Legends of Tomorrow S02E16 Review: Bond Villain Stupidity

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 2, Episode 16: Doomworld

It's probably a definite improvement over last season's climax leadup (not helped by the flimsy repeating of the generally trite Vandal Savage/Hawks plot), but that's mostly due to the strength of the cast and the dialogue writing instead of actual goodness of the episode. Which, let me be clear -- the cast this time around delivered an absolutely spectacular performance. Thawne, Merlyn, Darhk and Snart are glorious hammy villains, Amaya and Sara get to be an evil assassin duo for a bit, Mick gets some of the best character moments he's ever gotten, Nate and Ray are at their most dorkiest, Jax gets to let loose with something that he's not used to when he plays Stein's angry jerk boss, Stein gets some really awesome moments, Rip Hunter gets to bake a cake...

But honestly, the same problems that plague the Flashpoint episodes in the Flash also plague this episode. Sure, it's arguably a bigger change than Flashpoint did, which was just moving some pieces around Earth-2 style. We've got Sara and Amaya as hired guns working for the bad guys, murdering vigilante!Felicity in a pretty brutal outing, which is definitely a very strong start... but other than that, it's very, very quick to snowball into a 'wake up from this dream!' story, with Mick deciding to pick the side of the Legends and everything's just a great coincidence afterwards. Of course Ray retains enough of his old identity to make a handy-dandy memory-restoration gun. Of course Nate shows up at Thawne's office just when Mick's around. Of course Mick somehow is able to memorize the Aramaic chant to activate the Spear of Destiny. And while I don't mind the fact that the stakes here aren't real and anyone can guess that this Doomworld universe will be retconned out of existence and repaired at the end of the season, it doesn't mean that the show can't actually have some tension.

The thing is, there really wasn't. Sure, there was some tension at seeing Mick adapt to this more flat villain Leonard Snart, how he's torn between his newer friends, the Legends, and this old, pre-character-development Snart that clearly respects him little more than an attack dog. Likewise, killing Amaya (that's not going to stick for obvious reasons) was a pretty cool moment, and I can't really blame the huge brawl at the end, which was entertaining as we moved from Darhk-vs-Nate to Sara-vs-Damien to Reverse-Flash just zooming around knocking everyone around...

But at the same time, for being such a powerful Spear of Destiny, it's pretty ineffective in delivering the Legion of Doom what they truly wanted. Why is the Black Flash still alive? Yes, he's imprisoned, but why is Eobard keeping him around? Also, why is Eobard in the present day considering one of his main goals in his home series is to return to the 25th century? Why is the Legion of Doom so nonchalant in killing the entire casts of Arrow and Flash, but keep the Legends of Tomorrow around as trophies? You'd think Merlyn and Thawne in particular would be more than a little obsessed with tormenting Oliver and Barry more than they do the Legends. Yes, Mick's request was what saved the Legends from being instantly killed during the wish, but that really doesn't explain why Reverse-Flash doesn't do what he does best and vibrate-hand the entire Legends team during the final battle. Even if he doesn't want to kill his old Legion buddies (which I don't buy at all) him not killing the Legends due to wanting to gloat like a Bond villain is just rather silly. And after Darhk and Snart realizes that, hey, they should've listened to Malcolm and killed the Legends... they only really went for the throat with one of them.

And yes, in a sense, the episode does acknowledge how Bond villain-y the Legion of Doom are behaving, with Snart and Malcolm lampshading how Damien Darhk is giving a 'bad guy monologue' (it was a good bad guy monologue, according to Malcolm) but there's honestly a line when hamminess and pettiness give way to simple stupidity.

Still, on the bright side, once you ignore the rather... stupid decisions that people make in this episode, it's still highly entertaining. We've got some genuinely great lines from literally every member of the Legion of Doom. The final battle, with Darhk and Nate accidentally whacking Reverse-Flash across the huge room with the Spear of Destiny, and both of them just forgetting they're fighting and going 'oh ho HO!' and almost high-fiving each other is absolutely hilarious. The aforementioned "bad guy monologue" exchange between Darhk, Snart and Malcolm is absolutely hilarious. And Mick's turmoil gets to be emotionally touching without going into eye-rolling self-loathing bullshit that Arrow, Flash and Supergirl are so guilty of. Oh, and Rip Hunter making fucking cakes is actually pretty hilarious.

But, again, the fact that there's some genuinely wasted potential here is a bit amiss. Why couldn't we have gotten some of the things foreshadowed across the season? What if Malcolm brought Laurel back to tempt Sara with letting this new reality stand? What if Reverse-Flash actually followed actually became the Flash, like the impetus of him gaining super-speed in his origin story? What about the talk last episode about Mick wanting to see his family alive again? Why didn't we see the casts of Arrow and Flash trapped in their own personal hell? (Okay, that last bit might just be because the studio can't afford so many actors, but still).

Honestly, I really ranted a lot in this episode, don't I? The thing is, I truly enjoyed this episode. The dialogue was funny, Mick was great, the Legion was hammy and it fits very well with the show's lighter-hearted tone. But at the same time, we really had a lot of wasted potential as far as how the rewritten universe was, and there were some really glaring problems with the bad guys' badass decay, and Amaya's death felt just done for shock value.

Also -- someone's totally going to spring the Black Flash from his prison to eat Eobard's face, yeah?

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Obviously, the Legion of Doom's new base is a floating Darth Vader esque skull dome, which is, of course, inspired by the Hall of Doom from Challenge of the Super Friends.
• A bunch of callbacks to our villains' roles in the revised world, which saw them in positions resembling how they were during their height of power. Eobard Thawne is the head of a now huge STAR Labs with more staff than the skeleton crew it's reduced to in the Flash, and it's the position he enjoyed in his Harrison Wells guise in season one of the Flash. Damien Darhk is the mayor of Star City, which was one of his plans (albeit his wife was the mayor) in Arrow's fourth season. Malcolm Merlyn has his family and wealth back, which was how he was during Arrow's first season. Captain Cold and Heat Wave are a duo of thieves robbing banks, which was how they were during their Rogue days in the Flash.
• Felicity here uses her old college-hacker-era Goth look.
• In addition to the cameos by the masks of a good chunk of the Arrow/Flash cast, we also get name-drops of Tommy Merlyn, Rebecca Merlyn and Nyssa al Ghul, though understandably they do not show up.