They saved the timeline from Vandal Savage last year, and now they have new problems to face as Legends of Tomorrow returns for its second season. Of course, first they need to find their place in the universe… and time.
The first season of Legends of Tomorrow ended with the team, back in 2016 and victorious after beating Savage and the Time Masters, being confronted by Rex Tyler, the Golden Age Hourman, with a warning. But as we start the second season, the Legends are missing, thrown across the timeline. But maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
We kick off the season with historian Dr. Nate Heywood getting clotheslined by a security guard at City Hall in Star City (2016), trying to see Mayor Oliver Queen (Arrow’s Stephen Amell), because he’s noticed aberrations in the timeline and assumes that it’s the doing of the Legends… and not The Flash going back in time to save his mother and then reversing it and screwing everything up.
Heywood hopes the Green Arrow would care enough to help him find his friends. He’s somewhat right, as Queen helps Heywood find the Waverider – the team’s ship – at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and revives Mick Rory – Heat Wave – who was in stasis on the ship while everyone else disappeared.
After Mick fills Queen and Heywood in on what happened – the team stopped Germans from kidnapping Albert Einstein and setting off a nuclear bomb in New York in 1942 – Mick takes Heywood to find the rest of the team. Oliver decides he doesn’t “have time for time travel” and disappears from the Waverider. Seriously, he’s the worst hero ever. His friends are lost to time and he just shrugs and tells a couple of guys he doesn’t know to go fix it.
We get a quick scene in 17th Century France to show the team saving the King and Queen from guys with laser pistols (and Sara Lance getting it on with the queen – I’m sure that was important), but the crux of the episode takes place in 1942 New York City. Dr. Martin Stein gets to spar with Einstein while Sara and Ray Palmer discover that Damian Darhk – the man who killed Sara’s sister Laurel – is in New York and working with the Nazis to build an atomic bomb.
The team stops the bad guys, but Capt. Rip Hunter needs to use the ship to prevent the atomic bomb from going off. To ensure the safety of the team, he sends them off throughout history (leaving an injured Mick in stasis on the ship). Getting the team back together takes no time at all, with Ray running from a dinosaur in South Dakota, 70 million years ago, Stein and Jefferson are stuck in medieval times (not the restaurant with the jousting) and Sara is left to burned at the stake as a witch in Salem. I can’t imagine why Rip would send them to such dangerous eras. But whatever, just nitpicks. All are reunited, except for Rip, who seems to be lost in the time stream. At least they have Heywood to take his place…
The most exciting parts of the episode, though, come right at the end, as the Legends are confronted by the Justice Society of America – DC Comics’ first super-team – and Damian Darhk reveals his partner in crime, Eobard Thawne – the Reverse Flash! I’m really glad Neal McDonough (Darhk) and Matt Letscher (Thawne) are sticking around the Arrow-verse, as they’re always fun on screen. And the Justice Society should make for a good episode next week.
It may not be the best of the DC Universe shows on the CW, but the season 2 premiere felt much more fun than the majority of the first season – super powers were used during battles at the very least – though the ramifications of the time travel in The Flash vs. the ramifications in Legends of Tomorrow could give me a headache if I thought about it too long. We’ll see how things go as the season progresses, though.