Legends of Tomorrow, “Left Behind” recap

1 Apr

Welcome back! The team barely had time to deal with putting Rory/Heatwave on ice before launching into a mission in 1958. As they are about to leave to follow another lead on Vandal Savage, our ol’ party crasher Chronos shows up, and the Waverider takes off, leaving Ray, Sara, and Kendra behind. But hey, they got a timeship, so no need to wait long for the rest of the team to pick them up, right?

Split Up. On the Waverider, we see Rip, Snart, Stein and Jax being shot at by Chronos, who has boarded the ship. Rip orders Stein and Jax to escape in the dropship, while he and Snart head back to the bridge, which Chronos has taken control of and sent the Waverider into the timestream. While Rip and Snart fight Chronos on the bridge, Stein and Jax say, “forget running”, and head up into the bridge as Firestorm. Rip is knocked out briefly, but Snart and Chronos are gone, and the ship is left hurtling through the timestream.

Back in 1958 Harmony Falls, Sara, Ray, and Kendra are stuck waiting. After a little bit, Sara suggests that whatever happened to the ship or team, whether they got abandoned or not, they need to find a place to lay low in case Savage is looking for them. They set up in an apartment, and spend the next few weeks waiting, as Ray devises a makeshift time beacon to let the Waverider know where they are. When it looks like that the beacon is not quite working, Sara sees this as the rest of the team never coming back for them, and decides to take off to somewhere that feels like home. Well, what has happened to the Waverider?

“OH DAMMIT THAT’S THE HAND I WIPE WITH!”

Time Flies By. Rip manages to keep the Waverider from getting destroyed in the timestream, but Chronos and Snart are unable to be tracked. Gideon lets the rest of them know a signal from a time beacon has been found…in 1960! When we catch up with Ray and Kendra, they have spent the last TWO YEARS pulling down jobs and getting closer as a couple. In fact, its at a outdoor picnic where Ray is about to propose to Kendra that the beacon starts working, and the Waverider pops in.

Obviously late by a few years, Kendra asks why can’t the Waverider head back to 1958 and pick them up there, and Rip explains that picking them up before events have happened could cause rifts in time. Which is weird, because by Rip taking people from the past for his mission, he should have done that already, but let’s not think on that too much. Anyway, now all they need to do is pick up Sara and, um, where is she anyway, since Ray and Kendra don’t know? Cut to 1960 Nanda Parbat and the home of the League of Assassins, where she is working under Ra’s al Ghul, and his cute little daughter, Talia (!). At least she found a place to work she’s been at before!

The good thing about reapplying for an organization of killers in the past: you know all the entry questions beforehand.

Picking Up Some Things. On the Waverider, Ray asks to pick up his ATOM suit, still at their apartment, and its during this talk it seems Ray is reluctant to leave his life in 1960, unlike Kendra, who’s ready to go. This throws Ray off a bit, but no matter, because he gets the suit and a few things, and after some brainstorming, realize Sara would have made her way back into the League of Assassins. So to Nanda Parbat we go, and we’re still left with one question: why did Chronos nab Snart instead of Rip when he had the chance? Why, indeed…

On Chronos’ ship, Snart finds himself chained up as Chronos notes he has also heard the time beacon from 1960. Snart tries to figure out why he’s still alive, and that’s when Chronos gets all really cryptic with his talk like Snart should know who it is, and takes off his helmet to reveal…Rory! Um, we got some explaining to do.

Catching Up On Lost Time. Well, we find out that Snart didn’t kill Rory at all, but left him behind, planning to pick him up when the mission was over. But the Time Masters found Rory first, and drafted him into becoming Chronos. And as to why capture Snart? Oh, just so Rory has someone to watch as he kills Snart’s little sister in multiple times, over and over again. DAMN, that’s some cold ass plan of vengeance. But that will be after they follow the Waverider to Nanda Parbat.

So now we know why Chronos is so trigger happy all the time.

Speaking of, the team is sneaking into the place to retrieve Sara. Rip goes ahead to her quarters, and wakes her up. Instead of a “thanks for coming back for me”, she takes him down, and calls the guards, and they surround the team. Good thing Ray has been there before, because he knows the best places to lay back in those cells!

Prisoners of the Demon. With the team locked up and likely going to be executed for trespassing, they have to ask why Sara would betray them. Rip thinks this may have to do with a “time drift”, a disorder that happens to people stuck too long in a time foreign to their own. That also explains Ray’s reluctance to leave, and as we learn from Kendra, why she hasn’t “hawked out” in years. Knowing they need to escape, Rip decides to use his knowledge of the League to ask for a meeting with Ra’s. Once Rip gets his audience with Ra’s, he wishes for trial by combat to get Sara back, and Ra’s chooses Sara as his champion to fight. Seeing how horrible that fight would go for him, and maybe slyly, decides to choose Kendra to fight for him. She agrees with Rip, thinking they need someway to reach Sara.

Chronos lands his ship outside the League lair, and leaves Snart behind. Snart manages to get to his ice gun and tries to use it to freeze the shackles to shatter. Only problem is he freezes his right hand instead, and decides then to BREAK HIS FROZEN HAND OFF! OWWWWW!

Helping Hands. So Sara and Kendra have their big fight, and even as Kendra remembers how to stretch her wings, Sara still is able to best her. Before Sara can deliver the killing blow, Kendra reminds her she’s the White Canary, which snaps her out of her time delirium. Then Chronos comes in, attacking everyone, and Ra’s is convinced by Rip that they can help fight him. The team together actually stops Chronos, but before they can finish him off, Snart shows up, cradling his frozen hand stump, telling the team who it is. Obviously the team is shocked because they clearly thought Snart killed Rory (although he leaves that little loophole that he never said he did that, but everyone implied he did it), so they knock him out.

“Pay attention, daughter. In the future, she’ll come back, leave, then die, causing a convoluted chain of events that will have me killed by a man who exercises on a salmon ladder. It makes sense. Sort of. Trust me on this.”

After Rory is taken away, there’s still the matter of Sara back with the League. Ra’s, either because he sees Sara is not in the right frame if mind to stay in the League or because she helped fight a time leaping bounty hunter, releases her from her League obligations. In return, Sara warns Ra’s to keep her daughter–not Talia, but his future daughter, Nyssa–away from going to an island called Lian Yu around 2008 or so. Sure he’s just okay with hearing he’s gonna live that long.

Regeneration. Back at the Waverider, Rory is locked up, and is threatening to kill them all, yadda yadda yadda. So now what do they do with their former teammate and adversary that’s been chasing them since this mission started? Well, with his knowledge of the Time Masters’ plans to catch them, Rip suggests “reforming” Rory. Um, you tried exile and almost murder on him and he just came back worse, so what’s gonna happen with making Rory a, well not stable, but working member of the team again?

While Rip uses some future tech to grow Snart a new hand lickety-split (“Why didn’t you say you had this before?” “Because none of you has lost a limb before.”), Ray and Kendra patch up that awkward time caused by leaving 1960 and seem to be back to being a couple. Rip gets the team together and says they got another way to get Savage, but its one he didn’t want to use because of how dangerous it was. The plan is to go to 2146. As in the Vandal Savage controlled 2146! Well, things are gonna get really interesting next episode!

–Comic book connections: Talia is the more recognizable of the children of Ra’s al Ghul in the DCU, often being a nemesis and love interest to Batman. Oh, and they had a kid together who eventually became Robin. It’s complicated, okay?

— The future has a list of every League member (a Shadow Record) in existence. Record keeping is that good with the Time Masters.

–It seems Rory had a pretty nasty recruitment and training process before he became Chronos, talking about “dying and being reborn again and again”.

–In cheesy Sci-Fi tropes, watching the cast fake fumble around in a set that can’t move was a Star Trek worthy moment.

–Ray meets Bill Gates’ dad as a student in his science class in 1960. The people you meet when you don’t try.

–“As an Eagle Scout with 100 merit badges–no big deal…”

–“Lucky flower vase?”

–“I think we all wish you had this moment to yourselves.”

–“Sigh. I miss Netflix.”

That’s it for now, so comment below and come back next week for the recap of “Progeny”…