Major spoilers are ahead for the Season 1 finale of Legends of Tomorrow. Feel free to check out one of our other fine articles if you still need to catch up on the show.
Never let it be said that Legends of Tomorrow is afraid to shake up the status quo. The show had killed characters, brought in new versions of characters and shown us doubles of the same character when we didn’t know that’s what we were looking at. As of tonight’s finale, the time-traveling superhero show has shuffled a major player off the board for the foreseeable future. If you’ll be missing Hawkgirl (Ciara Renée) next year, we all understand, but, according to showrunner Marc Guggenheim, the decision to let the character go was actually pretty easy.
We got into the writers’ room to start work on Season 2, working up character journeys for each of the characters. We got to Kendra and we found ourselves a little stymied by how neat a bow we tied off her story with, to the point where it was like, “Now what?” It’s got such a definitive ending, and it’s such a graceful ending. We questioned, “How do we get her back on the team? What would be motivating her?” It felt like the ending of Season 1 was very much about her needing to take some time with Carter and with developing her new identity, and every time we talked about how to bring her back to the team, it felt truncated and rushed. That started to make us think, “Maybe we should let this character be on her own, off the ship for a while.” That’s ultimately what we decided to do.
Marc Guggenheim spoke with TVLine about the show’s decision to let Kendra/Priestess Chay-Ara/Hawkgirl fly off with Carter/Prince Khufu/Hawkman at the end of the Season 1 finale. And, after listening to Guggenheim’s words, it seems like they really made the right choice.
The Legends finally vanquished immortal baddie Vandal Savage after trailing him around time all season long and trying to kill him. Kendra dealt the final blow, meaning that she and Carter had, once and for all, won the battle with him that had lasted for thousands of years. After spending several lifetimes on the run for fear of Vandal Savage finding them and killing them, actually having a chance to live their lives like (semi) normal people is going to be hard to resist for either of them. The whole reason Kendra and Carter were on this Waverider journey was to get that lunatic out of their lives for good, and once they did that there was very little motivation for them to stick around on a permanent basis.
Well, as hard as it may be to say goodbye to Hawkgirl, Legends of Tomorrow clearly has some cool Season 2 plans up its sleeves, and I’m sure it’ll be fun to see how they fill the void left by Hawkgirl.
