Spoilers ahead…
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While I rather enjoyed the two-part pilot episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow despite its flaws, the fourth episode shows they haven’t quite worked some of them out yet. This is the first episode where it began to irk me that this team is so… incompetent? This episode has the team damn near failing in their mission not one, not two, but three separate times, partially due to a lack of teamwork and partially due to a lack of leadership by our resident Time Master.
The year is 1986 and they’ve discovered the location of Vandal Savage, but it’ll take an unsuccessful break-in at the Pentagon, the failed by Ray then accomplished by Leonard seduction of a Russian scientist, and a mostly fruitless break-in at a Russian science lab to stop him. But at what cost?
The team are still learning to work together, and their various ticks and quirks are setting them up to fail at almost every turn. Hunter almost turns himself and the team in to the Time Masters against Heatwave’s wishes, only to find them allied with Chronos. Hawgirl is losing control of her rage, and begins rigid training with White Canary to reign it in, but who’s helping who?
While still an enjoyable episode, the writers need to bring this team together sooner rather than later or the audience is going to lose interest. It’s finding its footing, but as a new type of comic based series it’s taking a few more episodes than I’d like. There were some good character moments and action scenes, but every time you begin rooting for these legends they screw up barely succeeding in their mission, if at all. As usual, I found Captain Cold to be the stand-out character, injecting the episode with some much-needed humor.
They do bring up Professor Stein’s kidnapping of Jackson, which was something that stood out in the pilot, but it really isn’t addressed by any of the other teammates which is a little curious/disturbing. The relationship between those two is tense, to say the least. From my Legends of Tomorrow pilot review: “None of these characters are who I thought they were, in the sense that I was surprised at some of their actions, especially Professor Stein. He does something so morally ambiguous early on in part one that left me literally scratching my head. The fact that none of the others find it wrongheaded or disconcerting is a major bungle on the part of the writers, and I hope they remedy it in a future episode.” They haven’t yet.
Setting up Palmer and Snart as a team again was just as fun as in the pilot, with Snart proving once again that his assured cockiness will win in the end against Palmer’s naivete. I wish they wouldn’t split up Snart and Rory though, as those two work well together. Overall it was an entertaining episode not without its flaws, and I am curious how long it will take to see this team come together.
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow airs Thursdays on the CW.
