The team is finally back together, the Legion of Doom is almost at the final piece of the Spear of Destiny, and finally somebody cares about the future on this week’s Legends of Tomorrow.
1. Vixen shines
Leave aside all the weirdness about Amaya being African, but having no discernible accent, or her so seamlessly adapting to the look/parlance of the early 21st century, and even separate yourself from the weirdness of her wanting to bone down with her pal’s grandson: this is the best Amaya has been used all season for a few reasons.
First of all, we saw her use her power in a unique and weird way. Sure, she can channel the strength of a bear, but lots of heroes are as strong as bears, but we see her venture into Animal Man/Aquaman territory here, and use her channeling power to communicate, non-violently, with Gertrude the T-Rex. This gives her something to do that no other character on the show could achieve, and this show is somehow really bad at giving characters moments that suit their powers/abilities.
But more importantly, we see her descendants come into play here. Ray is absolutely right – if Amaya doesn’t return to her village and have a daughter, the line of succession to Mari who, in the future, saves hundreds of people, will be broken, and the future could look quite differently. This show is so cavalier with time travel, it often times ignores things that are right in front of our faces. And here, I must admit, the show was one step ahead of me. I never put that possibility together, and that’s actually a fun bit of storytelling.
2. Land of the Lost
I know the choices are to either have limited creatures or lots of shitty looking creatures, but this is one of my big issues with the show. Don’t take us to prehistoric times if you can’t deliver quality dinosaurs. Not that Gertie looked bad, but she wasn’t part of a stampede of dinos. I want to see Ray ride a fucking pterodactyl – is that so much to ask?
3. Jax solo
Mick brings up an interesting point to Stein tonight: he’s considerably older than Jax, and so he needs to start letting him be his own man/make his own mistakes and successes, because there will be a day that he’s gone. This begs a few interesting questions: will we ever see Jax without Stein on this show and, if we do, how would that work? Since they’re connected, wouldn’t Jax, theoretically, die too? Or, is there a way to sever the Firestorm matrix that holds them together?
The age difference between Stein and Jax has been pretty much exclusively used for yucks, and it could be so much more than that. I hope the show starts looking to that as a potential source of real distress and conflict.
4. Inside Rip’s mind
Obviously, going inside anyone’s mind is going to be weird, but Rip’s mind, which has been controlled for the whole season by the Legion of Doom, has a few really weird kinks. The evil Legends are an expected touch, but sexy Gideon was unexpected. Even more unexpected? Hooking up with sexy Gideon? Thrice unexpected? Gideon, the ship’s AI remembering – and liking – it.
The scenes in Rip’s mind, overall, were pretty fun, and I must admit, it is nice to see Rip back. Whether he will be a double agent, or if the LoD already knows he’s free, remains to be seen.
5. Inventing workarounds
OK, so here is my big problem with this show: the show is constantly writing itself into corners, and then inventing bullshit scenarios to get out of them. Part of the fun of seeing the damsel tied to the train tracks is knowing that there’s one two ways out of that situation: stop the train or untie her. It builds suspense for the audience to imagine how those scenarios will happen. If it turns out that the train is actually an airplane and it takes off, it cheapens the thrill, and you’ll never trust the source again.
This show does that over and over again. Having mind-wiped Rip was a fun challenge for the show to get around, but instead of working out a way to convince ‘evil’ Rip to turn back, they create a new technology to fix that. Now, I know that the show is sci-fi and takes place in a future where it seems like everything is possible, but this still feels dirty to me.
Now that the show fixed its Rip problem, let’s hope that it moves quickly into its endgame. Next week features the Apollo 13 mission, something I truly love, so let’s try to not fuck that up, ok?
