LEGENDS OF TOMORROW Season 2×01, “Out of Time” recap

24 Oct

Welcome back! Last season, our dysfunctional team of time-traveling heroes had managed to defeat the immortal Vandal Savage, and by proxy of blowing up things, became de facto guardians of the timestream. That mission gets delayed by the arrival of a man called Rex Tyler, a member of the Justice Society of America, who warns them they are in danger if they continue on. What danger, you ask? Well, we waited awhile, so let’s find out!

Watery Grave. We open on current day Star City as some guy is rushing through security to see the mayor, Mr. Green Arrow himself, Oliver Queen. The man, who introduces himself as historian Nate Heywood, need Ollie’s help finding Sara Lance, Ray Palmer, and the rest of the gang. He thinks they are traveling through time, based on the fact they, well, aren’t very good at covering up their adventures in the timestream. But he says they are in trouble, based on historical evidence that a ship resembling the Waverider was spotted in the ocean outside 1942 New York and submerged just before a reported atomic blast happened underwater. Um, all of that sounds bad, so Ollie’s and Nate take a small submersible to outside New York, where they find…a damaged Waverider.

Despite this ship’s damage, the ship’s interior isn’t flooded, so Nate and Ollie investigate, only to find one person on board: a stasis held Mick Rory (Heatwave). After freeing Mick, the duo asks what happened to the rest of the team. He mentions in the six months since they were last in the present day, they have been busy, dealing with “aberrations” in the timeline. He mentions things started to go wrong around the time they had to save Louie XIII from being assassinated…

French Kiss-Off. That mission had the Legends stopping some future tech armed assassins from killing Louie XIII, and not very covertly as you can imagine. So besides their flashy save and Sara secretly romancing the Queen of France during all of this (!), Captain Rip Hunter is not happy about this. But the team is used to it by now, and not that it matters, because that lecture is interrupted by a “timequake”, an strong timestream caused by a massive aberration in the timeline. That aberration is the destruction of New York by an atomic bomb in 1942! But this news is troubling for a whole other reason.

You see, according to Mick, six months ago when that Rex Tyler guy warned them about being in danger, he specifically said NOT to go back to 1942 or they would be doomed. And then Rex and his replica Waverider vanished mysteriously, which, not reassuring either. But what are the after-effects of this event? Well, the event drags World War II on for several more years and with millions more dead before it ends with the Allies winning anyway. But still, this seems like more a reason to stop this bomb from going off and go to 1942, warnings of doom be damned, yeah? Well, as Rory says, Rex was right.

Mick: “Sigh. Blouses.”

New York, 1942. The team arrives in 1942 New York, where they discover why an atomic bomb may have gone off: Nazis kidnapped Albert Einstein! Also, Sara has been stalking Damien Darhk, the creep who murdered her sister, Laurel (the Black Canary), last season on Arrow, and guess where Gideon has located a sighting of Mr. Darhk? While Jax is left to work on the ship (a plot point, believe it or not), Sara goes off to follow her lead while being secretly followed by Ray. And Sara finds Darhk making a secret deal with Nazis for an unfinished atomic bomb, which means she has to hold on revenge for Laurel at the moment. Ray knows she wants to kill Darhk in the past, which might save Laurel in the future, but he doesn’t want her to get clouded in revenge while they’re on this dicey mission.

Meanwhile, Rip, Stein, and Mick are attending a symposium with Einstein and find, he is quite the cad. Oh, and there are some Nazis dressed as U.S. soldiers following him. So they kidnap Einstein and take care of his Nazi pursuers. So, problem solved now, right? Well, according to Gideon, the atomic bomb going off in New York still happens. But how?

Stealing The Ex. Well, it’s true Einstein has some knowledge of atomic weapons, but unfortunately so does his ex-wife, Mileva Maric, who was just kidnapped by the Nazis and Darhk. They detect radiation from the bomb (which is not that hard, considering not much could irradiate like that in 1942), and they find Maric on the docks being escorted by the Nazis to…a U-boat? The team jumps in to save Maric, but things go bad when Mick takes a bullet to the side and Sara gets distracted by trying to kill an unaware of any Laurel sibling Darhk. What’s worse is the bomb has been finished and is with Darhk and his Nazi buddies on the escaped U-boat!

The team drops off Einstein and Maric, and makes their way to find the U-boat. Also, Rip asks Jax if he’s finished working up a little program he calls “Timescatter”. Well, let’s hope he finishes whatever this “Timescatter” thing is, because…

I know we have to have sexy characters on the CW, but this seems a bridge too far.

Explosive Results. The Waverider goes underwater to find the U-boat, who have rigged the atomic bomb to a torpedo. This seems like a bad idea already because the Waverider isn’t really built for underwater combat, and after a regular torpedo hit, isn’t doing all that well. So when the nuclear torpedo is launched, its decided to throw the Waverider in its way. Since no one knows if the ship will survive, Rip asks Jax if that “Timesplitter” program is ready. It is, so Rip activates it and the crew, sans Rip and Mick, vanish.

The program was a last ditch thing to abandon the ship, and it has sent the crew to various points in the timeline, as opposed to the most logical thing which is to send them back to the present day, but you know, reasons, I guess. Mick is too injured to survive the trip, so Rip puts him in stasis, and…well, the bomb hits the ship. Back to the present, it looks like the Waverider is still operational enough to travel, so Mick decides to go after his buddies, with Nate in tow, while Ollie gets back to his own show. So where is everybody?

Bringing The Team Back Together. We find our team in disparate places: Ray is stuck in the prehistoric era with dinosaurs chasing him, Stein and Jax are jesters in medieval times, and Sara is about to be burned as a witch in Witch Trial era Salem. After a brief save in all those periods by Mick and Nate, everyone’s back together…except Rip. He seems to have went missing after the torpedo hit in New York, and, oh wait, whatever happened to Darhk after that failed attempt to blow up that city? Well, the Nazis are unhappy with Darhk and his partner screwing up, and that’s when we meet Darhk’s partner. Coming out of a streak of light that kills the whole crew, its Eobard Thawne, also known as the Reverse Flash! He still exists? Damn you, Barry Allen!

We traded in a Time Master for random historian guy? I mean, bring the Hawkpeople back if you must, but really?

Final Message. Back on the Waverider, Gideon has found a final message from Rip to be given to the crew in case of his demise. In it, he praises his dysfunctional shipmates and hopes they decide to continue protecting the timestream from evil. Well, they start by getting Einstein better security by involving him in a little heard of operation called the Manhattan Project and give Maric some security by having ol’ Albert give his ex some credit with his research. So, the team decides after clearing that up, to get back to the Waverider and get out of 1942…

…and then a bunch of costumed people show up, among them one who looks like Rex Tyler and one who looks like Vixen from Arrow, calling themselves the Justice Society of America, and that our heroes are not going anywhere! Looking forward to a quiet reasonable conversation between both groups next time.

–Comic book connection: The original Justice Society of America was one of the first ever superhero teams in comic book history, with its original lineup consisting of the Flash (Jay Garrick, not the Barry Allen Flash), Wildcat, Hourman (Rex Tyler), Dr. Midnite, and the Alan Scott version of Green Lantern.

–I’m really suspicious of this Nate guy. Something is really up with him.

–I know Sara is a bit more free-spirited than her teammates, but maybe not lean into her sleeping with almost every person she runs into on these missions like in this episode, okay? She almost got burned at the stake for that!

–So what did happen to Rip? I have a bad feeling we may get that answer later than sooner.

–“I knew we we’re in trouble when Rip made us wear blouses so we could save the King of France.”

–“Never been to a nerd party before.”

–“In my defense, they were happily corrupted.”

–“I knew you never liked me.”

That’s it for now, but come back soon for the recap of “The Justice Society of America”…