Legends of Tomorrow – The Legion of Doom

By: Michelle Lopez

The Legion of Internal Bickering

In 2016, Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) mopes around his apartment watching news coverage the death of Damien Darhk (Neal McDonough) when to his surprise Darhk walks into his apartment with Eobard Thawne (Matt Letscher). Merlyn’s confused, but when Thawne begins talking about fixing time so that Merlyn has no fall from grace and Darhk doesn’t die in 2017. That’s all it takes for Merlyn to join a team almost as dysfunctional as the Legends.

Back to “present day,” Thawne is annoyed that Merlyn and Darhk haven’t pulled any information out of Rip (Arthur Darvill). They assure him it’s not for lack of trying, but Rip just isn’t in there anymore. On top of the annoyance, Thawne is still angry about them losing the Longinus Medallion so he threatens and attacks Merlyn. Merlyn isn’t afraid since Thawne obviously needs him and Darhk. He offers to try hypnosis on Rip. If Rip’s still in there hypnosis will find him and bring him back. Darhk ponders if the Legends will figure out where the Spear of Destiny is before they can, but Thawne isn’t worried because in his opinion the Legends are idiots. I’m not going to disagree.

Merlyn’s hypnosis doesn’t work because the old Rip has been erased. Darhk doesn’t care, he’s going to torture some sort of answer or clue from Rip. Thawne insults Merlyn and Darhk before taking off to somewhere else in time. Merlyn and Darhk are getting tired of Thawne treating them like henchmen when they used to be top tier villains.

Darhk returns to Rip’s holding area to “level with” him. He doesn’t like that Thawne treats him like a henchman because those guys always end up dead. He needs Rip to cooperate and give him something useful so Thawne will stop threatening him at every turn. Rip has absolutely nothing to offer so Darhk settles for pulling a tooth. The tooth has a barcode to a Swiss security deposit box in 2525. Thawne, Merlyn and Darhk figure the rest of the Spear is stored there so Thawne orders Merlyn and Darhk to get inside that security box.

Darhk plans on going into the bank and killing everyone to get access to the box, but Merlyn would rather use Rip to get in there more covertly. The hostility between the two heightens as Darhk agrees with this “foolish” plan because if they fail it’s Merlyn’s ass on the the line with Thawne. Merlyn goes and preps Rip for the trip to Switzerland with a few threats and a clean suit.

At the bank, Darhk gives Rip a comm and the mission is underway. Rip has to request access to the security box, do a retinal scan and grab the contents. As Rip heads off on his mission, Merlyn and Darhk ponder why Thawne never stays in the same place for long and why he needed to recruit them if he’s such a powerful speedster. As they ponder, Rip hits a snag – there’s a step they missed. Rip needs to provide a passcode which he doesn’t have so Darhk and Merlyn execute Plan B: kill everyone and get out of there.

Back at basecamp, Merlyn and Darhk bicker over whose fault the failure is. Merlyn blames Darhk and Darhk blames Merlyn so they decide to settle this dispute League of Assassins style, a duel to the death. They begin the duel in front of Rip and are both pretty evenly matched. Rip is freaking out because he keeps coming awfully close to becoming a casualty. He screams for them to stop because infighting is what their boss, Thawne, wants of his underlings. The words “boss” and “underlings” catch Merlyn and Darhk’s attention because they work for noone and certainly are not anyone’s underling. Having their captive explain to them that they are puppets in Thawne’s game opens their eyes to the situation so they decide to work together to get rid of Thawne or earn the place of equals with him.

Merlyn and Darhk break into the bank League of Assassins style, killing everyone in their way and stealing override codes. In the vault they find a device that is not the Spear of Destiny. Thawne shows up and IDs it as a mnemonic archive which most likely holds Rip Hunter’s identity. Merlyn shuts the vault door locking them all in because it’s time for them to renegotiate the terms of this team-up. Thawne tries to talk his way out of it, but they’re not buying it and demand the truth. Eobard’s ancestor killed himself to erase his existence, but The Flash pulled him from the timeline. In the timeline he found himself in he’s been chased by some evil looking speedster that’s been tracking his Speed Force to try and kill him. The dark speedster shows up at the bank so Thawne agrees to be actual partners with Darhk and Merlyn if they help get him out of there. They devise a plan where Thawne doesn’t move so the evil speedster has no Speed Force to sense. It works and they trap it in the vault and make their escape.

Back at base camp, Thawne pulls up the mnemonic archive’s data and confirms it’s Rip’s identity. Merlyn wants to upload it so they can get back to find the Spear, but Thawne’s got a better plan. He makes some adjustments to Rip’s identity and uploads it to Rip.

New Jersey 1776, Rip Hunter enters George Washington’s tent and shoots him.

A Legends Day Off

After a mess of mixed metaphors, the Legends try to figure out a plan to save Rip from the horribly named Legion of Doom. Mick (Dominic Purcell) has a simple and effective plan, trade the Medallion for Rip. Amaya (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) would rather focus on identifying the Speedster. The Legends begin to bicker, but Captain Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) decides both are good options yet before they hand over the Medallion they need to figure out how it works. Stein (Victor Garber) has a plan for that so him and Jax (Franz Drameh) head to Central City while the rest of the Legends try to figure out who Speedster is.

The Legends find that all the speedsters are either dead for friends with The Flash so there’s no record of their villain anywhere. He has to be someone from the future, but why would a speedster need the Spear when he can change history whenever he wants? They decide he must have to use the Spear to fix something in time. They ponder this for a while and get nowhere until Martin walks in and triggers Nate to develop a theory.  What if Martin could create a person that the speedster managed to get erased from time? Martin throws out the name Eobard Thawne. He was a rogue speedster who’s progenitor killed himself to erase Eobard. As a member of the Speed Force he’s been able to outrun time itself. It takes time for time to harden so continuous moving through time would allow him to outrun his own demise.

What Makes a Family?

In Central City 2017, Jax and Martin stroll into a coffee shop. Jax doesn’t get why they’re stopping for pastries when they’ve got a mission. Martin assures him they’re there because his contact goes there every day. In walks Martin’s daughter, Lily (Christina Brucato). Jax can’t believe they’re there to pick up Martin’s secret daughter who’s technically an aberration. Martin busts out the Medallion, which baffles Jax since it’s kind of a secret and asks Lily to take a look. She grabs a ionic transmographer and activates the Medallion in the middle of a crowded coffee shop. They decide to take this meeting back to the Waverider. Lily is amazed that a temporal navigation vessel exists while the rest of the team is confused about both Lily’s presence on the ship and her existence in general. Sara is pissed because leaving a single aberration alone is one thing, but bringing that aberration onto a time ship could cause a storm of aberrations. Martin assures her that if he did any real damage Gideon (Amy Pemberton) would have alerted them. Lily has a plan to hook up the Medallion with Gideon so she’s more helpful than harmful. In exchange for the help the team agrees to not mention the whole time aberration thing to Lily.

Ray (Brandon Routh) and Lily hood up the Medallion to Gideon, prepare to activate it and hope it doesn’t kill Gideon since that’d leave them stranded in the Temporal Zone forever. They activate the Medallion and Gideon shuts down, but before Ray can spiral into full on panic she boots back up throwing a few snarky comments his way. Basking in their victory, Ray and Lily head to the kitchen for some champagne. Mick, already drunk, strolls in for some more beer and randomly drops the “you’re an aberration” bomb. Lily doesn’t know what that means, but she knows it’s not good. Ray sends her to talk to Martin.

Martin finds Lily to congratulate her on linking up the Medallion and Gideon, but Lily has questions about this whole time aberration thing. Martin tries to play it off, but Lily’s not going to be lied to. He admits that an aberration is an unnatural alteration in history due to time travelers messing things up. Lily is devastated to learn that her entire life is essentially a lie. Martin explains how it happened and how it doesn’t matter that she’s a result of time travel because she means the world to him. Lily’s a little to raw right now to take any comfort from the father who she believes doesn’t want her.

Jax pulls Stein’s head out his ass

Jax finds Martin feeling sorry for himself and drinking brandy. He regrets bringing Lily aboard because she now knows she’s an aberration. Jax tells him to explain that he needs to make Lily understand how much he loves her and doesn’t regret her existence. Martin admits he didn’t want kids because he was afraid he’d become his father. Jax reminds him that they’re Legends and changing history is kind of their entire deal, so he needs to go deal with this.

Lily requests Gideon take them back to Central City 2017, but Martin has instructed Gideon to not allow Lily off the ship. Martin shows up and apologizes to her. He’s sorry for not being honest with her about her origins, but assures her that he loves and doesn’t regret her existence. It’s true he didn’t want kids, but he’s learned that time doesn’t give you what you want but what you need. They make up and Martin hopes Lily will join the team yet she’s got work to do on some synthetic proteins.