po-faced world of fighting crime in form-fitting costumes.
Barack Obama fights Gorilla Grodd in Legends of Tomorrow. Yes, really. Photograph: Warner Bros
Compared with the various other shows that have sprouted from the brooding vigilante series Arrow an expanding TV universe that now directly interconnects The Flash, Supergirl, Black Lightning, Batwoman and more Legends of Tomorrow has always been something of an outlier. Partly that is because of its team-based premise, tasking a grab-bag of C-listers with hopping around history to protect the integrity of the time stream in a whizzy spaceship called the Waverider. If that sounds like it has some overlap with Doctor Who, the slightly stodgy early seasons encouraged the comparison by casting former Tardis companion Arthur Darvill as the squads swashbuckling leader. While the hooded anti-hero Arrow was stuck protecting his home city, the Legends could theoretically go anywhere and any-when, with the team theoretically blending in thanks to a dressing-up box worthy of Mr Benn.
Since its debut in 2016, Legends of Tomorrow has operated as a sort of Ucas clearing house for guest heroes and villains who have wrapped up their arcs on related shows. After the supernatural series Constantine was cancelled in 2015, the title character an entertainingly aggro English exorcist who likes to pick fights with diabolical hellspawn later materialised on the Waverider and has stuck around ever since. Its all part of the rather back-handed compliment of being recruited into the squad: you can be safely removed from your own time without fear of disrupting anything major, so habitual under-achievers suddenly become prime candidates.
This pick-and-mix approach and constant turnover of personnel means that each season essentially stands alone, so even though all five are currently available to binge on Now TV you can basically dive in anywhere (maybe skip the first episode of season five, which wraps up an epic but confusing five-part crossover). As well as smart-mouthed warlock Constantine, the current lineup includes a hard-drinking bisexual ninja, a high-fiving bro of steel, various incarnations of an Egyptian wind god and a beefcake career arsonist played by Prison Breaks Dominic Purcell who has a secret double-life as a bestselling romantic novelist.
Legends of Tomorrow has always been self-aware and keen to send up superhero tropes, but this year it embraced its sitcom side more than ever, signalled with its updated credits sequence. The formerly whooshing sci-fi titles were replaced with a scrappy animated collage that crackles with punky energy.
The shows previous high watermark of daftness came in season three, when the team took on a telepathic super-ape called Gorilla Grodd who had beamed to Chicago 1979 to assassinate a lanky law student named Barack Obama while declaring it was time to make America Grodd again. But season five has taken some even bigger conceptual swings while cleverly cooking up a plausible monster-of-the-week formula: some of the worst offenders in hell are granted a second chance at life, requiring the Legends to pinball around time taking out older and wiser versions of Rasputin, Bugsy Siegel, Marie Antoinette and more.
There has even been some pushback at those who complain that culture is now too saturated with superheroes, with an impromptu 16th-century stag do getting so out of hand that Shakespeare is inspired to start writing plays about costumed avengers, beginning with Romeo v Juliet: Dawn of Justness. The penultimate episode goes even more meta, trapping the various Legends in different TV shows a Friends-alike sitcom, a mannered Downton spoof and a retro Star Trek analogue created to entertain the brainwashed masses of a 1984-style dystopia.
Sisqó made an appearance in the season five finale, Swan Thong. Photograph: Warner Brothers
Self-indulgent nonsense? Perhaps, but as other heroes go super-gritty its refreshing to be reminded that these sorts of stories can be heightened, colourful and fun. The good-time crew of the Waverider drink constantly, get high and make messy decisions. When things do go wrong, the stakes feel high because you genuinely like and care for these goofballs. In a summer notably light on laughs, their adventures have been a genuine tonic.
All five seasons of DCs Legends of Tomorrow are currently available on Now TV

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