Despite the uninspired name, the pretty strong debut of Legends of Tomorrow continues as the crew hangs around in 1975, still trying to do Savage in.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The crew is still in 1975 but have moved to Norway now as they plan on attending the sale of a nuclear warhead by an arms dealer. They figure Savage will be there and it will be a perfect time to nab him and stop this mission before it even really begins.
Sarah, Snart, Rory and Stein manage to access by Stein playing the bad ass Bond villain role while the Hawks, Ray and Jax wait in the wings. But it turns out Savage isn’t buying a nuke, he’s selling. The proximity of the Hawks tips him off and a slip of the tongue by Stein results in the team being discovered and all hell breaks loose. A huge, sprawling battle takes place as the team tries to take down Savage, but the arming of the nuke takes priority. Firestorm manages to absorb the blast, preventing a nuclear holocaust, but Savage and the terrorists manage to escape.
Rip congratulates the team on exposing themselves and completely messing up the timeline. Savage and his scientists managed to get their hands on a piece of Ray’s suit and now the future is peril. The team only has a certain amount of time before history is irreversibly altered. For a super suit, it comes apart pretty easily. For a Time Master, Hunter is doing a terrible job of preserving the timeline.
The Hawks go through Boardman’s belongings and happen to find an article that he had on him. Kendra recognizes the knife as the one that Savage used to kill them way back in Egypt and items with ties to their past lives can be used to destroy Savage. So, the team has a two pronged mission – save the future and find a weapon from the past. The Hawks delve into Kendra’s past lives in order to figure out how to use the dagger to kill Savage, Snart, Ray and Rory go off to retrieve the knife from a wealthy Russian while Stein, Sarah and Jax go off to find the only person who is doing the kind of research that can help them find the piece of Ray’s suit – the younger version of Stein.
So, the Hawks have an uncomfortable moment when Carter tries to push the ‘we’re destined to be together’ angle, Stein hates his younger self while Sarah flirts with him to get them closer and Ray butts heads with the two criminals who are looking to lift all the loot they can.
Stein is worried that they’ll alter history as that’s the night he’s to meet his future wife. They go to steal the tracker but are stopped by younger Stein who Sarah knocks out. Snart and Ray get trapped in an anti-theft cage while fighting about Snart stealing more than just the dagger. While locked up, Snart and Ray learn more about each other and what brought them both to this point in their lives and it turns out, they aren’t so different when it all boils down to it. Carter gives Kendra her space, which makes Kendra fall for him a little, cause of course. So, she channels her past life and she remembers how to use the dagger to stop Savage.
Stein, Jax and Sarah use the tracker to find Ray’s missing tech and Sarah lays a serious beating down on everyone and retrieves it. Rory gets grabbed by the owner of the house before he can free Snart and Ray and lo and behold, the owner of the house is none other than Savage himself. Then, things get really complicated when young Stein uses a tracker to track his tracker and ends up on the Waverider with his older self. Savage gets Ray to call the rest of the team in so he can finish them all off in one fell swoop.
They manage to convince younger Stein to ‘forget’ everything he’s seen and sends him on his way and they roll out to rescue their captured comrades. Cue another pretty huge fight sequence that results in the Hawks finding themselves alone with Savage. Carter takes him down and uses the knife on him, but it doesn’t work as it needs to be Kendra who strikes the killing blow. Savage then stabs Carter, killing him and taking his life force. He stabs Kendra and is about to finish her off but the team comes to her rescue and they beat a retreat.
They manage to stabilize Kendra, but they won’t be able to time jump until she’s further healed. So, Rip takes Stein to see his younger self and to let him know that the Time Master corrected the time lapse and Martin still meets his future wife. The rest of the team band together and decide that they will not stop until Savage has been put to rest, using Carter’s death as a rallying cry for their mission.
The conclusion to the pilot of Legends of Tomorrow showcased all of the highs and lows I’m going to expect from the show going forward. It’s actually all of the same highs and lows that I got from the first half, so to see them all back again solidifies in mind what’s coming every week.
The storylines are pretty good and use the time jumping very effectively, but aren’t really well thought out. Cause they’ve irreparably altered the timeline in both episodes with seemingly no real consequences, like young Stein bordering the ship. Why doesn’t old Stein have memories of that? I’m not asking for a physicist to make sure the show doesn’t break any space/time continuum rules cause there’s no fun in time travel if it adheres to all the rules. All I want is just a little consistency! Set up some ground rules and stick to them. Or, at least, give a pretend explanation like they do in The Flash and hope no one asks too many questions.
One of the big high points for me was the just terrific set piece at the arms deal. The action was high octane, it looked great and everyone was flashing their powers without it looking cheap. Also, the director used his angles and camera movement to fully showcase the scope of the scene as well as give the entire thing this frenetic, chaotic pace that just added to how great it was. The secondary action sequence at the end was pretty much the same, but to a lesser degree. I’m looking forward to seeing more of these action scenes, though I wonder if these sequences were particularly good due to the pilot budget. Can they keep up this quality of production? I guess only time will tell.
Which brings us to a final point. The beginnings and ends of both half of the pilots were certainly rushed. They spent so little time with setup/wrap up that you almost don’t know what’s happening. The teams decision to stay together was literally a 45 second scene and since they’re jumping through time and facing down one of the most vicious villains in history, I can’t help but feel they probably should have taken longer than that when making their choices.
And what of Carter? They certainly killed him in this episode, but he’s got star billing for the whole season. Also, using him as the reason for the team banding together seems silly if you’re just going to bring him back to life next week. Either way, based on the previews for next week, it looks like there’s some pretty occult aspects to the episode, so maybe that’s how they bring him back to life. With Damien Dahrk making a guest spot as one of the people trying to buy the nuke at the start, I guess anything can really happen in this show!
Come back next week and see if Legends of Tomorrow can continue to be the new superhero hit of the year!