‘Legends of Tomorrow’ series premiere review: A worthy journey through time

Going into Thursday night’s series premiere of “Legends of Tomorrow,” we only had expectations that this was going to be an entertaining and at-times silly romp through time. This is why we were pleasantly surprised by what we saw in the end.

Did the episode suffer from a case of pilot-itis? Sure. there was a ton of exposition, and it took us nearly 55 minutes to start to understand what sort of “mission” Rip Hunter really wanted to gather together this motley crew of characters for: Effectively, a revenge story. Vandal Savage took his family away from him, and the Time Masters turned their backs on him. He decided to take the Waverider ship and travel through time on his own to stop the chaos inflicting the future, and recruited the likes of Sara Lance, Ray Palmer, and Mick Rory because they had little impact on the future. Kind of a depressing thought.

Yet, at the same time there could be a greater motivation for these people to take part now than ever, provided that they believe them. It’s an opportunity to change the narrative, and give themselves a new lease and an opportunity to become the Legends / Heroes that they weren’t otherwise. We all know where this is going…

One of the other fascinating surprises of the premiere was that Kendra Saunders had a child in 1975, which is where the team visited in their first effort to get information on Savage. This led to an emotional moment for him, and then also some fun with Sara as she decided to go with Captain Cold and Heat Wave to a bar. If this is a tease of what we’re going to get in the future (pun intended), color us excited.

After one hour, our chief concern is mostly that Jefferson is going to be pigeonholed as argumentative. His character is a little frustrating, but to be far Professor Stein comes off pretty badly for drugging Jax into coming on the mission in the first place. We know he loves a good adventure, but was this out of character?

Minor quibbles aside, we’re going to say that this episode starts off the series very well. It has humor, cameos, and a mismatched team of heroes at the center of it; even if you’re on the fence, we do think that it is worthy of a second shot. Grade: B+.

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