Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1, Episode 12: Last Refuge
Last Refuge finally decides to have the Time Masters stop dicking around and pull off a Terminator as they send a really competent assassin, the Pilgrim (who, to my knowledge, is an original character) to go to the past and start killing off child versions of our heroes. Yeah, why not have Chronos or the Hunters do just that before? Sheesh, for a bunch of Time Masters, they are kind of incompetent, aren't they?
The Pilgrim is played by a memorable actress, at least, conveying an aura of cold callousness as she goes around shooting kids in the head and wiping them out of time (with visual effects of erased-from-time akin to how Eobard Thawne died in Flash's first season finale). And thus we once more take a break from the Vandal Savage plot to hop around to moments of Team Legends' childhood eras and stop the Pilgrim from murdering their child versions. While we get some interesting moments -- especially and unexpectedly Mick Rory (both child and adult) dealing with the guilt of having accidentally burnt his family to death. We've got some nice banter between a younger Sara and Quentin (Present-day Sara struggles really hard not to spill anything regarding the tragedies poor Quentin will have to endure), and indeed baby Captain Cold is cute.
But what really sold the episode's emotional weight was Jackson, who has never made that huge of an impact to me and always felt like a satellite character to the far more well-written and interesting Martin Stein. He always felt like a poor man's Ronnie Raymond/Victor Stone to me, but this episode finally gave him some much-needed emotional focus. He never knew his father, who was killed in military combat, and the chance to actually meet his father before he was deployed to his doomed mission. Jackson displays a range of emotion that he never really had a chance to before, and you can't help but feel for the kid as he struggles with whether to reveal his identity as the son his father will never have a chance to meet. That scene was just tear-jerking, especially with how Jackson's father was all like 'yeah, that's my kid. He's going to grow up to be awesome.' and considering the amount of self-esteem issues Jackson is established as having, it's a great moment. It's a nice break from just being a young hothead, and made me care for him in a way that I never did before.
Emotional moments aside, the main premise of the plot, to save the children version of themselves, really didn't feel all that tense, though the final fight against the Pilgrim in that weird out-of-timeline place was a lot more fun than the previous laser slugfests. The Pilgrim apparently has temporal-stopping powers and it's cool to see her basically stop every single energy blast in her tracks, and shows just how kinda outclassed by her compatriots White Canary is. Seriously, Rip couldn't have lent her a laser pistol or something?
Changes to the timeline or keeping it constant seems to be thrown out of the window, though at least Rip shows up with these memory-erasing pills to make Quentin forget about that time when a Terminator shows up an tries to kill his daughter. Presumably Rip did the same with a lot of the characters we saw in previous episodes? The big overreaching plot of what Rip's backstory is never interested me despite Snart's prodding, and the payoff -- that he was a street urchin that was taken up and trained by the Time Masters... or rather, "Mum", who is a nice no-nonsense woman who doesn't give a shit about the Time Masters and chooses to ally with her adopted son. It's... a backstory, at least, even if it's not one that's all that interesting. Worth noting is that Rip Hunter's real name, "Michael", is a reference to Michael John Carter, alter-ego of time-travelling superhero Booster Gold, who is Rip Hunter's father in the comics. Booster Gold really needs a TV series of his own, though the cinematic universe has their hands tight on Booster Gold and Blue Beetle (a.k.a. the role that ultimately was written into Ray Palmer in CW).
Having Kid Hunter stab the Pilgrim and causing her to lose control of her Kylo Ren Force powers is a nice touch to making it somewhat relevant, though.
We get some long-winded romantic bullshit from Kendra and Ray which is essentially the same thing they did last week. And the week before that. You'd think having Ray see his dead wife in flesh and alive would cause him to have second thoughts about the relationship and be conflicted and everything, but no. Kendra Saunders is easily the weakest link of the show, and her constant whining and moping about her love problems really brings to shame... basically all other iterations of Hawkgirl over the years of comic and cartoon incarnations.
The main plot of the Pilgrim or Rip's backstory ended up not really holding that much interest. While the Pilgrim was a far more competent villain than the plot device Chronos or the disposable Hunter trio, she still ended up being throwaway. And the Time Masters really felt like ciphers at this point. Maybe show them having to fix one of the messes to the timeline that the Legends team did? Really, the big takeaways from this episode was from Jackson's interaction with his father, as well as other assorted moments from the Legends and their families.
Despite the strong moments for Jackson, it's still ultimately a mostly average and mediocre outing, and I highly doubt the 'ticking clock' introduced here with their histories unraveling with their younger selves taken out of time will ultimately matter... and while we abandon the filler plots for some actual Vandal Savage fighting one wonders how ultimately entertaining or successful it will be.
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