Warning: spoilers for last week’s episode of Legends of Tomorrow are ahead!
Only two episodes into its run, and Legends of Tomorrow already delivered a shocking death last Thursday when Carter Hall, a.k.a. Hawkman, was killed by Vandal Savage with the mystical dagger that Chay-Ara was supposed to wield against the immortal villain. With only the series' pilot and last December’s The Flash/Arrow crossover also under his belt (or in this case, wings), fans didn’t really get to know this version of Carter that well, but fear not. Actor Falk Hentschel will continue being a series regular as we see flashbacks of Carter while the show progresses.
With Kendra Saunders, a.k.a. Hawkgirl, still part of the time-traveling team, executive producer Phil Klemmer informed TV Guide that she’ll be the key to Hawkman’s continuing presence on Legends of Tomorrow, specifically by learning more about their past lives together. He explained:
What we're going to explore in our show is her gradually remembering all the lives they had together in various time periods and how they inform this life, how everything she's learned in her 208 deaths will give her the strength and power and knowledge on how to not fail this time, when she will ultimately confront Vandal Savage.
When Rip Hunter recruited Carter and Kendra, they had only been together for about a month, so Kendra didn’t have much time to learn about their shared history or realize how she felt about Carter in previous lives. She eventually remembered she loved him, but alas, it was too late, as Carter had already been met his demise at Vandal Savage’s hands. So fans will get to see what they were like together over different time periods, and as Kendra learns more, she’ll eventually learn how to kill Vandal permanently.
Klemmer also acknowledged that even though Carter is dead, he’ll still play a role in Kendra’s romantic life, since she’s now free to enter into another relationship if she chooses. That would explain why The Flash’s Cisco Ramon will be guest starring, considering the two of them dated before Carter and Vandal came into Kendra’s life. Klemmer said about these complications:
You can imagine, should Kendra embark on a present-day romance story with someone aboard our ship or someone beyond our ship, that would really complicate things. You meet the guy you're destined to fall in love with over the past 4,000 years, that seems like a pretty juicy love triangle that we'd like to get to some day.
Fans should also prepare for the possibility that we may see another iteration of Prince Khufu post-2016. When the team travels to the future, be it when Oliver Queen is an old man or Rip Hunter’s era, they may run into a later reincarnation of the winged hero, though obviously he wouldn’t be named Carter. It would also be an interesting twist if this version of Khufu didn’t learn about his past as quickly as Carter did, leaving it up to Kendra to fill him in on the details.
We’ll see more of Hawkman as Legends of Tomorrow airs each Thursday at 8 p.m. EST on The CW.
