Welcome back! The pursuit of Vandal Savage takes our heroes to 1986 Russia, where they discover Savage is trying to create his own Firestorm project! Things go from bad to worse as Stein, Atom, and Heatwave are captured, then dropped in an inescapable Russian gulag by Savage to finish the Russian Firestorm experiment. Can the rest of the team stop this experiment and save their teammates? Probably, but let’s see how…
Parlor Games. Doc Stein is having a conversation with Cisco about the Firestorm project at STAR Labs, and–whoa whoa! Didn’t we leave Stein in a Russian prison? Well yes, we did, but Valentina has drugged Stein and only after hearing Cisco being way too formal with him, does Stein realize what’s happening. He’s in Valentina’s lab, and refusing to talk any further to her or Savage (who has dropped by, finally) about Firestorm. But, they have ways to make him talk…
On the Waverider, Kendra has noticed Jax is shuddering in his hospital bed, still recovering from last episode’s injuries. He can feel Stein becoming panicked, and wants to rescue him. The team meets to discuss the break-in into the gulag, which is apparently impossible. So, Sara suggests getting in through other ways, namely the Bratva, the Russian mafia. Kendra and Jax want to go, but are benched by Rip to avoid ending up in possession of Savage. But, Rip wants to talk to Sara privately, and he shows her something very scary: an army of evil Firestorms laying waste to 2016 Star City! If Stein gives up his knowledge of Firestorm, this will be the only reality they will come back to. So Rip tells her if Stein seems likely to reveal that secret, to kill him! Yikes!
“Stick with me, Ray. I’ve busted out of a few prisons before!”
Contigency. First thing our team of Rip, Sara, and Cold does is visit a Russian bathhouse to talk to a Bratva higher-up. They have a problem with Savage too, and after some “negotiating” (meaning a fight), offer the team a way in through black market goods being smuggled regularly into the prison. The team heads back to the Waverider to prep for going in, and there Cold calls Sara on that extra little mission Rip assigned her to. She calls Cold on really just wanting to get only Heatwave out, but Cold’s quick to point out he’s not going to kill his friend if it comes to it. Weird when an assassin is getting morality lessons from a thief.
At the prison, Ray and Heatwave are getting put into the gulag, and the former’s Boy Scout attitude is not winning any new friends, let alone Heatwave’s sympathy. Then, while grabbing lunch outside in the prison yard, Ray’s inquisitive nature gets him on the business end of a beating by other inmates, while Heatwave…well he gets a lighter to stare at, because, duh, he likes fire. Ray comes to in the yard a while later, and is dragged back to Heatwave’s cell, where he gives Heatwave grief for not helping stop the beating. Ray’s loyalty to teammates is clearly stronger than Heatwave. Too bad Ray is given little time to rest before they both are taken away for…well, Stein hasn’t been cooperating with Valentina’s drug torture, so Savage has his own method to play.
Two-Way Communication. On the Waverider, Jax is thinking of a way he can help Stein out, when Kendra has her own idea. If Jax can sense Stein, doesn’t it work the other way? So Jax takes a page from Looper and scrawls a message on his arm, which Stein sees appear on his arm in his cell: “WE’RE COMING”. Maybe not fast enough, because Savage has brought in shirtless Ray and Heatwave to be strung up and get electroshocked. Before the torture goes up to being hit with a hammer with Heatwave, Ray starts talking trash to the torturer, and takes what was coming to Heatwave. Stein relents and agrees to help Valentina finish the Firestorm project.
Meanwhile, Cold and Sara sneak into the gulag, and Cold splits up to find Heatwave and Sara is left to find Stein. Stein however, is being taken to the lab, as Sara tries to rescue him, but gets cut off fighting soldiers before he’s taken into a far more fortified area of the facility. And Gideon points out there’s a 99% chance that dark Firestorm army future can happen now. Uh-oh.
Hey, Rip! When you walk away from an explosion, you do it in slow-mo!
Deliveries. Rip is stressing over this Gideon newsflash, when Kendra and Jax want in to save Stein. They’re willing to break in to disable the power grid to the prison, but they need Rip to help by dropping them into the field where the fuse box is. In the prison, a disguised Cold gets to Heatwave’s cell, and finds him not willing to leave Ray behind, because of that beating he took in Heatwave’s place. So what to do? Well, Heatwave is carrying Ray out on his back, is what!
In Valentina’s lab, she gets to hear how the Soviet Union falls apart in a few years, but that only fuels he desire to finish this project (with an extra fission core ready to go!). Then she sees that Jax message on Stein’s arm and pieces together the missing part of solving the Firestorm matrix is using Stein! And she wants to merge with Stein, even though he makes implicitly clear they need that stabilizer from the future to keep that matrix from collapsing. But she’s all, that’s for weak Americans, not a strong Russian woman like me!” Well, she was warned.
Prison Break. While Valentina is getting juiced up in the fission core room, Stein is finally being moved from the lab to there, with Sara training a sniper rifle on him. Rip calls her to tell her to abort, but she doesn’t want to risk failing with so much at stake. Surprisingly, its Cold who manages to talk her into not pulling the trigger on Stein. Meanwhile, Jax is dropped into the field with the fuse box, and makes a quick dash across (pulling his knee out in the process) to switch off the prison’s power. And Kendra is placing bombs in the lab to destroy the Firestorm research when Savage shows up. But Rip is there too, and as Kendra leaves, Rip recollects that watch taken from him in 1975, before hearing Savage say how he’ll remember the faces of Rip’s wife and son just fine without it. And then Rip gets out, and blows up the lab with Savage in it. But obviously, Savage will be back.
Very rare to see a woman be joyous over being set on fire.
So Valentina, against Stein’s crystal clear warnings, merges her Firestorm juiced body with his (and try writing that without feeling you wrote some erotic slash fanfiction), and tries it out on some inmates. Jax reaches out to the imprisoned Stein to take back control and remind him, no matter what happened with Ronnie, Stein and him are partners now. Valentina and Stein separate, and surprise, she’s not stabilized enough to stay together without melting down. All our heroes peel out of the prison just as Valentina explodes, taking most of the prison (and escaping prisoners) with her!
A Detour In Star City. So with the Russian Firestorm project dead (along with whoever was in the blast radius of Valentina’s nuclear death), the Waverider is back in the timestream, and our gang is celebrating with some vodka, courtesy of Cold’s pit stop during the prison escape. Before we can rest with knowing Sara and Cold are (more than?) besties, Chronos pops up to attack the ship. Chronos’ ship gets disabled, and the Waverider is knocked out of the timestream. Rip warns everyone that means there’s no telling where they’ll end up.
Where they end up is in the future, 2046 to be exact. And Ray and Sara recognize the apocalyptic city block they have arrived in as Star City! Then a familiar deep voice is heard: its the Green Arrow, dressed in familiar clothes! Ray and Sara say hello to their familiar friend, and then see the man under the hood isn’t Oliver Queen, but an African-American man who doesn’t recognize them! Welcome to the future, guys!
–Comic book connections: There is a evil Firestorm that existed in the DCU called Deathstorm, but unlike the recent Flash episodes on Earth-2, was not Ronnie Raymond or Dr. Stein.
–Instead of some 80’s tunes for the action scenes, the closest we get to a needle drop is Vera Lynn’s “Until We Meet Again”? Well, it does come after a mushroom cloud explosion, so its okay.
–Instead of Palmer Industries on that Star City building, its Smoak Technologies! What exactly happened?
–Lots of beefcake this episode, with Rip, Ray, and Heatwave shirtless. Good times for lovers of in-shape guys, and in Heatwave’s case, guys with burn scarring all over their body.
–Heatwave apologizes for threatening that Russian colonel with going “Rocky IV” on his ass this way: “I forgot Ivan Drago lives at the end of that movie.” By the way, did Heatwave kill that colonel, because I don’t remember it.
–“I have a good hairdresser.”
–“This must be where they keep the VIPs.”
–“Barry Allen who?”
–“More drinking, less thinking.”
That’s it for now, but come back next week for the recap of “Star City 2046″…
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NerdLush 
I counted it as Mick killing him when he locked in the cell with the shotcaller… BMOC seemed pretty excited to have the prissy guard all to himself.