attended Green Arrow's funeral, it's been business as usual aboard the Waverider. And in Legends of Tomorrow season 5, that means chasing Encores, who are history's greatest villains released from Hell, all over the timeline.
This week's Legends of Tomorrow episode, "Slay Anything", hilariously parodied 1980s slasher movies as our time-jumping heroes took on a killer named Freddy Myers at two different points in time. In 2004, Sara, Ava Sharpe (Jes Macallan), and Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell) tried to save the attendees of Central City High School's Class of 1989 reunion, but Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh) hatched a plan to redeem Freddy at his prom in '89 so that he never becomes a killer in the first place. Ray, Nate Heywood (Nick Zano), and Nora Darhk (Courtney Ford) went back to 1989 and Nora attached herself to Freddy (Seth Meriwether) as his Fairy Godmother to steer him on the right path before he learns to kill.
Posing as "cool new teachers", Ray and Nate met Freddy right after Tiffany, the most popular girl in school, asked him to be her date for the prom (setting him up for a cruel prank like in Carrie). The well-coifed superheroes tried to talk Freddy out of going to prom and Nate suggested going to the movies because "1989's a great movie summer. Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II..." Now, Nate is absolutely correct that the summer of 1989 was a benchmark year because it was the first time so many huge blockbusters were released during the hottest vacation months. Along with the movies Nate name-dropped, there was also Lethal Weapon 2, Licence to Kill, Turner & Hooch. But curiously, Nate failed to mention the one blockbuster that towered over them all and was synonymous with the summer of '89, a little movie directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton called Batman, which was the highest-grossing film of 1989.
But the reason Nate didn't reference Batman is likely because he couldn't since, in the Arrowverse, Batman is real and therefore, Tim Burton probably never made a blockbuster movie about him. Batwoman forced the Arrowverse to stop dancing around whether Batman exists or not.
Arrow season 6 had Tim Burton's Batman likely never happened. But on the plus side, if the Legends of Tomorrow ever figure out that the Multiverse still exists, they could conceivably take the Waverider to Earth-89 and meet Batman themselves.
DC's Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays @ 9pm on The CW.