Trivia / Legends of Tomorrow

• Accidental Downer Ending: The series ended with the team captured by time police. It was supposed to be an end of season cliffhanger, but The CW unexpectedly cancelled the show. And it didn't get resolved in the show it spun off from, The Flash (2014), either.
• Acting for Two:
  • Both Ciara Renée and Falk Hentschel play every single Reincarnation of their characters. Casper Crump doesn't really count since his character is an immortal who can regenerate when "killed".
  • Victor Garber plays Martin Stein and Eobard Thawne when the latter uses a non-fatal version of the DNA duplicator device (the one he used on the real Earth-1 Harrison Wells) on Stein. He also plays an ancestor of his in the Season 3 episode Return of the Mack.
  • The Season 2 finale episode, "Aruba", has virtually all of the Legends actors playing two versions of themselves.
  • "Guest Starring John Noble" had John Noble playing his real-life self and voicing Mallus.
  • Maisie Richardson-Sellers played her usual version of Amaya and an older version of her in "Guest Starring John Noble". Then season 4 she went on to play the Shapeshifter Default Form of Charlie.
  • Christian Keyes plays Desmond, a love interest of John Constantine. However, after the demon Neron takes Desmond's soul, he then assumes Desmond's identity to walk around in the earthly realm; thus, Neron is also played by Christian Keyes.
  • Same deal for Brandon Routh when Ray is possessed by Neron. Brandon Routh later resumes his role as Superman from Superman Returns during the Crisis.
  • Several actors get brief stabs at this once Charlie joins the show, thanks to her Shapeshifting into their characters.
  • Courtney Ford plays Nora Darhk and later also plays Marie-Antoinette. Ray is the only one to note the resemblance.
  • Quasi-example: while Zari Tomaz and Zari Tarazi are technically the same person, just from different versions of history, their lives diverged so radically at such a young age that they're effectively different characters, and both played by Tala Ashe.
• Actor-Inspired Heroism: Hank Heywood was meant to be one of the main antagonists of Season 4. However, the writers found his actor Tom F. Wilson so charming and likable, they felt compelled to change his character to being more foolishly misguided than outright villainous.
• Actor-Shared Background:
  • Rip Hunter is British, much like his actor Arthur Darvill.
  • Victor Garber is gay, and his character Martin Stein occasionally makes references to this (although Stein himself is heterosexual).
    • Stein caps off his speech about the fall of the Soviet Union by saying that in America people can "love whoever we want." Garber is gay, and had recently gotten married after country-wide gay marriage legalization.
    • Jefferson and Sara demolish Stein's rose-tinted view of the '50s, and he looks especially uncomfortable when Sara brings up how hard the period was for gay people.
  • Courtney Ford and Brandon Routh are married in real life. During the show, their characters Eleanor "Nora" Darhk and Ray Palmer get married.
  • Both Victor Garber and Adam Tsekhman are Jewish, much like their respective characters Martin Stein and Gary Green.
  • Zari Tomaz is an Iranian-American and fluent in Farsi, like her actress Tala Ashe.
  • When Maisie Richardson-Sellers switched from playing Amaya to playing Charlie, the new role was made an Englishwoman (or at least a millennia-old being who became an Englishwoman), allowing her to use (something approaching) her native accent.
  • Dr. Gwyn Davies is Welsh, like his actor Matt Ryan (though unlike Ryan's previous role on the show, who's from Liverpool).
• Billing Displacement:
  • Arthur Darvill, who plays The Leader and provides the Opening Narration of the first season, is only third billed behind Victor Garber and Brandon Routh.
  • Even though Sara is made captain of the Waverider in season 2, Caity Lotz doesn't get first billing until halfway through season 5, after Darvill, Garber, and Routh were no longer on the show.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • Dancer, stuntwoman, and Parkour practitioner Caity Lotz gets to lose the mask with her new outfit, making it even clearer that she does all her own fighting and stunts.
  • Veteran Broadway star Victor Garber gets to sing on multiple occasions.
  • In "Tender is the Nate", Tom Wilson gets to show off his guitar and singing skills.
  • Tala Ashe (Zari) occasionally speaks fluent Farsi, her first language.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Caity Lotz, Dominic Purcell and Brandon Routh have admitted in interviews and social media posts that they are not fans of the first season.
  • Ciara Renee and Falk Hentschel have been open about how much they disliked the material they got, including saying that most of the material they were told about when they signed on either never happened or was cut if it got to the filming stage.
  • As news of Brandon Routh and Courtney Ford's departure was released, both actors immediately made it clear on their Instagram and Twitter profiles that this decision was made by the writers, not them. Routh even retweeted comments criticizing the writers' decision, suggesting that he and Ford are as dissatisfied as the fans.
  • The creators of this show thought that their take on Vandal Savage was terribly underwhelming.
  • More generally, Marc Guggenheim even acknowledged in an interview with EW's "Superhero Inside" that aired following the season 3 finale that the first season had problems, and that the goal when developing the last two seasons was specifically to avoid these problems.
• The Danza:
  • Almost. Hawkgirl's real name is "Chay-Ara" (pronounced somewhere between "Shay-arra" and "Shee-arra"), and her actress has the similar first name "Ciara" (pronounced "See-arra"). Since Chay-Ara is a character from the comics, this is entirely a coincidence, presuming Ciara Renée wasn't hired for her name.
  • Mona Wu is played by Ra '''mona''' Young.
• Darkhorse Casting:
  • Before she was cast as Astra, Olivia Swann's sole acting credit was as a guest star in a single episode of British soap Doctors.
  • While he wasn't a complete unknown, Shayan Sobhian had only appeared as an extra in a film and a guest star in two episodes of the Biblical drama The Chosen before he was cast as Behrad. Legends of Tomorrow was the first time he acted in any major role.
• Deleted Scene:
  • A behind the scenes feature featured the Flash asking Captain Cold how it felt to be a hero. This was never shown and indeed Barry himself never showed at all in the first season.
  • A conversation between Sara and Snart was cut in the pilot.
  • There was a filmed kiss between Zari and Charlie.
• Directed by Cast Member:
  • The reason why Sara is mostly absent in "Mortal Khanbat" is because her actress, Caity Lotz, directed that episode. Lotz also directed the season 6 episode "The Satanist's Apprentice".
  • David Ramsey directed the episode "Stressed Western", though it should be noted that he never appeared in a non-crossover Legends episode.
  • Jes Macallan directed the episode "The Final Frame".
  • Maisie Richardson-Sellers directed the episode "There Will Be Brood". Played with in that Richardson-Sellers had departed from the cast a year prior to her stint as director.
• Fake American:
  • Both halves of Firestorm are fake Americans. Jefferson Jackson is played by the British Franz Drameh, while Prof. Stein is played by the Canadian Victor Garber. In "Moonshot", to fool NASA, Jefferson briefly imitates an English accent, which is Drameh's actual one in real life.
  • Carter Hall is also a fake American as Falk Hentschel is German.
  • As in The Flash, English-Australian Dominic Purcell plays American Mick Rory.
  • The English Maisie Richardson-Sellers plays Amaya Jiwe with an American accent, although the character is from the fictional African country of Zambesi, similar to her granddaughter. Averted when she plays Charlie as the latter speaks with Maisie's real accent.
  • Olivia Swann, who is English, plays Astra Logue, who has been changed into an American in the show (the comics' Astra is English, like Constantine).
• Fake Brit: Canadian Kiefer O'Reilly plays English Jonas Hunter.
• Fake Nationality: Danish Casper Crump as ancient Egyptian Vandal Savage.
• Fake Russian: Danish Stephanie Corneliussen as Russian Valentina Vostok.
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • In 'Blood Ties' Sara says she isn't much of a dancer, Caity Lotz on the other hand is a trained professional.
  • In 'Night of the Hawk,' Stein waxes nostalgia about how idyllic 1950s America was compared to 2016, prompting Sara to remind him only if one was "a man, and straight." Victor Garber is openly gay.
• Non-Singing Voice: Ava's (good) singing was not performed by Jes Macallan. Instead, it was dubbed in by Lola Kristine.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Gideon was originally played by Morena Baccarin but is now played by Amy Pemberton, though it is heavily implied that the Gideon here is a Foreign Remake.
  • Kuasa was voiced by Anika Noni Rose, but is played in the flesh by Tracy Ifeachor.
• Out of Holiday Episode: The episode "Turncoats" was set on Christmas Eve, even though the episode aired in February.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Courtney Ford, who plays Nora Dahrk, is married to Brandon Routh, who plays Ray Palmer.
  • Jax's photo of his daughter is the actor's actual infant daughter.
  • Raffi Barsoumian, who plays Bishop, is married to Tala Ashe, who plays Zari.
  • Jes Macallan's fiance, Nic Bishop, appeared in two episodes in as General Kilgore and Levi Stapleton.
  • Dominic Purcell's on-off girlfriend AnnaLynne McCord also appeared in season six as Irma Rose.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Queer actress Maisie Richardson-Sellers initially played the straight Amaya Jiwe (Vixen) in Legends of Tomorrow but in season 4, she got recast as pansexual demon Charlie.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Notably averted regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Legends of Tomorrow is one of the few CW (if not the entire broadcast television) shows not to get screwed over by the shutdown of filming plaguing the entire US showbiz, with its fifth season still going according to plan. This is because it managed to film the entire 15 episodes before the pandemic hit, meaning the show had completely entered post-production, as opposed to others (such as the rest of the ongoing Arrowverse, The Flash, Supergirl, and Batwoman) which weren't able to film their entire season and as a result had to cut short. Ironically, Legends was previously screwed over when The CW postponed its fifth season premiere from 2019 to right after Crisis on Infinite Earths in direct opposition to its plan to air Crisis midway.
• Recycled Script: Season 5's plot of the Loom of Fate has a lot of similarities with Season 2's The Spear of Destiny. Both involve a powerful artifact capable of altering reality itself, which has been broken up in 3 parts that are scattered across time. Both seasons have a Season Finale in which the villains get all pieces and reshape the world to their liking, with the Legends not remembering their old lives except for one of them (Mick in season 2, Zari in season 5), who then reunites the others to restore reality.
• Recycled Set:
  • The exterior of Savage's 1975 mansion in the second part of the pilot is the same building used as Darhk's 2016 mansion in the episode of Arrow that aired a week before this episode.
  • Kayla's spaceship in Season 6 is mostly recycled from Stargate Atlantis. The cryo chamber pods are the most blatant giveaway.
• Renamed to Avoid Association: Zari Tomaz is an adaptation of a superheroine named Isis (who was originally from The Secrets of Isis and then adopted as a Black Adam character), but the "Isis" codename was dropped as by then the name was also used by a terrorist organization.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting:
  • Lovell Adams-Grey looks and sounds exactly like a young Barack Obama.
  • Actually threw a wrench in the works during season four because after casting Thomas F. Wilson as the father of Nate, Nick Zano's character, the writers found themselves having to change their plans after seeing the two of them together on set, including how much they did look like they could be related.
• Screwed by the Network: Or, more accurately, the network's new owners. Following the merger of Warner Bros. and Discovery, two Arrowverse shows were stated to not be making the cut. Despite being one of the most popular of the bunch, Legends found itself cancelled out of the blue along with Batwoman. Apparently, some bean-counter decided it was costing WB too much to store the Legends sets. (This turned out to be an early warning sign of the rather-unpopular reign of David Zaslav as WB's owner, which has seen several other projects been cancelled or scrapped for financial reasons.)
• Shipper on Deck: Olivia Swann liked this tweet regarding the Charlie x Astra ship.
• Those Two Actors:
  • Aside from his Prison Break brother Wentworth Miller, Dominic Purcell was with Callum Keith Rennie in Blade: Trinity.
  • Both Laura Mennell and Daryl Huttleworth, who played minor characters during The '50s episode, were on Watchmen together. Coincidentally, both of their characters in the film are connected to the same major character (Dr. Manhattan).
• Throw It In!:
  • Caity Lotz and Wentworth Miller had a ton of fun improvising little friendship bits in the early episodes, which the writing crew loved so much that they soon starting putting more in the scripts.
  • Most scenes of the team together are full of adlibs, Dominic Purcell almost never says anything that's written in the script.
  • In "Meet the Legends", Sara sweeping Ava into a Big Damn Kiss, followed by Ava fainting and Sara flashing a thumbs up at the camera? That was just the two actors goofing around between takes (luckily, since this was a Documentary Episode, even the Breaking the Fourth Wall moment could be kept in).
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original idea for the third Arrowverse show was to simply give The Atom his own series. But The CW execs got cold feet after his lukewarm reception during Season 3 of Arrow, so it was heavily retooled to be about an entire team.
  • The team was going to be named the Justice Society, but Geoff Johns nixed it so the real JSA could be saved for any future appearances.
  • Alan Scott was supposed to be the leader of the Justice Society, but DC prevented his usage; he was replaced by Hourman. They got as far as concept art.
  • Keiynan Lonsdale originally auditioned for Jefferson Jackson, but the showrunners decided he's better suited to play Wally West on The Flash so he was cast as that instead.
  • The creators originally wanted to have Robbie Amell reprise his role from The Flash as Firestorm, but Amell couldn't commit. They ended up killing the character off on The Flash so they could have a new Firestorm to use in Legends of Tomorrow.
  • Joseph David-Jones revealed his character of Connor Hawke was originally supposed to become a series regular and join the Legends, but due to a combination of being unable to fit him in and the tone of the show changing to Denser and Wackier they scrapped the idea.
  • Likewise, the creators wanted Megalyn Echikunwoke to reprise her role as Vixen from Arrow and her animated series, but this was scrapped because of scheduling issues. The new Vixen Amaya in Season 2 was created as a replacement.
    • It was announced that Megalyn was supposed to reprise her role as Mari in Season 3 and meet Amaya, but for some reason that never happened.
  • The show originally planned on tackling Ra's Al-Ghul and Damien Darhk's friendship and fallout but was scrapped for unknown reasons.
  • Other names for Legends Of To-Meow-Meow.
  • "Wet Hot American Bummer"'s script was changed to remove Nate from the episode in order to give Nick Zano time off after his daughter was born and required surgery at a day old.
  • Hank Heywood was initially going to be the Big Bad of Season 4, revealed to be a Mad Scientist putting all the creatures the Legends brought back through horrific experiments, complete with Nate making a Face–Heel Turn. Then everyone found Tom Wilson so inherently likable that they decided this could never be believable (a bit odd, seeing as his most famous role is a villain), so the story was tweaked to make him Neron's patsy.
  • The season four finale was originally supposed to include Nate dying for real, but the writers ultimately couldn't bring themselves to do it and had him resurrected by the power of love.
  • The writers wrote in a Zari/Charlie romance and the two were going to kiss at the end of season 5. Because Maisie Richardson-Sellers departed from the show at the end of season 5, the scene ended up getting cut.
  • Per Caity Lotz, had Legends gotten an eighth season, the Legends would've been forced to work off their prison sentence training rookie time travelers in how not to time travel.
• Word of Gay: Wentworth Miller says he believes Snart is pansexual, but that's yet to be seen in canon. At least for the Earth-1 version. Earth-X Snart, on the other hand, is in a committed relationship with Ray Terrill, aka The Ray.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants:
  • As noted above, Hank was originally written as an outright villain, but the incredible chemistry between his actor and Nate's encouraged the showrunners to make him a misguided Anti-Villain instead.
  • According to showrunner Phil Klemmer, the revelation of Gary being an alien in the Season 6 premiere is something that they only thought of when they began developing the story for that season.
• You Look Familiar: Time Masters councilman Declan is played by Peter Bryant, who also played an alderman in Arrow Season 3. Identical Grandson perhaps?
  • Vanessa Przada previously played Erika Morrison in Supergirl and younger Ava Sharper in Legends of Tomorrow.
  • Melissa Roxburgh played Blake a high school friend of Thea in Arrow's season 1 and Betty Seaver in Legends Of Tomorrow season implying that was a case of an identical granddaughter.
  • Laura Regan previously guest-starred on Constantine as a character named Claire, then appeared on Legends Of Tomorrow as a woman named Jane.
  • In somewhat of a meta Running Gag, Jes Macallan's partner Nic Bishop guest stars in three separate episodes of season 6, each as a completely different character.

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