Episode Title: White Knights
Original Airdate: 2-11-16
I’m still running behind on my Legends of Tomorrow coverage, but I’m working towards catching up (while starting to fall behind on the Flash, but I’ll be watching that next and it’s taking a month off) As tonight’s episode airs, I go back in time two weeks to watch the team come ever closer together while simultaneously tearing itself apart. And even though I still really enjoy the show for all of its great moments of humor, the more dramatic moments are starting to wear a little thin on me and don’t feel quite so serious as they do elsewhere. Not enough to completely throw me off of the show, but I did catch a bit of an eye roll here and there on this episode.
With the jump ahead a few years more than a few things go wrong for our team pretty quickly, and not just their failed attempt at Oceans Elevening the Pentagon where we find out that White Canary isn’t the only one that has her struggles with bloodlust when Kendra lets her inner Hawk out. But we also find out that Chronos is still after them and has found them thanks to their latest time jump. Not only that, but Vandal Savage has used his knowledge of their encounter to help himself along the way and alter some of his plans for world domination. These plans now include making his own version of Firestorm over in Soviet Russia.
Four episodes in and there’s finally quite a bit of gelling within the team, but there is still friction between some members. And surprisingly, the most friction here is coming from the two halves of Firestorm which is ending up to be a very surrogate father & son relationship. Jackson very much plays the “I’m not your son” card while also tossing in the fact that his own father left his family, even if it was through his death if I remember correctly rather than just being an absentee father, while Professor Stein realizes that he’s being a little too hard on Jefferson, but only because he already lost one partner.
The continued increasingly friendly rivalry between Atom and Cold is in full force as they both try to woo a beautiful Russian scientist. Especially since Ray comes up completely empty while Cold succeeds in a big bad way to end with the big laugh and callback to the Pentagon heist where he not only gets her security card, but her wallet as well.
What didn’t work so well for me were some of the more serious moments. Especially the training scenes between the two birds. It felt a little bit too forced to me, and especially after Rip Hunter has his talk with Kendra and explains that she’s supposed to be bringing out Canary’s human just as Canary brings out Kendra’s Hawk and the scene ends in a very cliche clashed staves. I also wasn’t quite on board with having yet another member of the team gravely wounded just one episode later, even though it was essentially brushed off rather than being something truly life-threatening. The reveal that the Time Masters’ deal was merely a trick also wasn’t something very surprising considering where we are at this point in the series. It just felt rather empty. But what the episode did do well was what it always does well: the humor and the action, and it still had enough of that to make me happy and keep trying to catch up to hopefully be on time for next week’s episode.
Channel: Superhero 