If you watched the first season of Legends of Tomorrow, the CWs spin-off show featuring DC Comics characters from The Flash and Arrow, chances are you didn’t expect it to get renewed for a second season. Let’s be honest, it’s a bit of a rough go trying to cram these characters into a show together and travelling through time without making it remarkably hokey. In fact, it’s arguably a bad show to start. That’s’ not the fault of the actors as there are some outstanding talents on display in the first season with Victor Garber as Professor Stein and Arther Darvill as Rip Hunter. Kendra Saunders makes an excellent Hawkgirl too, but it’s quite often Wentworth Miller who steals the show as Captain Cold. But the script is certainly more than a bit weak in parts and while there’s a fair amount of action, it takes most of the season for the cast to find a cohesive rhythm.
Legends of Tomorrow started way back at the beginning of 2016, but let’s fast forward. Today, we have a full seven season and Warner Bros. has released Legends of Tomorrow: The Complete Series on blu-ray. As you may be aware, while things started off a bit rough with LoT, the cast settled into their roles amazingly and the show managed to come together as a very solid sci-fi/comic book experience for several seasons. Fair warning though, the final season will absolutely leave you high and dry and if you’re expecting a wrap-up like Supergirl got (see our review of the Supergirl set here), you’re likely to be sorely disappointed. But endings aside (and a lot of DC shows have unfortunately abrupt endings – see Swamp Thing and Constantine for example), Legends of Tomorrow is absolutely worth your time.
What’s wild about Legends of Tomorrow is how far the series has come over its seven season journey. Major characters die and stay dead with some pretty spectacular twists. Assorted characters from other DC series join and leave and some excellent villains manage to menace the Legends as well. Jumping backwards and forwards in time and becoming embroiled in wild, complex –plots becomes the norm, high-tech weaponry gets mixed in with the occult, and the whole experience feels like some of the best of the DC Comics library from the 1970s and 1980s. Sure, there’s the requisite CW teen-style drama but with adults that we’ve all come to know and love with DC Comics releases, but even that ends up fairly addictive and surprisingly compelling. There’s no question that Legends of Tomorrow is a series that is worth your time to watch.
Now let’s take a look at the set itself. Prominently featured on the cover is Beebo, the toy-turned-god and one of the staples of the series. Anyone who hasn’t seen the show will likely be confused why there’s a weird blue critter that looks like a Furby crossbred with Gizmo from Gremlins, but suffice it to say it’s an excellent cover and you’ll just have to watch to see why. Inside the cardboard slipcase, we’ve got a set of seven multi-disc standard width DVD cases, one for each season. While fairly wide, this is a great design and fits nicely on a shelf with the title of the series clearly displayed on the spine. It’s easy to pull individual seasons out of the case and pick what you want to watch. Some boxed sets like this one jam the cases in too tight or replace the plastic cases with paper, making removal hard and damage a certainty but the box design here is basic but solid, making for a series that will be durable and long lasting on your shelf, even with repeated watching (mostly of seasons 3-5 where the series arguably peaks).
Moving on to the menu system, we’ve got a simple, streamlined menu that loads quickly (after the requisite copyright warnings and threats). It’s easy to select the episode you want and there’s no lag on menu selections. Warner Bros. tends to have excellent menu designs that aren’t particularly resource heavy and the Legends of Tomorrow menus are no exception. There are plenty of extras included with each season as well. From full San Diego Comicon panels to gag reel outtakes there’s a bit of everything here. Features on events like Crisis and Invasion are also included and even a creature effects mini-documentary. There’s plenty of extra material for hardcore fans to sink their teeth into in addition to the series itself.
Looking at the video quality, the entirety of Legends of Tomorrow: The Complete Series is in 1080p using a 16×9 aspect ratio. While there’s no upscaling to 4K, every episode looks crisp and clean as we have come to expect from Warner Bros. releases of modern TV shows. There is no artifacting, no glitches, and colors are crisp and clear (assuming your TV’s color is properly tuned). This is honestly a gorgeous series with lots of color shifts, huge explosions, and tons of special effects and it looks fantastic, even when the script doesn’t quite keep up with the visuals.
Sound work is equally solid on the entirety of Legends of Tomorrow. The entire series is mastered in DTS 5.1 and the audio mixing is always clear. So many shows are failing in this aspect that it’s wonderful to see every CW show absolutely nailing the sound work at every turn. The compositions are also excellent, a staple of any good superhero show. Along with Flash, Arrow and Supergirl, Legends of tomorrow manages to create instantly recognizable themes for transitions and action sequences that stick with you long after finishing the series. At this point in the DC universe’s TV career, a compilation of the scores for every show would be both welcome and enjoyable and it’s unfortunate that Warner Bros. doesn’t market some of the available content to fans. They’d be almost certain to buy it.
Speaking of content, let’s talk about the contents of Legends of Tomorrow: The Complete Series. With a series as large as LoT, you’d think there’d be a wealth of includable extras to go along with the series release on blu-ray. Sadly, that’s not the case here and not even a digital code for the series is included with the boxed set. There are no downloads, wallpapers, or other bonus content for the series and nothing extra is included in the box along with the individual seasons. There’s nothing extra inside each case either, making this a bare bones collection. For the cost-conscious, this keeps the price down of course, but it also means that there’s no added incentive to get the set if you’ve been slowly picking up the individual seasons as they’ve released.
Much like the Supergirl series release, there’s a lot to love about Legends of Tomorrow and if you’re any kind of fan of the DC universe, this is a must-own piece of television history. If you’re a serious DC fan, the cast of characters here is utterly insane with Ras Al Ghul, Jonah Hex, Booster Gold, Reverse Flash, Deathstroke, The Ray and plenty more DC characters making appearances throughout the series. The wealth of fan service mixed with the incredible plethora of historical figures that permeate the series is remarkably entertaining and even if you’re not a DC Comics fan, by Season 4, Legends of Tomorrow will have you glued to the screen.
At $130, this isn’t the cheapest set around, but you’re also getting over 77 hours of TV spread out over 18 discs and seven seasons. That’s a heck of a lot of content and it works out to less than $19 a season, some solid pricing. With this set dropping just in time for the Christmas holiday buying season, Warner Bros. has made an excellent choice and with Black Friday fast approaching, there’s no question that this set is going to be on a lot of people’s wishlists. Between the overall solid plotlines, the continually improving acting as the cast and showrunners find their niche, and the excellent transfer to bluray, this is a set that should be on every DC Comics and Legends of Tomorrow fan’s shelf and you definitely won’t regret picking it up wither it’s for yourself or a gift!
This review was based on a blu-ray copy of Legends of Tomorrow: The Complete Series provided by the publisher. It was played on a Sony blu-ray player using a 55” Sony 1080p TV. Legends of Tomorrow: The Complete Series is also available on DVD and streaming services.
