To say there was a lot of hype going into last night’s midseason premiere of Legends of Tomorrow is an understatement. I mean, not only did you have Matt Ryan doing a guest shot as fan favorite John Constantine, but there was also the matter of Wentworth Miller’s farewell lap in the Arrowverse to deal with. Overall, I felt the show turned in its best episode of the season thus far.
Of course, there had to be an actual reason for Constantine to interact with the Waverider crew, lest he feel shoehorned. Fortunately, Sara Lance and company have had to contend with a variety of supernatural threats this season, which created a natural backdoor for the master of the dark arts.
As you know, we joined him as he attempted to perform an exorcism on a young girl at an asylum in a brilliant throwback to his own ill-fated solo series. In fact, Ryan himself addressed all this in a recent discussion with ComicBook.com, saying:
“Yeah, I thought that that was really clever how they tied that in, you know, and I wasn’t really up to speed and I had to do my homework, so I went back and looked at some episodes from season one season two and then season three as well just to kind of … I knew what the show was, but I kind of wanted to figure out what the tone of the show was. How John could fit in with those characters, and I thought that the way they made those two worlds collide was very, very clever and interesting, you know, and they did a great job on the script.”
Of course, the big surprise was that the young girl Constantine and the Legends were trying to save was none other than present day Nora Darhk, whose life had taken an unfortunate turn after her father was killed by the Green Arrow. The fact that a time traveling adult version of her has been one of the greatest thorns in their sides this season made the reveal doubly ingenious.
And while the principal cast had their own reasons for wanting to set her down the right path by freeing her of Mallus’ influence, Ryan thought this to be a much deeper experience for his character:
“I think that one of his biggest driving forces is redemption and as much as he kind of … you know, everybody around him gets hurt at some point or dies, I think he does see that in this young girl … if he can hope for his own soul to be saved then that is such a driving force behind the character and what keeps him going really, you know.”
Unfortunately for our heroes, Damien Darhk showed up to claim his daughter shortly after their brief triumph. I guess that no matter how hard you try, some events are unavoidable. Well, there’s that and the fact that we have an entire back half of the season ahead of us, so it’s going to be anything but smooth sailing.
Legends of Tomorrow airs on Monday nights on The CW.
