Fans of Arrow and/or The Flash were given a treat recently, when DC released the first look at the upcoming spin-off, Legends of Tomorrow.

Cue mass geek-out by fans. 😀 I know I was not the only one watching that trailer several times in a row. 😉

And what’s not to love?

Olly and Barry help the time traveler, Rip Hunter, assemble a team of both heroes and villains, including Firestorm, Hawkgirl, White Canary, the Atom, Captain Cold, and Heatwave, all to stop the power-mad immortal, Vandal Savage, from conquering and/or destroying all of time.

Now that’s a loaded synopsis if ever there was one!

When Arrow began, it was all about Olly’s struggle to save one single city. The Flash took things up a notch by adding superpowers to the mix, but it was still about saving one small corner of the world. We are going from saving a city or two, and skyrocketing straight up to saving all of time and space.

Yeah, that would be important, keeping the whole of creation intact. Of course, while Cold and Heatwave may like the fabric of the universe being intact so long as they’re a part of it, I have no doubt they will want some kind of tangible reward for their efforts. Cold’s ego may appreciate becoming a legend spoken of for centuries, but he’d also like some cold, hard cash in his pocket, thank you very much.

Which brings me to the Legends themselves.

As Dr. Stein points out, this isn’t your typical team. And that’s putting it mildly. This is a collection of freaks.

Albeit very cool-looking freaks.

Stein and Ronnie Raymond combine to form the elemental Firestorm, which is powerful, but, for the moment, they’re still a bit lacking in grace and precision. Not only that, but they’re just spouting fire everywhere, which is only a part of what Firestorm can do. They haven’t yet done this, but I’m hoping they develop their powers in the direction of the comic-book version, which can convert matter from one form to another.

We haven’t really met Hawkgirl yet, only seen a cameo of her in the first season finale of The Flash, which I suspect/hope means season two will actually introduce us to her prior to this show’s premiere. They’ll have about eight episodes to work with, so letting us actually meet the winged, mace-wielding (if they stick with her usual weapon) woman who is a reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian goddess who was actually a stranded alien police officer.

…yeah, that’s not complicated at all!

Though if she can remember her past life/lives, that could probably be most helpful during the team’s time traveling adventures.

I am stoked about them bringing back Sara Lance! She was just awesome, one of my favorite characters in this DC televised universe, beautiful, strong, and compelling, and my personal favorite pick for who Olly should have coupled with! I’m a little on the fence about her being White Canary, a fairly new villain in the DC comic universe, an adversary of Black Canary in particular. I also have a personal distaste for when they change race of any character from what is canon in the comics, but as long as they can make it make sense, then whatever. But my concerns are overridden by my excitement!

For her? Yeah, I’d betray the League, in a heartbeat.

I am sure that Sara’s resurrection, much like her death, will be addressed on Arrow, and have a profound impact on the plot and the characters therein. I can already see one possibility: Damien Darhk using the promise of Sara’s resurrection to sway a revenge-crazed Nyssa into betraying the League, as led by Sara’s murderer, Malcom Merlyn. No idea if that’s what they’ll do, but it would be my scheme if I were telling the story. 😉

And what is it going to be like for Sara, being dead and rotting for a full year and then coming back to life? Traumatic, much?

Ray Palmer seems to have truly become the Atom now, which is part of why I am hopeful for Firestorm’s evolution of abilities. We spent a great deal of Arrow‘s third season watching him build his armor, and it concluded in part with his first experiment in miniaturization, which resulted in an explosion that took out an entire floor. Naturally, with his presence at ground zero of such an explosion and his subsequent disappearance, people would assume he was dead. (Sara, in particular will have had experience being dead before) But he was just shrunken, and this version of the Atom leaves me hopeful that such will be a useful power. So now he’s the real Atom, and I can only imagine all the fun they’re going to have with that!

And now we’re back to Captain Cold and Heatwave, who are basically a pair of criminal sociopaths with fancy guns crafted by a genius, Cisco Ramon, during season one of The Flash. Make no mistake, these two will not be fighting a powerful immortal out of any altruistic motivations. Yet, on a show dominated by superpowers, these two relatively-normal men have been worthy recurring enemies for Barry and his friends to face, dangerous and clever, smarter, in some ways, than the good guys. I’m actually a little sad to see them go over to another show already, but I have to share a certain friend’s interest in how they’ll manage to work that out. I mean, it’s not like these two are particularly trustworthy, so watching them fight alongside the heroes for an extended period of time should prove most interesting, possibly even enlightening.

Not his first time as a bad ass time traveler.

And while fate may have somehow seen this unlikely group triumph over Savage once, when the immortal begins mucking about in time and space, it’s the hand of a time traveler who brings them all together this time around. Rip Hunter, played by Arthur Darvill (who played one of my favorite characters in Doctor Who), promises to be the man who truly carries the weight of the world, times infinity, on his shoulders. He’s been passingly referred to on The Flash, and it seems he’ll be introducing himself to Olly and Barry, so they can bring the unlikely team together. Whatever might have happened before, Rip Hunter is the one who has to make happen on purpose what once happened by providence. Anyone who’s ever tried replicating an accident knows how difficult that can be, and as he knows the real stakes of success or failure, he’ll be the one bearing the brunt of the pressure.

Now, with the awesomeness that Legends promises to be, there is one more detail which makes me only cautiously optimistic. To sum it up in a word: dependence.

See, when Arrow began, I loved it, and I still do. When Arrow set up The Flash, I liked it, and I like The Flash. Yet, from the moment The Flash premiered, both shows have been setting up Legends of Tomorrow, even while interacting with each other. While Arrow‘s setup of The Flash was smooth and sweet, and the first real crossover between the shows, and the entire interaction, it was all very well executed. So long as you were watching both shows and had watched the first two seasons of Arrow already. In short, they’re fine, and together they’re pretty great, but they seem to be depending on each other a little too much.

“You don’t think we’re crowding each other, do you?” “Nah!”

With both Arrow and The Flash having worked, together, for a full season to set things up for Legends, and they’re not even done yet, and the crossovers we can surely expect to happen, I’m starting to fear that none of these three shows will be allowed to stand on their own, apart from the rest. It’s no crime, of course, to be dependent on others, but there’s also nothing wrong, and something admirable, in being able to stand alone. Instead, we have a trio of shows which look like they’ll all be perpetually spring-boarding off one another to achieve success. I mean, we’ve already seen how so much of the Legends’ backgrounds, the establishment of the characters and their abilities and personalities, hinge on some of the more pivotal events of both Arrow and The Flash.

So what happens when someone unfamiliar with the whole DC televised universe sees one of these shows, and can’t make sense of it because they haven’t seen the other two?

And then there’s how the later-season interactions seemed a bit clumsier in comparison to everything previously. Most glaring: when Barry serendipitously rescued everyone in Arrow‘s third season finale, it was actually very out of character for him to not then help save Starling City from a bioweapon attack. So how are they going to do when they have three shows to juggle, hmm?

So, there’s plenty of questions, a lot of uncertain things, but that was true of Arrow and The Flash, and it’s true of pretty much everything else! And what the heck? It looks like a fun ride!

We have to wait until January 2016 to really meet the Legends, as a team, but DC has sufficiently teased us enough to make me excited for it! I suspect the annual Arrow-Flash crossover event might be used to set up the series premiere. They will be collecting the members of this team from both shows, after all. And if we’re lucky, if they do not skip any weeks like every other show did this last season, then perhaps we’ll even have a decent season broadcast from January to June! Which would just be very cool!

Either way, I’m looking forward to this!