‘Legends of Tomorrow’ Season Finale Recap: A Three-Way Dance Through Time
Warning: This recap for the “Legendary” episode of Legends of Tomorrow contains spoilers.
A wild, three-way fight in multiple times wraps up the first season of Legends of Tomorrow, and sends two more members off into the sunset. Fortunately, it looks like next year will have plenty of potential fill-ins as Hourman (Patrick J. Adams) introduces the JSA to the Arrowverse.
The PlotRip returns the team to 2016, mostly alive, but defeated. He doesn’t want to risk their lives any further, but they rally, and demand to help him finish the mission. Kendra manages to get a message into a soldier’s helmet in 1944, which makes its way back to the Waverider. While fighting Nazis, Firestorm learns molecular transmutation, and Carter is rescued, but Kendra is recaptured. Stein figures out that Savage’s plan is to blow up the three original meteorites during three separate conjunctions with the planet Thanagar but, because of the radiation, that will make him vulnerable. The team splits up and manage to kill him simultaneously and destroy the meteorites before they explode. Rip returns them to 2016; Kendra and Carter decide to stay behind, but the rest agree to join Rip in policing the time line. Another Waverider crashes nearby and Rex Taylor of the Justice Society of America warns them not to go.
As the Season Goes, So Goes the Finale
Given that the show is forced to juggle almost a dozen main characters, Legends did an acceptable job of keeping all the story lines interesting and in play. The show has breadth, but no depth. Case in point: The season finale. It was entertaining to see the team split into three different times and kicking Vandal Savage’s butt three different ways. But Rip’s “final” moments — where he hallucinates a reunion with his wife and son — felt incomplete (not to mention, a little silly; the laws of physics say he could have just chucked the meteorite long before he got anywhere near the sun).
Hopefully what happens next season is the writers give the characters room to breathe. Let there be entire episodes where some of the Legends simply don’t appear. Look at the first year as an extended pilot where we got to meet everybody and learn their deal, then… relax.
Alternately, turn the show into a playland. Arrow is a dark show; The Flash is a good balance of emotion and light; why not let Legends do what it does best? Make us smile. This final episode sorely missed the aggrieved snarkiness of Captain Cold; when he and Heat Wave are undercutting the heroics, it’s genuinely hilarious. Giant robots are ridiculous and fun, as is Firestorm turning Nazi rifles into dust. There’s a dude with wings and a medieval spiked stick and we only got to see him use it two or three times in an entire season! Embrace the silliness. Lean into it.
Walk (Off) Like an Egyptian
For all that, though, the three-fold climax of taking out Vandal Savage — in 1958, 1975, and 2021 — felt good, big enough to justify a finale, and his death felt earned. Apparently, it felt good enough that the writers wrote out Kendra and Carter as well — closing up the Egyptian story line completely. It was the plan all along to have a rotating cast of characters on the show, but is losing Hawkman, Hawkgirl, and Captain Cold cutting too deep? Or maybe it was the wrong cut? Who would you have let go to keep the show fresh?
Legendary Thoughts
Curious that they would introduce the Justice Society of America instead of the Justice League, since the JSA — in the comics, at least — is from Earth-2…
Line of the Night: “You may not think you’re a hero, but you’re a hero to me.” Mick Rory is often featured here with the best line of an episode, but it’s always been some sort of joke before. This time, it’s his gruff, heartfelt sincerity that really brings home the arc of both villains.
Second-Best Line of the Night: “I give it three months. Tops.” Said to a departing Kendra and Carter. Is there nothing that Dominic Purcell can’t do?
Legends of Tomorrow airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.
