Legends of Tomorrow, “Last Refuge” recap

15 May

Welcome back! So the mission to stop Vandal Savage is running into some delays thanks to those pesky Time Masters. They sent a band of bounty hunters to kill them, and instead, they got themselves killed. And now, the newest plan to stop our heroes is by sending an assassin to kill them all…as their younger selves! So how do they stop a killer that can strike them anytime in their past? As you’ll discover, not as complicated a task as you may think…

Central City, 1990. We start off at the Time Masters’ big meeting place as we see some criminal being judged guilty of something, but instead of killing him right there, the Masters inform the criminal that their agent, Pilgrim, is already killing his younger self. We watch this poor guy disappear in a flash since he no longer exists, and Pilgrim, a lady time assassin, gets a new job: hunt down and kill the younger versions of Rip Hunter’s crew! So we get to a scene outside of the house of young Mick Rory, who is outside watching it burn to the ground. Pilgrim shows up behind him, ready to vaporize him, when Ray shows up in his ATOM suit and blasts her away.

Ray takes young Rory into the Waverider, and they leave him in a cargo room while we hear what the team is planning. The good news is this Omega Protocol has a finite limit: the hunter can only go to one specific point in the target’s timeline in order to avoid further contamination of the timeline, which is good, since they don’t want to spend the rest if this series’ run bouncing around saving their younger selves. They have managed to trace Pilgrim’s movements through the timeline, and it seems Pilgrim’s next stop is Starling City in 2007. So yeah, the next target is a teenage Sara!

“Just look at the flowers, Rory.”

Starling City, 2007. We head to 2007, and Quentin Lance’s precinct house in the middle of the day and the still haired daddy Lance is giving teenage Sara grief over some mess she got herself into. Pilgrim shows up and almost immediately starts blasting up the place, but the team manages to snatch up young Sara and makes her a roomie with young Rory (who likes her hair!) in that cargo room. But now there’s another problem in Pilgrim masking her movements so now, she could be killing them anytime. Well except Kendra, who will just get reincarnated, and Rip, because his influence is too tied into the timeline to kill him as a youngster. So yeah, panic time for everyone else.

While Sara is trying to keep young her and Rory from ending up in a vicious fight, Ray talks to Kendra. He’s about to propose to her…until he collapses in pain. Gideon analyzes he’s suffering internal injuries, probably due to an injury that’s affecting him in the past, which, I guess is a thing. It appears the anomaly is in 2014 Star City, so the Waverider makes its way there and fast.

Star City, 2014. Ray of 2014 is being tossed around his Palmer Tech lab by the Pilgrim as Rip and company arrive. Shooting her is a problem because she has some time bending powers that stop what’s attacking her, but not when it comes to surprise blasts, like when Rip sends her out the window using some of Ray’s prototype pulse blasting tech. Current Ray’s health starts to improve once past Ray gets sent to the hospital to recover, and as that happens, he proposes to Kendra and she accepts. I guess I should say “congrats”, but, meh.

Anyway, these attacks by the Pilgrim are getting harder to prevent, so Rip has a rather extreme solution: collect their infant selves before they can be attacked later in the timeline. This is of course a seriously dangerous solution, which we’ll get to later.

Baby Boom. While baby Snart and baby Stein are collected, Jax gets to see his baby self, but is feeling bittersweet about it. For one thing, his soldier father, Michael, died weeks after he was born, and never saw him. Well, he was wrong because Michael shows up, on a quick furlough to see his infant son. Jax has a talk with him (without revealing who he is, of course), and all the baby Legends are collected. Obviously keeping a nursery/loft in the Waverider cargo bay isn’t a long term solution, but Rip has one in mind. It’s a safe haven hidden in the time stream that he knows very well…because he grew up there as a kid.

“This place is hidden in space and time.” “You mean Vancouver, Rip?” “Sigh. Yes.”

The Refuge. The Waverider arrives at an unspecified mansion somewhere, and they are met by the headmistress of the house. She shows them into the mansion, which is an orphanage of sorts for future Time Masters. She assures Rip the children they brought will be safe from Pilgrim here, and he seems to believe that, while also noting a young boy running by (that’s not as creepy as it sounds, but we’ll get there). While there, Rory talks to young Rory about that fire that killed his parents. Young Rory thinks it was an accident because of his pyromaniac tendencies, but current Rory knows it wasn’t an accident.

With that aside, Gideon receives a call from the Pilgrim, who has given up trying to kill their past selves. Now she has a new plan: capturing people close to the team! Ray’s fiancé, Stein’s wife, Snart’s sister, Sara’s dad, and Jax’s dad are all her captive, and if they don’t surrender their younger selves to her, she’ll start killing their families. Rip agrees, but has a better solution: he’ll bring his younger self only, being if he’s killed then, the team will retroactively not exist. That seems acceptable, and coordinates for an exchange site are sent out.

The Weak Points. At this neutral exchange site (a futuristic looking warehouse, if there is such a thing), Rip and the headmistress are waiting with that little boy Rip was noting in the refuge. Pilgrim shows up with Jax’s dad and they make their exchange. But before Pilgrim can do anything, the entire team springs out of hiding and attacks her. She uses her time bending powers on all of them, freezing their swarming attacks around her. Then she feels a stabbing in her leg, and its young Rip knifing her, showing that he was more of a wild child than we believed. Young Rip gets clear as that distraction gets her hit with all these fire attacks and she gets turned to ashes.

The next big DC TV spinoff set up here: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow Babies.

Start The Clock. After freeing Pilgrim’s prisoners from her ship, they are planned to be dropped off from where they were snatched, and given a pill to forget what happened to them (which, seems like an odd solution, but go to the notes for why I got problems with that). Meanwhile, until this mess with the Time Masters is cleared up, the children will have to stay in the refuge. And Rory gives his younger self some advice about being better than him, Jax gives info to his dad that could save his life, and something regarding Kendra and Ray’s engagement, but…

Let’s get to the problem that our team is noticing. With their past selves not in the timeline, there’s an unfamiliarity with them by their loved ones. Right now, time is insolvent, and if those younger selves aren’t returned soon, the timeline will change irrevocably to where they won’t be there anymore. Which means now there’s little choice but to face Vandal Savage head on…in 2166!

–Comic book connections: Pilgrim is a character in DC Comics, albeit not a time hunting bounty hunter. In there, she’s a soldier who hunts vampires and other supernatural creatures.

–So, some “forget me” pills for their loved ones is fine, but what about the multitude of witnesses in the past that saw all of this stuff happen?

–Weird seeing Quentin Lance with hair again, albeit a really full head of hair.

–A really good job from Caity Lotz in playing young Sara, a decidedly different Sara from what we know Sara is now.

–“Oh, look at those cheeks!”

–“You better not drop my future criminal partner, or you answer to me.”

–“Come with me if you want to live. I always wanted to say that.”

–“Honey, its the dream of every father to keep their daughter locked up until they’re 30.”

That’s it for now, but feel free to comment below and come back next time for the recap to “Leviathan”…