‘Legends of Tomorrow’: Jes Macallan on Directing Constantine’s Dark Turn & What’s Next
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Legends of Tomorrow Season 6 Episode 11 “The Final Frame.”]
In her Legends of Tomorrow directorial debut, star Jes Macallan (who plays co-captain Ava Sharpe) had a lot going on in her episode.
There was a bowling alley in space, with planets the bowling balls. “Try pitching that to people and try having a meeting with department heads talking about a skin sky, which is a whole other thing,” she tells TV Insider. “The number of times that we had to talk about ratios of human to Earth ball to planetary situations — we have some crazy, crazy conversations on Legends, but it took the cake for me, for sure.” (While trapped in the Earth bowling ball, Nate and Zari nearly broke up only to agree that it would hurt more to not be together.)
And then there was John Constantine’s (Matt Ryan) continued dark descent into his use of magic. As he walked into the bowling alley at the end of the episode, Buddy (guest star Alvin Sanders) remarked on the power he could sense in him — and that it would be the death of him.
Considering we know that with the end of Season 6 comes the end of John Constantine — Ryan will be playing a new character in Season 7 — we’re worried, so we had to ask Macallan about that and more when we spoke with her about directing the episode.
So far, no one is really noticing just how bad Constantine and magic is getting. What can you say about what’s coming up?
Jes Macallan: That was such a fun third storyline that I had during my episode — I was telling three fully, totally different movies on their own, standalone little shows. His magic journey is definitely starting and that was a really cool thing that was in my episode. I love that spell. I love Matt Ryan. I love Constantine. I love what they were doing with the dark turn in him this season. Just buckle up. Buckle up and watch. Everybody’s going to start noticing. It’s hard to hide those demons forever. And that’s going to be a huge journey for him towards the end of the season and for the Legends as a whole to deal with John and his ultimate kind of demise of himself.
Will we see the others trying to keep it from Sara [Caity Lotz] and Ava as their wedding is getting closer and closer?
Yeah, absolutely. That’s John’s M.O. He has a lot of secrets and a lot of skeletons.
Buddy says that the powers will be the death of him, which is very ominous considering we know that this is the end of Constantine’s journey, even though Matt, Ryan is playing a new character. So what can you tease about how bad that’s going to get?
That moment was super important. Just shooting that in an ominous way, I’m glad that you — obviously the line is itself is ominous. But the way that Alvin — he’s on Riverdale actually, he’s tremendous, isn’t he? He was so much fun — delivered it gave me chills. It’s obviously coming and I don’t want to give too many spoilers away because it’s a journey that’s the back end of the season. But it’s definitely one to tune in for and it’s certainly going to be very hard on the Legends. Very, very hard.
What can you preview about the finale to set up Season 7? Are we going to be especially glad that there’s not much time until the premiere in October?
Yes! There should be — what is that thing for when you tape yourself watching it, what’s that called?
Reaction videos?
Yeah, whatever the heck it is. I think a lot of people should do that for the last I think five minutes of the episode. I think we just need a few reaction videos sent to us because for sure when I read the script, I was like, “What is happening?!” Buckle up.
And I saw on Twitter that you’re starting production on the 100th episode — congratulations!
Yeah! Today was day one. I actually messaged Caity [who’s directing it] yesterday. I hope she’s kicking ass and taking names, which I know she is. Very exciting, very exciting stuff. We have some very exciting people here and exciting things happening, all exciting.
And I assume you can’t say more than that.
I can’t say anything, I literally can’t say anything.
Legends of Tomorrow, Season 6, Sundays, 8/7c, The CW
Legends of Tomorrow, Season 7 Premiere, Wednesday, October 13, 8/7c, The CW