John Constantine is leaving Legends of Tomorrow, but actor Matt Ryan is staying

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow made an appearance at this weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con@Home event, with most of its core crew (minus Caity Lotz) on hand to talk about the current season as well as the upcoming seventh season.

We didn’t get too much information during the panel, but we did learn something interesting about Matt Ryan’s character, John Constantine. If you’ve been following the DCTV shows on The CW from the start, then you know that this character has had an interesting journey. Ryan started off with his solo Constantine series on NBC back in 2014, but sadly, it lasted only one season. But that wasn’t the end of his character. Ryan would go on to appear as Constantine in Arrow and then finally find a place to call home in Legends of Tomorrow as a series regular. And now, things are about to change once again.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow: John Constantine out, Dr. Gywn Davies in

During the Sunday panel discussion, showrunners Phil Klemmer and Keto Shimizu revealed that Matt Ryan’s journey as John Constantine is coming to an end with season 6. However, Matt Ryan is not going anywhere (phew). “His arc on our show, his character’s arc, is coming to an end in season 6 and will be concluding John Constantine’s on the Waverider with the Legends,” Shimizu said. “However, Matt Ryan’s journey with Legends of Tomorrow, is not yet done.”

“The Legends are stranded, they’ve been deprived of their ability to time travel,” Klemmer added. “Matt’s character, [Dr. Gwyn Davies] becomes sort of the possible salvation for our team. He is an eccentric gentleman who lives approximately 100 years ago, and according to legend, he is their only hope to return to their native place in time.”

At this point, Klemmer went on a slight conversational tangent and asked Ryan how to pronounce his character’s Welsh name. It was adorable because it’s simply pronounced like the name, “Gwen”, but he was so afraid of butchering it that he had to ask. Everyone made fun of Klemmer, of course, but I respect the man for double-checking.

“I just want to say, I am very excited,” Ryan chimed in. “As we all know, John is a character that who out of all his comic book history and all the TV parts as well, is someone who always walks alone. He dips into stories and dips out of stories, and you know the time for John’s journey with Legends and with me has come to an end. But I am so very excited to be doing another role on this show, and creating a new role with everybody. And having some fun with that in a way that I haven’t had with John. So that’s really, really exciting to me to see what that is going to be and discovering how this new character fits in and causes trouble for the Legends.”

Who is Matt Ryan’s new character on Legends of Tomorrow?

We don’t know a whole lot about Ryan’s character except that he is a Welsh scientist who will cross paths with the Legends after they get stuck at some point in time without all their nifty gadgets and technology. From what I know, the character of Dr. Gwyn Davies is not a DC Comics character and has never been mentioned throughout the Arrowverse shows, so he will be a fresh new addition to this world. And apparently, he’ll be instrumental in getting the Legends back to their own time.

In addition to Ryan’s character swap, the showrunners revealed that Amy Louise Pemberton is officially joining the team as Gideon’s physical form. Up until now, it’s primarily been her lending her voice to the AI character. And while we’ve seen her from time to time as a physical person, this will be the first time she will be in her physical form for an extended period of time.

Lots of exciting changes are coming for DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, and I for one can’t wait to see what season 7 has in store for us.

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h/t The A.V. Club