Blood Ties – With Kendra’s condition still critical, the team are stuck in 1975 while Ray works on a teeny tiny solution. Sara and Rip Hunter go after Vandal Savage's financials but discover they are not the only source of his power. Snart and Rory mount a jewellery heist in Central City with a surprising objective.
They say any hero is only as good as his villain and this week Vandal Savage really shows he’s certainly up to the job. While we’ve seen him as a good villain on the recent Arrow/Flash crossover but here, in Legends of Tomorrow is where see him as a super villain. Megamind was right: the difference is presentation and Savage proves this by going full on Kuberick for a creepily lit Eyes Wide Shut-esque cult scene, “To them I am a God!”. This superbly amplifies his evil credentials by making things about more than just him. That his mere presence inspires others towards a greater evil and builds in the idea of a legion of followers (those glimpsed here were likely just a local branch). This makes complete sense within the context of the given timeline. No matter how powerful he eventually becomes in 2166, no one man could conquer an entire planet singlehandedly. He would need an army and here, we see how such a force could grow and propagate through time as his legend grows. Speaking of presence, my God does Casper Crump that here as he unleashes the inner showman when in a comfortable position. His interactions with Rip Hunter are the most enjoyable as it establishes a circular link in their relationship by Hunter inadvertently causing Savage to seek out and kill his family. Their final moments together are incredible as a blood-splattering Savage fades into his temporary equivalent of death while haunting Hunter with what he’s going to do to his wife and son. It’s incredibly powerful stuff and when you contrast that to an earlier sequence of White Canary beating up henchmen to 70s rock music (I Got the Fire by Montrose) it really goes to show how much dramatic range the show can muster. It can be playfully silly or utterly horrific when it needs to be.
In an extended model of the last episode’s format, this week breaks the characters into several smaller groups for fragmented arcs. This helps build their relationships and keep the episode moving at pace but cutting in between them. We get to see Stein and Palmer bonding like a good old pair of science bros. The revelations about Ray’s finance are nothing new to Arrow viewers but the episode does well to cover them naturally via Ray’s crisis of confidence. Perusing the pair’s former student/teacher relationship turns into a lot of fun and seeing ATOM shrunk inside Kendra’s veins is a loving throwback to his 1989s Braving the Bloodstream comic (not to mention the Asteroids arcade game). Rip Hunter and Sara’s play for the money (like a snivelling little Ferengi) gives us yet more dashing 70s getups but more enjoyably some insights into their personal demons. For Sara, this is still dealing with her Lazarus Pit bloodlust. It’s good to see that the show hasn’t taken the magical escape route from this as it vastly deepens the White Canary character towards a self=loathing belief that she’s returned to life as a monster whereas Hunter is still feeling the guilt from his failed solo attempt on Savage back in Egypt before the man became the immortal (most likely the preceding events to recruiting the team). Both characters’ troubles link well a central theme of accepting your past and embracing your future.
However, some of the best moments of the entire episode come from what could easily have been filler b-plot in the episode but develops into an incredibly touching story. In the last episode, we witnessed the first case of a character accidentally changing their timeline as Martin Stein Marty McFly’d himself into being a bachelor. In this episode, we get our first case of someone actively trying to change their personal future. Of course, it was going to be Captain Cold/Snart. He’s the planner, the master schemer, and it feels completely in keeping with his character to both envision and seize such a temporal long-con opportunity and improve his troubled childhood courtesy of an abusive father. The scenes in the '70's Snart household are both touching and gripping, from the contrasting meeting of sweet little Leonard to facing off with his father. Wentworth Millar is outstanding as he holds his typical cold-fixated stare but tones back the sarcasm just enough to convey the emotion behind it. Let’s not forget Snart has already killed his father in the present (earlier in Flash season 2), and his passing remark about getting a free pass because his sister, Lisa, not being born yet, brilliantly suggests that he’d considered doing the same again. The ultimately ineffective conclusion of this story nicely pulls in some previous time-travel lore from The Flash: the idea of time biting back against big changes i.e. stopping one disaster will only create a different one. Hopefully, that continued logic will permit other team members to take a punt at their personal time line without creating any major continuity problems.
The episode itself is very difficult to fault. The only real issue is from a series perspective: that for a time-travelling show, it’s now spent 3 straight episodes in the same time but that looks to remedied come the conclusion. Blood Ties is a fun and hugely entertaining offering with good action, stunning visuals (the red lighting in the cult ritual scene!), excellent drama and some good laughs too. Bring on the '80's!