***This review contains some spoilers***
Watch the SPOILER review on YouTube
“Legends of Tomorrow” takes itself in a new direction for its seventh (and possibly final) season. While it was a good idea to mix things up, the execution just wasn’t there.
The Legends find themselves without a time ship and spend most of their adventure without many resources. While it’s not as flashy as the normal time travel antics, it’s a decent change of pace. The problem is that it takes too long to establish the true threat for this season. At one point, it looks like the team will face off against a famous lawman of this era, only to see him taken out of the picture. That seems like it sets up a storyline where they keep screwing up the timeline and will have to come back and fix it all later. While this might have been a cool concept, the show rapidly introduces evil robot doppelgangers, a returning villain from last season, and finally the true big bad. While this ended up being an interesting foe for the team, it develops a bit too late and doesn’t quite payoff.
Surprisingly, most of the characters don’t get a lot of strong individual arcs this season. Sara doesn’t really do anything special outside of a few good gags with her new immortality and moving her relationship forward with Ava. (And Ava doesn’t get much of interest besides an investment in somebody else’s love life.) Spooner also falls flat, especially after she moves off from her time with her mother. Since her alien detecting ability has little use now, they mostly focus on her friendship with Astra. Zari 2.0 also doesn’t have much to do outside of a late-addition desire to be a hero. Her time is cut a little short since she has to occasionally switch places with Zari 1.0. (And her relationship with Nate is about the extent of story for her and Steel.) Astra has improved a lot from last season, in both her personal growth and her powers. Behrad does get a few strong moments that dig into his character, but his attraction to Astra always felt kind of flat. Gary has one of his stronger seasons, and even though most of his arc is tied to the newly human Gideon, coming out as an alien last season made his character more interesting. Joining the crew is Gwyn Davies, who is a brand-new character despite being played by Constantine actor Matt Ryan. While he’s pretty annoying in his first few episodes, he improves quite a bit even though he still doesn’t totally fit in. Also this season we get the previously mentioned flesh and blood Gideon. She’s a fun, but naive character that takes a while to come into her own as well.
Overall, “Legends of Tomorrow” is still of fun show with some nice character interactions, but this season felt like it was stuck in first gear for a little too long. The show looked fine but being stuck in one era of time made things a bit bland looking. While a few stories get wrapped up at the end, there’s still a couple decent cliffhangers left to pursue if the show ends up getting renewed.
**1/2 out of *****