I know not everyone’s happy with how the OT3 was presented in Leverage: Redemption. But frankly, this is an excellent answer from John Rogers and is absolutely in line with everything that he’s said about it.
The OT3 was never going to be explicitly canon for exactly the reasons John Rogers outlined here – to define it in any way would kill somebody’s version. The OT3 means so many different things to each individual that ships it; there’s no one right and there’s no one wrong way to interpret it.
I will also point out that John Rogers knows the difference between enjoying media as a fan vs enjoying media as a creator. As he points out those are two very different things and as such, need to be understood and perceived from very different perspectives.
If you don’t, you miss gems like this where they’re talking about the fact the show is set when it is.
JOHN ROGERS: And that’s why Parker has the line, “Eliot was very concerned.” Because Eliot would have been the one in the big, giant house that they all share where he’s all like, “Man why isn’t she callin’ us, what’s going on?”
David M. Perry, @Lollardfish, wrote: “The rich and powerful take what they want.” Followed by a partial link to NPR Twitter status.
John Rogers, @jonrog1, replied:
It is worth noting that when pitched that intro to LEVERAGE, there was some pushback (not by our TNT friends) to soften it to “SOME of the rich and powerful…” . The exact same thing just happened (“Could we not say ALL rich people are bad?”) on another IP I was working on.
Second John Rogers tweet in thread:
American culture will work really hard not to hurt the feelings of the rich, while deranged conspiracy nutjob rich people have no problem reshaping society at their whims, nor do rich sociopaths hesitate to leave death in their wake.]
i’m already seeing people dismissing the leverage reboot cause it ‘won’t be as good as the original’ and i cannot stress enough HOW MUCH I COULDN’T POSSIBLY CARE like my favorite show of all time is getting rebooted with all my favorite members of the OG cast and being led by people in charge of the og show? like fuck yeah it ain’t gonna top the original just cause of the nostalgia factor no matter how good it is but who GIVES A HOOT AHHHHHH MORE FUCKING LEVERAGE
You guys. John Rogers and Dean Devlin are still on board. These are the guys who took Gina Bellman’s maternity leave and turned it into a character building arc. These are the guys who crafted each season as a complete story because John Rogers thinks cliffhangers are for cowards. These are the guys who gave us a series finale with an emotional gut-punch that slams just as hard the fifth time you see the episode as it did the first time, and then ends with an emotional lift that makes you scream so loud it scares the dog EVERY TIME even though you spend the whole episode knowing it’s coming.
We trust one (1) set of tv show creators to do right by us, and it’s these beautiful bastards.
