'Legends of Tomorrow' Recap: A Fantastic Voyage
Warning: This recap for the “Blood Ties” episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow contains spoilers.
Our pairings on this week’s Legends of Tomorrow: Rip Hunter and White Canary go banking; The Atom and Dr. Stein get small and do some surgery on Hawkgirl; and Captain Cold, Heat Wave, and Jax go joyriding and try to alter time. Plus, Vandal Savage reveals he’s got a cult and he’s learned a few (gross) things from Jack the Ripper.
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The Plot
Shards of the dagger that killed Carter are now killing Kendra; Ray must miniaturize and travel through her blood vessels to destroy them, but a mishap makes him afraid that he can’t do it. Professor Stein talks him through it. Leonard and Mick convince Jax to hijack the jumpship to steal an emerald. It’s the same gem that sent Leonard’s father to prison and Leonard thinks that by stealing it for him, he can prevent him from going to jail, but his dad gets caught trying to fence it and goes to jail anyway. Rip and Sara infiltrate a bank to cripple Savage’s finances, only to find a vast network of his followers. They end up at a ritual where Savage gives Carter’s blood to his worshippers, extending their lives. They “kill” Savage, then steal Carter’s body to give him a proper burial. Next stop: 1986. Parachute pants!
Timeline: Unchanged
The big lesson we keep learning is that nothing ever changes. That’s good when it comes to Captain Cold since stealing the emerald could have easily made him disappear from the timeline. But it’s bad since, basically, every week, the team is going to try and go fix something and they won’t fix it — or if they do, Time will just make sure whatever they tried to fix happens some other way. That’s going to get depressing after about a dozen episodes.
On the other hand, what if it turns out that Rip Hunter is the reason that Vandal Savage becomes powerful? If Savage is fending off unsuccessful assassination attempts throughout history, he’d be much more inclined to want to rule the world so he could stop that sort of thing from happening. What if, like Eddie on The Flash, the solution is just to kill himself so that Vandal goes on to be a moderately successful carpet salesman who just happens to live forever?
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Missed It By That Much
Rip also reveals that he tried to go back and kill Savage already. Obviously, he failed or the show would already be over. The obvious question is, “Why didn’t you just go back and kill him as a baby?” To which, the obvious answer is probably, “If he couldn’t kill a fully grown man who looks exactly like the man who killed his family, how could he kill an adorable little baby (who, presumably, had that same Vandal Savage beard, only toddler-sized).
Now the Student Has Become the Master
It’s about time the two eggheads sat down for some brain bonding time. The turn of “I don’t remember you/I remember you, I was just jealous with the extra addition of psych, I just told you what you needed to hear” was a lot of fun. Certainly better than the usual “You had the power within you all along,” which is all it amounted to really. Can’t wait for inevitable body swap episode where Dr. Stein has to pilot the ATOM suit and Ray has to give unhelpful advice when he melds with Jax.
Legendary Thoughts
*Line of the Night: “Is there anything you think about other than yourself?” “Yes. Money.” Speaking of: It was really easy to convince Jax to help steal that emerald. Yes, if everybody just stays politely on the ship, there’s no show, but come on.
* Existential Question of the Night: What would you say if you met yourself at age 5? Aside from the obvious, “Buy Apple,” or “The Patriots win the 2001 Super Bowl.”
* That’s twice that we’ve seen Vandal Savage die now; Carter and Kendra are on their 207th and 206th deaths, respectively. This is basically a live-action Itchy and Scratchy Show.
* Ray and Martin have to spend their spare time doing competitive Sudoku in the rec room, right?
* If the show were 100% Caity Lotz murdering people with knives pulled out of random parts of her dress to a ‘70s soundtrack, this would be the perfect television show.
Legends of Tomorrow airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.
