Interview with Legends of Tomorrow Executive Producer Phil Klemmer, discussing spoilers for upcoming episodes of the show

The series premiere DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is only six days away, premiering Thursday, January 21 on The CW. The show, a spin-off featuring characters from Arrow and The Flash, sees a group of superheroes and supervillains traveling through time to defeat the villainous Vandal Savage. Time Master Rip Hunter assembles these Legends, taking them in his ship, the Waverider.

At the recent TCA Press Tour in Pasadena, CA, we sat down with the show’s Executive Producer, Phil Klemmer, and instead of having him detail what the show will be about, we focused more on trying to get spoilers out of him. It’s up to you, the reader, to decide on whether or not we were successful. Enjoy, and be aware spoilers are being discussed. You can read more about DC’s Legends of Tomorrow at our Legends portal, DCLegendsTV.com.

KSITETV’s CRAIG BYRNE: In November’s Flash and Arrow crossover, it appeared that Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) had something to do with bringing Vandal Savage back to the land of the living. Will we see any of “what happened next” on Legends at any point?

PHIL KLEMMER: I think before this season is over, we would very much like to go back to that moment. If not that exact moment… we spend a lot of times jumping around in the past and future, and before the battle is over, we would like our Legends to get back to their own time.

The Waverider set had things like Sandman’s gas mask, the Jonah Hex Wanted poster, and Sgt. Rock’s helmet. Might we see any of them?

I’ve been told not to spoil certain things…. I will say they’re not there by accident, and I will say that those clues will bear fruit in the next episode that we are going to produce. [EDITOR’S NOTE: It has since been announced that Jonah Hex will appear in an episode set in the Wild West.]

We will see major DC characters from different eras in the series?

Yeah.

What can you tell us about Jewel Staite’s character?

She’s related to one of our heroes. We will find that she’s not a person off the street. We are going into the most distant future that we will be visiting, and we will find that she is the biological result of something that one of our characters either directly or indirectly did before their recruitment in the pilot, in 2016. As we know, when we pull our characters out of the timeline, they cease to have an effect on the future, but this will be a sort of Ghost of Christmas Future where somebody will realize that something that they did before they left had a butterfly effect on the future that will effectively — they will have aided and abetted Vandal Savage’s rise to power.

So she’s playing Scandal Savage?

No. That’s a good pitch, though!

Is Scandal Savage a character we might be seeing on the series?

I don’t think we’ll see her in this season, but there have been a number of Scandal Savage pitches that have been on the table at one time or another. I just don’t know if we’re going to have room for her.

You’ve said “this is as far in the future as we’re going.” Does that mean they’re not going to go to the 31st century to see the Legion of Super-Heroes, or anything like that?

We start at 2166 as our “Second Blitz of London.” That will be the point which we will never pass in Season One.

Characters who are dead in the Arrow universe, like Tommy Merlyn or the Queens… might we see any of them on Legends of Tomorrow? I know we will see Ra’s al Ghul.

We haven’t had plans to see them yet, but we do have plans to visit Star City in the fairly distant future, to see the consequences of the removal of our Legends from their own timelines. We will get a Ghost of Christmas Future in Star City. But we do not have plans as of yet to see any of the dead Queens or Tommy, no.

Is that in a particular episode, and does it have a title?

That episode is number 6, and it’s called “Star City 2146.”

Will Sara (Caity Lotz) ever be reunited with Nyssa (Katrina Law) on this series?

Geographically, they’ll come close; but temporally, there will be something in the way of that.

Can you tease anything about Carlos Valdes’ appearance on Legends of Tomorrow?

You’re going to see it very soon. It happens in Episode 4. I don’t know if I can really tease it without giving away the good bit.

Ray Palmer mentions in the Legends of Tomorrow pilot that no one really cared when he died, but they did name a city after him. Is he aware of that?

You know, most people would be satisfied by that, but I think Ray is a Steve Jobs sort of guy who wanted to change the world for the better, and I think he would take that as a bit of a bit of a “booby prize,” sort of like a pity gesture. I don’t think just seeing his name on the “Welcome to Star City, population XXX”… that doesn’t scratch his ambition.

Is there a particular character on Arrow or Flash that you’d like to be able to use at some point, but you haven’t yet?

I like the idea of returning to the pre-Arrow or pre-Flash [days]. A show in which we could see, like, Grant [Gustin] as the nerdy CSI. I like seeing the pre-heroic versions of our people. It’s too bad they have those two pesky shows that they have to work on Monday through Friday.

How do you feel about The CW giving you one of their best time slots (Thursday at 8PM ET/PT)?

It’s crazy. It’s the sort of thing you don’t really think about until it’s already happened, and then you have a moment of being like “Oh my God. Thank God it worked out like that.” You almost can’t even entertain those thoughts, because you have so many day to day [duties], that it’s kind of a mercy that you don’t allow yourself to see this grand chess board. But then when you see Thursday night and 8 and you’re like “Damn. What if it hadn’t been that way?” All this work could have not had the chance that we all think it deserves. And, man. Bless them for giving it to us.

Marc Guggenheim tweeted out the title page for an episode with the title “Night of the Hawk.” Can you tease anything about what that title might mean?

Joe Dante’s the director, and if you’re a Gremlins fan and Amblin 80’s television fan, you’ll know how much Spielberg and company loved to live in to that post-war America. We are doing our sort of homage to the Fifties drive-in genre picture. Because if you have Joe Dante as the director… I think “Night of the Hawk” feels evocative of a Roger Corman movie, and that’s not a coincidence.

Is that the episode where Sara meets a homemaker love interest?

Yeah. We find that even in America at “it’s post-war height,” where everything was perfect with picket fences and Leave it to Beaver and Andy Griffith, we want to take the air out of that version of “America was so great.” We want to find the skeletons that were lurking in the closet.

What are you most excited for fans to see on January 21?

I am really excited for people to get aboard the Waverider. Not since Star Trek has there been a network television show where the standing set and the home base is a spaceship. For a kid who grew up on Lost in Space and Star Trek, to introduce a new generation of television viewers to space-based, time-travel-based sci-fi is real exciting. It’s long overdue. I’m really proud of it.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, featuring several icons from the DC Comics universe, premieres Thursday, January 21. Read more about it at DCLegendsTV!

Additionally, look for more Legends interviews between now and Thursday here at KSiteTV!