The Legion of Doom – While interrogating Rip Hunter, Damian Darhk finds hidden details of an a safety deposit in 2025 Switzerland that hay hold his secrets, while he and Merlyn question what Eobard Thawne is hiding. Meanwhile, Martin Stein seeks help from his aberration daughter causing everyone to learn the truth.
The episode title tells it all. Right from the start, with Damien Darhk hilariously narrating the typical hero introduction, this episode revolves around the Legion of Doom motley trio rather than the Legends. What’s more, it’s both different and much better than most would expect from that concept as we the see the 3 villains combined but far from united. Although there are a few more goofy lines from Thawne, Phil Klemmer & Marc Guggenheim’s really impress by the way it keeps their individual villains as a driving motive. Each is clearly just out for themselves. Pretty much every instance of 2 or 3 members in the same room turns into a big dog growl off of threats and grinning defiance. John Barrowman is on particularly magnificent form, portrayed, having lost a hand, as the weakest of the 3 but flat out refusing to be ordered to be intimidated. Then throw in some closed doors scheming and back-stabbing to present this wonderful idea of the Legion being little more than a chaotic time bomb underneath their well-presented surface. It’s a lot of fun too (that sword fight) as the story develops into showing their power dynamics transitioning from an Eobard Thawne dictatorship to finally being the villain partnership they were implied to be. The means for doing this becomes an excellent play on both comic lore and the past events of Flash Seasons 1 & 2 (with some Jurassic Park thrown in for good measure) to de-powering the Reverse Flash. Sadly, the CG of said “thing” is a bit on the dodgy side but the dark final confrontation scenes make up for it in creepiness.
Ultimately, the Legends become merely a subplot this episode, which is why it’s surprising they spill the beans on Stein’s time aberration daughter Lily (they told Mick not to do it.... big mistake). On the plus side, by picking up on an already invested storyline, it enables them to cover some good emotional material inside their lesser screen time. Stein senior’s revelations are particularly good as he confesses to not having children in his life out of feel in becoming like his own terrible father. It allows both father and daughter to feel justified in their actions while still reconciling at the end. There are even some fascinating converse speculations from Stein about the nature of aberrations and to some extent questioning how can they really determine whether their own reality is the real version a history..... However, as such ideas throw the show’s very purpose into the grey, I can’t see them being dwelled upon. The more certain future seems Lily’s demise. Now that the whole Legends team is aware and accepting of her existence, an eventual death or sacrifice becomes all the more meaningful. The big fat down side the Legend’s lesser episode presence is that half the team are left with little or nothing to do other than explain the exposition of Eobard Thawne’s character for the Legion story. It would have been better to least have them occupied with something; like having the, “whatsitcalled-dohickey” break on the ship for several of them to fix. Or better yet just leave the Legends out this week for an entirely Legion episode.
Even before the end of this episode, Arthur Darvill’s not-Rip Hunter accent was starting to grate on me, along with fears about dragging out his altered state for too long. Thankfully, this episode addresses these issues and progresses Rip’s story very well. Firstly, before moving forward the early scenes of Merlyn and Darhk’s torture attempts getting stonewalled were great from both sides. It instilled vulnerability and fear into not-Rip while Merlyn & Darhk’s frustrations in failure were very enjoyable to watch. Then everything that follows concerning the recovery of Rip’s memories made sense and gets bonus points for riffing on Doctor Who’s terrific Human Nature/Family of Blood episodes. Yet it still manages to pull off a major closing twist that really sets things up for a heated confrontation next episode.
In concept, this is a fantastic episode in giving us a villain’s perspective. So much so that it really should have gone all in and made the full hour about the Legion and their road to this point in the main story rather than throwing in the Legends team as a supporting act and disrupting the pacing in the process. Yet a certain dark emergence may be all some fans need to walk away with a smile this week and in fact, the whole episode is a very comic orientated delight. The likes of Merlyn and Darhk are in the best from we’ve ever seen them and the show itself is really on a high right now. It all holds together we are in for quite the legendary few months.