Legends of Tomorrow gets renewd

The announcement has been made (to what I hope was no one’s great surprise) that The CW has renewed DC’s Legends of Tomorrow for another season.  If you had asked me around the end of the show’s first season how long it would last, I would have replied, “Is it on next week?”  Season one was a dull plod, with silly hawk-people and a main character who sought to kill the main bad guy because he killed the main character’s wife and child.  Yeah, he also enslaved all mankind and ruled as an iron-fisted despot, but the wife-and-child killing was just over the top. 

But then something miraculous happened: the show got better.  It dropped the gloomy tale of trying to stop immortal despot Vandal Savage (okay, the character was dull, but the name was awesome) and decided to embrace its inner geek.  The show got more imaginative and more daring, eventually featuring Vikings worshipping a Tickle-Me-Elmo knock off, George Lucas changing the fate of humanity by dropping out of film school, Napoleon Bonaparte partaking in Spring Break, and most recently going back in time to 1999 to have guest star John Noble utter some words so the Legends can impersonate a demon whose voice is provided by. . .  John Noble.

The renewal announcement follows a prior announcement that, if the show were to be renewed, it would add actor Matt Ryan as John Constantine as a regular.  This has been generally accepted as a good thing by the comments I’ve seen on the Internet.  Ryan has been on a few episodes as a guest star and has served as an effective comic foil, a new character in the mix, and (thanks to a quick shag in the 1960’s) a reminder that Sarah Lance is in fact bi-sexual and not a lesbian (after flirtations or more with a number of female characters ranging from Queen Guinevere in Camelot to Supergirl’s adopted sister Alex Danvers in the Crisis on Earth X mini-series, I was starting to wonder why she was always described as bi). 

I remain skeptical.  For one thing, I watched the first two episodes of Constantine when it debuted on NBC, and found it less than compelling.  The reason for that is my point two, mainly that I dislike the mixing of science fiction with fantasy.  Or at least what I call “soft fantasy” as opposed to “hard fantasy.”  The latter is demonstrated by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which dealt with mystic arts and things that defied the realm of science, but did so in an alternative that still had rules that had to be followed.  Vampires can’t enter a home without an invitation; why?  Who cares as long as the rule is applied consistently, I can accept it. 

But on shows like Constantine the rules seem more fluid.  There’s always a way out, a way to stop an all-powerful demon by making a Latin incantation, a way to avert the end of the world by burning incense and making some runes on the floor.  The last two seasons of Buffy occasionally fell into this trap, where a witch could transmute something by a wave of the hand, sort of like Samantha on Bewitched twitching her nose. 

While I have enjoyed Legends this season, I have wearied of the seemingly endless quest to assemble a collection of totems to defeat a demon called Mallus.  Of course this makes no less sense than season two’s quest to assemble a Spear of Destiny, but for some reason that seemed infinitely more reasonable.  Of course when the bad guys assembled the Spear and were able to re-write the universe however they wanted, they chose to make the universe seem an awfully lot like the original.

I am glad there will be another season of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, but I hope adding John Constantine into the mix doesn’t ruin the chemistry of the ensemble.  Of course other characters have been inserted and left without lessening the show’s quality (in some cases improving it), so maybe they know what they are doing.  But the fact is that most shows have an expiration date, a point by which time all plots have been done and all character backstories have been examined.  Maybe four seasons is the time limit for Legends; maybe not. 

When a show has proven so nimble, so adept at evolving into something better, you have to give it the benefit of the doubt.  This show has done something I would have thought was impossible, namely make me actually LIKE Brandon Routh (after that stupid Superman film and the disastrous guest role on Chuck, not even Scott Pilgrim vs. the World could get him out of my doghouse).  So sign me up for another year; heck, I even forced myself to watch seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy.

Talk about a show sticking around past its expiration date.