Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for Legends of Tomorrow, season 5, episode 5, “A Head of Her Time.”
The latest episode of Legends of Tomorrow added yet another dark twist to the origins of John Constantine. While the short-lived Constantine series offered a fairly straightforward adaptation of the blue-collar warlock’s history, the CW show has offered a new angle which further deepens John’s motivations and the defining moment of his life.
The NBC Constantine series presented John Constantine as a professional exorcist and supernatural detective, whose soul was damned to Hell after he failed to save a young girl named Astra Logue from being dragged to the underworld by a demon. This offered a simplified and sanitized version of John’s original origin story from the comics, which would not be fit for broadcast TV. After Constantine’s cancellation, the character was revived for the Arrowverse, with actor Matt Ryan once again playing the infamous Laughing Magician.
At first it seemed that Legends of Tomorrow season 5 might be continuing the story of John Constantine from the series, with John facing a rising darkness flowing from Hell. However, with the latest episode, “A Head of Her Time,” it has become clear that far more than the Swamp Thing storyline “American Gothic,” which made up much of Constantine’s first season, is being adapted. Indeed, the writers of Legends of Tomorrow have fundamentally changed the origins of John Constantine in a way that give him a new sense of depth as well as a new sense of desperation in his battle with the forces of Hell.
John Constantine’s Origins In DC Comics
The full history of John Constantine and the group of his friends known as the Newcastle Crew was first detailed in Hellblazer #11 in 1988. Strangely enough, all of the Newcastle Crew had been killed off in the comics before that point, with most of them dying over the course of the “American Gothic” storyline in Swamp Thing, which introduced the character of John Constantine into the DC Comics’ universe. By the time writer Jamie Delano finally told the story of the dark day where John Constantine first fought the forces of Hell, he had dropped several hints regarding a botched exorcism and killed off the rest of Constantine’s oldest friends.
The Newcastle Crew was made up of John Constantine, his best-friend and band-mate Gary Lester and other aspiring magicians and musicians they had met while touring around England with their band, Mucous Membrane. The Crew arrived in Newcastle and stopped by the Casanova Club; the night club where Mucous Membrane had played their first concert. Their original plan had been to pressure the club’s owner, Alex Louge, into paying them the money he still owed John for their first concert and arranging for another gig. Those plans were quickly changed when the Crew found the club full of dead bodies and Alex’s tween daughter Astra dancing amid the carnage.
The Newcastle Crew quickly deduced that Alex Louge, who had a justified reputation as a debauched magician, had been holding wild drug-fueled parties in the basement of the club and forcing Astra to take part in the proceedings. This caused the young girl to cry out for help and a fear elemental answered the call, taking possession of Astrid before slaughtering everyone else at the club. John Constantine decided to fight fire with fire and summon a more powerful demon to drive the first demon away. Unfortunately, due to his being more of a “petty dabbler” in those days than the “Master of the Dark Arts” he would become, Constantine botched the ritual to summon a powerful Lord of Hell named Negral and the demon dragged Astra to Hell as the prize owed for its service in slaying the lesser spirit.
John Constantine’s True Origins in Legends of Tomorrow
The Constantine series presented the same basic story as the comics when it described John Constantine’s history. The details of how John got involved in saving Astra Logue were deliberately kept vague, due to the graphic nature of how Astra had come into the company of a demon. There’s some irony in the fact that Legends of Tomorrow has maintained the same sense of sanctity in expanding John’s background in the Arrowverse, yet somehow made his story even more disturbing.
“A Head of Her Time” sees John confronting the spirit of Astra’s mother, Natalie, whom he describes as “a powerful witch” and “none too happy with me.” (Astra’s mother never made an appearance in the comics.) With his apprentice Gary Green and the shape-shifting Charlie by his side, John is forced to confront the truth about his past and how Astra came to be drawn into Hell. Natalie’s poltergeist takes the three Legends on a walk down memory lane, manifesting scenes from her and John’s life while revealing just how much of the story of Astra’s damnation John didn’t discuss with his allies.
Natalie and John Constantine were friends growing up and both shared an interest in the occult. In this reality, Natalie was a member of Mucous Membrane and the band’s lead singer. She was also John’s first love, but the two broke up after she tried to force John to choose between their relationship and their magic. Despite this, the two remained friends, and Natalie went on to marry a man named Alex Louge and they had a daughter named Astra together.
When Natalie was killed by a drunk driver, Alex and Astra were both distraught. John Constantine offered to use his magic to resurrect Natalie, though he later claimed it was Alex’s idea rather than his own. John also tried to forget how his spell was partly successful, in that he was able to summon a demon and was able to force the demon to bring Natalie back from the dead. Unfortunately, John lost control of the demon and it claimed Astra as payment for its work. The revelation that her daughter had gone to Hell so that she could live drove Natalie to kill herself and John went mad with the guilt over what his arrogance and his efforts to prove to Natalie that he’d been right to give her up to become a wizard had caused.
What’s Next For John Constantine In The Arrowverse?
The ending of Legends of Tomorrow’s “A Head of Her Time” sees John suddenly collapse as he begins coughing up blood, while Gary and Charlie desperately try to help him. This is revealed to be the work of Astra in Hell, who consulted with another demon called the Coin Maker, who was able to alter the token containing John Constantine’s soul and twist his fate so that his predestined death of lung cancer came ten years early. Comics readers may recognize this as a nod to the classic Hellblazer storyline Dangerous Habits, which was also the chief inspiration for the Constantine movie with Keanu Reeves.
Apart from Dangerous Habits, there are elements of other classic Hellblazer stories at play, besides the alterations Legends of Tomorrow made to Constantine’s origins in “Original Sins” and “American Gothic.” The concept of Constantine fighting to avoid his own death and damnation as he contends with an old enemy while working to find a way to free Astra from Hell lay at the center of Critical Mass; an often over-looked but critically acclaimed story in which John ultimately managed to not only save Astra but every child ever claimed by the forces of Hell. It was an impressive feat, marred only by the fact that John had to betray a friend to pull it off and that friend quickly became one of his most dangerous enemies. It remains to be seen if John will pull off a similar feet in the Arrowverse, but it’s rarely wise to bet against John Constantine when the odds are against him.
More: Legends Of Tomorrow Sets Up Constantine’s Death: How He Can Survive
