'DC's Legends of Tomorrow': The Legends have stopped caring about changing history and that changes everything
Spoiler alert for 'Slay Anything' Episode 4 of Season 5 of 'DC's Legends of Tomorrow'
So Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh) actually just came out and said it. "We're on a time ship. And let's be honest, we're a little past the whole should-we-change-history debate."
It's about time they admitted to it. They're a long way from the days of trying to keep a low profile in their travels through time. With that admittance, however, comes some pretty big questions — the biggest being why the Legends don't just go back in time and fix EVERYONE?
The sacred nature of the timestream is something that needs to be established in any show that brings up time travel. Some terrible things have happened in the past, but one can't go back and fix them without changing things drastically in the present — a logistical nightmare for any writers trying to figure out cause and effect.
In order to prevent complete chaos, there needs to be a reason that holds time travelers back from messing everything up and this is especially true for characters as messy as the Legends.
It's something that 'DC's Legends of Tomorrow' used to care about. They would be very careful about characters they interacted with in the past.
They would continually run afoul of Ava Sharpe's (Jes Macallan) Time Bureau, who were in charge of keeping things straight. They even brought in the time wraiths, from 'The Flash,' in Season 2, who target anyone messing too heavily with time.
The Legends are now either just beyond caring about the consequences, or a post-Crisis timestream just accepts change more easily, because this episode the Legends decide to change the past in a pretty big way.
They go back in time to give a known serial killer a happier childhood, reforming him before he has a chance to go evil. They even succeed in giving him a happy ending, getting the girl and bringing a host of kids back from the dead to live out their lives.
The Legends are also dealing with the fallout of their other big change to history — Zari Tarazi (Tala Ashe) bringing her brother Behrad back to life, wiping out her time with the Legends.
Besides turning Zari into more of a socialite, there seem to be no adverse consequences, especially with Zari no returning to the ship with her most useful skills intact.
With the consequences removed, the Legends now wield incredible power, and the ability to change history in vitally important ways. Every one of history's major villains has a chance for reformation, stopping calamity in its tracks.
Non-violent solutions to evil are the superhero way, and until the boundaries of time travel are re-established, it's going to be a big question as to why the Legends don't just reform every villain they meet.
The next episode of 'DC's Legends of Tomorrow' airs on February 18 on The CW.