The third season of Legends of Tomorrow has gotten off to an interesting start, continuing to embrace the comical comic roots that won fans over last season. Throughout the first three episodes though, there hasn’t been a concrete main antagonist.
The main conflict has come at the hands of fixing time anachronism and consistent intervention from the Time Bureau. Last episode did introduce Kuasa, who is capable of changing the state of her body to water, but even she isn’t main bad guy.
Instead, hints and mentions have been dropped about a certain entity known as Mallus. Unlike The Thinker in The Flash or scenes of a mysterious figure exiting a chopper in Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow’s main villain has only been mentioned, not seen. Or has Mallus been alongside the Legends all along, in plain sight?
Comic books and entertainment in general love their twists and the CW shows are no different. Wells turning out to be Eobard Thawne, Slade Wilson killing Moira, the first Hank Henshaw revealing himself as Green Martian instead of Cyborg Superman, these shows are known for trying to trick and surprise fans. Alongside that, movies, tv and comics love to play the villain off as a dweeby background character that no one would possibly expect to be the mastermind (i.e Usual Suspects). Sound like anyone?
Yes, the theory is that Gary, the four-eyed dweeb that the Legends have come to know well, may be Mallus. He certainly fits the profile of an unsuspected person to end up being the main antagonist, which would serve as quite the twist, as the Legends are able to boss him around and intimidate him pretty easily despite his “authority” as a member of the Time Bureau. On top of that, he seems to be the most clumsy of all of the members of the Bureau we’ve seen so far, both physically and based on his actions, which doesn’t fit the rest of the straight laced members of the Bureau.
So far in Legends of Tomorrow, he has been captured by the Legends twice and revealed information even the Legends weren’t foolish enough to do to Zari. While these may seem like minor slip-ups in retrospect, it also doesn’t seem like mistakes a highly trained time agent would do. Its entirely possible that he is doing these things on purpose, with a motive that we aren’t currently aware of, with these screw ups furthering that motive.
Something else that is suspect with Gary is that he has been involved in every single anachronism we have seen in Legends of Tomorrow, which is a crazy coincidence considering the amount of anachronisms shown on the board at the start of “Aruba-Con.” That could be chalked up to a couple of different things. There may be more anachronisms that the Legends are fixing off-screen. A higher up in the Bureau, maybe even Rip himself, ordered him and Sharpe to follow or keep an eye on the team. Or Gary is manipulating the Legends into which events they investigate to further his own agenda.
Again there isn’t much to go on evidence wise to support this idea as a concrete theory quite yet, but the last episode does add fuel to the fire. Of all the agents that could have run into Zari and Kuasa, it was Gary, and Gary alone, who reported the incident. One which the Legends were able to get very easily. It’s been established in Legends of Tomorrow that the team has stolen Time Bureau technology, so the idea intercepting the call isn’t impossible, but it just seems too convenient (though it could just be cliche writing).
Based on the amount of screentime Amaya has been getting, the introduction of another new totem, and the relation to the new antagonist Kuasa, one can guess that Mallus wants the totems Amaya and her people draw her power from. Without knowing entirely too much about their origins, they seem like the show’s version of Marvel’s Infinity stones, with whoever has all of them wielding immense elemental power. The Legends are now in possession of two of them, with the likelihood of them finding more increasing with each episode.
The totem was also what Kuasa was after in the episode. Kuasa was introduced at the end of “Freakshow” resurrected by a mysterious woman. So it looks like she is after the totem and their power at the behest of whoever resurrected her. And who brought her back? Mallus.
But if Gary is Mallus then it couldn’t have been him right? Because a woman resurrected Kuasa. Wrong, as the women stated to Kuasa that she was merely a follower of Mollus. And who fits the bill of being the woman who serves alongside Gary? Agent Sharpe.
All season, Sharpe has been a thorn in the Legends side, arriving to thwart their plans, claiming they’ve only done harm and no good. In reality, she could be doing the same thing Gary is doing, staying close to them to monitor and follow the leads they have on the totems, all with the cover of following them because the Time Bureau doesn’t trust them. Interestingly, this would also mean that their true dynamic is a flip of what is actually displayed in Legends of Tomorrow, another way to throw people off the trail.
There are a lot of moving parts for these theories to pan out, with a hell of a lot more information necessary before a full, workable theory has merit, but they certainly aren’t impossible. Some people even suggest that Amaya and her totem’s recent imbalance are as a result of Mallus as well, and that she may even be Mallus, controlled by someone else.
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