We ask for so little in this life, and yet: The CW has announced tonight that it’s cancelling DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow, one of the weirdest, funniest, most devotedly creative superhero shows ever broadcast on TV.
This is per Deadline, which reports that the series—which had been hanging in limbo for weeks now about a possible renewal, with the show’s writers putting together all sorts of #RenewLegendsOfTomorrow efforts online—will now end on its seventh season, which wrapped up on March 2.
News of the cancellation was disseminated by the writers themselves, who called the series “the journey of a lifetime,” thanking fans for sticking with a show that definitely took a little while to get its timelegs, before growing to be one of the coolest series on TV.
And, really, if it sounds like we’re being overly melodramatic about this, please consider how rare it was to have a “superhero” show that could literally be anything it wanted from week to week: A Cold War-era nuclear drama where the world is saved by getting Fidel Castro very high; a historical epic where a stuffed bear could incite a Viking Civil War; a Groundhog Day riff that’s simultaneously deeply funny while also serving as one of the most deft introductions of a new character (into a cast that rotated oh so frequently) we’ve ever seen.
Legends wasn’t always a perfect show, even after it ditched its initially dour vision of itself to become the sort of screwball, reality-bending comedy where DC Comics magical badass John Constantine gets turned into a Downton Abbey butler, or a rendition of “The Thong Song” (performed by an animatronic Sisqo played by actual Sisqo) could be instrumental in saving the world. But it was a platform for relentless inventiveness and re-invention. All that, and it had one of the great unsung comedy casts on TV, including stalwarts Caity Lotz, Nick Zano, Amy Pemberton, Tala Ashe, Adam Tsekhman, and especially the endlessly hilarious Jes Macallan. Truly, it was the kind of show about which one could unabashedly write: “The production design is as lazy as the action staging.”
If you’d like to revisit some of the show’s highlights (and maybe get up to speed on its very weird later seasons), please consider checking out this TV Club 10, which, completely coincidentally, was co-authored by the writer of this Newswire.
Alas. News of the cancellation came shortly after it was revealed that The CW was also cancelling Batwoman, suggesting a general clearing of the decks with its superhero offerings.