SDCC ’18: DC’s LEGENDS OF TOMORROW To Introduce a New Character in Season Four

Legends of Tomorrow is about to enter its fourth season, as the team continues to protect time and space against a myriad of dangers. The cast and crew of the show stopped by Comic-Con to answer some questions about season four and the new character that will be joining the team. Legends returns to The CW on October 22nd.

Maisie Richardson-Sellers (Amaya Jiwe)

What’s new for you on the show next season?

“I play a new character next season, so that’s very exciting. Her name is Charlie and she is a magical fugitive who has basically come through when history and time broke and she slipped through into this dimension. So she is a rebel without a cause, out for herself, punking everyone. She’s a much more tough, edgy, punk rock kid who looks like Amaya. So the whole team has to respond to that and you can see how they win her over. Why is she here, what does she want? And once she realizes the power she possibly has over the team what’s she going to do with that? That’s her journey.”

Will the team have a hard time separating the new character from Amaya?

“Definitely. And I think she’ll probably use that to her advantage. She has magical powers which are really really cool powers. They also need her in order to figure out how to get rid of these other magical entities. So it’s a battle between: can we use her enough to trust her or is she going to use us?”

Will there be any more JSA ties?

“I hope so! I’d love to have Amaya come back again. Who knows, maybe they could meet. And also to check in with the rest of the JSA members. I think there might be someone coming in that you might recognize, which will be really exciting. I always want the JSA to come back. They’re great.”

When did you find out that you were going to be playing a new character?

“I think it was a couple episodes before the finale. We were just talking about how it felt like Amaya needed to go home. It was time. She had been through so much and it was all because of the fact that she wasn’t returning home. We wanted to do her right and let her go, so we took her home. But they were like ‘You’re not going anywhere!’ So I had no idea over the break what was coming up and they presented this character to me. And I was like ‘She sounds amazing’. She’s the opposite. She’s cheeky, she’s playful, she’s wild. She doesn’t care about doing bad, she just wants to have a good time. And she is definitely a prankster and a jokester. So I think it’s going to be really fun.”

How will Nate react to the new character?

“I’m curious! We haven’t gotten there yet, but I think it’s going to be really hard for him because she looks like the person that he’s mourning. And I wonder if she’s going to use that to her advantage and play with that. I don’t know. It depends why she’s here and what her ulterior motive is. And whether they can win her over before she gets too brave to start messing things up. But it will be really interesting watching her with Nate and whether she’s still attracted to him. Maybe she’ll still play with him, who knows?”

Brandon Routh (Ray Palmer)

What is Ray’s emotional journey right now?

“Ray is happy they defeated Mallus but conflicted about his decision to give Nora Darhk the time stone. There are some things that happen early on in the season that lead him to question whether that was really a good idea and if his gamble on Nora turning into a good person is going to pay off or not. He’s a little worried about that.”

Would you agree that Ray’s personality shifted a bit around season two?

“I think they leaned into what I was doing and they wrote more towards that aspect. I guess maybe they had a need to make somebody be that to contrast with the other darker sides of characters that we had. Ray on Arrow was envisioned to be one way and I swam upstream because I wanted to make him not so much a Tony Stark. To have him be a kinder presence. So that naturally just fed into the comedic abilities of Ray and the comedy gold that could be mined out of a goody two shoes character, a Boy Scout character. And that worked. The comedy of that worked so they just kept building and morphing Ray into this version. Which I think is great because it’s true to a lot of my growing up and it’s a character that maybe isn’t represented enough, the kind of nerdy Boy Scout kid who still wants to be cool and part of the team.”

What is Ray’s importance on the show?

“I think the science aspect is something that I hear from a lot of fans, whether it be kids or parents, who like the fact that Ray is so geeked out about science and talking about science. And having that positive role model for somebody who is intelligent; a physicist is a cool role model.”

Caity Lotz (Sara Lance)

What is Sara’s emotional journey right now?

“I think for Sara, she really wants to try to build a life and some normalcy and feel like a real person. Of course that’s not an easy thing to do. So I think she’s going to struggle a lot between her responsibilities as the captain and having a relationship and trying to be a normal person.”

How will Constantine’s presence challenge you as the team leader?

“I think Constantine is kind of like the devil on Sara’s shoulder. She’s got this new hold on life. We did good. We saved the world. I’ve got a girlfriend. Maybe my life’s not so bad. Maybe I can let people in. Maybe I can love people. And then you have Constantine who’s like: I know who you really are, you’re just like me. I see him putting in jeopardy the loose hold that she has on this new life. I think he’s going to make it harder.”

Dominic Purcell (Mick Rory)

What’s coming up for Mick in the new season?

“Well he’s about to encounter a new thing called Constantine. The dynamic between Rory and Constantine is just hysterical. It’s wonderful actually. I’ve had the opportunity to read a few scripts ahead of time and the scenes are beautifully written and hysterical. Rory has now come to the conclusion that this is his family. These are people that he protects. Even though he doesn’t verbally articulate it, they all know that Mick has their back now. The hostility or animosity between him and Constantine is something I want to keep going forward with.”

Are there any big changes to the character?

“Mick is firmly established. We don’t have to mess with Mick Rory now, we know what he is. There’s not a whole lot of tinkering we need to do with him. Essentially what you see with him is what you have. But there are parts of him that we haven’t yet seen and they’ll be drawn out over this year and next year.”

Keto Shimizu (Executive Producer)

How will Mick Rory react to the new challenges?

“For Mick it’s kind of like another day at the office. It’s like, all right what are we doing now? He’s kind of resigned to the fact that things are just always going to be crazy. After what happened last season with Beebo, we’re up for anything. For him it’s like what do I need to roast and where is it?”

Matt Ryan (John Constantine)

How does the show’s tone affect your experience?

“That’s what I love about the show. It can go so far in the extreme in terms of comedy, but then it has an emotional core to it as well. That range, which as an actor you get to play…it’s great.”

How does it feel to be back after the cancellation of Constantine?

“It’s great, man. It’s been four years since the show was cancelled and I’ve gotten to go off and do other things as an actor and satiate some of my other wants and needs as an artist. And now I get to dye my hair blonde every week and run around in a trenchcoat. It’s great. And also exploring the character in this dynamic with all these different characters, which is new from all that I’ve discovered from all the comic books. These are new relationships for me in terms of how to approach them.”

Courtney Ford (Nora Darhk)

How different will Nora’s world be now that she’s free from her possession?

“I know! Who is she? Nora needs to find out who she is without her father and without Mallus guiding her. She was possessed by him from the age of thirteen. From thirteen into her thirties, she fought him and fought him and finally he said ‘I’ll help you bring your father back’ and she gave in to him. So, you know, I don’t think she’s had any of the normal experiences that we take for granted. Is she going to go out into the world and get a job? How is she going to interact with everybody? What part of her is going to win out, the dark or the light? I think she’s really going to struggle with that and we’ll get to find out more.”

Nick Zano (Nate Heywood)

What can you tell us about the new season?

“It’s going to be really exciting. We have a HUGE season premiere. It’s pretty enormous, maybe the biggest premiere to date. We have about 150 extras. We went for it. I pulled my groin in the first episode.”

Will there be a theme in the new season?

“We are never consistent, which is the best thing to have in tv. We’re not married to anything: cast, storylines…we can do whatever we want. We have no rules. We could come back and literally do anything. And we can because we are legends. We don’t have any blueprint and that’s so freeing when you’re writing, when you’re acting. We don’t know who’s going to get paired up in one episode. It’s like ‘Oh, I never thought the two of them would work together’ and it just clicks. And then we can just go down that road. That’s the beauty of the show. We’re not locked into anything or anywhere. That leaves us with a long possible run.”

Phil Klemmer (Executive Producer)

What is the tone of the show moving forward?

“Obviously with the arrival of Constantine’s character we’re kind of changing our genre up, going from just fixing history to dealing with the world of these magical creatures. Our show is a comedy in my mind and to offset that lighter tone we wanted to get into some dark stories. I’m a big fan of horror. And mashing with comedy…there’s a reason that people laugh when they get scared.”

Any guest appearances from other shows?

“We kind of do our own thing and the fact that we’re not participating in the crossover this year I think is an indication that we sort of now exist on our own separate tonal universe. I think one world is plenty for the legends.”

What will you be exploring?

“The show becomes more outrageous, more absurd, more preposterous. Our finale was pretty much an explosion of all those things. In order to counterbalance that we’re trying to make a lot of the themes at the heart of the show much more real. We’ve played arch villains, we’ve played the Legion of Doom, we’ve played Vandal Savage. Now we’re kind of exploring the evil of just humans. And we’re looking to fracture the team a little bit. Because when we fixed history it was clear what you do — you put it back the way it was. And then we got in that moral grey zone of how do you fix the parts of history that were broken to begin with? This season, it’s the morality of these ‘monsters’ …you meet a minotaur on the street and it’s like ‘It’s a minotaur, we’ve got to kill him’. What Legends does in everything it does is slightly off center and when we do a minotaur episode it’ll be ‘What’s his story? What makes him tick?’ And Constantine’s like ‘Throw him to hell!’ Our legends are big hearted people and tv’s good in ensemble when you’ve got a debate every episode. You don’t want the guys ever to agree and just say ‘Do X’.”

Tala Ashe (Zari Tomaz)

What’s in store for Zari this season?

“Zari has become more of a part of the fabric of the team. Through the time loop episode she has literally lived with them hundreds of times, so they have become her family. So it’s like a ride or die situation for her now. But she’s still grappling with the future that she comes from and losing her family and losing her brother. And seeing the worst version of a very xenophobic and intolerant future. It’s going to be interesting with the magical fugitives that come in. I think for her it’s going to parallel the metas that she saw being persecuted for being different in the future. I think she’s going to butt heads with Constantine quite a bit, who just wants to send them to hell, where Zari’s like ‘Hold on’. We’re going to see her grappling with that and see other sides of her because she’s not as guarded. She’s still sarcastic, she’s still dry. But the guard’s come down, at least in front of the legends.”

Jes Macallan (Ava Sharpe)

Where does Ava go this season?

“Ava’s in love. It’s kind of amazing that they’ve taken these two really strong women and they’re trying to make them play house. I don’t think it’s easy in any relationship to have two people who are working hard and then trying to build a domestic life and try to find time for each other with their full time jobs. We’re doing that. You’re going to also see a softer side of both Sara and Ava just being home and being together and not running stuff and not having everything under control and not having it put together all the time. It will be a nice shift from bossing people around all the time.”