'Legends of Tomorrow' showrunner sets up Season 7 finale: ‘How do you outdo yourself?’

The seventh season of The CW’s Legends of Tomorrow is wrapping up this week, and co-showrunner Phil Klemmer says they’ve learned a whole lot of lessons they’ll be applying as the latest arc comes to an end.

The 13th and final episode of Legends of Tomorrow’s seventh season, “Knocked Down, Knocked Up,” airs Wednesday night on The CW.

The show’s penultimate episode last week threw fans for a bit of a loop, with the feel of a potential series finale, giving the various Legends team members a peek at their potential futures and setting them off on retirement. There’s still an episode to go on the year, though, and Klemmer says they used Episode 12 as a palate cleanser to tee up the action to come in the finale.

One key this year, according to Klemmer, was staying dialed in on the more emotional character stories and not getting so lost in the plot and story that can sometimes push the heroes themselves to the periphery.

“Episode 12 felt like a finale to us. It was like a deep breath, a calm before the plunge. Finales are really hard, people are really tired. It’s like having to run a 100-yard dash after completing a marathon,” he told SYFY WIRE. “So a lot of times we kind of lose those personal stories, because sometimes the plot or mythology is just like a tide, you have to wrap up all these things. There have been seasons where I feel like the smaller stories kind of washed away. So one thing we’ve learned is, sometimes the smallest stories are the most gratifying and interesting. That’s why we wanted to take that deep breath.”

But just because the penultimate episode was a bit slow, that doesn’t mean the finale will be more of the same. It is a season finale, though, and Klemmer is well aware of what fans have come to expect from Legends finales. Be it a wild set-up for the next season, a big twist, or a killer cliffhanger — Klemmer promises they aim to please this week.

“A finale is a chance to blow it out and just like leave it all on the field, spend all your money. You also get this chance, as you’re resolving one season, to try and plan for the next,” he explained. "We’ve had Constantine show up with a dragon’s head to kick off an episode, or Hourman showing up and telling the Legends they’re in trouble. So it’s always a question of how do you outdo yourself? By the time you get to Season 7 people are kind of desensitized to our surprises, so the trick is figuring out how to zig where they might expect us to zag?”

At this point, there’s been no word on a potential eighth season of Legends of Tomorrow, but hopefully fans will get some news soon from the network on the show’s future.

The season finale of Legends of Tomorrow airs Wednesday night on The CW. Previous episodes are available to stream on The CW app.