Legends of Tomorrow, “Star City 2046” recap

26 Feb

Welcome back! So the last time we left our heroes, the Waverider was flying through the timestream when Chronos attacked. They escaped, but thanks to damage to the ship, they put down in a somewhat familiar place: Star City. Except the burned out hellscape they have landed on is Star City in 2046!

Welcome Back to Star City. The team is looking around the ghost town that is 2046 Star City, when a familiar hero in a green hood and a bow and arrow shows up. Sara announces who they are to who she thinks is Ollie, but it isn’t. The mystery archer starts attacking, but the team manages to get him to flee. So the good news is they can go, but need some parts to fix Gideon before they do. The bad news is the closest replacement in this era would be one made by Smoak Technologies, and who knows if its still in its main building.

Meanwhile, let’s just speed through this subplot regarding Jax and Ray’s interest in Kendra. Okay: Jax is into Kendra, and Stein accidentally gets Ray to think about courting her, but surprise, she’s not into any kind of dating right now, so both guys are kinda left in holding. See? One less subplot to worry about.

It’ll probably be 2046 until we get an African-American Green Arrow.

An Evening Stroll. Rip, Sara, Cold, and Heatwave start walking to the Smoak Tech building, and run across gangs fighting in the middle of the street. The mystery Green Arrow shows up and seems to get injured, which gets Sara to follow him. Rip tags along, while Cold and Heatwave decide to wander around and do some plundering. The two get surrounded by a gang, but Heatwave takes out their leader and decides to take charge of them, despite Cold’s objections. Someone definitely likes it here!

Sara finds this Green Arrow, and demands to know where Oliver Queen is. The archer says he died, or went missing when the city was taken over by an army. And that leader drops by to introduce himself: Deathstroke! Well, its not really the Deathstroke we know, but Slade Wilson’s son, Grant. Before we ask who did that deed with Slade to have a son, the mystery archer, Sara, and Rip make their escape.

Prodigal Sons. Once the three are to a safe place, Sara asks this Green Arrow for help getting into the Smoak Tech building to find what they need. The Green Arrow says all of the advanced Smoak Tech gear was moved by him to a familiar place to us. That place is current time Arrow HQ, which has seen better days, since it was abandoned after Grant outed Ollie as the Green Arrow prior to this event to conquer Star City called the Uprising. The three arrive to the trashed HQ and hear a familiar, older telling them to leave. Out from the darkness appears a gray haired, bearded, and one armed Oliver Queen! Wait, so this Green Arrow has spent the last 15 years looking for Ollie, but never looked in the one place he might be? Eh, maybe Green Arrow 2046 was busy.

“I HAVE FAILED MY LEFT ARM!”

The Old Queen. Ollie recognizes the new Green Arrow when he tells us his real name: John Diggle Jr.! He of course, now calls himself Connor Hawke, because, eh, some reason. Anyway, Sara asks what happened in this Uprising, like what happened to Felicity and her family. All that Ollie can say is that they’re “gone”. Because this particular future is not set, Sara and Ray hadn’t returned from when they left in 2016, which meant 15 years down the road, they weren’t there to prevent Grant from laying siege to Star City. They ask where this prototype Smoak Tech is, and Ollie tells them its in a warehouse nearby, just before giving them the “show yourself out” talk.

Meantime, Heatwave is enjoying being a top dog in this place so much that his talk of wanting to stay is kinda concerning Cold. Heatwave learns that Deathstroke is the de facto head honcho of all of them when Grant takes Heatwave’s gang to look for our heroic trio. Cold thinks they need to find them first, but Heatwave doesn’t. Things look like they’re gonna get nasty between the two, until Cold suggests they save their teammates, and then they can “talk”.

In Storage. Rip, Sara, and Connor arrive in the warehouse and start to look around. Sara is a bit rattled to hear what has happened in this future, but Rip reminds her that this future is only a possible one, not the actual one. As Rip finds what they’re looking for, Deathstroke’s goons arrive, and they all fight. Cold and Heatwave come in to knock out the rest of the goons, but Connor has went missing during this. Sara fears Deathstroke nabbed Connor, but right now, the priority is to install that tech in the Waverider. Cold and Heatwave decide to have that talk about Heatwave wanting to stay in this time, and because Heatwave turned his back on him, Cold knocks him out. Someone’s gonna be angry when they come to.

Cut back to the Waverider and they return, locking Heatwave up. He comes to in the holding cell and is not happy about getting sucker punched like that. Cold’s priorities are about taking down Vandal Savage, but Heatwave is more interested in just the plundering. So Heatwave agrees to play along, but very VERY reluctantly. Meanwhile, Sara wants to save Connor from being executed by Deathstroke, and Rip is reluctant to alter events here any more. Once Sara reminds him that they’re all here because Rip wants to save his family, he reluctantly gives her an hour to do something, or she’ll be left behind.

“Stick around, Leonard! We’re gonna slaughter the rest of One Direction just for kicks!”

The Emerald Archer Returns. Sara goes to Ollie back at the old HQ and asks for help to save Connor, and it takes a while to convince him he should, but she brought his bow and arrows from that warehouse, and, is that a cyborg arm among all that stuff in the HQ? Convenient. Anyway, Deathstroke is taking Connor to be executed in the same spot where he chopped off Ollie’s arm years ago. Sara and a cyborg arm Ollie in Green Arrow gear arrive and break things up. Before things look to get too intense, the rest of the team show up, with Rip agreeing to help fight. Ollie and Deathstroke fight, and with an assist from Connor, the two archers put down Deathstroke Jr. Connor is glad to see Ollie back as the Green Arrow, but Ollie assures Connor already has the job.

Rebuilding. At the old HQ, Sara says goodbye to Ollie and Connor, who know they have a lot to do in cleaning up Star City. The team gets ready to go now that repairs have been made to Gideon and the Waverider, and Heatwave’s the only one who is going to miss this place (and from the way he sounds, he really is not happy about it). So, the Waverider takes off to…well, we’ll see next episode!

–Comic book connections: One armed Oliver Queen is a reference to what happened to the character in Frank Miller’s seminal comic The Dark Knight Returns. Slade Wilson had a son that became part of the Teen Titans, which complicated his animosity with that super team, even with his son’s death some time later. Connor Hawke in the DCU was actually Oliver Queen’s son and took on the mantle of Green Arrow when Ollie was dead for some time. He got better.

–So Ollie had a cyborg arm all this time to use, and didn’t use it in the last fifteen years to fight Grant Wilson? Also, he’s kept that beard and hair from getting ratty and everything while he’s been in hiding. On the other hand, good job on getting that voice all old and crusty.

–Yeah, Mick’s desire to burn stuff is going to become a problem now, isn’t it?

–Yeah, Ray wasn’t blind to learning Jax was interested in Kendra.

–“Go to hell!” “Probably will.”

–“Where did you get that?” “eBay.”

–“I’m gonna call you Kenickie.”

–“…and she’s a pretty good welder.”

That’s it for now, but come back next week for the recap of “Marooned”…