So far, Legends of Tomorrow has been fairly monotonous. Look for Savage, lose to him, start again. But ‘Legendary’ is everything that we could have hoped for. We begin with a despairing Rip Hunter dropping off his crew five months after he picked them up. Although they are against the idea, a holographic Rip led them off of the ship and the real him flies off, leaving them to readjust. Stein returns to his marriage and all is good for him. Unfortunately, the rest of the team struggle to readjust to the missing time. Mick does his best to move on from losing the courageous Captain Cold by giving his gun to a new partner in crime. It goes less than well as the newbie is too different and ends up toasted. Ray tries to help and convinces Mick to come with him after Savage. Sara goes to visit her father in the otherwise empty Arrowcave and learns the traumatic truth about Laurel. With each member of the team upset with their lot, Stein and Ray join forces to summon the Waverider back to them and finish their business.
Watching them all try to figure out exactly what to do with their lives now that they have begun a higher mission is brilliant. Because they were dropped off further ahead in time than when they left, they practically get to see all the outcomes of their decisions immediately. That is, their pre-travel choices. But when they struggle to look for clues regarding Savage, Jax conveniently knocks a helmet that moved across a room because Kendra hid a note in it. Weak writing there. Following it logically, the helmet should just have carried the message all along anyway and Rip would have found it that much earlier. Regardless, they have a location and go to fight Savage on one hand and Nazis on the other. Struck by plot development, Firestorm develops transmutation powers just in time to prevent himself getting shot. We also learn that Savage plans to use the Thanigarian meteors to send the world back to 1700 B.C. and rule. Kendra and Carter run free just long enough for Kendra to get captured again. This happened before, when Kendra tries to escape the Time Masters control. It seems to be her thing.
Curious to see if he can replicate his transmutation ability from earlier, Jax and Stein prove to be a bust. Stein remarks that ‘third time’s a charm’ and has an Independence Day level brainstorm. Savage plans to destroy the world three times to create a paradox so large that time resets itself back to the first meteor storm in 1700 B.C. Back in Harmony Falls circa 1958 (time of the scary bird people), the time-travelling Savage meets his younger counterpart and starts planning with himself. Using meteors in 1958, 1975 and 2021, Savage puts his plan into motion. Planning an equivalent plan, the Legends realise that the second dose of radiation from the meteors will render Savage temporarily immortal and split up into the separate time periods. Mick and Rory take 1958, Sara, Stein and Jax go to 1975 and Rip and Carter depart to 2021.
While Firestorm holds off the other forces, Sara and Savage face down with Sara proclaiming that “Time Masters are never late” as they begin to fight. Thirteen years earlier, Ray is able to protect Mick from the birds as he squares off against the immortal without letting him get in a single blow. Decades later, Carter notices a soldier taking aim and Rip and watches helplessly as he is blasted over the railings, only to emerge triumphantly atop the Waverider. Kenda and Carter return to fighting Savage as Rip takes on the remaining soldiers. In all three time periods, the fight against Savage goes badly for him. This is weird, as the entire team of Legends didn’t do a thing the last fifteen times but when it’s just two-people teams? Suddenly they’re invincible. Despite ’58 Savage proclaiming he is immortal Mick picks up his gun. “Guess you haven’t heard the news.” Mick casually incinerates his version as Sara snaps the neck of her maniac. The oldest version receives a knife to the heart from Kenda before Rip throws him into a generator. Ray shrinks the meteor in 1958 down so much that the explosion is minute as Firestorm transmutes his into water, much to the displeasure of Sara. Her boots get wet. The team reconverges back in 2021 but there’s a problem. The meteorite has gone critical and can’t be stopped. On the bright side, time will be alright if it goes off. Just not the world.
Rip uses the Waverider to take the meteor into the heart of the sun in a suicide run. A really pointless one. With such a sacrifice even moving Heatwave to admit that he doesn’t want to lose another friend, Rip sets a course. And then he has the ultimate near-death experience. His wife and sun son appear before him and Rip makes the sensible course of time-jumping away.
Gathering up the crew, he takes them back to 2016 with an offer: joining him in protecting the timeline.
Sara visits her sisters grave and discusses the option with her father, remembering how Laurel was the reason she departed in the first place. Clarisa realises that her husband wants to depart on another ‘sabbatical’ and reveals that Jax has been telling her everything. She pushes him to go and make a difference. Seperately to the rest, Rip drops Rory off in 2013. From the looks of STAR Labs, it’s before the particle accelerator explosion. Rory talks with a younger version of Snart and tells him that although he “might not think that [he’s] a hero, [he’s] a hero to me”.
The Legends reconveine back at the Waverider and Kenda and Carter announce that they intend to live a normal life now that Savage is gone. As the pair flies off, Mick reveals that the sight of them flying off makes him crave chicken. Before the crew can depart, another Waverider crashes from the sky and a hooded figure appraoches, asking for the exact day. Claiming that they’re “exactly where they said they’d be” he warns them not to board their Waverider or they all die. Heatwave asks who says so and the figure claims that Rory himself sent him. Rip asks who the newcomer is and the answer is pure gold: “My name is Rex Tyler. I’m a member of the Justice Society of America.”
Season 1 has plodded along but the next one looks ready to explode. The JSA are the original superhero team and consists of the ultimate icons. The original Flash, the first Green Lantern. Hourman, Atom, Jhonny Thunder. With several months to wait, I hope that Rip is willing to let us sneak a peek into the future sometime soon.