Bringing Booster Gold to Legends of Tomorrow
If ever there was a DC character perfectly suited to hang out on the Waverider, it’s Booster Gold. Hell, you might even say that Legends of Tomorrow‘s entire mission statement is inspired by Booster’s antics. So it might feel like destiny – the DC Universe’s most famous misfit time traveler had to end up on the show about the DC TV Universe’s misfit time traveling team, right? But it wasn’t always a foregone conclusion that he would.
“He was off the table for a very long time,” Legends of Tomorrow Executive Producer Keto Shimizu tells us in an interview about the show’s bonkers season finale. “We really kind of forced the issue again this year.”
Booster’s introduction to the show is as conspicuous as you would expect for the biggest remaining shoe that the time travel side of the DCU could drop on this show. The second Donald Faison struts on screen, you know who he is, how he’s going to screw up the Legends’ plan, and why exactly so many people were excited about Faison joining the cast. “We had a very extensive list of people who it might be, and that list got whittled down and whittled down,” Shimizu says. “And then Donald Faison popped up and we thought, oh my gosh, yes!”
Faison is beloved for his portrayal of Turk on Scrubsand he’s been a genre fixture ever since, appearing as a regular on kids’ shows, Star Wars shows, and gone-too-soon Tron cartoons, among plenty of others. And it turns out he’s just as voracious a nerd media consumer as he is prolific in his nerd media appearances.
“[Legends showrunner] Phil [Klemmer] and I had this wonderful meeting with [Faison] where we just clicked and we saw that he was such a huge fan,” says Shimizu. “But not just someone who was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve seen a couple episodes. I love it.’ No, this was a man who has watched every single episode of our show and had nerdy questions for us. He was so into it!”
And he slides right into the show’s vibe like he was always there. The episode follows directly from last week’s mock-series finale: the Legends are all retired, Gideon and…Dark Gideon? OOH GOODEON AND BADEON HA! [Editor’s Note: Jim…] Oh fine, never mind. Anyway Gideon and Evil Gideon are speed running a few repeat time travel offenders, as Evil Gideon slowly poisons Human Gideon’s mind against organic people.