'Legends of Tomorrow' Won't Cross Over With 'Arrow,' 'Flash'

It took a village to raise Legends of Tomorrow out of Arrow and The Flash, but after taking off in its January 21 premiere, don’t expect our DC Guardians to return anytime soon. Producers confirm that neither Arrow nor Flash will crossover with the Legends again this season, as well the likelihood of an expanded second season.

Given all the setup required of the main CW DC dramas, it stands to reason that Legends of Tomorrow would chart its own time-turning course through sixteen episodes, rather than return to any specific point of its predecessors. In particular, executive producer Marc Guggenheim spoke to IGN of the decision to keep Legends separate through its run:

In the pilot, our characters are sort of plucked from 2016 and put on a time ship and travel throughout time. The fact of the matter is by the nature of that, they don’t have any opportunity to interact with the characters of Flash and Arrow as far as Season 2 of Flash and Season 4 of Arrow are concerned. We want to create a time travel show, and once you’re doing that, you’re not interacting with your other characters, which I think we were all very fine with.
There’s no plan to return them to their sister shows any time soon. We really love the ensemble that we’ve built, and a big part of the cache of the show is the dynamic between this group of people. While we always say it’s fun to mix and match and constantly replenish the team, we don’t want to do that without losing the magic that we currently have.

That said, the first season of Legends will still feature crossovers of sorts between alternate-timeline or past/present versions of Cisco Ramon, Damien Darhk, Ra’s al Ghul, and very likely Barry Allen and Oliver Queen themselves. No ending for the 16-episode run has yet been locked down, though the writing team have already begun considering the future, as Guggenheim reveals that a potential Season 2 would likely run 20 or more episodes concurrent to Arrow and The Flash:

We’re all assuming that the network will want to put us on in the fall next year and do 20-plus episodes. It’s just an assumption. I haven’t heard anything, it’s not official, it’s just we’ve been assuming it, and even in our little discussions, when we assume it, we’ve been saying we’ll probably try to break up that 20-plus season, or whatever number it is, into two halves.

That said, we can at least rest easy that the three series won’t attempt to spin off any further characters, as Guggenheim notes it would take “an amazing idea or a huge groundswell of fan requests” to even consider burdening the universe further.

In the meantime, Legends will kick off its run on Thursday, January 21, trailers of which you can find below.

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