'Legends Of Tomorrow' Premiere Spoilers: The Team Assembles With The Help Of 'Arrow' Characters [RECAP]

After months of anticipation, the CW finally debuted the third of its immensely popular collection of TV shows set in the DC Comics universe. It didn’t take long before “Arrow” and “The Flash” spawned enough characters to merit the team up series, “Legends of Tomorrow,”

The premiere episode wastes no time setting the stage for the first season of the show. Vandal Savage (Casper Crump) is an immortal being that’s successfully conquered the planet in the year 2166. Fortunately, this future can be prevented by one man, working on behalf of a much larger organization. The series introduces viewers to Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill). The hero works on behalf of the Time Master Council, an organization dedicated to making sure the natural order of time isn’t interrupted. However, Hunter makes the point that if they allow Savage to go untouched, there won’t be a timeline to protect. His plan is to assemble a team.

Just like that, Hunter is on a mission to collect former “Arrow” and “The Flash” characters Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh), Sara Lance (Caty Lotz), Hawkgirl (Ciara Renee), Hawkman (Falk Hentschel), Jefferson Jackson (Franz Drameh), Martin Stein (Victor Garber), Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller) and Heatwave (Dominic Purcell). He catches them all in various states of action and manages to knock them out with a piece of technology from the future.

The gang wakes up on a rooftop and Hunter explains to them the mission. He needs them to travel with him throughout time and stop Savage when he’s most vulnerable. In the end, the hope is to stop him in the past enough times to make it so he can’t eventually control the world. Everyone is reluctant, especially since time travelers don’t come along recruiting heroes and villains every day, so Hunter gives them each 36 hours to think on it.

During that time, each member of the team seeks some advice on the subject. Palmer visits his old buddy Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), also known as The Green Arrow. Palmer mentions that he can’t pass up the opportunity to do something legendary after dying once and realizing the world kept spinning without him. Lance was doing some training with her sister Laurel, who convinces her that she left Star City in the first place to find herself, and now she’s got a chance to make her destiny something great. She reveals that she’d inexplicably had the White Canary costume made by “The Flash” star Cisco (Carlos Valdes), so she’s in. Captain Cold and Heatwave aren’t thrilled about the idea of being heroes, but they love the idea of being able to rob the past, so they sign up as well. In fact, the only one that doesn’t end up being on board is Jackson, who says he’s too new to the Firestorm powers and opts out. That’s not good enough for his partner, Stein, who drugs him and literally drags him unconscious to the meeting.

Once they’re all there, Hunter reveals that he wasn’t just bluffing and shows off his time machine. He tells them that their first mission will take them to the year 1975, where they’d interrogate a professor who he thinks has information on where they can find Vandal Savage. The awkward part of the mission, though, is the fact that they have to encounter the professor on the day that he dies, in order to minimize the timeline disruption.

When they land, Hunter tells Sara, Captain Cold, Heatwave and Jackson to stay behind while he takes the rest to go meet the Dr. Aldus Boardman (Peter Francis James). Fortunately for fans that wanted to see the characters in action, no one except Jackson stays on the ship for too long. Instead, at Sara’s suggestion, they go to a bar and get a little weird in the 70s, laying the smackdown on some sexist patrons.

Meanwhile, the away crew finds Aldus, who is more than eager to tell the group everything he knows about Hawkman, Hawkgirl and Vandal Savage. Although he doesn’t know exactly where to find the villain, he’s certainly got some exciting information for the Hawks. It was previously revealed in the big “Arrow” and “The Flash” crossover event that the Hawks and Savage are the product of a curse that overtook them after a meteor killed them in ancient Egypt. Now they’re destined to die at Savage’s hand and constantly reincarnate to do it all over again. It turns out, in one of those reincarnations, they had a son named Aldus Boardman. Realizing that they’ve had a son together, the Hawks cannot allow him to die that day. Their deliberation over changing the timeline is cut short when Rip gets a report that his ship is under attack.

A mysterious masked bounty hunter had opened fire on the ship, which was still holding Jackson. The away team gets back, with Aldus, just in time to get themselves pinned down by the enemy’s fire. Palmer and Stein manage to get away and suit up as Atom and Firestorm respectively, but Rip Hunter is there with the hawks alone. Just when it looks like they’re about to lose to the villain, Lance, Captain Cold and Heatwave return from their bar fight and run Chronos over.

The gang escapes, but Aldus takes a hit in the process.Hunter orders repairs on the ship and helps them escape, but the rest of the gang has some serious questions for him. Chief among those questions is who exactly Chronos is. With his back to the wall and a bunch of angry superheroes in his midst, Hunter reveals he’s been lying to them. It turns out that the Time Masters rejected his plea to stop Savage, so he stole a ship and went ahead with the mission anyway. His line before about the collection of eight characters being legends in his timeline was a lie as well. It turns out the reason he chose them is because their existence ends up being pretty insignificant to the larger timeline.

This leaves the group with an awful lot to think about, but they eventually all decide that, if Hunter is telling them their destiny is to be insignificant, how can they turn down a chance to change that future? Together, they confront Hunter, who is now less of an authority figure and more of an equal, and agree to take on the mission. Just like that, the “Legends of Tomorrow” crew is set and on the hunt for Savage, together.

The episode ends with the group flying off into the time stream to check out the lead Aldus gave them before, unfortunately, he died on the very same day he was supposed to. Before the credits rolled, it was revealed that Vandal Savage had stolen a bomb that he was hoping to use to usher in another war of some kind.