When Justice League: Dark Tomorrow #1 was released last month, the one-shot introduced the DC (comics) universe to the Legends of Tomorrow, a team of time-tossed B- and C-list heroes who will be doing their superheroing from the relative comfort of the Waverider, a time-ship with a huge floor plan but, confoundingly, only one bathroom.
The leader of the group is a mysterious character named Legend, and, as our headline pointed out back when the issue was released, it’s the identity of Legend that has driven a lot of the conversation coming out of Dark Tomorrow. With the team’s adventures set to carry on in the near future, teased for issues of Justice League Unlimited and DC K.O., why not explore some of the possibilities?
Legend revealed very little about themself in Dark Tomorrow, except that they, too, are a time-traveler and that they have “history” (ha!) with the Waverider ship itself and some of the characters seen in the issue. The character, whose gender is uncertain, wears an armor evocative of Ray Palmer’s A.T.O.M. suit from The CW’s Arrowverse, albeit with a full-facial mask that totally blacks out Legend’s face.
That isn’t a lot to go on, but it’s a start. We’ve put together a list of suspects, and depending on who (if any!) of these candidates turns out to be Legend, the long-term arc of the character could be very different.
Before we jump into it, let’s touch briefly on the gender thing. Most characters in the one-shot referred to Legend as “he,” presumably since the A.T.O.M. suit is designed to mimic male musculature. Supergirl, who has X-ray vision, referred to Legend as “them,” suggesting that Supergirl is either uncertain of the character’s gender, or knows that Legend is not a male and is choosing to keep that information to herself for one reason or another.
As for Legend themself, they do make a joke at one point that they have no history with new Legends member Marilyn Moonlight, but “don’t blame a girl for wishing,” which heavily implies both that Legend is a woman (or a man with a sense of humor) and that they’re attracted to women.
With all that established, who is Legend? Well…
Rip Hunter is obviously a strong candidate. In the Arrowverse, it was Rip (Arthur Darvill) who brought together the Legends in the first place, and Rip who owns (or at least captains) the Waverider. The timeship is not part of Rip’s story in the comics, but he is a secretive man who always has another time-travel surprise up his sleeve. There’s also the outside chance that this version of Rip comes from another part of the DC multiverse, maybe even the Absolute Universe (which would make sense given the story behind DC K.O.) or the Arrowverse itself, which could explain the artifacts from that reality buried in Dark Tomorrow.
Rip, at least in the comics, is the son of Booster Gold, which could explain why he both feels compelled to involve himself at this moment (Booster is being held captive by Darkseid’s forces in the Absolute universe, as seen in this week’s Superman #29) and why he feels the need for absolute anonymity.
It might even turn out that Legends is the Arrowverse version of Rip, who was thin enough to be drawn in an androgynous way despite comics’ usual conventions about male and female anatomy. It would also explain the Waverider’s presence without any further need for explanation. In the Arrowverse, there was a lot of implied backstory between Rip Hunter and Jonah Hex, which could also explain an offhand moment in Dark Tomorrow where Legend claims to have history with the Old West outlaw.
That said, never rule out Rip’s father, Booster Gold. Booster, who shared an adventure and way too many whiskeys with Hex in one of the early issues of Booster Gold, Vol. 2, may be in bad shape right now, but that doesn’t mean he’s off the board completely. Time-travel is a funny thing, after all, and the older Booster who has been depicted as Rip’s dad could certainly play a role in the story.
As with multiverse shenanigans, time-travel from the near future could also explain the presence of a previously unseen timeship. After all, this is a character who literally raised his child at the Vanishing Point, a fortress built outside of regular time.
(However, Legend’s comment that Vanishing Point reminds him of death seems out of place for Booster, unless fans are about to learn some truly tragic elements of his backstory.)
Even without the need for Legend to be the “older Booster,” he could be the Booster from immediately after he escapes custody, or a Booster from the past recruited by Rip, or something like that. Remember when Booster was dead, and Supernova was running around during DC’s 52? This feels like an opportunity to echo that storyline.
There is another version of Booster — The Black Beetle — who could serve as a dark horse candidate. First appearing in Booster Gold, Vol. 2 in 2007 and finally revealed as the Earth-3 version of Michael Jon Carter in 2021’s Blue and Gold, The Black Beetle is a villain. But he first came on the scene as an anonymous “hero” from the future, using Booster’s own naiveté to manipulate the hero into damaging the timeline.
If Legend is Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh) from the Arrowverse, it would explain not only the costume and his familiarity with Jonah Hex and the Waverider but also the need for absolute anonymity. After all, Ray Palmer from the main-line DC continuity appears in Dark Tomorrow as well, and having the two face-to-face would require eating up some page time explaining just what’s going on.
There are a number of other Legends from the TV show who could be considered fairly solid candidates in their own right… Although the possibility of bringing anybody at all in from the TV show seems like a pretty remote one.
Gideon (Amy Louise Pemberton), the shipboard AI, was given human form in season six, and an alternate Gideon served as the series’ anonymous big bad for season seven. There is arguably no one more familiar with the Waverider than Gideon herself, who had access to every room except the bathroom during the entirety of the ship’s service time. Her obsessive, narrow-minded commitment the mission of the Legends caused her to go rogue in that final season, and while the “evil Gideon” is gone now, it wouldn’t be impossible to imagine “our” Gideon getting similarly obsessed and traveling into the multiverse to do good.
Zari Tarazi (Tala Ashe), whose own backstory could be an article in and of itself, not only lived on the Waverider but lamented, when faced with the possibility of forced retirement, that she thought the team would have “more time to be heroes.” In the last two seasons of the show, Zari seemed like she was being built up as a possible successor to the title of the Waverider’s captain, and a version of her (again…complicated backstory!) had a friendly, flirtatious relationship with Hex (and a scripted-but-not-filmed scene where she kissed Vixen, suggesting an openness to beautiful women).
The Arrowverse versions of both Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller) and Heatwave (Dominic Purcell) have to be viewed as possibilities, too (albeit remote ones). They both lived on the Waverider and, since Leonard Snart died at Vanishing Point during the show’s first season, both could associate the place with death. In the Arrowverse version of Crisis on Infinite Earths, an alternate timeline’s version of Heatwave even took on the Waverider as his home when the rest of the Legends retired.
The last, and maybe best, guess we have is Sara Lance (Caity Lotz). As the person who took over the Waverider after the death of Rip Hunter in Legends of Tomorrow Season 3, and the only member of the OG Legends crew still on board (except Gideon) as of the end of the CW show, Sara would be the person who most embodies the team. While Sara’s Arrowverse codename was White Canary, in the comics, that name is taken by a character with a very different personality and identity. Embracing the name “Legend” for her trip to this world might make sense.
Sara also knows Hex well, having been present for all of his on-camera adventures with the team and even giving an alternate Earth’s version of Hex his trademark scars during Crisis on Infinite Earths. Having been a Legend from the very beginning, Sara also remembers Vanishing Point primarily as a place where she first saw Leonard Snart die, and later encountered a version of her friend Oliver Queen who had died and come back as the Spectre. And, yes, Sara is bisexual, allowing for a little fantasizing about Marilyn.
Of course, unless something is very wrong, it’s unlikely that Legend would be the Arrowverse version of Sara, at least not exactly. Sara is married to teammate Ava (Jes Macallan), and the last time we saw any of the team, they were about to be arrested by “time police,” so it seems unlikely she would leave her wife and team behind to travel the multiverse, even if she somehow freed herself.
That leaves two possibilities, if Legend is indeed Sara. First, Legend could be a different version of Sara, either from this universe or from a reality that resembles the Arrowverse but isn’t exactly that; or she could be the TV version of Sara, but with some kind of special circumstance — maybe a mission that would free her team? Perhaps some form of memory or personality loss, as we saw from Eobard Thawne (Matt Letscher) in Season 7 after the time police got him? — that could explain her coming to a new timeline to start a new team of Legends.
So: those are the main suspects. Did we miss anybody? Let us know in the comments if there’s somebody you think could be hiding behind that mask.
Comic Book Club Live Info:
Discover more from Comic Book Club
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.