LEGENDS OF TOMORROW Review: The Team Bungles Their Second Mission

By Justin Carter

The opening to this week’s Legends of Tomorrow is possibly one of the coolest things to ever come from DC’s TV universe thus far. It’s a hell of a thing, slowly going from the team infiltrating Vandal Savage’s arms deal to everyone going up against a bunch of terrorists. It’s not an entirely accurate comparison, but if you can imagine that scene in The Avengers where the camera follows each member of the team as they do their thing, that’s more or less what the intro is. It’s genuinely cool to watch Captain Cold and Heatwave fire their guns back to back and Firestorm absorb a nuke, and it’s the best vision of what the show will hopefully be providing on a week by week basis.

Thankfully, the episode doesn’t really come down from that high, or at least not for long. Just like last week, the show makes the wise decision to split the team up into different groups so the differing personalities can clash as the team searches for the dagger that killed Kendra and Carter the first time and a piece of Ray’s suit. Caity Lotz is a lot of fun in this episode, flirting with the younger, pot smoking version of Stein and taking down a bunch of henchmen while completely high. These are moments that would be ridiculous in Arrow and maybe a bit more plausible in Flash, depending on the episode. But here, her devil may care attitude and flirtatiousness (plus great fashion sense) are used perfectly as Stein and Jackson just sit back and let her do her thing. It’s just as well, because their reactions to everything she does are well worth seeing.

The Ray/Snart/Rory teamup works just as well. Of course, putting two thieves together is a bad idea, but putting them together with a guy as earnest as Ray is pretty much begging for trouble. Ray screws up often, but he means well, and Brandon Routh makes him endearing as he keeps bungling the mission. He and Wentworth Miller have a fun chemistry together, and the work that Miller and Dominic Purcell had on Prison Break is prevalent here. It adds some meta humor to their failed heist with Ray at Vandal Savage’s home.

This whole episode is pretty much a showcase for just how funny the show can be when it gets to let loose. While Lotz and Miller steal the show, the rest of the cast is game to match them. It can’t be said enough how great it is to have Victor Garber on the show as he grows increasingly more frustrated with his younger self as time goes on. While the emotional distress from Stein is well acted, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Jackson to say he’s selfless and kind, considering he was roofied and more or less forced into the whole time travel superhero gig a week ago.

If it weren’t for a few things, this episode would be pretty much perfect. It’s got great action, great character moments, and it feels like a marked improvement over its debut last week. Unfortunately, the dip in quality comes yet again from Kendra and Carter. They’re once again trying to reconnect and sift through Kendra’s old memories so they can find a way to beat Savage, but it feels like the show is trying to force her to be in love with him. That already sounds kinda bad, but it’s definitely not helped by there still not being much reason or evidence for Kendra to fall for him in the first place. The first time she remembers something big, Carter straight up tries to kiss her immediately afterwards, which isn’t cool. And there’s no emotional connection to really be made between them when we’ve already seen Kendra interact with someone she has clear and genuine chemistry with, so it hardly matters when Savage guts Carter near the end. If the two didn’t spend pretty much every scene they’re in attached at the hip and we got to see both characters process their past lives with the other characters, it would help (especially now that Kendra remembers her past lives), but we won’t know until Carter comes back.

Still, the uninteresting romance between the Hawks aside, this is a really fun episode of Legends of Tomorrow. If the show can keep up with this forward momentum and have just as much fun along the way the next 10 weeks are going to be a fun ride.

Additional Notes

• Jax: “People actually wore this crap?” Stein: “People smoked a lot of pot in the 70s.”
• Stein is very aware that his younger self thinks Sara is sexy, and I really hope she takes time to remind of him that.
• Stein: “I’m Professor Musk. Elon Musk.”
• “Let’s go smoke a doobie and rap about physics!”
• Sara: “I could be unconscious and still be able to kick the ass of a few rent-a-thugs from 1975.”