Legends of Tomorrow – Raiders of the Lost Art

By: Michelle Lopez

We open six months ago when when Rip (Arthur Darvill) scattered out Legends though time and ended up in 1967. After discovering that the Waverider was beyond reasonable repair, he activates the auto repair function of the ship and shuts down Gideon (Amy Pemberton) as he recovers a hidden artifact from below the floorboards of the control room. The artifact is a wooden stick… Yup a wooden stick. Rip proceeds to run to the room containing the time drive and grabs onto it.

Ghost of Best Friends Past

Stein (Victor Garber) finds a mildly intoxicated Mick (Dominic Purcell) talking to himself. Mick confides that he’s been seeing and talking to Snart (Wentworth Miller) since their mission in Chicago. Mick is convinced that since Stein is a “doctor” he can fix him. Stein points out he’s a doctor of nuclear physics not psychology.

Mick rambles to Stein about anything and everything that pops into his head, but Stein isn’t prepared to study the inner workings of Mick’s brain. He asks about when the Snart visions began and Mick tells him it was back and Chicago with Snart claiming he was around to set Mick straight. Mick suggests Stein analyze him with Gideon’s medical setup, but Stein is convinced that the Snart visions are an emotional response to missing Snart. Mick ultimately “convinces” Stein to do the scan.

The results of the scan reveal that Mick some sort of time antenna in his head. Stein’s hypothesis is that when Snart was killed he could have latched onto the device and the effects appearing as some sort of time ghost to Mick. Mick concludes Chronos installed the device and he wants it out right away. Stein is no brain surgeon, but Mick scares him enough to try.

After the surgery Stein checks in on Mick to see if his visions are gone. They are, but it’s not because of the device Stein removed. It turns out that hadn’t been operational for months. The visions were just Mick’s subconscious communicating it’s second guessing of his moral obligation to the team. Mick is a little confused, but he’ll figure it out.

Which Rip is Rip?

Nate (Nick Zano) is blasting music and studying some books, which wakes Amaya (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) and Ray (Brandon Routh). Nate is trying to figure out what the “Legion of Doom” a/k/a Merlyn (John Barrowman), Darhk (Neal McDonough) and Speedster (Matt Letscher) want with the two amulets they’ve collected. Amaya makes quick work of figuring out that the two amulets are in fact two pieces of the same amulet. Nate recognizes the combo as The Longinus Medallion. After calling Captain Lance (Caity Lotz) and Jax (Franz Drameh) to the control room, Nate breaks down the legend of the medallion. Way back when the blood of Jesus allegedly got on the medallion and give it magic powers. The medallion acts as a sort of compass for the Spear of Destiny which has the power to rewrite time. Nate name drops the Legion of Doom again and Sara is less than impressed with the title. Sara also feels guilty for handing over the medallion that can give the Legion of Doom the power to permanently rewrite history.

In Hollywood 1967, Darhk and Merlin kill the owners of a few motorcycles on their way to 1600 Vine Street. Gideon flags those deaths as time aberrations since the owners were killed with League of Assassins techniques, which Darhk and Merlyn were both members of. The Legends head to Hollywood 1967 in hopes of stopping the Legion of Doom.

In 1967, Gideon drops off the Legends at a film studio where they find a sign labels “Legends” with an arrow pointing to a film studio where Rip “Philip Gasmer” Hunter is filming this student film of “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.” Philip is upset that the actor playing his villain is as threatening as a weiner dog. He asks the advice of his prop master George (Matt Angel) as they walk outside. Darhk and Merlin are waiting to confront Rip, but Rip doesn’t remember anything about his former life as the captain of the Waverider. Before the Legion of Doom can take Rip (a/k/a Philip), the Legends show up and fight it out with the Legion over who can have Rip. George and Philip hide behind some crates as the fight continues and George ends up taking a blaster shot to the shoulder. He’s rightfully freaked out and ready to run for it, but Philip is more interested in going back into the studio to get the script for his Legends student film. In the distance police sirens go off and the Legends, Legion of Doom and George take off to avoid arrest while Philip stays put rambling about his script as he’s carted off to jail.

On the Waverider, the Legends try to figure out why Rip was acting so weird while Nate and Amaya determine where the police took him. Ray suggests he’s suffering from time drift, but there’s no explanation for how he ended up in 1967 without being a part of the time-scatter that sent the Legends out into time. Since they followed the Legion of Doom to 1967 and the Legion was using the medallion and the medallion is programmed to find the Spear of Destiny, they surmise that Rip must have the Spear of Destiny with him.

Gideon finds where Rip is being held so Sara brings Mick and Stein dressed in their best doctor/nurse outfits to break Rip out of jail. Stein having practiced being a psychologist all day is prime for the role while Sara and Mick are his orderlies. They are taken to Rip’s room where he insists that he is Philip Gasmer and Rip Hunter along with the other Legends are just characters in his student film. Philip starts to have a bit of a meltdown so Mick knocks him out and the team rolls him out of the room in a wheelchair. Before they can make it to the front door they spot Merlyn and Darhk entering the precinct and blocking their exit from the building. With some quick thinking, Sara tells Ray to fly the ship to the roof of the police station while they take a quick elevator ride up. On the roof, Philip wakes up and freak out because he’s being kidnapped by people who think his fictional characters are real and that time ships actually exist. While Philip freaks out, Darhk and Merlyn realize that the Legends probably went up to the roof with Rip so they take a hilariously slow trip up to the roof accompanied with some horrible elevator music. Philip believes this is all a bad drug trip so he’s ready to risk it all on the ledge of the building when the Waverider appears out of thin air causing him to faint. The Legends drag him onboard and escape as Darhk and Merlyn show up guns blazing.

On the Waverider, Gideon is scanning Rip’s brain so see why the heck he thinks he’s Philip Gasmer. It turns out Rip’s neural architecture was completely scrambled and he really has no idea he is Rip Hunter. They piece together, with the help of Gideon, that he must have touched the time drive in a last ditch effort to hide the Spear of Destiny from the Legion of Doom. Nate sets to work on figuring out what the Spear of Destiny looks like, but he and Ray seem to have been hit with a stupid stick because they’ve suddenly forgotten everything. Gideon and Amaya piece together that a new time aberration has occurred due to their activity in 1967. A man named George Lucas dropped out of film school and didn’t make some movies that motivated Nate and Ray to become a historian and scientist respectively. Sara and Amaya are baffled that a few movies not being made resulted in their two brainiacs losing their usefulness. Sara sends Amaya, Ray and Nate to convince George to go back to film school so he can make Star Wars and Indiana Jones and consequently save time.

George is freaked out when approached by the Legends because he’d been shot earlier and these freaks were the ones in the fight. Ray and Nate fail miserably at convincing George to stay in film school, but Amaya levels with him. She doesn’t care about the movies he’ll one day make, but these guys and a bunch of other people do and their lives will be changed by them. George reluctantly agrees to go back.

Sara brings Rip back to his old office to try and jog his memory of his former life, but it doesn’t seem to be working. She explains that he saved her life. He gave her purpose after being resurrected. Philip admits that she sounds a lot like his films character Sandra. Just then Jax storms in having read Philip’s screenplay. It seems he wrote his former life as a movie, which includes the Spear of Destiny. Rip broke apart the spear and Philip has a single piece of it as a film prop which his prop master, George Lucas, is in possession of.

In George’s dorm, Darhk and Merlyn jump George and the Legends where they snag Amaya’s necklace and rob her of her powers. Completely helpless with Ray and Nate’s powers being gone due to the lack of Star Wars and Indiana Jones in their lives and Amaya’s stolen necklace, they’re taken hostage in George’s dorm. Darhk wants to know where the prop stick from the movie is. George tells them he threw it out when he decided to drop out of film school. Merlin and Darhk take the group to the local dump to root around in search of the stick. They root around in a dumpster trash compactor which Darhk turns on, recreating the classic scene from Star Wars: A New Hope. They find the piece of the spear, but refuse to give it to Darhk since he’ll kill them once he has what he needs so in desperation Ray, Nate and Amaya try and convince George to be a filmmaker. With growing pressure and impending doom, George finally agrees and Nate gets his metallic powers while Ray gets his Atom suit and a fight ensues. Sara and Jax join in the brawl and it’s a pretty even fight until the Legion of Doom gets a slight upper hand.

On the Waverider, Gideon gives Philip a pep talk about the amazing qualities of Rip Hunter convincing Philip to take action. He drops down into the fight, using Rip’s actual voice he threatens the Legion of Doom and takes aim with what appears to have been an unloaded prop gun. As everyone realizes Rip is actually just Philip, Gideon swoops in with the Waverider to fires some rounds off at the Legion. The Legends flee to the Waverider but lose Rip/Philip in the fray and have no choice but to leave him behind. Sara, as the captain of the Waverider, takes this hard. She feels like she’s not living up to the title because Rip wouldn’t leave anyone behind. Jax assures her that they’ll get him back. He’s calling a prophecy so it’s going to happen.

In a warehouse Philip is tied to a chair being interrogated by the Speedster. Philip has nothing to offer since he genuinely doesn’t know he’s Rip Hunter. Speedster decides to leave Philip in the capable hands of Darhk and Merlyn to “encourage” him to spill the bean on where the Spear of Destiny is.