DC’s Legends of Tomorrow Review: The Virgin Gary (Season 4 Episode 1)
Legends of Tomorrow Season 4 Episode 1, “The Virgin Gary,” is up to its same tricks as the team goes to Woodstock and finds a murderous unicorn.
For the majority of its run, Legends of Tomorrow has aimed to venture on the weirder, more ridiculous side of the DC/CW universe.
Granted, it was a rocky start at first in the first season and parts of the second season, but the third and most recent season is where it truly found that sweet spot that it has always aimed for.
Whereas the other DC shows, such as The Flash and Arrow, feel this need to be more self-serious and dark, Legends of Tomorrow gets to exist on the polar opposite of the spectrum with Beebo, John Noble cameos, and wacky time loops.
The series has found that nice niche for itself and it’s never been clearer than it is in “The Virgin Gary” where it can generally be zany and bizarre.
The thing most working in its favor is that Legends of Tomorrow knows exactly the kind of show that it is. It holds no delusions of grandeur to what it’s trying to achieve: It’s pure-grade nonsense and it thrives in that zone.
That’s not to say that what it’s trying to do is by any means easy. Drama is easy; fun is so difficult to get right.
A show like Arrow needs to fit itself into this constricting box of gritty soap opera melodrama, but what the series does is so much more freeing. As long as it’s goofy, it’s allowed to do anything and the box for that is much larger.
It can have a killer unicorn and it not be a problem. It fits in its tone because its tone is everything. It gets to be off-the-wall and madcap with moments of larger emotion, but never loses sight of its own levity.
Ultimately, it’s not surprising that it took the first two seasons of the series to get this right, because it’s so easy to see how, in less capable hands, “The Virgin Gary” could be the very epitome of a hot mess.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about this black sheep of the DC/CW universe is how it has truly emerged to become the show that is most interested in telling stories with queer characters.
It’s the kind of representation that doesn’t resort to playing with your emotions or killing off central queer characters, as other CW shows have done in the past.
Rather, characters such as Sara or Constantine are allowed to have these canonized identities without it overtaking or detracting from anything. Their sexuality is as prominent as anyone else’s, which is simultaneously both a small thing and a huge one.
After last season’s rather stellar run of episodes that proved itself to being one of the stronger in the DC/CW universe, it’s incredibly encouraging to see that Legends of Tomorrow has everything perfectly under control and is entirely still the unlikely show that we all know and love.
What did you think of this episode of Legends of Tomorrow? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Legends of Tomorrow airs Mondays at 9/8c on The CW.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.