Booster Gold has finally come to The CW, though not in the way you may have expected.
In the season finale of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, the Waverider crew strives to undo the fixed point in time of Gwyn Davies dying to save his love, Alun, in 1916. To that end, they travel back to that year and encounter a Fixer known only as Mike, played by Donald Faison. Faison is best known for appearing in series such as Clueless, Scrubs, and Skyline.
For those new to the concept, a Fixer in the show’s continuity is an appointed individual charged with maintaining a fixed point in time. An earlier example is a (literally) reformed and depowered Eobard Thawne (Matt Letscher) in a previous episode. Whether by The Speed Force or The Time Police, The Fixer is to relive the same day to maintain the original course of events of a specific fixed point.
Upon hearing anyone interfering in the final battle would be erased in a paradox, Mike’s insecurities arise. He destroys Davies’s time machine and hijacks the reconstructed Waverider to confront his superiors. When the Waverider returns and the Legends board, they find Mike in handcuffs and accompanied by Time Police officers that promptly arrest them as well for time-related crimes. To confirm Mike’s true identity, one of the officers refers to him as “Booster.” Further, comic fans now know that “Mike” is short for Michael Jon Carter, Booster’s birth name.
Booster Gold – Who Is He and Why Should Fans Be Excited?
Booster Gold’s appearance was highly anticipated from the inception of the show through the character of Captain Rip Hunter. In comics continuity, Rip – played by Arthur Darvill for the series – is Booster’s biological son, so therefore it was a given. While he’s not fully called Booster Gold in the episode nor in the credits, his blue-and-yellow color scheme can be found in his wardrobe throughout the episode, even his yellow star emblem on his golf balls. And with the departure of Nate Heywood from the crew, there is a new slot available for Booster to fill.
In a joint statement, Legends showrunners Phil Klemmer and Keto Shimizu express their exhilaration over Donald’s casting. “We are all huge fans of his impressive body of work, and seeing him with the rest of the Legends in our finale was an absolute, side-splitting joy. We can’t wait [to tell] many more stories with him and our lovable misfits should we be blessed with an eighth season.”
Booster Gold was created by Dan Jurgens in 1986. A former college football star in 25th Century Gotham City, Michael Jon Carter’s life took a turn for the worst when the father who abandoned him and his sister due to gambling debts. At his father’s insistence, he deliberately lost games to clear those debts but was inevitably caught. Expelled from both the university and the game for life, Michael took a job as a night watchman for a local museum, where he began to study the exploits of 20th Century superheroes and villains. Consumed with the idea of reinventing himself as a hero, he pilfered the museum of Legion of Superheroes paraphernalia, and Rip Hunter’s time sphere.
He also took along Skeets, the museum’s interactive security robot with an advanced AI containing complete historical files and shielding to temporal and other reality-altering phenomena. With all this, he traveled back to the 20th Century to shamelessly promote himself as a superhero and build a corporation around himself and amass a fortune. Originally calling himself “Booster Goldstar”, President Ronald Reagan incorrectly introduced him as “Booster Gold” and the name stuck. Booster’s showboating, glory-minded personality typically rubs other DC heroes the wrong way but was famously best friends with Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle. An infamous story saw them spend the Justice League’s reserves on an island resort that fails, forcing them to earn the money back through manual labor.
The character has been featured in multiple animated series, but Faison is the second actor to portray Booster in a live-action setting. He was preceded by Eric Martsolf in the final season of Smallville. That Booster wanted to intercept the spotlight from a yet-to-be-revealed Superman and was much in step with the source material with both a comics-faithful costume and celebrity-obsessed persona concealing an inferiority complex. Coincidentally, he had to help a recently-empowered Jaime Reyes – Blue Beetle III – to get control of the scarab controlling him.
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will return if renewed for another season.
Official Source – DC’s Legends of Tomorrow: Booster Gold Joins the Arrowverse (comicbook.com)
