Legends of Tomorrow Theory: Why Sara Was [SPOILER] & What It Means For Season 6

Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for Legends of Tomorrow season 5 finale.

Legends of Tomorrow‘s season 5 finale ended with a stunning twist, as team leader Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) was abducted by aliens. This immediately raised two questions; who are these aliens and why did they only take Sara rather than the entire Legends team?

Legends of Tomorrow season 5 has seen Sara Lance go through a number of big changes in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths. In addition to coping with her role as the Paragon of Destiny and the death of her ex-lover Oliver Queen, Sara had to face a shift in the power dynamic of her relationship with her girlfriend Ava Sharpe, as Ava found herself unemployed and adrift following the dissolution of the Time Bureau. Sara also had to cope with the sudden development of seemingly permanently blindness and a prophetic superpower following a fight with the Greek goddess Atropos. The events of Legends of Tomorrow‘s season 5 finale, “Swan Thong,” saw Sara seemingly returned to normal, as the death of Atropos cut-off Sara’s connection to the divine energies that blessed her with foresight at the cost of her vision.

The final scene of the episode saw Sara enveloped in a blue light and pulled into the sky by some kind of tractor beam, with her drunk and distracted teammates none the wiser as they celebrated their victory over the Fates of Ancient Greek mythology. This reportedly will start the storyline for Legends of Tomorrow season 6, which will see the Legends journeying into deep space. The big takeaway from this ending is that whoever abducted Sara was only interested in her rather than the entire Legends team. Capturing all of the Legends should have been an easy task given the inebriated state most of them were in at the time Sara was taken. Additionally, as the Paragon of Destiny, Sara is a figure of cosmic significance and she is one of the more prominent superheroes in the Arrowverse, despite her best efforts at avoiding publicity. Given that, it is totally believable that she might be seen as more valuable than the rest of her teammates

One possibility is that Sara was abducted by aliens in need of a great warrior. Legends of Tomorrow season 5,  episode 13, “The One Where We’re Trapped On TV,” saw Sara cast as a Shatneresque star-ship captain on the Star Trek inspired television series Star Trip, and that show still exists in the reality of the Arrowverse after the events of the season finale. It’s entirely possible that, as in the movie Galaxy Quest, the broadcasts of Star Trip made their way into deep space and were viewed by aliens who had both the technology to travel between stars and the inability to differentiate fiction from non-fiction. Legends of Tomorrow possesses a similar level of meta-humor and it would be the height of irony that Sara would get abducted by aliens who thought she was a fictional heroic captain when she truly is a heroic captain leading a crew of misfits who screw things up for the better. Of course if that were the case, they would probably also have abducted Ava Sharpe, who played the Spock to Sara’s Kirk on the same show.

Another possibility is suggested by the original synopsis of Legends of Tomorrow season 6. It states that Sara’s abductor is “a ruthless alien,” suggesting a far more sinister reason for her abduction. One option from the DC Comics’ universe is that she was taken by Mongul; an alien warlord who frequently abducted great warriors from other planets and forced them to fight for his amusement. While Mongul typically favored abducting metahumans on par with Superman, Sara may have developed enough of a reputation (especially because of Star Trip) to be worthy in his eyes. Certainly Legends of Tomorrow could also have a bit of fun with the idea of Sara as an intergalactic gladiator as in Thor: Ragnarok.