Interview with Executive Producer Phil Klemmer about DC's Legends of Tomorrow Season 2

The Waverider takes flight for a second season of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow starting October 13 on The CW. The show will continue to air on Thursday nights, where this season we will meet more members of the legendary Justice Society of America!

We spoke with Executive Producer Phil Klemmer last week at the Television Critics Association Press Tour in Beverly Hills, California for some intel about the upcoming second season, minutes after it was revealed that Lance Henriksen (Millennium) will be appearing in Season 2 as the JSA character Obsidian. For more details on Legends Season 2, visit our portal for the show DCLegendsTV.com.

As this interview ran a bit long, we’re splitting this interview into two parts. The second part of the interview can be found here.

KSITETV’s CRAIG BYRNE: Damien Darhk is going to in Legends of Tomorrow Season 2. Are we going to have some kind of confrontation with Sara over what he did to her sister? [EDITOR’S NOTE AND SPOILER WARNING: On Arrow, Darhk killed Sara’s sister, Laurel]

PHIL KLEMMER: It’s unavoidable. It’s inevitable. It’s interesting; Sara really has taken an unexpected leadership position within the team. I think it was clear that she and Rip had a great dynamic, and in a way, we realized that he was grooming her all along: She is meant to be a Time Master. And so, her evolution from assassin to Time Master is really rocked when she has a chance to back-slide.

Killing Damien Dahrk — that’s what the old Sara would have done. We want to force each of our characters with a chance to back-slide. In the same way, Mick Rory has evolved, but when he meets Snart, that’s like an invitation to back-slide. So if all of our characters are in recovery, we want to put that first drink in front of them and be like “are you committed to being a hero, or do you want to team up with Leonard Snart and go back to robbing banks? Do you want to commit to being the leader of this team, Sara, or do you want to do what your heart is telling you to do, which is to put a bullet in this guy’s head and save your sister’s life in 2016?”

Would Sara have any remorse for wanting to kill someone for something that they haven’t even done yet?

Not to get too heady about it, but Damien Darhk and every bad guy, it’s not as simple as killing him in the past and saving your sister in the future. It seems like that would be the metric. But even bad guys have unforeseen consequences on history. Our team are Time Masters now, and they’re presumably following the playbook that Rip has handed them. You can’t just kill people, because you don’t know the Butterfly Effect from removing a person like Damien Darhk. Who knows what unforeseen consequence that had? So, it’s all about your selfish agenda versus your Time Master agenda.

What are the chances we will see Sara meeting the Black Siren?

Hmm. Have not considered that yet… I can’t give you the odds on that. [EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re not sure if he’s joking or not, or if he’s just being coy here.]

How much of the action in Season 2 might take place in the present day?

I’d say precious little. Obviously, you want to check in with the other shows which exist in the present day, but aside from that, Season 2 I think is much more about really leaning into the fun romp through history. Do you remember the show Voyagers? I was weaned on that version [of time travel], and so for me, having a time machine means that I want to go to a famous place in history and meet famous people. That’s the fun we’re really trying to lean into, as opposed to going to the future, which is effectively sci-fi. We want to live in history book history, I think, in Season 2.

Does that history involve characters from the DC Universe past? For example, last year’s Jonah Hex episode was really popular.

Yeah. We’ll certainly be checking in with our friend Mr. Hex again.

Is there any chance we’ll be seeing Connor Hawke again?

Wow, that’s a great question! I mean, saying that just made me want to say yes immediately, because that was so much fun. Yeah! We have an embarrassment of riches on the show. Now that we have the JSA, we have an awful lot of people to give story to.

Our philosophy in this season is slightly different, in that instead of trying to divide up the pie evenly between our eight Legends or however many JSA members, we really want to focus on individual storylines of two or three characters, and let the other characters recede into the background knowing that they’ll get a big episode the next week. Now that we know everybody, we want to really dig deeper. We want to give Stein and Jax their own episode. We want to give Nate his own episode. We want to give Sara and Darhk their own episode. It’s okay if somebody is light in one, knowing that the spotlight will hit them in the next.

How awesome is it that you’re getting Lance Henriksen on your show as Obsidian?

He’s half Norwegian and so am I, so I feel like we’re going to bond. As I said in my letter to try to encourage him to take the role, I was like “you have been in three of my top ten movies. I mean, you were in The Right Stuff.” Yeah.

In the comic books, Todd (Obsidian) is gay. Is he going to be gay on the series?

Yeah. That’s certainly our intention. We haven’t written this episode yet, but yeah. That is [the intention].

Part Two of our interview with Phil Klemmer can be found here – follow our Legends Twitter feed @DCLegendsTV for more updates related to the show as Season 2 approaches!



The Complete First Season Blu-ray set for DC’s Legends of Tomorrow hits stores Tuesday – here’s our review!