Rip Hunter is terrible at his job!
Sorry, just had to get that out there before delving into our most recent episode of Legends of Tomorrow. Back to the action: the opening five minutes sees the plot develop at breakneck speeds! The Legends drop into the future, only to be fired upon by Savage’s forces over London. The team needs to take out Savage during the height of his power, as they’re left with little other recourse since their time traveling has made it impossible for them to bounce around the past. They’ll need to kill Savage right before Vandal kills Rip’s family, which Hunter is more than happy to do. Infiltrating Vandal’s army, they watch the immortal dictator deliver a speech, then bumble their way through an assassination attempt, to escape and meet up with the rebels. Remember how I mentioned that this was moving at breakneck speed? When the team discovers the rebel base, the opening credits are still rolling! Yeesh!
During their extremely quick session of pretending to be Savage’s soldiers, they notice a mysterious woman wielding a strange bracelet. The woman turns out to be none other than Savage’s daughter, and the bracelet was made from an ancient artifact that may be the only way to kill Savage. Luckily enough, while Sara and Kendra are looking for some additional weapons, they manage to find a mace used by Hawkman and Hawkgirl in their past lives. After managing to capture Savage’s daughter, they melt down the bracelet and pour it over the mace, creating a weapon that can finally put an end to Vandal once and for all. It’s during these events that Rip has a discussion with Ray and explains that no matter how many times he tried to save his family, time dictated that they must die in one way or another. It sort of makes you not feel as bad when Rip and his Legends have just about destroyed every time period they visited in one way or another.
As the team was visiting the rebel camp in a very Terminator moment, they see what’s left of the last rebels who attempted to take on Savage: nothing but ash. This leads into my favorite part of the episode, the Leviathan. Originally believing that the rebels were killed by a bomb, it turns out that said bomb was actually leaving footprints and was in fact a giant robot that Savage had hiding up his sleeve! The team manages to escape the robot, with Ray deciding that the best way to defeat him is to grow big himself and wrassle it! To be fair, the effects here aren’t the best, and “Giant Ray” looks as if he’s moving through water during his tenure, but kudos to the show for going through with such a bonkers scene. Ray begins fighting the robot with Jackson yelling at him from the Waverider as his hype man, which gives the Atom the emotional support he needs to punch the bot’s head clean off its shoulders. You have to love Legends of Tomorrow when it delves head-first into the insanity and Silver Age shenanigans of the DC Universe, so this was right up my alley.
The team also managed to convince (surprisingly quickly) Savage’s daughter, Cassie, that her father is a monster and she should switch sides. Using Cassandra as a trap, the team stands in front of Savage with guns drawn (and don’t fire on him for whatever reason) only for Savage’s guards to join the fray. Kendra swoops in from the sky and hammers away at Savage, hurting the immortal dictator for the first time using her mace. Before she’s able to deliver the killing blow though, a random guard gives her some trouble, who turns out to be none other than a future reincarnation of Carter Hall, a.k.a. Hawkman! Savage taunts that the team will need him alive to undone the brainwashing he had done on Carter, and Kendra can’t manage to put an end to Vandal. Rip comes onto the scene and has both Savage and Hall brought back to the Waverider.
I mentioned it earlier, but man is Rip an awful leader to this ragtag group of time travelers. It doesn’t necessarily make the show worse per se, but it’s worth mentioning how often he just completely drops the ball on whatever mission they’re supposed to be doing each episode. It always seems like each episode has a given formula wherein Rip tells the Legends they can’t muck with the timestream, they muck with the timestream, and Hunter throws up his hands and whines about the whole thing. I think Rip whined about what the Legends were doing no less than three times this episode. Maybe next season he needs to pick an entirely new team and work on his leadership skills? The episode ends with Rip and Savage having a staredown, Silence of the Lambs style.
Ultimately, this episode was a mixed bag. The pacing was a tad off and certain events happened way too quickly/conveniently for my taste, but this was balanced out by some of the cooler scenes such as Ray battling a giant robot in a fist fight. If the show could only focus on more stuff like the latter and pull back on the melodrama and boneheaded decisions of the characters, we’d be cooking with gas here.
Rating: ★★★ Good
Notes of Tomorrow
-Savage’s “Leviathan” isn’t really from the comics, which is a shame because you could have easily pulled from the DC vault for some fan service. I thought it was actually the DC villain, Chemo, the first time they showed it. Obviously, with the Atom symbol on it chest, it was made using Ray’s technology.
-I really enjoyed the score in the opening scene; it felt super techno and since it was the future, it was obviously fitting.
-I wish they would remember that Captain Cold’s gun is supposed to freeze people.
-Having all of the characters say “Perdegetton” over and over again was ridiculous.
-Not killing Savage because of his control of Carter is, frankly, weak sauce. This isn’t even the Carter that Kendra knows, it’s one that exists a hundred years in the future. Worst case scenario is that he dies and they just go to the next Hawkman. No harm, no foul!
-Jackson: “Why is London shooting at us?”
-Rip: “I’ll require the services of…”
Heatwave: “Killer Klepto and Pyro!”
-Kendra: “Carter is my past, Ray is my future.”
-Kendra: “We were only married in eight lifetimes.”
Carter: “That’s a lot!”
-Heatwave: “We just like bright, sparkly objects like that bracelet.”
-Jackson: “This lid is going to be very angry when the pot learns we have his daughter... you know what I mean!”
-Cold: “I was wrong, your dad’s a gem!”
-Kendra: “I’m fighting an immortal madman and you’re fighting a giant robot. I can’t believe this is our life.”
-Savage: “They’re nothing but grains of sand in the dessert of time."
