TV Review: Legends of Tomorrow Season 6 Episode 1

Legends of Tomorrow Season 6 Episode 1 “Ground Control to Sara Lance”

Director: Kevin Mock

Starring: Caity Lotz, Tala Ashe, Jes Macallan, Olivia Swann, Adam Tsekhman, Shayan Sobhian, Lisseth Chavez, Amy Louise Pemberton, Nick Zano, Dominic Purcell, Matt Ryan

Rating: TV-PG

Runtime: 42 minutes

Spoilers Follow:

As good as it is, Legends of Tomorrow is a hard show to review.  Following its second season transition from a straightforward Arrowverse spin-off to a hilariously bizarre superhero comedy, the show quickly achieved such a high and consistent level of quality that one can’t help but view it with different standards than anything else.  Take this season opener’s plot, for instance.  “Ground Control To Sara Lance” revolves around the Legends discovering that their captain, the titular character (played as spectacularly as ever by Caity Lotz) has been abducted by aliens. As Ava Sharpe (Jes Macallan), Sara’s co-captain and girlfriend wrangles the unruly team to rescue her their search for answers leads them to team up with both another past abductee, Esperanza “Spooner” Cruz (Lisseth Chavez) and a young David Bowie (Thomas Nicholson), who witnessed Sara’s abduction before writing a song about it.  On any other show that plot would make for peak comic absurdity or a shark-jumping disaster (more likely the latter) but it’s not really anything special for Legends, and the actual meat of the episode’s comedic and dramatic beats aren’t really much more than average for the show either.  The team has dealt with plenty of shenanigans as crazy or even crazier than this before and has done so in both equally and more compelling ways but the audacity and quality of the episode is still far beyond anything most other shows could even dream of.  All of which is to say that while Season 6 Episode 1 is little more than average for Legends that still makes it one of the most delightfully crazy, simply fun hours of TV one’s ever likely to watch.

After the Legends’ wild night partying with 1970s London punks to say goodbye to their teammate Charlie, Ava wakes up on the Waverider (the team’s trusty time-traveling spaceship) severely hungover.  When she and Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell) realize that Sara is missing they gather the rest of the team, which is scattered throughout London, to get to work on finding her. After locating everyone else they come across Nate Heywood (Nick Zano) hanging out with Bowie, who then performs his song for Sara and gives the team footage of his conversation with her and her abduction at the concert they were all at.  In the video, a star-struck Sara tells Bowie of her plans to propose to Ava, which naturally causes her co-captain to freak out even more over the current circumstances.

Sara herself wakes up in a tiny cell aboard a spaceship that she then escapes.  She frees one of her fellow captives, Spartacus (Shawn Roberts), whose bravado continuously puts the pair in danger. Spartacus is intent on fighting their alien captors head-on and avenging any fellow captives that may have been killed, which leads to a great meta gag of Sara repeatedly telling him that “being an Avenger sucks,” and urging him to instead be a “Preventer” who minimizes the loss of life. But Spartacus doesn’t listen and although Sara manages to fight off a large alien he releases from one of the cells (while armed with only a broken pipe!) the beings piloting the ship are more formidable and one of them winds up eating the foolhardy gladiator after ensnaring him in their tentacles. Sara sneaks away but is later found by the other pilot alien, who is much less vicious.

Back on Earth, Ava’s handling of the situation demonstrates how she’s grown over the years.  As she is the most logical Legend and this is the Arrowverse show best at seamlessly integrating the wider continuity into its narrative, her first move is to call the alien experts: Alex Danvers and the DEO from Supergirl.  She’s even nonchalant when Nate reminds her of the one-night stand Sara and Alex shared during a crossover, which would have sent the Ava of a few seasons ago spiraling into a jealous panic.  Unfortunately, the DEO no longer exists as per the end of Supergirl Season 5, which does unnerve Ava quite a bit.  Fortunately, Nate is there to comfort her and successfully encourages her when they realize that the alien kidnappers are time-traveling, as that makes it just the kind of crazy mess the Legends know how to fix.  Ava isolates herself in her room for a while to do what she does best, organize and plan and then returns to the ship bridge with a strategy outlined on a to-do list with individual copies for each team member because of course, she does.  But before she can really say anything the Legends all head off to do their own things: John Constantine (Matt Ryan) is convinced he can find a mystical solution and is accompanied by Zari 2.0 (Tala Ashe) and Astra Logue (Olivia Swann), Zari’s brother Behrad (Shayan Sobhian) goes on a weed-fueled research session, and Mick, who is taking Sara’s absence especially hard, angrily storms off to drink.  Sweet Nate is the only one who reads the list, on which Ava accurately predicted all these reactions, showing how well she’s come to know her team/family over the years.

John becomes discouraged at the idea of dealing with an alien threat as he believes his magic will prove useless, but after very different encouragement from Astra and Zari he goes looking for a relic he believes can help only to discover that Gary Green (Adam Tsekhman), the annoying but (sometimes) lovable former Time Bureau agent who has been a friend to the Legends for years now, took it at some point he was staying at John’s castle.  As John yells Gary’s name in anger Sara moves on the second alien pilot, but rather than fight back he cowers and backs away before putting on a pair of glasses that transform him into Gary.  Gary explains that he actually is an alien and that the glasses create a holographic disguise for him to pass as a human.  He’s been spying on Earth for years as part of a mission to find “the quintessential human”, which he believes to be Sara, but held off on abducting her after falling in love with Earth and coming to care for the Legends.  Gary being an alien is clearly not a twist that was planned out in advance and contradicts some other stories he’s been involved in (remember his demonic nipple?) but it’s a delightfully Legends thing to do and the show has multiple ways to explain away continuity errors, given both the changes to the timeline it makes on a regular basis and that the entire Arrowverse’s history was altered at the end of the Crisis on Infinite Earths.  I also very much like when the show works acknowledgments of Sara’s badassness into the plot so the idea of her as the quintessential human is a solid one.  I am a bit concerned that the storyline is in danger of overusing Gary, as he’s a character that works best in small doses, but the prospect of seeing Sara have to fight her way through space is exciting enough to overlook that concern.

Behrad and Mick go to meet with the rightfully paranoid Spooner, who now has a telepathic link to aliens through an implant in her brain.  Spooner initially believes the guys to be aliens themselves and captures them but Ava is eventually able to convince her to help them by describing her need to get Sara back.  On the ship Sara battles Kayla, the other alien who is both Gary’s boss and his fiancé for an arranged marriage but eventually gets locked in another cryo-cell, which Kayla then sets to freeze.  John is able to use his magic to establish a link for Ava to talk to Sara with.  She tearfully accepts the proposal, which gives Sara the strength to continue fighting.  She puts the engagement ring she meant to give to Ava on and uses it to punch through the ice wall of the cell.  Taking on Kayla again, she eventually succeeds in knocking her into space by cracking one of the ship’s airlocks, but this also sends several of the other imprisoned aliens’ cells into the timestream, which will presumably be the source of the season’s episodic time travel missions.  Unfortunately, Sara and Gary are unable to make it to a wormhole in time to return home.  But with her team out there to screw things up for the better, there’s little doubt Sara will be brought back in one piece.  As compelling as the Sara/Ava relationship (lovingly dubbed “Avalance” by fans) is, there have been times throughout the last couple of seasons where both characters have lost some of their independence and individuality.  Sara being lost in space presents a promising opportunity to develop them both separately from each other while still foregrounding their love story.

Avalance is given the most attention but the series’ other romances are also important parts of the episode.  John refuses to admit to Astra that his and Zari’s relationship is anything more than another one of his usual flings but it’s clear that they’re both completely smitten with each other.  It’s unusual for John to be in such a healthy and positive relationship and the show is aware of this, giving his and Zari’s scenes an air of foreboding, even though the content of them is nothing but sweet.  I don’t really think Zari will be killed off or have anything too horrible happen to her as would likely happen in a Constantine/Hellblazer comic but there’s no guarantee the romance will survive the season.  On the other hand, I could see the show giving John an arc about letting himself be happy and abandoning his self-destructive habits so that he can have a brighter future than his comic counterpart ever really does.  With Ryan and Ashe at its center, I’m confident whatever kind of story the show is telling here will work well.  Meanwhile, Nate is still pining over his own girlfriend, Zari 1.0 from a previous timeline who now must live within her doppelgänger and brother’s air totem.  Nick Zano does a great job of filling the perky, unflinchingly sweet, and supportive role left vacant by Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer but I also like that the show isn’t forgetting that Nate has his own vulnerabilities and problems.  His story is also an encouraging sign that Legends isn’t completely done with the original Zari yet.  Astra is the only character given anything resembling an arc that doesn’t have to do with romance as she realizes that she needs to spend time exploring Earth on her own after growing up in hell rather than immediately joining the Legends.  This should be a nice way to spread the show out beyond the confines of the Waverider, although I’m confident Astra will wind up becoming a formal team member sooner or later.

While the premiere emphasizes the romances what makes Legends special is the wider, loving dynamic between the weird, found family that the team is.  Season 6 looks to test these bonds through Sara’s absence and other means, which should also challenge the show to tell even more creative stories.  And just as I’m certain the Legends will get Sara back, I’m confident this will result in another strong season.

Notes:

• Dominic Purcell has announced that Season 6 will be his last as a regular cast member on Legends, so maybe Mick’s surprisingly emotional reaction to Sara’s abduction is the start of whatever his farewell storyline will be?
• As good as the show continues to be I do think writing off Ray and his wife Nora (played by Routh’s real-life wife Courtney Ford) in Season 5 was an unusually big mistake on Legends‘ part.
• I hope Sara’s other survival experiences, either on the island of Lian Yu or the previous time she was abducted by aliens during the Invasion! crossover is referenced.
• Speaking of crossovers, COVID means there won’t be any big ones this year but Arrow cast member David Ramsey will be appearing and directing episodes across the franchise, though on Legends he’ll be playing a separate character from his usual role as John Diggle.