Legends of Tomorrow season 6 review: Ground Control to Sara Lance

Oh Legends, how we’ve missed you so. After nearly a year without everyone’s favorite time-traveling mostly queer superhero B-team, the CW’s most unhinged superhero drama, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, returned in its new Sunday night timeslot with the season opener “Ground Control to Sara Lance”. Though we’re not entirely sold on run-of-the-mill aliens as season-long villains, the introduction of Spooner and the reveal surrounding Gary’s true identity was more than enough to get us excited for the latest season, and all the mayhem that’s sure to follow.

When we last left the Legends, they had just defeated all manner of time-traveling baddies through the power of Sisqo’s “The Thong Song”, and were celebrating their epic victory in 1970s punk London – that is, of course – before Sara was suddenly abducted in the final seconds of the season. “Ground Control to Sara Lance” picks up in the hungover morning-after of the rager/abduction, and as the Legends struggle to round the team up and figure out what happened to their Captain, Sara wakes up in a much nastier locale – an alien spaceship.

There, she meets (and briefly aligns) with Spartacus, and the two hatch an escape plan, before Spartacus is killed and it’s revealed that everyone’s favorite annoying time agent/warlock in training – Gary Green – is actually an alien. Yup, you heard that right – it sounds like the entire time we’ve known Gary, he’s actually been an alien in disguise, sent to earth to kidnap a prime specimen of humanity, which happens to be Sara. But, as Gary explains, he grew to love the Legends (oh Gary, didn’t we all?), and couldn’t bring himself to betray her.

It’s certainly a surprising (and gusty) reveal, and one that – admittedly – feels like it came out of nowhere. Though it’s a solid-enough tie-in/setup for the rest of the season’s alien-related hijinks, once we got past the initial shock of it all, we couldn’t help but wonder why it mattered all that much. Gary has never been a major character, and he’s betrayed the team (both willingly and unwittingly) before, so this new reveal (though surprising) doesn’t really hold much water in the long run.

Between the action on earth and the action in space, we found the Sara/Gary/Spartacus plot to be the weaker of the two by a significant margin – it wasn’t particularly interesting, nor inventive, nor did we even learn anything solid or exciting about who the aliens are or what they’re after – other than the setup at the end of the episode of aliens being strewn around the time stream. That particular plot beat is a near copy-paste of how the magical fugitives were introduced for seasons 4 and 5 – but at least then, the fugitives were unique and had their own power sets and folklore to draw from.

So far, we sad to say we aren’t particularly dazzled by the idea of alines being the monster-of-the-week for every episode this season – but what we are excited about is the presence of newcomer Esperanza Cruz, aka “Spooner”. Played by Lisseth Chavez, Spooner is a backcountry redneck who was abducted by aliens as a child and has spent the rest of her time since in an alien-fueled paranoia that they’ll one day return. Behrad and Rory end up crossing paths with her, and though they get off to a rocky start, she joins the Waverider and agrees to help the Legends bring Sara home.

It’s a similar setup to how the original Zari was introduced – chip on her shoulder and all – and we’ve seen the formula work before. We’ve got a feeling it will work again, too – Chavez already has tons of charisma and chemistry with the rest of the cast – and we’re excited to see the direction the writers take her character. Legends thrives off of having a rotating cast roster, and Spooner could be a breath of fresh air – since the current team has been getting awfully chummy as of late.

Especially chummy are Constantine and Zari – who turned last seasons’ one-night stand into a more friends-with-benefits type deal. But both we and Astra are a little skeptical of Constantine when he says his relationship with Zari is strictly physical – and though we’re not sure if we can quite picture them as a couple yet, it’ll be interesting to see how this (admittedly unlikely) relationship pans out over the course of the season.

The show’s other romantic relationship – Sara and Ava – also made some major ground this season, prompted by a bombshell reveal courtesy of a mind-read from David Bowie: Sara was planning on proposing to Ava. CW shows do love a good wedding, and Avalance has been around long enough now that the would-be proposal feels like a natural progression for both characters – especially considering the relationship (in our eyes) has exhausted the majority of the avenues it could’ve explored. Though we’ve never been particularly dazzled by the Ava/Sara romance, the knowledge of an impending proposal gives Ava something to fight for this season – and lights a fire under her to assume the role of leader while Sara is away.

As for the rest of the cast – Rory, Astra, Behrad, and Nate didn’t particularly have much to do this episode- although Behrad did have an interesting (and slightly disconcerting) interaction with Gideon which has us suspicious that the friendly neighborhood AI might have been corrupted or taken over- she nearly tried to kill Spooner while in the med bay. On the whole, this series opener wasn’t particularly heavy on the time travel or the hijinks (Bowie cameo and Alien references aside), instead opting to focus on info-dumping and setting up for the rest of the season.

While we’re still a little tepid on aliens being the big bad of the season, “Ground Control to Sara Lance” is a solid enough opener to keep us interested -and the introduction of Spooner promises a much-needed shakeup in the roster.

What did you think of the Legends of Tomorrow season 6 premiere? Sound off in the comments.