What to Watch Verdict
Legends of Tomorrow's premiere has all the weirdness you'd expect, but some of it's a little too hard of a shift for things to flow "smoothly."
Pros
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👽 All the fun you expect from a Legends of Tomorrow premiere.
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👽 Mick Rory being the even-headed one is always a weird but enjoyable ride.
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Cons
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👽 The hard shift into alien territory is a little jarring.
This post contains spoilers for Legends of Tomorrow.
The Legends of Tomorrow are back, and they’re still keepin’ it weird! By the time Mick Rory finds the team, all that’s left on the Waverider is a hungover Ava Sharpe with her head in a toilet. The two venture out to find the rest of the team and learn a whole host of things: Astra’s a Grade A card shark, John Constantine and Zari Tarazi are sleeping together, Behrad’s high, and Sara’s missing. Worry not, Legends! David Bowie helps them “find” their lost leader. He’s got video footage of Sara Lance revealing that she’s about to propose to Ava — right before she gets abducted by aliens.
If this is your first episode of Legends of Tomorrow, I apologize if that opening paragraph made your brain short circuit. Welcome to the fun!
Why was Sara (Caity Lotz) kidnapped by aliens? It’s Gary (Adam Tsekhman), of course. When Constantine (Matt Ryan), Zari (Tala Ashe) and Astra (Olivia Swan) go hunting for the tome that could lead to answers on how to best handle an alien abduction, they find a nice and gooey cocoon hanging over Gary’s bed. He was sent to Earth to abduct the quintessential human. But then he fell in love with the Legends and couldn’t follow through with it — until now. The thing is, nothing’s really changed and he feels terrible. When he starts to think about what Ava’s going through with Sara missing, he breaks.
In the beginning, Ava seems to be handling things pretty well. She makes binders and gets the Legends ready to take on their respective missions. She even prepared for them each to ignore everything she said and takes their insubordination with grace. But the time they make their way to the home of Esperanza “Spooner” Cruz’s (Lisseth Chavez) — a woman who was once abducted by aliens — home, she’s at the end of her rope. When Spooner shoots a hole through the Waverider, Ava tearfully pleads with her over the situation.
After they get Spooner on board and sort out Sara’s location, it seems for a moment that everything will work out and they’ll get their captain back unscathed. But this is a CW show after all. Sara and Gary don’t make it through the wormhole, and remain lightyears away from from the Waverider and their team.
“Ground Patrol to Sara Lance” is the type of episode that’s going to test science folks’ patience. However, it feels like an important tone setter for the rest of the season. We know we’re dealing with aliens rather than our usual time travel stich, and we know that they’ll be handling the science of space in the same way they’ve handled the “science” of time travel. One’s a little weirder because we have set scientific parameters for the whole space part of it, but it’s a sci-fi show. We’re gonna allow it!
So far as a premiere goes, the episode does its job setting the theme for the rest of the season and letting us know what we’re in for when it comes to certain relationships and the trajectory for a handful of characters. Something about it felt a little bit off, but that may be the tonal shift into aliens more than the episode itself. Hopefully the Sara situation sorts itself out faster than Kara’s been stuck in the Phantom Zone over on Supergirl!
