Note: Heavy Spoilers For This Episode Follow

Left Behind

Well this may be a review for the ages, but I actually unironically enjoyed an episode of Legends of Tomorrow for the first time in quite awhile. The show hasn’t changed quite that much. It still has some daring leaps in logic, plot, and characterization in order to jam everything together, but its actually embraced the possibilities of its premise for once. The idea is fairly simple, after an emergency escape that stranded Ray, Kendra, and Sarah in 1958, the team (sans Captain Cold) is caught falling through time after an encounter with Chronos.

What this episode does that’s so interesting is that it decides to have the stranded team spend two years in the past. While in typical Legends of Tomorrow fashion this isn’t given much time to bloom like another show would, it does change the characters to a fairly interesting degree. While Ray and Kendra decide to in effect play house together in the hopes that eventually the team will come to them, Sarah falls off the wagon and searches out for the only kinship she has left in the League of Assassins. Meanwhile: Rip, Professor Stein, and Jefferson while making an emergency escape from Chronos after losing Captain Cold, fall forward through time leading through the aforementioned time skip, which is where the episode’s positives and problems come in.

While the episode does give a look (albeit a condensed one) at the away team’s circumstances from 1958-1960, it doesn’t really allow us to see that skipped over time in favor of moving the plot along. While it’s all well and good to see the three in a place where they may have moved on from the time traveling shenanigans, it feels like a bit of a lost opportunity to explore how radically the team’s lives were altered by throwing them into normalcy, but I digress. The majority of the episode thereafter concerns itself with the team’s attempts to rescue Sarah from the League of Assassins at the point they’re still led by Ra’s Al Ghul (unfortunately with Matthew Nable reprising the role), while Captain Cold looking for a way out after discovering that Chronos, the man hunting them throughout the series is actually their former teammate Heatwave. The former opens up questions about the interference caused by the team on their own history that like Flash gets a very broad handwave, which is ultimately very frustrating on yet another show that attempts to build itself around time travel but it still at least provides an interesting struggle for the team to deal with.

Heatwave’ plotline however, while an interesting examination of Mick and Len’s friendship, and of the types of plots you can write with a time travel story also highlights one of the problems with Legends of Tomorrow. The mission has no stakes. While Hawkman was killed off early on, he’s also an immortal, and most of the missions aren’t terribly impactful on their mission. Even Captain Cold losing an arm is proven utterly meaningless. While there’s something to be said about the writers needing to stretch storytelling to fit the needs of a network season, the show continually pulls the rug over anything ever moving forward till the finale. While it’s great to have an episode sans Vandal Savage, the show has fallen into a pattern it can’t escape from. While the actors do a great job of pulling the show forward, there’s only so much that they can do to drag what’s fairly sub-standard material. That said, the Heatwave twist drags the show into the really ugly side of their mission. While Rip fully embraces the opportunity to use Mick to get at their enemies, it also opens up the reality that Rip may not be that much different from the Time Masters using this team as his strikeforce against Savage. And even with how angry Mick is, his grievances against his friend for betraying him are real, as well as how he was treated like a pawn.

Now all of that vinegar aside, there is some potential in Legends of Tomorrow. Flash’s sophmore season has had some struggles as well, but both shows still go for fundamentally fun and somewhat goofy heroics. While that isn’t going to always produce level writing, it still is worth watching even if it fumbles. Watching the Atom’s fundamental optimism at play, Captain Cold’s ham and snark really goes a long way towards making a show enjoyable.

3 out of 5 Regeneration Machines

P.S:

• Speaking of which… a regeneration machine? Have we gone full Doctor Who here CW?
• “I used to think the most beautiful thing on Earth was fire. Now I know, it’s vengeance.” Mick Rory a regular poet over here.
• The look on Ray’s face when Kendra hurts him. Man you feel that pain on him. Brandon Routh is too good at fundamental optimism.

Review by Slew