George Lucas saves the day on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow

Tuesday night on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Star Wars creator George Lucas saved the day by deciding to stay in film school and directing Star Wars, and Indiana Jones…

If you aren’t watching the current slate of superhero shows on the CW, then you are missing out on some quality storytelling. Tuesday night, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow had its mid-season premiere, and during the episode, an actor portraying a young George Lucas, still in film school, had to save the day by deciding to direct both Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

Actor Matt Angel was cast as a young George Lucas, who, while helping a confused and mid-wiped Captain Rip Hunter create a science fiction film about the Legends (yes this was a very meta episode), was scared into leaving film school after running across a fight between the good guys and two members of the nefarious Legion of Doom.

Once George Lucas decided the film industry was too dangerous to be a part of, two heroes from The Legends of Tomorrow had their pasts changed and lost their powers/abilities to contribute to the group. So, in order to save the day, the Legends had to convince him to stay in film school and create both Star Wars (for Ray Palmer: The Atom), and Indiana Jones (for Nate Heywood: Steel).

The episode, titled “Raiders of the Lost Art,” was, as I mentioned, extremely meta for so many reasons, but as it pertains to Star Wars, there were a ton of fantastic Easter Eggs to enjoy. One particular little nugget was Lucas’ license plate in the episode, which read — THX 138.

Many Star Wars fans know that THX 1138 was George Lucas’s directorial debut, in 1971, and the director famously used the designation for the Stormtrooper who loses his armor to Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars novelization (it was changed to TK-421 for the film). After that, as StarWars.com points out, a combination of the letters and numbers were used throughout several Star Wars films, books, and even the animated television series, The Clone Wars.

Here are a few other Star Wars Easter Eggs from DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, “Raiders of the Lost Art” that we noticed:

• Amaya tells George Lucas he needed to stay in film school and create movies, saying: “You’re our only hope.” This, of course, is one of the most famous lines in all of Star Wars, uttered by Princess Leia on a holo-recording to Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• Damien Darhk and Malcolm Merlyn throw the heroes and Lucas into a trash compactor, to look for the Spear of Destiny that the young aspiring director had thrown away when he decided to leave film school. This inspired Lucas to create the compactor scene from A New Hope. 
• Actress Maisie Richardson-Sellers (Amaya) actually appeared briefly in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as Korr Sella, General Leia’s representative to the New Republic Senate who was killed when the First Order destroyed Hosnian Prime. 

All in all, “Raiders of the Lost Art” was a fun episode that demonstrated the CW and DC’s ability to actually not take itself too serious…which is something the films could take a lesson from.

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We want to hear from you: Did you notice any other Star Wars Easter Eggs in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow? Let’s discuss in the comments below and on social media.