DC's Legends of Tomorrow S03E13 Review: Damien Darhk And His Awesome 60's Hair

DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Season 3, Episode 13: No Country For Old Dads

Part of perhaps one of the bigger weaknesses in Legends of Tomorrow is the fact that the writing behind the villains is relatively sub-par. I'm not really expecting much of Mallus beyond him being some non-descript vague threat, but this is Damien Darhk's third outing, and he's sort of... grown stale sometimes. Neal McDonough is an insanely talented actor and he just injects this character with so much energy and fun that you can't not like Darhk, but at the same time I do wish that he had more substance in this season beyond just "mwahaha, I am evil! HAMMY evil!" 

But this episode ends up going to explore the relationship between Damien and Nora relatively well. Most of the time we see the Darhks this season, they're working well together as a father-daughter team, but it turns out that behind the scenes, as a kidnapped Ray finds out, the two are as dysfunctional as any parent-child combo are. Damien has some insanely bad dad jokes ("Hi annoyed, I'm dad! HAHAHAHAHA!" has to gather the loudest laugh that any CW show has ever gotten) and tends to coddle and not trust her daughter essentially be independent. It's a loving gesture, sure, but it's suffocating to poor Nora. Throw in the fact that, y'know, there's the whole "hey daughter could you be the host of an immortal demon to resurrect me in the future? Kthx" deal thrown in, and there's definitely some tension between the two of them.

Meanwhile, the captured Ray ends up being a sort of therapist for the parent-child combo, and it's...  it somehow works. Say what you want about Legends of Tomorrow's legitimate long-term writing issues, but they do some really decent episode-by-episode stuff. The entire legends team take a huge back-seat in this episode, essentially just wringing their hands over Ray's disappearance. Rip and Wally show up on the Waverider and there's some comedy involving that (Wally accidentally blabs about "Nate's basic bitch that dumped him",  not knowing that said basic bitch is Amaya), while Amaya and Zari go meditate to seek out the spirit totem, only to find that it's been corrupted and has chosen Nora as its new host as the episode goes on. Oh, and more Sara/Ava stuff, although it's a lot more organic than the previous episode's. 

Anyway, Darhk demands that Ray fix the fire totem, shattered during the events of the Vixen animated series.  Instead of doing the logical thing and going back to a point in time before it was shattered, Darhk demands that Ray fix it, to which Ray gives a flippant "can't do it without the energy of big bang or cold fusion". Again... long-term planning and logic? Not Legends of Tomorrow's strongest suit. But it's a quick huge handwave because the show writers know what story they want to tell, and that story is Nora and Ray travelling back to the 60's as Nora is intent on proving herself to daddy. They have to kidnap a German scientist, Bernardht Vogal, a scientist who solved the formula for cold fusion... but was assassinated by a young Damien Darhk. With such a hilariously bad wig that it makes this entire episode so much better. Again, the episode doesn't want to take itself too seriously, and that's what Legends of Tomorrow is all about -- it's the cinematic equivalent of a kid telling stories with his action figures. And how more darkly comedic can you get than Damien Darhk using his magical telekinesis to toss around Ray's old employer at UpSwipes, while discussing whether it's more intuitive to do the Tinder method of swiping side-to-side or vertically, while Darhk literally tosses the dude around the room?

The cinematography is excellent, too, as it sets up the moody 60's Berlin very well, and while there's a lot of fun one-liners where Ray, Nora and present!Damien are involved, it's still pretty tense, and there's some legitimate drama as Ray ends up playing therapist, talking to Nora about how she is a mighty evil sorceress on her own right, and she doesn't have to make it all about daddy... be it the present-day helicopter parent, or the Damien of the 60's with all the menace of a cold, deadly sniper and the ridiculousness of a bad hairdo. 

And kudos for Neal McDonough for switching between the two Darhks, with the 60's Darhk being a stone-cold silent killer, while the present Darhk cracks jokes about Tinder apps, throws people around like it's a game, and despite his sometimes overprotectiveness of his daughter, it's clear between his conversations to Ray (and the corpse of Ray's old employer that he speaks to at one point) that he's also struggling to reconnect to his suddenly-adult daughter. This all comes to a head when Nora and Damien argue with each other, and Nora storms off, causing Damien and Ray to have a 'therapy session', as Damien calls it. Nora only knows what Damien tells her, and, y'know, parents have to tell their kids how proud they are of them. 

The climax is, of course, with 60's Darhk kidnapping Nora and demanding a prisoner exchange with present-day-Darhk (who 60's Darhk doesn't know is also him), causing Darhk to go off and confront his past self who doesn't care about his daughter quite as much -- quite literally -- and, of course, we get a bit where Damien has to save both Nora from falling off a building and fend off his past self at the same time. It did drag on a bit too long and there was definitely a moment when I was thinking "surely Nora could just reach out and grab onto the ledge?" but the drama was there, and Darhk trusting Nora as she tells him to let her fall, and then Nora activating the spirit totem? It's truly badass and awesome as Nora gets to whack past-dad in the fact, and then the two Darhks celebrate their newfound repaired bond by murdering all the Berlin policemen and Vogal. And later on, by coffee. D'aww.

Again, while Ray might've had a bond with Nora (and the chemistry is undeniable, what with the actors being married in real life) it's still clear that Nora's still evil. Ray did manage to cause enough of an anachronism for the Legends to come pick him up, and in that we get to see Kid Flash pickpocket the Fire Totem out of Darhk's pocket. Ray also gets the cold fusion formula from Vogal, because apparently his daughter's doll and all the sad story ends up being just a fake-out for the cold fusion formula. Oh, and we also get the revelation from Amaya's spiritual ancestor that Mallus is imprisoned by time itself, and so the Darhks and Kuasa fucking up the timeline and causing anachronisms is done in the service to weakening the timeline. It's... okay,  I'll take that explanation. I can honestly say that I don't care at all about Mallus, and the story behind Damien, Nora and Kuasa are far more compelling, anyway.

At the end of the episode, Mallus has exerted more power over Nora in the form of glowing eyes and tattoos, Wally's joined the Legends squad and Rip's been reinstated as part of the Time Bureau... because Grodd shows up and kills the entire leadership of the Time Bureau other than Ava, promoting her to head of the Bureau. Yay Grodd! Oh, and Rip tells Gideon to delete a secret about Ava, because "Sara must never know". More ominousness, eh?

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• A blink-and-you'll-miss-it Easter Egg is that Damien's attempt to get a match on UpSwipes is Carrie Cutter, a.k.a. fellow Arrow villain Cupid. I thought that was funny. 
• Kuasa makes references to Vixen's first season with the fire totem's destruction, as well as her own death at the hands of its wielder Benatu. 
• I'm not sure how intentional it is, but Mick inspiring Wally to grab a souvenir from a mission seems to be inspired by his Young Justice counterpart, where that Wally is also obsessed about collecting souvernirs.