'And Then Things Just Got Stranger': What We Know About 'DC's Legends of Tomorrow'

It all made sense back when Arrow was just a scrappy little action show about a vigilante dispensing justice with his bow. A few cartoony characters began showing up, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Then The Flash came along and broke everything wide open. All of a sudden, there were bolts of death and people wizarding the weather. Where do you go from there? Obviously, you form a superteam and send it bouncing through time.

We still only know the broad strokes about The CW’s third DC show. “Time-traveling rogue Rip Hunter is tasked with assembling a disparate group of both heroes and villains to confront an unstoppable threat — one in which not only is the planet at stake, but all of time itself,” reads the show’s official synopsis. The series is slated for midseason, so we won’t know the specifics of how the team is united for a while — but we have a number of tantalizing hints and, of course, each character’s comic book history.

“A Girl With Wings and a Past-Lives Complex”

Ciara Renée as Hawkgirl

In the comics, Kendra Saunders commits suicide, and the spirit of her great-aunt — the Golden Age Hawkgirl — possesses her. In the show, it looks like she’ll be dealing with something similar. One of her past lives is a warrior spirit that comes with wings when she gets angry.

Will They… Bring up her relationship with Red Arrow? Roy Harper or — as it stands now on Arrow — Thea Queen?

“A Deceased Assassin”

Caity Lotz as White Canary

Since being killed last season on Arrow, Sara Lance’s sister has taken up the mantle of Canary — now Black Canary – so the wardrobe change makes sense. There’s a glimpse of what is almost certainly the Lazarus Pit reviving her, though she’s been dead a long time, so there’s no telling what effect that will have on her psyche.

Will They… Tell her dad that she’s back from the grave again? Not telling him last time nearly killed him. On the other hand, telling him this time almost certainly will kill him. It’s tough being a superhero’s parent: They die and come back more often than a cell phone with a bad battery.

“A Pair of Criminals”

Wentworth Miller as Captain Cold and Dominic Purcell as Heat Wave

It’s hard to hate a bank robber with a heart of gold — sorry, heart of cold. Oh sure, sometimes he’ll flat-out lie and release all the supervillains S.T.A.R. Labs had imprisoned underground in The Flash, but he did promise not to kill any more people, so there’s that. Miller can chew scenery when standing perfectly still, which is the perfect contrast to his former Prison Break co-star Purcell’s blustering — sorry, blistering — heat.

Will They… Abandon the Rogues on The Flash? The idea of a group of supervillains who abide by a code is the perfect fit for the show and, in the comics, it’s Captain Cold who leads them. Who will do it if he’s on another show? The Top? (please don’t say The Top.)

“A Billionaire With More Tech Than He Clearly Knows What to Do With”

Brandon Routh as The Atom

Ray Palmer’s sweetly nerdy energy was the perfect match for Felicity on Arrow, but we knew he was destined for the sort of flashy, effects-heavy superheroics the series tends to shy away from. Now that he can fly and get small, like his comic book namesake, it’s time for him to be Legends muscle. It will be interesting to see how far they push his powers: Will he be able to shrink enough to travel through the human body? Or travel through telephone lines? Or shrink others with him?

Will They… Have him fight Marvel’s Ant-Man? Paul Rudd’s probably not busy, right?

“I’m Half a Hero and My Other Half Is Combustible”

Victor Garber as Firestorm

Technically, Garber’s not Firestorm: Robbie Amell plays the flammable flier when the two characters merge. That’s the biggest question to be answered so far, as Amell hasn’t been announced as being part of the cast. Firestorm will clearly be a part of the show, so we won’t be seeing Garber’s Dr. Stein without his other half. Of course, in the comics, Ronnie Raymond wasn’t the only Firestorm.

Will They… Replace Ronnie with nuclear plant worker Mikhail Arkadin, whose radiation exposure during the Chernobyl disaster turned him into the Soviet superhero Pozhar? Probably not, as the only way you could make that idea more retro ’80s would be to cast Mr. T wearing neon legwarmers and singing “Karma Chameleon.”

Related: Get Up to Speed With Our Recaps of ‘The Flash’

“I’m From East London… Oh, and the Future.”

Arthur Darvill as Rip Hunter

Well, of course you cast the Doctor Who alum as a time traveler. In this case, Rip Hunter (who was briefly name-checked in The Flash finale as the man who built the first Time Sphere) is a sort of time cop (fine, a Time Master) who is chasing the immortal Vandal Savage through history.

Will They… Use him to introduce Booster Gold to the Arrowverse? In the comics, Hunter is the son of the showboating supehero from the future, which might be a little too close to the Eddie/Eobard story they just told in The Flash.

QUESTIONS

Who is Jay Jackson? Played by Franz Drameh (Edge of Tomorrow), there is no DC character by that name, but the Arrowverse rarely introduces heroes who aren’t based on someone from the comics. The network says he’s an auto mechanic — with a surprising affiliation to S.T.A.R. Labs — who acquires superpowers. Most speculation has centered on African-American heroes (Cyborg, Static, Black Lightning, Black Vulcan), but really, any as-yet unclaimed superpersona is a possibility.

Related: Get Caught Up With Our ‘Arrow’ Recaps

Who will be cast as Vandal Savage? He’s one of DC’s oldest villains — in constant rotation since his creation in 1944 — so comic fans will be difficult to please with this one. Have they not announced casting because they’re courting a big name? Maybe they’ve found someone and are keeping him under wraps to build suspense? Or are they still looking for that special someone who’s as good as John Barrowman and Tom Cavanagh have been on their respective series?

What do you think? Are you looking forward to this “13-hour long mega-movie,” as executive producer Marc Guggenheim calls it? Do the effects look fun or hokey? Do you have predictions on casting? Let us know in the comments below.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will premiere in January 2016 on The CW.