Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1, Episode 6: Star City 2046
Trying to get back into superhero shows! Let's catch up with these shows one by one. Legends of Tomorrow first, then Flash, Arrow and Agent Carter in that order.
The previous five episodes of Legends of Tomorrow have been sorely rooted in set pieces in the past, and this is the first episode to really explore the sci-fi time travel timey wimey concept and strand our heroes in Star City of 2046. There has been a crapton of DC-comics themed apocalyptic future stories featuring a successor to one of DC's big names. The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Beyond are probably two of the most well-known ones, though I know there are a lot more out there. And that's not to mention people who travel from the future to the past like your Reverse-Flashes and Abra Kadabras. So it's really exciting to have this episode travel to the future, a nice change of pace from the 'let's try our best not to change the past' vibe we've been having throughout the past five episodes. Even if the show and Team Legends flagrantly disobey and detonate nuclear bombs here and there.
The black Green Arrow that appeared in the final scene of the previous episode is, as everyone expected, the CW-universe version of Connor Hawke, a.k.a. Green Arrow II, who took up the mantle of Green Arrow after Oliver's death (disappearance here). Now beyond the fact that Connor is the successor to the Green Arrow name, he really has not much in common with his comic-book counterpart. This version of Connor Hawke is really John Diggle Jr, a character which in present-day Arrow hasn't existed yet unless Lyla is (or will be) pregnant with a second baby we don't know of. Diggle Sr has apparently perished, and a gigantic uprising led by a new Deathstroke -- Grant Wilson, Slade Wilson's son -- basically tore down Star City into, well, a post-apocalyptic gang-ruled wasteland. We get hints of what happened, with some hints telling us that John Diggle died in the battle, Oliver's identity was outed and the Arrowcave attacked by an army, a repeat of the whole Mirakuru soldier uprising but far more successful...
Neither Connor nor Grant really had a chance to really shine with so many characters thrown into the mix, including an old, one-armed (but finally bearded!) Oliver Queen. Connor's got a couple of interesting lines, but is mostly a good-hearted if rather bland successor. He's likeable and that's about what you expect from the limited screentime the dude's got. Grant Wilson is basically, well, a generic psychopathic villain, who, while entertaining enough as a standalone villain, isn't really up to par with Arrow's Slade Wilson. It's your standard 'recruit the retired hero' affair with Oliver Queen, and Sara gets the spotlight as she chooses to fight for this future despite Rip insisting that this future is only a 'possible' one.
I think that the shop's disregard of the whole 'damage to the timeline' thing is one of the biggest weakness, story-telling wise. It's all well and good and dramatic to, say, leave behind the Russian prison after killing the metahuman scientist and blowing up what amounts to a nuclear bomb, but are you seriously telling me that didn't leave a gigantic impact on history when episode two demonstrates that the innocuous act of talking to young Martin Stein for ten minutes very nearly annulled Stein's wedding had Rip Hunter not intervened?
And Rip somehow insisting that this particular future is not set in stone and hasn't settled down or whatever yet just sounds hollow in the face of Rip's own crusade to reverse the future where Vandal Savage kills his family. It's just odd... which futures are set in stone, and which aren't? I wished they took some time to really think out the rules of time travel and altering the timeline, instead of just bending the rules as they see fit.
Another weakness of this episode, really, is how little Connor, Old!Oliver and Grant's relationships are established. We get hints here and there, but we don't really see them develop. I wished we had cut the inanely long and pointless high school drama on a spaceship bullshit with Jax, Ray, Kendra and Stein. While it's adorable to see Stein flip out thanks to his mental connection with Jax, and Stein absolutely failing to be an intel-gathering wingman... does anyone really want to see this as opposed to some development on this interesting future-Arrow setting in 2046? It's the same complaints I had with the Earth-2 two-parter from the Flash, except that we're almost certain to get some more information about Earth-2. Not so regarding this future Star City.
And it's not like placing Jax, Ray and Kendra in a romantic triangle works at all. It isn't as random or egregious as Jay/Caitlin from the Flash, but romance only works if it's a natural extension of the characters' relationships, and there is none of that here. There is no prior romantic or attraction relationship between Jax and Kendra, or Ray and Kendra, unless you count Ray running around in Kendra's bloodstream zapping chunks of daggers as romantic. And the fact that Cisco is not mentioned, and several other characters acknowledge that Kendra is fresh off Carter's death turns this whole plot point into a tasteless affair.
Honestly, Ray's a big missed opportunity. You'd think he would be as emotional as Sara in seeing future Star City fucked up like it was, but he's far more concerned about the stupid high school plotline.
Meanwhile, while Sara is dealing throughout the episode with her 'I NEED TO SAVE MY FRIENDS DESPITE THIS BEING THE FUTURE' plotline which is... serviceable, if a bit dumb, Rip goes on with yet another variation of 'okay I'm done with you selfish fellows who don't listen to proper orders' and threatens to leave Sara stranded in 2046... despite him tottering about the importance of not messing with the timeline. Yeah.
Captain Cold and Heat Wave provide some much-needed fun. I thought Heat Wave randomly really, really wanting to be the gang boss of a motorcycle gang in a post-apocalyptic city is a bit odd and came out of nowhere, and it really could've used some buildup how much Heat Wave loved the anarchy and chaos that has enveloped future Star City... but the resulting drama, where Heat Wave gives in to his baser instinct whereas Captain Cold tries and fails to justify his newfound heroism with excuses of striking big and pride and whatnot is certainly entertaining. It's nice to see Heat Wave being developed as a character, and more importantly, to see Captain Cold and Heat Wave have a wedge driven in between them in ways that I don't think have received page-time in the comics.
On the other side, though, it's a nice little break from the over-arching Vandal Savage plot, and neither Savage nor Chronos make an appearance here. The crisis is wholly limited to the future Arrow story, and it already feels lacking without having even more elements tacked onto it. Despite all my rantings, this episode is honestly really quite entertaining to watch, and once you get over the fact that Legends of Tomorrow prefers to sacrifice big logic questions regarding time travel in favour of a more entertaining episode-by-episode plot, it's a far more enjoyable show. As it is, it's a really fun trip-to-the-future in regards to the Arrow show, whilst expanding several characters -- most namely the Rogues.
The DC Easter Egg Column:
Well, naturally there's a couple of Easter Eggs in this future Star City, and like the Earth-2 episodes it's easier to list them instead of awkwardly working them into prose.
- Connor Hawke, in the comics, was actually the son of Oliver Queen, who took up the mantle of Green Arrow after Oliver's death. While Oliver does have a son in Arrow, the show has chosen to take a different route with Oliver's son being a successor of the Green Arrow mantle.
- Grant Wilson is the name of one of Slade's sons from the comics, otherwise known as the first villain to bear the name Ravager, which, like Grant Wilson here, dons a predominantly gray variant of Slade's Deathstroke costume. (The Arrowverse already had a version of Ravager with Isabel Rochev in Arrow's second season) Grant Wilson is honestly short-lived and died really quickly in one of the earlier issues of the first Teen Titans comic, and was more of a plot device to drive Slade and his other children on.
- Oliver Queen missing an arm is reminiscent of what Future Oliver Queen looks like in The Dark Knight Returns. In the comics, present-day Roy Harper also has lost an arm courtesy of the villain Prometheus and replaced it with a bionic one.
- Mick quotes Heath Ledger's Joker in his "I want to see the world burn" line.
- A little internal reference is that Grant Wilson was defeated in the same way that Slade did at the climax of Arrow's second season -- with a bola arrow.
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