Charlie’s (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) secret is out: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow revealed that the team’s resident shapeshifter is really the Greek goddess Clotho, and here’s what that means for Legends season 5. While the Legends have been rounding up the Encores, who are history’s greatest villains resurrected from Hell and scattered across time, Charlie mysteriously bailed on the team. Instead, she has been helping John Constantine sort out how to stop Astra Logue (Olivia Swann), this season’s Big Bad, who infected the British warlock with terminal lung cancer. All of this points to the magical Loom of Fate, which was created eons ago by Clotho - who it turns out is Charlie herself.
Charlie is the second Legends of Tomorrow character portrayed by Maisie Richardson-Sellers after Amaya Jiwe AKA Vixen was ‘retired’ at the end of season 3. Instead, Charlie was one of the Fugitives, who were magical creatures the Legends accidentally released and had to recapture last season. The Legends encountered the shapeshifter in 1970s London and, through the usual bizarre hi-jinks, Charlie impersonated Amaya and then permanently got stuck in Vixen’s form before taking refuge aboard the Waverider. For most of Legends season 4, Charlie had to learn to function as one of the team but she always harbored some dark secret. Now, the secret is out; Charlie is no mere supernatural shape-changer, but she is Clotho, a goddess from ancient Greece.
In Greek mythology (which is real in the Arrowverse), Clotho was one of the Three Fates of the Morai along with her sisters Lakhesis and Athropos. Clotho’s role was to spin the thread of life, which is called the Loom of Fate in the Arrowverse and is Legends of Tomorrow’s season 5 MacGuffin. The Loom of Fate gave Clotho power over all of human destiny - a responsibility Charlie didn’t want and ultimately abandoned Millenia ago. By rejecting her immortal role as Clotho, Charlie made eternal enemies of her sisters. So, Charlie literally has been on the run from her family for thousands of years and she has been keeping the Loom of Fate from them all that time. In fact, Charlie broke the Loom into pieces and scattered it across the Multiverse - but now that Crisis On Infinite Earths merged the different realities into the one Earth-Prime, Charlie realized that the all of the pieces of the Loom of Fate are now on the same Earth - and in danger of being discovered by the other two Fates of the Morai.
By taking on ancient magical beings for the last few seasons, Legends of Tomorrow has carved out its own unique niche in the Arrowverse, which helped turn the hilariously bizarre series into The CW’s most reliably fun superhero show. It’s typical of the bumbling Legends to not even realize they’ve been harboring a Greek goddess aboard their timeship, but now that the cat’s out of the bag about Charlie being Clotho, it cleverly sets the stage for a madcap chase across time for the Loom of Fate and the arrival of Charlie’s fearsome sisters (one of whom could be played by Joanna Vanderham). How it all converges with the problem of the Encores and John Constantine’s quest to redeem Astra in Hell in Legends of Tomorrow’s season 5 remains to be seen but no doubt, more surprises are sure to come.
Next: Legends of Tomorrow Getting Rid Of Ray Palmer Is A Mistake
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays @ 9pm on The CW.
