Legends of Tomorrow just said goodbye to Ray Palmer, aka the Atom. Brandon Routh has been fairly candid about how his exit from the series was handled, and he revealed he wanted to explore more of the relationship between Palmer and his wife Nora Darhk, as played by Routh's real-life wife Courtney Ford.
Speaking to TVLine, Routh discussed Ford's tenure on the show, including her comedic timing. "She worked so hard, I tell you, so hard on being able to do a French accent, and she could do it so well that she could just then be so big with it and so absurdly funny -- and beautiful at the same time," he said of Ford's performance as Marie Antoinette in the episode "A Head Of Her Time."
"The rom-com we did in the last episode, I'd love to do that for a long time with her," he continued. "We got that one episode and we cherished it, we worked on it, we took what the writers gave us and saw where we could make the energy and tension go. We care so much about these characters, we were continually doing our homework. Because it was us having to say goodbye, we did our work."
In last week's episode, Ray planned to propose to Nora, but the resurrection of her father Damien Dahrk threw a wrench into those plans. To appease Damien, Nora pretended that she was a dark sorceress who had fallen in love with John Constantine, but ultimately came clean. After a surreal trip into a children's TV show, Ray and Nora eventually did end up getting married, with Ray promising Damien that he would leave the ship to support Nora in her career as a fairy godmother. He followed through on that promise in this week's episode, "Romeo v Juliet: Dawn of Justness."
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.