Legends of Tomorrow is currently working up to the exit of Ray Palmer/the Atom later this month. Brandon Routh’s shrinking superhero has been with the show since the very beginning, so fans are sad to see him go. Especially, as the star has previously revealed, it wasn’t his decision to vacate the Arrowverse. Though the character is set to get a heartwarming ending, marrying fiancee Nora Darhk (played by Routh’s real-life wife, Courtney Ford), everyone would rather he remain on board the Waverider, including the actor himself.
While speaking to Michael Rosenbaum on his Inside of You podcast, the former Superman actor admitted that he likes to keep a positive attitude on set but that it was tough for him to do so this season given the shocking way he’d been written out.
“What I try to do at work is go to work, and try to enjoy my time on set. You don’t know what the end product is going to be. And I had to go into this — you’re also talking about loss, so we’re going back to that — loss of my family for the last five years, and the character that I played for six years. As you may or may not know, I filmed my last episodes in the Arrowverse and as Ray Palmer, and that was a very traumatic event for me. It was not something I was expecting, it was shocking.”
Rosenbaum questioned whether he’d literally been told he was being booted off the show during filming, to which Routh responded that it wasn’t quite that bad, although he still doesn’t think the situation was “well handled.”
“It was before we started production, but it was not well handled, and so that has been something my wife and I are both still working through. It’s been a huge transition time for us these last 8, 9, 10 months. So going, how was I going to find the joy in that, knowing this thing was looming. But I worked to just be with the crew that had become my family and my cast that had become my family and experience that, and just be there in the interactions with the people.”
Elsewhere in his chat with Rosenbaum, Routh opened up about the trauma he faced following Superman Returns failing to be as successful as hoped, so it’s tough to hear him speaking about his LoT exit being another traumatic experience. In fact, it’s kind of tragic that he was able to get closure with the Superman situation, thanks to “Crisis on Infinite Earths” giving him a chance to play the Man of Steel again, only for this other hurdle to come up.
Legends of Tomorrow 5×07 “Romeo Vs. Juliet: Dawn of Justness” will mark Routh and Ford’s final regular appearance. Catch it on The CW on March 17th.