In the Season 3 finale of The CW series Legends of Tomorrow, entitled “The Good, the Bad and the Cuddly,” the plan to vanquish Mallus by using the totems doesn’t go quite as planned, which finds the team regrouping in the Wild West with Jonah Hex (Johnathon Schaech). While Sara (Caity Lotz) and Amaya (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) are both trying to find a way to succeed with destroying the seemingly unstoppable demon, Ray (Brandon Routh) is left in charge of watching Damien Darhk (Neal McDonaugh), which can’t end well. And whatever the outcome, at least fans can rest assured that the Legends will live to fight another day, as Season 4 has already been picked up.
During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, showrunner Phil Klemmer talked about how ideas evolve in the writers’ room, the way Grodd fighting Obama came about, what led to the creation of Beebo, whether there could ever be an actual Beebo toy, why they’re returning to the Wild West in the season finale, the always evolving team dynamic, what he’s most enjoyed about the father-daughter relationship between Damien Darhk and Nora (Courtney Ford), a possible new look for John Constantine (Matt Ryan) in Season 4, the challenge of spending too much time with any one Big Bad, and whether there could ever be a happy ending for Nate (Nick Zano) and Amaya.
Collider: I’ve absolutely been enjoying the show, this season. It’s been so much fun! I’m really curious if you could talk a little bit about the process you guys have in the writers’ room, as far as deciding something like having Grodd fight Obama. Do you throw out a ton of ideas before you get to that? How does that happen?
PHIL KLEMMER: Yeah, that was a funny one because, a lot of times, there’s just no limitations on what you can do on our show, and sometimes it can be a little overwhelming. For some reason, that pitch just became the keystone of the episode. Once you have one thing that you’re in love with, your blood pressure drops and you can take a deep breath and be like, “Okay, no matter what else, if we come up with not a single other thing that I like in this episode, I at least have faith that this is gonna be so much fun!” So then, once you’re able to relax and not fret over every little thing, things tend to just fall into place. I know it would seem like the Obama thing is some ridiculous cherry that you put on top of something, but a lot of times, room pitches can become on screen pitches on our show, which is wonderfully liberating. The thing that really felt like a room pitch to me was going back and meeting John Noble. That’s one of those things where it’s right on the line and it’s a very small bullseye. It works when you’re all laughing about it in the room, but then you do have a moment where you’re going to camera and you’ve already hired John Noble, and you’re seeing wardrobe pictures of him in a wig, and you’re just like, “Oh, man, was this really meant to be on TV?” But so far, so good.
When you conceived the Beebo episode, could you ever have imagined just how talked about such a small stuffed animal would end up being?
KLEMMER: No! We used Beebo as a way of healing, as a room, from the crossover. The crossovers are so immensely complicated, and we killed poor Victor Garber. We were all broken from the process and mourning, creatively. I came into the room and could just see the writers were all smiling. Someone was like, “Pitch it to him. Go ahead, pitch it.” They knew it was gonna be a hit because it had Vikings, a young Martin Stein, and an 80s toy.
Are we ever going to get an actual Beebo toy, or will there ever be more of Mick Rory’s book released?
KLEMMER: That’s a fantastic question. Actually, one of our writers, Morgan Faust, was trying to recruit people to collaboratively write a romance novel with his pen name, and we almost made Beebos for our holiday gift, this year.
There has to, at least, be a Comic-Con exclusive or something!
KLEMMER: Don’t be surprised if he shows up on a Comic-Con bag, or something like that. I actually briefly had the prop, but then I didn’t trust my children with it. I took him away, which was terrible.
What was it that made you decide to return to the Wild West in the finale, and bring Jonah Hex back into the picture?
KLEMMER: Things had gotten a little bit out of control, storytelling wise, and we felt like we needed to ground it in a genre. I am a fan of Westerns, and I do like that archetype of the Last Stand. It just felt like a Western to me, with all of our guys being the scrappy townspeople who are trying to rally some brave and tragic violent offense before the Big Bad. It had to take place someplace, and it just seemed like the Western, to me, was right. It felt like we deserved a Butch Cassidy kind of, “We’re so fucked, but we’re gonna go down guns a-blazing, surrounded by people we love.” I just find the poignancy of all of these people who started out strangers, now being willing to die for one another, really heartbreaking. The fact that Mick Rory would care about another human being enough to stand with them, shoulder to shoulder, felt like the West.
This show has never been afraid to mix up its core cast. With Wally West on the team now and John Constantine joining for next season, how will that shift the dynamics, especially going into Season 4?
KLEMMER: Yeah, we have found that there’s an optimal number of people to have on this show. There are times where we’ve had too many gifted performers. The other trick is to find ways of challenging our performers. Arthur Darvill, in Season 1, had the joyless task of being the naysayer, or the adult in the room. That’s why we brought him back as this goofy film student. And Jess, who plays Ava, is a super funny actor. Our challenge is, how do we give her funny stuff to do? How can we force people out of their comfort zones? How can we turn a Legend into someone who would betray our team? How can you get over the loss of Stein? It’s a funny game with our show, which can bear comedy and poignancy, at the same time. Beebo was something of a grief puppet for Stein, with Jax getting to have his catharsis with young Stein. The crazy thing about this show is that it can be so absurd. The thing that keeps it rooted is that our performers are capable of pulling off really moving melodrama, in a good way. Damien Darhk and Nora are having ridiculous storylines about turning into a demon. The father-daughter aspect of that relationship is so real and they’re so talented that it keeps our show from floating off into the ether, into just pure absurdity.
Will you have to struggle to get John Constantine out of the trench coat, or will he have to dress for another time period, at some point?
KLEMMER: I was just asking myself that same question. What are we allowed to do? More importantly than that, I was wondering, am I allowed to actually bleach Matt Ryan’s hair? I should probably have this talk with Matt Ryan before I have it with you, but I’m a blonde connoisseur. I think we need to take him to a pure Sting, early Police kind of look. If he’s reading what you’re writing, that’s what he has to look forward to – lots of time at the hair dresser.
It’s been awesome to see the evolution of multiple villains, first with the Legion of Doom and now with the Darhks. Do you want to continue having more than one Big Bad, in a season?
KLEMMER: Yeah. We realized the Vandal Savage limitations, pretty early on. With someone like Damien Darhk, if you have 18 episodes – and I think he was 15 of them – you don’t want to go head-to-head 14 times. He’s fantastic at being a bad guy, but it quickly became obvious to us that it couldn’t just be the Legends vs. Damien. That’s why we gave him a daughter and humanized him. The middle part of the season was just delicious for me. It’s preposterous, but making him a dad and having him tell dad jokes was probably the most inspired thing we’ve done. The hard thing about bad guys is that the more time you spend with them, the more you realize that you secretly love them because you start to understand their pathology. In a weird way, they’re more interesting than the good guys, which is why Mick Rory is so interesting.
Obviously, it’s so tragic to see the love that Nate and Amaya have for each other because we know that it’s not her destiny. Is there any hope of a happy ending for them?
KLEMMER: We had a lot of pitches on how to resolve it because there were a lot of writers in the room who shared your feelings. The crazy, convoluted plot machinations that people came up with to try to keep those two together, it was really heroic measures, but I was like, should there being an easy answer for them? It’s why Romeo and Juliet works. If the apothecary hadn’t been a dipshit, then it would have been a happy ending. I think people secretly want to have their hearts broken. I don’t know if that makes me a sadist, but I do think the best love stories also give a gut punch.
The Season 3 finale of Legends of Tomorrow airs on The CW on Monday, April 9th.
