WARNING: The following contains spoilers for "Slay Anything," the latest episode of DC's Legends of Tomorrow.
As implied by "Slay Anything," the title of the most recent episode of Legends of Tomorrow, the team goes back to the ‘80s to take down a new Encore in a story that’s a combination of the era's teen slasher flicks and romcoms. In typical Legends fashion, the episode moves the characters forward in a story that's equal parts silly and sweet. Plus, it introduces fans to Ava’s previously unmentioned podcast, “Stab Cast.”
CBR and other outlets recently spoke with stars Caity Lotz, who plays Sara Lance, and Jes Macallan, who plays Ava Sharpe, and executive producers Keto Shimizu and Grainne Godfree about bringing the episode to life.
Due to its time-traveling conceit, Legends of Tomorrow is easily able to switch time periods and genres from episode to episode. According to Shimizu, the show’s writers “are genre fanatics, as you probably have gathered from five seasons of this show. We really love to pick a genre for an episode and really live in it. And for ['Slay Anything'], we did a mashup, which was we were in the ‘80s, and so we thought, let's take two of our favorite genres from that time period and put them together …
"John Hughes meets John Carpenter was really our going mantra for this episode," Shimizu added. "And so you had that and then you had the fun of like a Halloween meets Jason [Voorhees] meets Freddy [Krueger]. Like it was all a mash up of those kinds of horror movies, which we are big fans of."
The writers may be big fans of '80s horror films but neither Lotz nor Macallan can say the same. "I don't like slasher movies," Lotz confessed. "I like horror thriller not horror violence. And I just don't like being scared."
Macallan was with Lotz on her opinion of the genre. "I keep saying I can’t watch [horror movies],” she noted. “I’m an absolute mess of an emotional wreck when it comes to blood and guts and gore. I can't, like, it actually affects me in a super visceral way."
Yet, that didn’t mean they didn’t have fun shooting the episode. "The '80s prom is always so fun," Lotz observed. “All the '80s everything was pretty fun. They did the high school movies pretty good."
Plus, Lotz viewed the episode through her character’s eyes, and from that perspective, the experience was positive. "I think for Sara, it was mostly just about Ava loves horror movies," Lotz explained. "And the final girl’s a big deal to her. Sara doesn't give a sh*t but Sara loves how much Ava loves it. And so I think it was a cool experience. It’s like if your partner gets to do something that they love and you do it with them it’s really fun. So I think that was a big part of it."
While the identity of the final girl -- the one girl who survives the gory mayhem in a horror film -- is a big deal for genre fans, Legends decided to turn the conceit on its head by making both Sara and Ava the episode's final girls.
According to producer Godfree, at first the writers were going to adhere to the traditional horror movie formula and only have one final girl. "I think we knew we wanted a final girl and there were versions of the story where it was going to be either Sara or Ava," Godfree revealed.
In the end though the writers came to a radical conclusion, "We're like ‘Wait, why do we have to make it a final girl?'" Godfree said. ''That’s no fun. We want it to be final girls.'" So in the end, the both women survived the events of the episode's '80s horror mashup, a trope-busting turn of events that fits the show perfectly.
Airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow stars Caity Lotz, Dominic Purcell, Brandon Routh, Nick Zano, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Tala Ashe, Matt Ryan, Jes Macallan and Courtney Ford.