Legends of Tomorrow S03E02 Review: Donuts

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 3, Episode 2: Freakshow

Mmm, not much really to say about this episode. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about how Legends of Tomorrow feels absolutely episodic as opposed to the more serialized-but-with-weekly-villains feel that the first two seasons were. We're two episodes in and we still don't know who Mallus is and what our team is supposed to do other than compete with the Time Bureau in a dick-waving pissing contest.

The episode is fun and all, of course -- how can it not be fun when part of the plot involves a saber-toothed tiger being shrunk down, Martin Stein dressing up like a clown and Mick Rory shouting "DIE CLOWN!" and we get some shenanigans from there? But at the same time, I miss the old Legends of Tomorrow who would juggle epic storytelling with comedy, and the episode is sorely lacking in the former. There is a significant lack of pressure or tension when P.T. Barnum, our resident 'villain' (because Nate got real drunk at a bar), if you can even call him that, causes the simple threat of forcing Nate, Amaya, Jax and Ray to act in a freakshow, and when the latter two were unable to deliver, he has them pretend to be conjoined twins? Yeah. The episode doesn't give us a proper explanation as to why Nate's powers didn't work for like ten minutes beyond making a performance-issue joke. 

And, honestly, with how bumbling Ray and Nate were throughout the entire episode, you can't really fault Agent Sharpe for not really taking the Legends seriously. Throughout the episode, Nate drunkenly reveals his secret to P.T. Barnum because he's a mopey mess, the three boys hang around playing with mobile phones in the middle of the bar, Mick runs away from a clown, Ray sneezes when shrinking the saber-toothed tiger, Mick lets the tiny sabertooth tiger escape, Ray and Jax gets their heads whacked in by clowns, Amaya refuses to use her totem powers because she's prissy... yeah. Only Sara and Stein are even competent at this point. There's "fun hijinks", and there's honestly proving the antagonists' points for us.

The main plot is honestly just fun, silly fluff. There's some attempt to tie this in with the Time Bureau when the Legends beat up poor Gary, and then Sara and Agent Sharpe get into some good old-fashioned baton-fighting, but otherwise there's no real sense of danger even with Gideon going "oh no, we've increased our threat level!" Instead, the episode's mostly addressing the elephant in the room (well, she doesn't turn into an elephant per se this episode but still) with Amaya's return.

Amaya and Nate get the biggest spotlight of the week because we went through all the trouble of having P.T. Barnum have a saber-toothed tiger in a cage just so we can have an excuse to send Sara back to 1940, bring Amaya back, and have Amaya and Nate confront their feelings. And it's honestly pretty generic stuff. Amaya sees the modern-day Vixen in action, realizes that she's going to cause her to not exist if she continues to stay in 2017, decides she's being selfish by staying in the future (she totally is) and goes back... without talking to Nate at all, leaving him with nothing but donuts. So he can move on. Um.

And after the episode's plot is over, Amaya tells the team how the animal spirits in the totem are being wilder and wilder, and she's hunted and murdered the young Belgian soldiers that assaulted Zambesi. All the juicy Vixen lore gets even more complex when the we see the final scene of the episode -- Kuasa, modern-day Vixen's sister and villain in the animated Vixen series,  have been revived. That bit's definitely exciting for the future. For now, I'll just have to contend with a fun episode, which honestly isn't a bad thing.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• P.T. Barnum describes Nate's metallic form as the 'Man of Steel', which, of course, is a Superman reference.
• One of Barnum's minions -- the one that Amaya throws around -- is dressed up like the DC superhero B'wana Beast, who's a DC superhero that, like Amaya, has superpowers that involve animals.
• Martin Stein notes how he's never going to get on the Titanic and whoever built the ship ought to be shot -- his actor, Victor Garber,  played said shipswright in the James Cameron Titanic movie.
• In a conversation, the Legends mention the past enemies they've beaten, like the Egyptian demigod (Vandal Savage) and a speedster (Reverse-Flash).
• Kuasa was last seen burned to death in Vixen, season 2. She was the antagonist of the first season of Vixen, being Mari McCabe's sister and holder of the totem of water.