DC’s Legends of Tomorrow Review: Hey, World! (Season 4 Episode 16)
Legends of Tomorrow Season 4 Episode 16, “Hey, World!,” closes out the season with a final confrontation between the Legends and Neron.
This series is one big example of things that shouldn’t work in any way but constantly does.
It’s dumb but in the best way possible. Whether it’s something like last season with Beebo or with “Hey, World!” where the finally revealed dragon is wonderfully fake and cartoonish looking, it all just simply works.
Whereas another show might not know how to be ridiculous on a scale like this, Legends of Tomorrow gets that this is a feature, not a bug.
It is able to have the fear that the only way out of this is killing Nate or fear that their success could rewrite Zari and, at the same time, have shots of Hank Heywood literally singing from the rafters or The Monitor in the stands eating popcorn.
Legends of Tomorrow understands what other Arrowverse shows sometimes don’t: comedy and emotion should work in tandem together.
When necessary, and even when it isn’t, this show isn’t afraid to cut itself down. Legends of Tomorrow knows very well what show it is and has no problem working inside that parameter. It can have Vandal Savage pop back up in a quick cameo to mock the first season because it can do that now.
Could Legends of Tomorrow do any nonsense thing at this point, and we’d probably accept it? It stands to reason.
“Hey, World!” is silly and corny, in the best and most Legends of Tomorrow way, but its success is how it cares more about character than plot. A kumbaya circle bringing Nate back to life is goofy on the face of it, but this is a show that can constantly sell something like that.
Part of that success is its ability to make fun of itself while doing that, such as with Nora claiming that they basically did this last year, too. This series is so sublimely self-aware and makes such an effort to stay one step ahead of any criticism you could lob at it that, even if you didn’t love it, it would hard not to admire it.
The way in which the series sets the stage for the next season is also rather promising.
On the hand, you have what could be a search for the Zari that we’ve come to know over the past seasons, which could potentially lead to wonderful time travel hijinx right in the wheelhouse of this show.
At the same time, we have the promise of a premise similar to this season, only now with notorious bad guys on the scene instead of the monsters. Either way, we could be in for a delightfully fun season when the series returns for its fifth season.
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 8/7c 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.