Legends of Tomorrow welcomes back 7 heroes in 100th episode first look photos

The road to DCThe road to DC FanDome begins here! In the days leading up to the second annual free virtual fan event — which returns Saturday, Oct. 16 at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT — EW will be debuting exclusive new looks at DC Entertainment's forthcoming TV shows and comics.Today, we're screwing history up for the better with a first look at the 100th episode of DC's Legends of Tomorrow.

Wentworth Miller isn't the only familiar face returning for the 100th episode of DC's Legends of Tomorrow.

EW is debuting an exclusive first look at the Caity Lotz-directed milestone hour (airing Oct. 27) that reveals the returns of former cast members Arthur Darvill (Rip Hunter), Victor Garber (Dr. Martin Stein/Firestorm), Franz Drameh (Jax/Firestorm), Falk Hentschel (Hawkman), Courtney Ford (Nora Darhk), and Brandon Routh (Ray Palmer/the Atom). Check out the two photos below.

So what brings all of these departed Legends back to the Waverider? Well, it all has to do with Gideon, the Waverider's artificial intelligence who becomes a real flesh and blood character played by Amy Pemberton in the CW superhero show's seventh season. (Pemberton has voiced Gideon since the pilot.) Unfortunately, the newly human Gideon gets overwhelmed and has a meltdown in the 100th episode. To reboot her, Astra (Olivia Swann) and Spooner (Lisseth Chavez) must dive into her mind and help her remember the Legends. While inside, the team's newest recruits witness previously unseen moments from the dramedy's earlier seasons.

"We are exploring the memories of who we consider the O-est of the OGs, Gideon, who is the Legend before the Legends," executive producer and co-showrunner Keto Shimizu tells EW. "As we explore these memories, we get to see familiar faces from all the different iterations of the Legends that she has experienced through her steadfast watch as the ship mother."

Co-showrunner and EP Phil Klemmer adds: "What this episode explores is the key memories and why Gideon held onto them, and what she learned in each of these moments."

For both Shimizu and Klemmer, the 100th episode's premise was an opportunity to not only reflect on how Legends of Tomorrow has evolved over the past seven years, but to also give the actors who left the show before season 3 a chance to enjoy the wild and playful tone that has come to define the series.

"It was a real chance to celebrate the evolution of the show," says Shimizu. "We really wanted to take viewers back to what it was and not despairingly. For a story that is thematically about growth and change and embracing the new, and what challenges turn you into — the blossoming — it was really imperative that we had those people come back to both live in the new tone of the show, but also to show like, 'Hey this is what the show was and look how far it's changed and evolved since then.'"

Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that Legends shoots in Canada — which required international visitors quarantine for two weeks upon entering the country for most of the past year and a half — the producers had to approach this episode very differently. Who they were able to bring back dictated what these memories would be.

"We actually cast first and then wrote second," says Klemmer. "When we first started entertaining the notion of it, there was still a two-week quarantine period that nobody in their right mind would've done for a guest-star role. But it was one of those things that I don't think we dared let ourselves believe we would get as many as we did. When we broke the story, there were kind of placeholders [on the writers room board] like, 'And then there's gonna be a memory.' We didn't know what the memories were, who was going to be in them."

"We actually broke episode 4 first," says Shimizu. "We got episode 3 on the board as much as we could without knowing who was going to come in for those memories, and then we just moved onto four, pretty much broke it in its entirety. By the time we had done that, we knew who was coming back and then we went back back three and inserted all of the proper character into the mix."

Klemmer adds: "We didn't intend for it to be quite as expansive as it was, but it was just like we got one — we would've loved to have Hawkgirl and Heat Wave and Vandal Savage — [and] it made us greedy."

Picking up where season 6 left off, Legends of Tomorrow's seventh season finds the lovable super-screw-ups stranded in Texas 1925 after the destruction of the Waverider. With no other option, the team sets out for New York City, where they hope to find Dr. Gwyn Davies (Matt Ryan's new character), who might be able to help them out of this predicament.

DC's Legends of Tomorrow premieres Wednesday at 8 p.m. on The CW. For more on Legends of Tomorrow and the rest of the Arrowverse, tune into DC FanDome on Saturday, Oct. 16 at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET at DCFanDome.com.

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