In fighting for their freedom, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow‘s misfit heroes now find themselves bracing for a battle against a group of gods. Tuesday’s episode, titled “The One Where We’re Trapped on TV,” saw Charlie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) attempt to appease her powerful sisters and protect the Legends in one fell swoop by stashing them away in various TV shows. These colorful fictional universes, such as a mock Friends series and a ’60s sci-fi wonderland akin to Star Trek, served as a mind-soothing distraction from the Fates’ disturbingly bleak world in which history is being scrubbed of all instances of insubordination and blue mush is considered fine dining. But even in this dystopian reality where happiness is virtually nonexistent, there’s still hope.
Noticing how wrong things were, Mona (Ramona Young) and Gary (Adam Tsekhman) staged a mini insurrection and helped the Legends break free of their TV prison. It’s ironic that the pair, who entered the series as stalwart rule followers, were now the architects of a rebellion. For Arrow and Legends co-creator Marc Guggenheim, who directed the episode, pushing back against draconian measures is a message we can all get behind.
“Mona’s arc of going from someone who always towed the line and always followed the rules to realizing, ‘Oh my God, you know what the world needs? It needs misfits. It needs people who are going to question the status quo,’ I think that’s a great message,” Guggenheim told TV Guide. “One of the brilliant things that the Legends writers do almost every week is they hide these little messages about nonconformity in each episode so that amidst the laughter you’re getting this little lesson that what the world needs is people who don’t turn sharp corners, who do think outside the box. That’s a great message and it’s definitely a message that I think the world could use right now as we face all this uncertainty and all these challenging things.”
The jam-packed episode was a boot camp of sorts for the first-time director who was tasked with pulling together the second-biggest hour of Season 5. That’s no easy feat considering Guggenheim had just come off Crisis on Infinite Earths and admitted to being emotionally and physically exhausted by the time he stepped into the director’s chair for the zany series. The hour not only set up the season finale, but leaned into Legends‘ uninhibited chaos with a series of parodies that made filming the episode feel like a TV gauntlet. But while it may have been a massive undertaking, Guggenheim assured that it was also an incredibly fun journey.
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Shayan Sobhian, Matt Ryan, Tala Ashe and Nick Zano, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow
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