DC’s Legends of Tomorrow Review: Witch Hunt (Season 4 Episode 2)
Legends of Tomorrow Season 4 Episode 2, “Witch Hunt,” takes on the Fairy Godmother and that goes exactly how you would think.
For the majority of the series’ run, Legends of Tomorrow has most often opted to walk on the wilder side of the DC/CW universe. Regardless of the way that it would go about it, it was most always something just left-of-center.
As such, it makes sense for Legends of Tomorrow to go mystical in ways that it doesn’t for certain other series (not naming names or anything). The tone of the series is so zany and off-the-wall that it almost defies genre in a way. All that’s truly required is for it to do something ridiculous in an anachronistic time period.
At the same time, there’s a quiet kind of earnestness to the stories it tells. Yes, there can be an evil Fairy Godmother, but it can also couple that with an all too resonating look at the Salem Witch Trials and the ways in which it’s morally acceptable to respond to that type of fear and bigotry.
It can inhabit both of these zones and alternate between the two with a kind of ease that feels extraordinary for the kind of nonsensical show it’s attempting to be.
In a separate area of the show — and one where it seems to still be actively learning lessons from past seasons — the section of the show that does feels like a distinct improvement is the way that show is implementing its roster of characters, specifically Nate.
Previously, Legends of Tomorrow often struggled with learning how to juggle its ever-expanding cast and knowing when to discard certain characters. That’s why this B-plot of the episode trying to help Ava and the Time Bureau secure funding is significant.
They’ve set up Nate — a character that’s never completely worked — to calmly walk off the series and into the background of the Time Bureau, much in a similar way that Jax was able to. He doesn’t have to be exiled like the Hawk People (pretty sure that’s their official name) or killed off like Martin.
It leaves them with the ability to bring him back as they see fit, but not necessarily as a Legend, which goes to show how far the show has come in regards to knowing how to utilize an ensemble cast.
On a similar path, it’s excellent to see how well Constantine is able to immerse himself into this group, which is to say he doesn’t at all. That fits in the larger theme of the show that they are a bunch of outcasts that don’t fit in anywhere, especially here.
More than anything, “Witch Hunt” really shows that it is just as adept at dealing with any kind of magical threat as it is at anything else.
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.