Legends of Tomorrow S02E01 Review: In Which Stein Punches Albert Einstein In The Face

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 2, Episode 1: Out of Time

NOT Captain America

Well, that was a fun 40 minutes of TV! Legends of Tomorrow is a show that I desperately want to be good, but season one was plagued with several dead-weight characters like an absolute mishandling of Hawkgirl, Hawkman, and the Atom on some points, as well as a flagrant disregard for even attempting to write a time travel story that made sense. It was all entertaining and epic, of course, but Legends of Tomorrow has always been the best when it's just having time travel fun. Whereas her sister show Flash opened with a relatively... mediocre season premiere, and Arrow returned to its grittier roots, Legends of Tomorrow trimmed a lot of excess fat (mostly by getting rid of Hawkman and Hawkgirl at the end of last season) and just spent this episode playing catch-up.

The audience had no idea what the Legends have been doing for the past six months, and this episode opens with random dude, Nate Haywood, barging into an unexpected crossover with Oliver Queen from Arrow. Oliver's cameo really could've been handled better because other than being someone with resources to recover the Waverider from the bottom of the ocean, it's a bit strange that he really did nothing but sit and listen to the story and buggered off, seemingly unconcerned with anything that doesn't involve Star City. Nate Haywood is going to be a future member of the Legends team, and the show introduces him as like this fanboy sidekick. I'm reserving judgment now because he's still spending some time as a POV character to ask the questions that the audience is asking, plus being a 'time detective' that figures out a lot of the actions of Green Arrow and the Legends of Tomorrow, but so far he's a bit likable.

The problem of the Legends fucking up the timeline by their flagrant usage of things like Atom battle suits and freeze ray guns in the past is finally addressed, hilariously, by Nate showing Oliver how the past have changed to incorporate the Legends popping up in some parts of history. Nate tells Oliver of a particular inconsistency in the timeline (why Nate still remembers this, on the other hand...) where an atomic bomb blows up in the ocean, two years before it's supposed to be invented.

Nate and Oliver recover the Waverider, still intact underneath the ocean, and only finds one member of the Legends, suspended in animation -- Heat Wave. Heat Wave then begins a bit of a storytelling where they have been taking over Time Master duties, hunting down Aberrations and stopping them from fucking up the timeline... worse. There are hints of these mysterious hooded bastards using items from the future, but these are kept vague.

We get to see a hilarious set piece where the Legends team -- trimmed down with Captain Cold's death and the Hawks leaving -- infiltrate France and save the king of France from being assassinated. Also Sara gets to fuck the queen of France. Um okay. Apparently, after showing up at the final moments of last season, Rex "Hourman" Tyler disappeared after a cryptic warning to not go to 1942... so of course a Time Quake happens, where in 1942 someone blew up New York with a nuclear (atomic!) bomb. After a generic argument of Rip going "we need to take this seriously, guys!" and the others being all "we gotta help we're superheroes!", they head to 1942. Yeah, the Legends being absolutely reckless with showing off Firestorm and Atom powers to the king of France definitely is detrimental to the timeline.

Sara, meanwhile, I think is handled quite poorly this episode and easily the weakest link. In addition to her sexuality being portrayed as 'bang every single woman who wants to'... because apparently in each time period exists a repressed lesbian that coincidentally hangs out around where Sara shows up. The moment with the queen of France is funny, but when Sara shows up later and apparently having seduced an entire village in Salem, it's just a bit eyebrow-raising. She's also still obsessed with avenging Laurel's death... which she tries to do in 1942, compromising the entire 'stop New York from being blown up' by going off to murder Damien Darhk, who happened to be in town that year.

Like Flash being selfish and trying to save his family by changing the timeline, Sara's attempts are portrayed as nothing but selfish and stupid, and Ray acts as this little angel that shadows Sara and tries to stop her from doing anything too stupid. There's some argument running throughout the episode of the boy scout approach vs the assassin approach... that isn't good, but isn't bad either.

(Speaking of Flash, no idea how this whole timeline thing relates to Flashpoint... though the Legends being time-scattered is probably the reason why Flashpoint slipped through the cracks).

Apparently Damien Darhk is the one responsible for getting the nuclear bomb ahead of time, and after a bit of research the Legends find out that while the Allies still won World War 2, it's extended by two years and Albert Einstein was missing, presumably kidnapped by Darhk. Ray and Martin Stein decide that it's a good idea to kidnap Einstein first and Martin Stein just geeking out at meeting Einstein (and his later introduction as "I'm Martin Stein, like Einstein, without the Ein...") is hilarious, and a lot more interesting than Sara's vengeance mission. Especially when Einstein turns out to be a bit of a pig, groping random women and speaking in the most hilarious German accent ever. Mick Rory plays off Martin Stein absolutely well, pointing out how Einstein is a pig, how Einstein is calling Martin an idiot, calling the conference a nerd party... though Martin is fun as he punches Einstein in the face.

Einstein isn't the only person who knows about how to make the nuclear bomb, however, and while the Legends stopped Darhk's people from capturing Einstein, his estranged ex-wife ended up being the source of the bomb. They ended up fighting Darhk's people, where they fail spectacularly. A combination of Sara going straight for Darhk and being outclassed, Atom's suit not being as radiation-proof as he wished, and general bad luck meant that Darhk escaped with the nuclear bomb nonetheless.

See, throughout this flashback, Jax and Rip have had several extra scenes where they talk about making modifications and how Jax is being built up to take over for Rip as someone who knows the Waverider in and out, basically signing his death warrant. During the action sequence underwater, the nuke is launched and Rip drives the Waverider to intercept it, but not before activating the Timescatter protocol he had Jax install, which launches everyone (except the wounded Mick) into different points in time. It's a stupid decision, instead of sending them into like a fixed point like 2016 or something, but hey.

This is when the flashback from Mick's perspective ends, Oliver buggers off, and Mick and Nate decide to pick up all their buddies. Which, thankfully, happens in a quick, fun montage. Ray has to run away from a goddamned T-Rex, Jax and Martin find themselves as court wizards to a little psychotic boy-king that probably went to the same class with Joffrey Baratheon, while Sara fucks the female population of Salem and is nearly hanged as a witch. They witness a final message from Rip, who apparently "dies" (which I'm not buying), and they are the only ones left to guard time.

They decide to help reverse the nuke situation by meeting with Einstein and have him acknowledge his wife, thus putting both in places of protection, and causing Darhk's plan to be foiled. Darhk's nazi allies are killed by Darhk's buddy... Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash! Legion of Doom, yes. It's a way to keep these well-acted characters in the show without repeating their fights with Green Arrow and the Flash respectively. And while the time travel doesn't make sense (if Darhk didn't get the nuke, the Waverider wouldn't have needed to go kamikaze, Timescatter wouldn't happen, etc etc etc) it's entertaining enough to just shrug and watch as things unfolded.

And if the team-up between Darhk and Reverse-Flash isn't exciting enough, something teased at the end of the first season shows up at the end... the JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA! It's not quite the classic Golden Age lineup, which would be extra sweet, but who the fuck cares? Stargirl and the second Dr. Mid-Nite are two of my all-time favourite characters thanks to the stellar JSA comics, Obsidian is pretty cool, I think that's Commander Steel (we're actually having this rather obscure character be explored!) and... some lady? -googles- a version of Vixen, apparently. Huh.

Yeah, I'm happy. It's a decent start and while it's not quite the huge epic that I want... this is still just a load of cheery superhero time-travelling fun and I absolutely love it. It's a pretty solid -- if slightly poorly paced -- opening even if Rip's 'death' felt forced, and Sara's a bit weak, but it handles the introduction of the Legion of Doom (two members, anyway) pretty well, and trimming down the excess fat of the first season, whilst introducing the goddamned JSA, is definitely awesome.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• More 'Boy Scout' comparisons to Ray Palmer, which, if you've forgotten, is played by Brandon Routh, who used to play Superman in Superman Returns. 
• Damien Darhk is the main villain of Arrow's fourth season, and Reverse-Flash is the main villain of Flash's first season, though he's also shown up in seasons two and three.
• Nathaniel "Nate" Haywood, is, of course, a superhero character from the comics, and the third superhero to bear the superhero mantle of Commander Steel (or sometimes just Steel, or Citizen Steel while under Nate's rein). Obviously Nate isn't a being made entirely of steel, but with a predecessor seemingly a member of the 1940's JSA, it's interesting to see how this will go.
• The Justice Society of America that operates in the 1940s traditionally is comprised by Golden Age heroes, among them the likes of Jay Garrick's Flash, Hawkman, Hourman, Alan Scott's Green Lantern, Spectre and several other older heroes. Here only three of the five are members of the comics' version of JSA, and all three are all members of the modern, post-revival revamp of the team, and are traditionally contemporaries of the present-day heroes.
• Commander Steel, a.k.a. Henry "Hank" Heywood, is a U.S. Marine that was wounded by the villainous Baron Blitzkrieg (who showed up in Arrow's fourth season, albeit a non-Nazi version of him) and ended up being grafted with cybernetic implants, earning him the nickname Steel and later Commander Steel. Commander Steel served with the very American superhero team All-Star Squadron, and this version of Commander Steel never actually was a member of the JSA in the comics.
• Obsidian, a.k.a. Todd Rice, was the son of Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern (who was one of the founding members of the JSA). Obsidian was separated from his parents at a young age, and discovered that his parentage had given him shadow-related superpowers. Obsidian briefly was corrupted by other shadow-wielding supervillains, but eventually followed his father's footsteps in becoming a hero and eventually a member of the JSA. 
• Stargirl, a.k.a. Courtney Whitmore, is the step-daughter to Golden Age superhero Stripesy. Finding the superhero costume of his stepfather's old partner, the Star-Spangled Kid, Courtney donned the costume and succeeded the Star-Spangled Kid legacy, initially to spite her stepfather but later on for genuine heroic reasons. She join the JSA, and was later given an energy-blasting Cosmic Rod by Starman. Courtney then changed her superhero identity to Stargirl to reflect carring the legacy of two superheroes with the name 'Star' in their names.
• Dr. Mid-Nite, a.k.a. Pieter Cross, is the third person to bear the mantle, being inspired of the Golden Age Dr. Mid-Nite, a founding member of the JSA. Presumably this is the Pieter Cross version of the character, since he's, y'know, black. Dr. Mid-Nite is a very cool character concept, a superhero vigilante that's also a doctor, and his 'Mid-Nite' abilities stem from his ability to see in the dark, which he uses his advantage by using blackout bombs. 
• The fifth member of the JSA appears to be wearing Vixen's costume, but portrayed by a different actress (also happening 60 years in the past). Apparently this is supposed to be the present-day Vixen's grandmother, her predecessor in superheroing business, a wholly original character to the show. 
• Katana's mask and Jonah Hex's poster can be seen when the group is talking after Rip's message, around the 39 minute mark. Katana appeared in Arrow's third season as a supporting character, and Jonah Hex showed up as a memorable guest star in Legends of Tomorrow's first season. Can these two come along for the ride?