If Thursday night's episode is any indication, DC's Legends of Tomorrow does not plan on pulling any punches. And considering that the show has only aired two episodes, it has already proven its ambitious nature.
Please note that the following contains spoilers for last night's episode.
So viewers are two episodes into Legends of Tomorrow and the series is already down one team member. The death of Hawkman, aka Falk Hentschel, makes things even more difficult for the group, which not only has to face this loss of one of their own, but still travel through the past to try and stop Vandal Savage from ruining the future.
In other words, the team has no time to grieve and is back at it next week, on its "simple" mission. Of course, as Captain Cold says in the following preview, "simple don't mean easy."
Viewers are still in shock over the death of Hawkman, but executive producer Marc Guggenheim feels that including a major character death quickly on the series was important to its overall story and helped viewers understand how high the stakes are.
"The idea of losing one of their own spoke to us very strongly," said Guggenheim to Variety. "It's always a decision based on what's gonna give us the most story, and the idea of Kendra losing the person who is helping guide her through this brand-new experience of being a reincarnated hawk demigoddess, taking that support system away from her so that A: she'd have to deal with it, and B: she'd have to lean on the other members of our team ... that really spoke to us."
But Legends of Tomorrow is a show about time travel, so is Hawkman really gone? There's always the possibility of the team traveling back to the moment where he died and changing things, right? According to Guggenheim, that isn't how it will work.
"You haven't seen the last of Falk Hentschel - I will say that in episode 3 we very clearly state that we can't go back and just save Carter's life," said Guggenheim. "Because that would be way too convenient and also, quite frankly, completely vitiate the point of killing off a character in the first place. So we're very clear about the rules."
Of course, Hawkman is also a person who gets reincarnated throughout history, so it's likely that the team could meet a future or past version of him.
DC's Legends of Tomorrow airs at 8 p.m. EST Thursdays on The CW.
