Legends of Tomorrow, Season 2, Episode 12: Camelot/3000
I hurt my hand! So apologies if the reviews for this week and the next are a bit more shorter and truncated than usual.
Anyway, this episode is a bit of a simpler, despite its rather... misleading title. Camelot 3000 is a DC comics maxi-series published in the 80's that I'm actually not aware of prior to watching this episode, but even then I expected other characters from the Camelot era to play a role. Etrigan the Demon. Shining Knight. Madame Xanadu. Instead, Legends of Tomorrow continues to do its own thing, bringing to us its own take on Camelot and the Knights of Round Table. More than that, Legends of Tomorrow continue to present very different takes on other aspects of the DC universe (more than they already have with their interpretations of many major characters, anyway) with how they treated the Justice Society characters.
It's actually a bit of a statement telling us that Legends of Tomorrow is definitely doing their own thing, despite using a lot of familiar DC names and locales. And I'm surprisingly okay with it. So the cold open shows us Evil Rip Hunter (more entertaining than Dr. Who Rip Hunter or Hippie Rip Hunter) as he travels to the far-flung future of 3000 to murder Dr. Mid-Nite and take a fragment of the Spear of Destiny. Throughout this episode we learn that the members of the JSA other than Vixen, Obsidian and Hourman are all scattered through time by Rip Hunter, each of them guarding a piece of the Spear of Destiny. Which honestly feels a bit... strange -- what happens if the JSA members die in their time periods? Though Legends has proven time and again that it doesn't particularly care about the proper Physics of it all, and we probably can just handwave 'Spear of Destiny is a reality warping artifact' and be done with it.
It's a very wildly different take on the JSA, and while poor Mid-Nite dies at the opening of this episode (dammit!) Stargirl, one of my all-time favourite DC characters, ends up taking center stage when it's revealed that she's taken up residence in Medieval England and is responsible for the myths of Camelot by... founding the damned kingdom, using her cosmic rod to pose as the wizard Merlin. It's honestly a huge surprise when they brought in Merlin the hooded wizard -- mostly because I expected the actual Merlin (who's a character in DC comics) or Malcolm Merlyn to be it. But no, Stargirl is Merlin. And while the traditional portrayal has her as the cheery junior member in a team that's mostly made up of old superheroes, here she's portrayed as someone that's absolutely devoted to her duty to the realm. Also has a huge crush on King Arthur, but unable to marry him because of reasons. The Camelot stuff being made up by Stargirl is a clever way to retcon Camelot into history, allowing Arthurian geeks like Ray Palmer (sorry, Sir Raymond of the Palms) to muck around in this absolutely historically-inaccurate setting, something that distresses poor historian Nate to no end.
The Camelot plot is pretty well-told, though only Evil Rip and Darhk (who adopts the persona of the Black Knight) show up here. We've got a pretty okay knights-vs-knights conflict, we've got the arguments between Sara, Amaya and Courtney about duty versus the greater good, we've got Queen Guinevere being persuaded by Sara Lance (who turns out to have inspired the legend of Lancelot) to take charge, we've got Ray being super-geeky and embracing medieval heroics... it's pretty much your standard fare -- though honestly Sara flirting and causing women in periodical time periods to come out sexually is getting a bit old -- but it's still fun.
Sara, Ray and Amaya get the bulk of the characterization this episode, with Sara's role I think feeling the most well-written with her struggling between being a good 'for the greater good' leader and following her heart and code of morals like she usually does. Amaya's characterization here is definitely important because I've complained about how... boring she's been throughout this season and her more pragmatic methods is definitely a nice, stark contrast to Sara. Ray's fanboying and his 'Raymond of the Palms' and his light saber are all very hilarious and well-done. Stein and Mick get a very fun double-act in this episode, and the two really play off very well with each other.
Stargirl might be the weakest link of the episode where after the revelations and her short squabble with Amaya, her role really felt unnecessary to the plot at large, and I really wished they could've done a bit more with her, but eh. Mid-Nite's death was very much well told, showing just how far Rip Hunter's gone, and can he ever be redeemed from this? Killing is one thing, but killing a teammate and friend? Darhk abandons Rip to the mercies of the Legends and they have Rip in their cage, and it turns out that Gideon still obeys Rip's voice command so it might actually be a planned gambit all along.
So yeah, it's not the faithful DC adaptation I hoped it would be, but it still manages to be fun and tell its own story, and even the plot moves forward a little with only the final piece of the Spear of Destiny left for them. Maybe it's not the way I would've written the story, but it's definitely a fun one.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The Arthurian setting of Camelot, of course, is the origin story of many superheroes and supervillains in DC comics, among them Etrigan the Demon, Shining Knight, Madame Xanadu, Merlin the Sorcerer and Morgaine le Fay. Camelot 3000 is the title of a 12-issue DC comics maxi-series about the Arthurian characters reincarnating in the year 3000.
- Gideon obeying friend and foe, as long as they're programmed as her 'users', is a callback to season one of the Flash where Gideon technically belongs to the Reverse-Flash, but obeys and aids Barry Allen as well when he asks.
- Ray's lightsaber is, of course, a reference to Star Wars, and both Ray and Nate lampshade that they shouldn't call it that because of trademarks.
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