Progeny – The team travels to 2147 to stop the last key event of Vandal Savage’s rise to power but when the price of success takes a child’s life, things get a lot more complicated. Ray encounters a surprising piece of his legacy, while Kendra flashes back to her history and Mick & Snart finally settle their differences as only they know how.
So the main story of this of this episode boils down to the classic morality scruples question, “Would you kill a baby Hitler?” --The act of taking an (at that point) innocent life to save the future lives of countless many. Yet the episode finds a great way to deepen the concept by making it very clear that the kid in question, the young Per Degaton (a long-standing DC villain and Injustice Society member), is unmistakably evil. The scene of a conflicted Rip Hunter holding a gun to his head gets impressively dark by the kid’s cold unflinching calling of Rip’s Bluff. It’s like he’s had a Clockwork Orange-eye taped brainwashing of all Scar’s Lion King scenes on repeat until only a ruthless thirst for power remains. His every smirking word is another thread-tightening Rip’s finger on the trigger of his pistol, making the moral high ground an increasingly steep climb. Its powerful stuff that makes a more obvious outcome insignificant compared to the entertainment delivered in along the way. It triggers some good debates among the group as the likes of Snart is all for killing the kid before breakfast and as an assassin, Sara isn’t against to it, whereas the greater lawful good ranks of the group feel otherwise. The use of Per Degaton in Savage’s rise to power fits in well with his character’s modus operandi of moving pieces into place from the shadows before making his killer move. Rather than conquer the world himself, he grooms an ambitious but inferior counterpart to do most of the legwork on his behalf before kicking him to the curve and taking over the wheel. It keeps his anonymity until all opposing forces are at their weakest.
Family and legacy are heavily the running themes. From young Per Degaton believing his corporation heading father to be weak, to Ray encountering a few familiar faces, human and robotic. Although the Ray story gives us Jewel Staite (Firefly’s Kaylee) as a robotics doctor, it struggles a little by shooting itself in the foot over the speculation of Ray spawning offspring in 2016, which we know from watching Arrow this season, definitely did not happen. However, the resulting truth does provide a good setup for an Arrow Season 5 development along these lines. In keeping with Staite’s Firefly connection, Ray has a great Janestown moment when confronted with an unexpected bust of himself. The use of the Atom suit robots also give some good opponents for superpower action sequences. The visuals are impressive as Ray and Firestorm battle the bots through the skies and they look very good by TV standards. There are also some very fun moments to be found amongst these scenes. Ray’s choice of serial killer fake names is good but for the real money shot keeps your eyes on Jax’s unconvinced reaction behind him.
The family theme continues as Kendra flashes back to her past life of what looks like the 1920's. It sees Flak Hentschel make his first reappearance as Carter since being killed off in the opening episodes. We can be pretty sure this is a refresher course for Kendra re-encountering the real life version in a new time period. The scenes carry a surprising amount of meaning to them and function as much more than just giving Kendra something to do. The idea of their family, including the boy version of the 70's encountered Professor Boardman, having to continually run as Savage catches up to them links into unchangeable future idea of the main story: that, “time wants to happen”. There are some things you just can’t avoid. Then there’s Kara destiny bind to Carter and how that affects her budding relationship with Ray. It was a topic bound to surface sooner or later, and it’s approached well as Kendra confesses her conflict to Ray with some degree of guilt. Although she wants to be with Ray, something inside her needs to be with Carter.
I really liked the way the show brought Mick Rory back into the picture from under the mask of Chronos last week and while the decision to confine and rehabilitate him was a good one, Mick is not the sort of character who should be cooped up for too long, so it’s really great to see that resolved within this episode as eventually Snart goes to see him. It feels perfectly in keeping with their characters as they forgo the tender heart-to-heart talk for a good old-fashioned criminal boys punch up. The resulting fight is a lot of fun as the pair slug it out but with one niggling omission. Given Mick’s heavily documented Rocky obsession during the 80's Russia episodes, he really should have kicked things off with a good old, “You wanna ring the bell Apollo?”. Mick’s return to the fold also heralds the arrival of some new enemies as the Time Masters step up their game to take down the team.
This week, Legends tackles a topic that could easily have capsized them but instead harnesses it for a fun-filled voyages. From a series perspective, there is a mild feeling of repetition to the show’s formula in that in every time period, all the team’s actions become largely irrelevant, but it’s delivering enough character rewards to overlook this. Next week sees the team back in Doc Brown’s favourite, the Old West for encounter with Jonah Hex no less.