WARNING: The following contains spoilers for DC's Legends of Tomorrow Season 7, Episode 7, "A Woman's Place is in the War Effort!," which aired Wednesday, November 24th on The CW.
The Legends of Tomorrow are a team of misfits and outlaws, nobodies that do not affect the timeline if fully removed from it. With this, the team has a vastly different approach to its villains, be it purposeful or accidental. Instead of placing every villain as the root of all evil, the team has had a history of redeeming villains, mainly just by being themselves. Last season's big bad, Bishop, is the latest recipient in the Legends of Tomorrow Redemption Crew. Let's go over how Bishop became a good guy while also looking into other villains turned heroes thanks to the Legends of Tomorrow.
Bishop had the potential to be one of the Legends of Tomorrow's most dangerous villains. Off the bat, he managed to kidnap Sara Lance and brought her to his lab on Pliny X19 where he laid out a plan to restart humanity as human/alien hybrids, using Sara Lance as the human base code for the species. To prove his point, Bishop cloned Sara and combined her DNA with that of a regenerating alien. Bishop's plans ended with an invasion in 1925 which the Legends prevented with help from a younger Bishop, before he became evil and started kidnapping people. The future Bishop was killed by Mick Rory's alien children which left the Legends with one more mess to clean up; return the younger Bishop to the past to make sure time plays out the way it did.
However, young Bishop stole a copy of Gideon's operating system and rebooted her, using her to build a second Waverider which he used to go back to 1925 and blow up the Legend's ship, thus starting the series of events that took place at the start of Season 7. Unfortunately, young Bishop swore the Time Master oath to his rebooted Gideon and grew overwhelmed by the responsibilities. This angered Gideon who built a robot clone of Bishop and instructed it to follow the timeline to the dot. When Bishop found out he had been replaced, he looked into the robot clone's to-do list and learned that while the Legends of Tomorrow did kidnap him to use his intelligence, they did it to stop his future self from killing them. This guilt grew heavy on young Bishop who evacuated his Waverider to try and help the Legends avoid the problem he caused.
While hesitant at first, the Legends grew to like the not-evil Bishop and were even considering adding him to the roster. But, the evil Waverider found the Legends and sent a team of masked soldiers to terminate them. Trapped in gunfire, the Legends were running out of options -- until Bishop took control of a gun and shot at the soldiers, giving the Legends time to escape. This led to Bishop being murdered by one of the soldiers with his sacrifice allowing the team time to accurately travel by using a navigation device he built to help them.
Bishop's redemption is an odd one as he never reached the lengths of his future counterpart but still saw the flaws he would have undergone if the Legends did not interfere. Though limited, young Bishop's time with the Legends of Tomorrow was enough to prove he could have grown up to be a hero rather than the villain that would destroy the team. A villain does not need to have their past self meet the team to be redeemed, however, as many other villains turned good after their run as a Legends big bad.
The first of these villains is the first one the Legends of Tomorrow ever fought, Vandal Savage. Savage was the man responsible for the Legend's formation as Time Master Rip Hunter needed a disposable team to take down the immortal threat. While Savage was killed in the finale of Season 1, he made his return in Season 4's finale "Hey, World!" as a resident of Hell, assigned to torture Ray Palmer. The happy-go-lucky scientist was able to talk to Savage and the two reached a mutual respect and understanding, with Savage even becoming a fan of the team that brought him down.
Other villains include Damien Dhark who, after a short tenure as a member of the Legion of Doom took up a more direct parental role for his daughter Nora as they battled to bring forth the time demon Mallus. Seeing the error of his ways, Damien sacrificed himself to be the demon's host in exchange for the safety of his daughter. Like Savage, Damien's redemption came in death as his resurrection by Astra led him to see how happy and safe the Legends made Nora feel. Because of this, Damien chose to sacrifice himself again rather than kill the Legends for a chance at a proper resurrection.
Bishop, Damien and Vandal are only a few of the villains the Legends of Tomorrow had the honor of rehabilitating but they show the strength and power within being around the Legends and drowning in the love and comfort that the team provides to each other.
Young Bishop may be gone but the Legends of Tomorrow have a scarier threat ahead of them... themselves. Legends of Tomorrow returns on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022, on The CW.