Legends of Tomorrow’s 100th episode is a full-blown super reunion with 7 (?!) returning heroes

About a week ago, one of the chief creative minds behind DC’s Legends of Tomorrow shared with SYFY WIRE that the show’s new season would be packing a few surprises...and it turns out she wasn’t kidding. With Season 7 just around the corner, how does a full-blown Legends superhero family reunion sound as a way to commemorate the series’ upcoming 100th episode?

Fresh on the heels of news that Wentworth Miller (aka Captain Cold) would show up in episode 100 to reprise a role that’s mostly been on ice since the early days, Entertainment Weekly reports that no fewer than seven former cast members (counting Miller) will all be coming back to take part in the centennial-episode milestone, directed by Arrowverse veteran Caity Lotz.

Read it like the Legends who’s’-who list it’s meant to be: EW’s report states that departed cast members Arthur Darvill (Rip Hunter), Victor Garber (Dr. Martin Stein/Firestorm), Franz Drameh (Jax/Firestorm), Falk Hentschel (Hawkman), Courtney Ford (Nora Darhk), and Brandon Routh (Ray Palmer/the Atom) all will turn up at one point or another during the Oct. 27 episode.

But how on Earth-X can a single one-hour episode find a way to fit so many Arrowverse alumni into the story? As it turns out, the answer’s pretty simple: By showing fans a series of newly-filmed flashbacks while Gideon (Amy Pemberton) — still trying to find her legs after making the switch from AI to human form — takes a digital walk down memory lane.

Human Gideon reportedly suffers a “meltdown” and needs to be rebooted in episode 100, taking Astra (Olivia Swann) and Spooner (Lisseth Chavez) on a deep tour of Gideon’s brain in an effort to bring her memories back online. While they’re there, they get glimpses of Gideon’s recollections from years gone by — which is where the big superhero reunion comes in.

“Human Gideon is going to be showing up” throughout the new season, showrunner Keto Shimizu recently teased to SYFY WIRE. “Gideon, the AI, has been a character on the ship since its very beginning. She’s the ‘O’-est of O.G.s, in our minds.”

That makes her uniquely qualified to recall picture-perfect memories and anecdotes, through the years, that the rest of the group might not remember nearly so well.

“As we explore these memories, we get to see familiar faces from all the different iterations of the Legends that [Gideon] has experienced through her steadfast watch as the ship mother,” Shimizu told EW. “…It was a real chance to celebrate the evolution of the show…For a story that is thematically about growth and change and embracing the new…it was really imperative that we had those people come back to both live in the new tone of the show, but also to show like, ‘Hey this is what the show was and look how far it's changed and evolved since then.’”

Season 7 of Legends of Tomorrow kicks off on Oct. 13 at The CW, with episode 100 arriving on Oct. 27.