Cleaning up messes is really tough to do. It has also been what the Legends of Tomorrow have done since they first started. Sometimes (a lot of the time) it’s the Legends own mess they have to clean up, but there is something satisfying about cleaning up your own mess.
In “Aruba-Con” The Legends clean up a few of their messes, but also one caused by Rip and his new Time Bureau. Ah yes, let’s get into Rip’s new band of merry men and women shall we?
Being Normal is Overrated
Okay, so we get our first glimpse of the new Rip Hunter and his Time Bureau and they are basically the disappointed parents you never wanted. Rip saves the team at the beginning of the episode from a dinosaur and immediately introduces the Time Bureau and relieves the Legends of duty.
I guess 5 years since Rip left the Waverider (which was only 15 minutes to the team) has made him less inclined to the Legends’ methods, though I was caught off guard by Rip’s comment of “missing the good old days” to Sara.
We also get to meet Rip’s protege of sorts in one Agent Sharpe. She has not time for fools like the Legends, and is always insulting them. So you just know she’s going to be a member of the team very shortly. Also, with all the back and forth they had with one another, Sara and Agent Sharpe could be a perfect match for one another.
So we go six months ahead and the team’s lives are figurative messes :
- Sara works at a Bed, Bath and Beyond type place with the most annoying boss in the world.
- Ray works for a dating app boss (who takes a unnecessary shot at Felicity Smoak in the episode too).
- Nate is teaming-up with Kid Flash, but also dating other women.
- Amaya is back in 1942 thanks to Rip and the Time Bureau (though it was her idea).
- Mick is relaxing in Aruba when Julius Caesar shows up to pick a fight.
This leads us to the main thrust of our story as one mess (anachronisms) that the Legends might have caused needs to be cleaned up. As Sara, Ray and Nate get the band back together and after a little sight-seeing tour of the Time Bureau’s HQ, take back the Waverider and go help Mick!! But aren’t we missing a couple team members?
OMINOUS VIBES
We get to also see how Jax and Professor Stein‘s lives are going – Jax’s has quit a school and Professor Stein is going to be a grandfather!! Yep, Lily is pregnant and Stein is happy with the retired life. (Now, we won’t go into how Lily is a time aberration mess that Stein caused and has left unattended, not at the moment). Their quiet lives are interrupted when the Waverider shows up.
The team is still trying to figure out what to do about Caesar and then Nate chimes in with what is basically the Legends of Tomorrow’s motto
The point is, sometimes we screw things up for the better.”
A prime example of this is for Stein, he had no daughter before his screw-up. Now he has a daughter and possible granddaughter soon. Happily, the band gets back together (sorry if I use this reference a lot) and confront Julius’s army of basically drunk college dudes. As Professor Stein says “Can we agree they all suck?” The best part of this is Sara and Caesar’s fight, which lasted all of 5 seconds because Sara Lance is a world-class badass and could defeat Oliver Queen and Barry Allen in a fight if she had to. Some middle-age guy from Rome is no contest.
CLEANING UP YOUR MESS
So the Legends send Caesar back to his time in Rome and luckily have one of Rip’s memory guns to wipe old Julius’s memory clean. However, for some dumb reason, Nate has a book of Roman history which Julius easily swipes from him.
Nate, this is one of those times that screwing up wasn’t for the better.
Rip and the Time Bureau show up to save the day, but instead walk into a Caesar’s trap and Agent Sharpe gets captured. This shows the value of the team in Rip’s eyes. Yes, they may screw-up a lot, damage time a lot, but they can also figure things out. Sara knew it was a trap before the Time Bureau did. She also knew how to get Agent Sharpe back from Caesar’s forces, which looked almost as easy as it did against him at the beach. (Having Firestorm and The Atom’s powers helped too)
So, we get to see that the Legends may cause messes, but they also clean up their own messes. Rip Hunter understands that (after all a mess of his is what caused the Legends in the first place) and he also knows he will need these people for what is coming next. After all, chainsaws are sometimes needed to fix messes too. Something big named Mallus is coming and only the Legends can stop it.
(Though the Legends also caused it……..Dammit guys…)
QUICK THOUGHTS
- We end the episode in 1942 as we glimpse Amaya protecting a village in Zambezi from British soldiers. She seems more confident and vicious than ever before. How long will it be till she reunites with the team and Nate?
- Mick complains that “Caesar Salad sucks,” yet keeps eating it. SO I think you liked it Mick.
- The feeling I get is that something bad is going to happen to Stein, especially after he agreed to stay on the Waverider for Jax. Things are running too smoothly for him and I fear he might not get to see his grandbaby born.
- Yay or Nay on Rip’s new haircut?
- Here’s the extended trailer for season 3 – we see some familiar faces here and what looks like to be one heck of a wild ride for our team of Legends!
Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on the CW.