Legends of Tomorrow, “The Magnificent Eight” recap

18 Apr

Howdy, pardners! Last we left our gang, they was handling getting bushwhacked by one of their own, and tried to, ahem, what’s this word? “Re-hay-bill-lie-tate” him. Dang big words. Anyway, they gots problems besides that, like them pesky Time Masters sending hunters from the future to hunt them down. Those Time Masters are as pesky as ticks on a horse’s ass, ain’t they?

(Your regular recapper, from a distance) Hey, who are you? What are you doing in this recap? Don’t go anywhere, I’m calling the cops!

YOU GOTTA CATCH ME FIRST, LAWDOG!

(rustling noise as crazy ol’ western recapper escapes)

Sigh. Anyway, what he said.

Salvation, 1871. The Waverider touches down outside the town of Salvation, but why? Well, in order to figure out how to deal with the Hunters that are supposed to be chasing them through time, the team is holing up in a temporal “blind spot” to the Time Masters. The team minus Rip wants to go visiting the town for a bit, which, when has that ever caused any trouble, besides ALL THE TIME? Rory agrees to chaperone them, which sounds like an even worse idea. So, after a quick change of clothing, our team decides to check out the local saloon and grab a few drinks.

Barroom Brawl. At the saloon, Kendra bumps into a woman and has a sudden flash of a cabin in the woods. Stein reveals he’s an expert card player while playing a poker game. Too much an expert, because Stein’s winning streak irks a ornery player to pull a gun on him. But Snart guns the player down, and it starts a massive barroom fight, which is broken up by a guy with a half scarred face. That man is Jonah Hex, and he escorts the group out, asking where, and more to the point, when are they from. This is a surprise to the team, as is Hex’s request to see Rip Hunter!

“Serves me right for shaving with a torch.”

They all return to the Waverider, and yeah, Rip and Hex seem to know each other, and are slightly cagey towards each other, especially regarding the mention of a town called “Calvert” they last met at. The team tells of what happened in the saloon, and Hex adds a piece of bad news: the guy Snart plugged was part of the infamous Stillwater Gang, who have a tenuous agreement with Salvation of “we get what we want, and you townsfolk don’t die”. Leaving the scene would be a better idea as their interaction in this timeline might have signaled the Hunters to them, but Ray and most of the group feel the need to protect the town from the Stillwater Gang. Ray approaches the local sheriff, who promptly quits his post upon hearing the Stillwater Gang is coming for blood, and leaves his badge with Ray! So, Ray, I mean, “Sheriff John Wayne” has to clean up this mess.

There’s A New Sheriff In Town. At the Waverider, Kendra decides to follow up on that weird flash by heading into the woods, with Sara tagging along. They stumble upon the cabin Kendra saw in her vision, and a crusty older lady, the same she ran into at the saloon, guarding the place. It’s not until Kendra says it that it makes sense: the lady is a past life of Kendra’s!

Past is Prologue. While hanging out at the saloon, Stein becomes interested in one of the working girls, and learns she has a little boy who is deathly ill. He knows the era’s medicine won’t save the boy’s life, so he goes to swipe some meds from the Waverider. Rip’s not for meddling in the past like that, but that’s when Stein and Ray reveal what they learned from Gideon about “Calvert”. It was a town in Oklahoma that got razed & burned by a local gang of criminals a few years earlier, just after Rip had left it, spending a long time there. Stein takes off, and just to get this extraneous subplot out of the way, he saves the boy’s life…a boy named H.G. Wells! So yeah, that happens.

At the cabin, Kendra gets to hear about how her past self had met their version of Carter, and went into isolation after he got killed by Savage. Oh, she had lovers that weren’t Hawk-related, but those relationships ended really badly for those guys, which gives Kendra a lot to think about when it comes to Ray. By the way…

Who has six thumbs and won’t have much to do this episode? THESE GUYS!

The Posse. Jonah Hex suggests a posse with the future guys to round up the head of the Stillwater gang, Jeb Stillwater, to knock the gang outta commission. Especially since the gang would come back and really trash the town without protection from the team. Everyone but a reluctant Rip goes along, and the posse ambushes the gang’s camp. They get lucky with capturing Jeb, but the gang manages to capture Jax in the posse’s escape.

It’s after the posse gets back to the Waverider that Rip gets on their ass on interfering with history, especially since he tried to avoid doing that by leaving Calvert before it got razed. Yeah, he knew Calvert was going to be wiped out and didn’t prevent that massacre, which has the response of Hex slugging Rip. So in order to get Jax back and get the gang away from Salvation, Hex suggests it be solved the Old West way: a gun duel. Ray volunteers for the duel, but its Rip who steps up to be the duelist.

High Noon. A few hours later, with Kendra and Sara back, the team meets up in Salvation with the Stillwater gang and the imprisoned Jax. Jeb ends up being the other contestant in this duel, and as quick as the duel is set up…it ends with Rip gunning down Jeb in the draw of guns. The gang releases Jax and runs out of town. So, a day’s job well done, huh?

Like its just bad timing, a trio of time Hunters drops in and starts attacking the team and the town. The team fights and ends up killing the Hunters pretty quickly, but not before Rory hears that the Time Masters have initiated Omega Protocol, which doesn’t sound good. Then again, these Hunters were supposed to be bad news, but got their ass handed to them an episode later, so the Time Masters aren’t having the best track record with containing problems.

“Okay, we’re here for our quick horrible deaths!”

The Good, The Bad, and the Durn Ugly. The team leaves Salvation, and it seems Hex has kinda mended fences with Rip for letting a town and its residents get killed and all. Also, Kendra and Ray think on the dread warning of Hawklady’s past life, and think, “eh, we’ll be fine, right?”. But the team has a problem with this Omega Protocol thing. It’s basically the Time Masters sending their deadliest Hunter, a girl named Pilgrim, to kill the team…but their younger selves!

Cut to a young pyromaniac Rory burning down a house, and Pilgrim walking up behind him with a gun pointed at his head. So we get to meet the Young Legends of Tomorrow next episode, huh?

–Comic book connections: Jonah Hex is a longtime DCU cult favorite, inspiring a recent meh film with Josh Brolin, and a pretty good comic series in the 2000’s.

–Turns out in the battle between Sara and Rory of who can drink more, Sara wins.

–Ray offers to fix Jonah Hex’s scarred face, which the grunt response is a “no”.

–Miranda Laws didn’t exist back then, so little need to read them capturing Jeb, as Snart says.

–So who wants to bet this Ray/Kendra thing is about to crash and burn hard with that whole cursed talk?

–“You getting all native on us, Haircut?”

–“Did you just shoot someone for me?”

–“Feel fine I.”

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