When Vandal Savage murders his family, Time Master Rip Hunter goes rogue, deciding to bring him down with a team consisting of Atom, White Canary, Firestorm, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Captain Cold, and Heat Wave. However, the Time Masters actually backed Savage in his domination of the world in 2166, intending to repel a Thanagarian invasion. However, due to Captain Cold's sacrifice, the Time Masters are destroyed. Savage attempts to rewrite history with a temporal explosion, but is killed by the team when he is rendered mortal by the same meteor he used for his scheme. With Savage dead, Hawkman and Hawkgirl leave the team.

Following the demise of the Time Masters, Rip decides to take their place guarding history with Atom, White Canary, Firestorm and Heat Wave. However, they are warned by Rex Tyler that they will die in New York 1942. They proceed to ignore the warning, resulting in Heat Wave being put in stasis, Rip missing, and the rest of the team scattered in time. However, historian Nate Heywood, aided by Oliver Queen, finds Heat Wave and replaces Rip on the team. The pair rescues the rest of the team and proceed to locate the time criminals trying to alter history.




Episode Summary: (FULL Spoilers)


In 2016, historian Nate Heywood enlists Mayor Oliver Queen's help in locating the sunken Waverider, finding only Mick aboard in stasis. After being revived, Mick tells them what happened. With the Time Masters gone, Rip's team - Mick, Ray, Sara, Jefferson and Martin - continued traveling through time dealing with "aberrations" in history while avoiding 1942 due to Rex Tyler's warning. They learned that a nuclear bomb would be exploded in New York City in 1942 and believed that the Nazis kidnapped Albert Einstein and forced his help in making one. They abducted Einstein themselves, but discovered that this did not change events. Einstein explained that his partner, Mileva Marić, was the only other scientist with enough expertise. In another confrontation, they saved Mileva while Sara attempted to kill Damien Darhk, who was helping the Nazis, to preventLaurel's death. However, Darhk escaped and launched his sole atomic bomb toward New York from a U-boat. Rip then teleported all but the injured Mick off the Waverider, scattering them throughout time, before intercepting the missile with the ship and saving the city. Mick and Nate travel through time and rescue everyone, but fail to find any trace of Rip. After fixing events in 1942 to prevent the Nazis from making a nuclear bomb, the team is confronted by the Justice Society of America. Meanwhile, Darhk is shown to be working with Eobard Thawne.


The Verdict:

I have to admit that I enjoyed the pacing of the story on this episode rather than the timeline of the week format that the show lazily adopted in the first season during the pursuit of Vandal Savage. Jumping across multiple periods in time kept things interesting and fresh throughout the entire episode and didn't feel like a chore to watch like the bulk of the first season was.

At the end of the day, this episode is still a recap episode that fills in the gaps on what the Legends have been up to since toppling the Time Masters at the end of Season One. Rip Hunter is still playing the part of a wannabe Doctor Who doctor to this crew of misfits and unlikely heroes, even though I thought they got over the bulk of that hurdle at the end of Season One, but whatever. It's quickly revealed that Rip has taken measures to keep the team afloat in the case of his untimely (no pun intended) demise or disappearance. No one stays dead in these shows, whether it's DC or Marvel-made, so I think that Rip Hunter will be back later down the line in some form or fashion thanks to this show's (along with the "Flashpoint" plot for The Flash Season 3) tampering with the timelines.

I felt that the "Timescatter" protocol that Rip arranged to save the Legends in the event of their possible failure of their mission was rather stupid. He could have easily displaced all of the Legends to their original places in time where they belong or in one place together instead of fucking up the timeline even further by having their appearances show up in even more sporadic points in history. It was ironic that he was scolding them about that for the bulk of the episode when he managed to blunder the timeline himself.

Sadly, the special effects still leave a lot to be desired but at least the hand-to-hand action sequences make up for the visual shortcomings. White Canary/Sara Lance definitely kicks the most ass in this episode - or rather she gets her ass handed to her royally by Darhk by the end of the episode due to her personal obsession with revenge over the murder of her sister, Laurel.


Can I say that I vote that this guy is the best villain of the Arrowverse if he had the balls to kill off Laurel? Out of the rare chance that I took a peek at Arrow, Laurel and Thea were the two worst things about that show. Kudos to you all who put up with that shit since Day 1 but I couldn't deal. That being said... As much as I have a crush on the actress who plays Felicity Smoak, I'm not watching that show just for her.

I honestly didn't feel like Oliver Queen was needed in this Season Two pilot to introduce this new guy, Nate. It just felt like an excuse to hand Stephen Amell another paycheck for an appearance outside of his normal episode orders for Arrow this season and the inevitable Arrowverse crossover episode(s) with Legends, The Flash, and Supergirl. I thought the new guy was capable of selling himself as a new crewmember all on his own. The whole "stamp of approval" by Ollie wasn't necessary at all, but then again, most of the stuff on these CW-made superhero dramas are made to live-or-die by what the fangirls and fanboys jerk themselves off to in fan-fictions on Tumblr and Fanfiction.net, so I guess the network figured that fans would be more receptive to a new character if Ollie was cool with him too. Remember that's how Barry Allen/The Flash got his own spin-off in the first place. He popped up in a few episodes of Arrow first before they decided to go full-swing with a Flash-based show.

Since this show (along with The Flash) are playing with the consequences of Flash's tampering with the timeline of his show coupled with their own consequences of disposing of the Time Masters at the end of the first season of this show, it seems to be opening up a lot of unique opportunities to bring back a lot of marquee villains from throughout the Arrowverse up to this point. We saw Damien Darhk featured in this episode to lead into the treat of Reverse Flash/Eobard Thawne joining forces with him. I'm looking forward to seeing more of these villains join forces from both Arrow and The Flash up to this point as I'm sure they will stack the deck against the Legends big time if the JSA have to step in.

I thought Sara's crack to Palmer about "what is he without his suit" was rather funny even though it was a direct rip off of the joke Captain America poised to Tony Stark/Ironman in the original Avengers film. I thought that they would have given him legit powers by now instead of reducing him to don a low-budget Ironman suit to fight crime. And here I thought Diamondback's outfit in Luke Cage looked bad... Speaking of Sara, can anyone answer a question for me? What's her sexuality? Is she lesbian or bisexual? Either way I still think she's a bad ass and one of the better characters on this show, but geez, she was sleeping around on this episode. I thought she had a thing for Snart last season before he sacrificed himself? (Sighs) I guess that's her way of coping with losing two loved ones in so little time back to back. First, it was Laurel and now Snart. I suggest the writers tone that down a bit before people start complaining about it in the near future though if they aren't already. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that's probably their running gag in all honesty though.

Watch it or Don't Bother?

The Justice Society of America make their first appearance at the end of this premiere. 
If you liked the first season, you might as see where it goes next. Newcomers, it's still pretty early to judge, but this is as good as a starting point as ever as this episode recaps a lot of things outside of what happened to the original crew of the Waverider, but sticks to what happened to the current group that was left following the demise of the Time Masters.

Even though I feel like the Justice Society of America look like a huge group of losers/nerds in cosplay (outside of Stargirl's costume that looks AMAZING), I'm anxious to see where this goes. From the tease that there's more than Thawne and Darhk working together to form their own band of villains from the teaser trailers for this season to seeing the members of the JSA teaming up with the Waverider crew, I think they might actually deliver big time on this show after it's shortcomings last season.

My biggest complaint is that they completely dropped the cliffhanger that the last season ended on with the warning by Rex Tyler and it seemed like the writers wrote this episode like that didn't even happen. I'm willing to forgive them for that if they revisit that situation later in this season - after all this is the season two premiere, so I'm going to cut them some slack.

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