Recap: LEGENDS OF TOMORROW Gets Stranded with Easter Eggs

Episodes 107 “Marooned”

[photos: Cate Cameron/The CW]

Tensions are high and emotions flare, for good and ill, as our team races against the clock to save another time ship from the ravages of dastardly time pirates.

And on top of that, we get flashbacks to the future.

Apologies for missing the last couple of episodes. Dogs and cats are trying to live together in my world (not literally… you’ll get the reference if you’re of a certain age).

Onward!

This episode has our team drifting in the Time Vortex Limbo, where we find Rip (Arthur Darvill) moping in his steampunk office, trying to figure out where to find Vandal Savage. But he’s hindered, he tells Professor Stein (Victor Garber), by the fact that Gideon hasn’t had an upgrade with new historical data. But moping gets interrupted when they pick up a distress call from another time ship. This one is under the command of Captain Eve Baxter (Stephanie Cleough), under attack by time pirates led by John Valor (Callum Keith Rennie from Battlestar Galactica).

And that gives us the impetus to delve into Rip’s history — his marriage, the fact that he and Lieutenant Coburn (Alex Duncan) broke the rules by having a relationship, and the reveal that she resigned from the Time Masters to marry Hunter in a move that guaranteed he would fulfill his destiny as one of the best Time Masters in history.

Tensions are running high between Snart (Wentworth Miller) and Rory (Dominic Purcell) after their … let’s say “disagreement” over staying in Star City 2046, where the city was aflame — Rory’s favorite environment. And as he points out, he hasn’t really been able to do what he was ostensibly recruited to do: burn things.

Rory’s resentment only gets worse after their capture by the pirates, as Hunter admits he only wanted Snart, but brought Rory along because it was a “package deal” to get Captain Cold on the team.

Snart and Sara (Caity Lotz) are busy trying to patch a hole in the hull while Rip, Jax (Franz Drameh), and Baxter commiserate in their cell, trying to figure out a way to escape. See, Rory figures he can cut a deal: in exchange for the Waverider, the pirates take him home to Star City just before he gets recruited so he can keep Snart from going along.

Yeah, this will end in tears. You know that, right?

That hole in the hull won’t patch from the inside, and it’s got Snart and Sara trapped, so Ray (Brandon Routh) rigs his suit and goes EVA to repair the damage from the outside, leaving Kendra (Ciara Renée) to worry. And when Ray almost dies, but doesn’t, we get a very shoe-horned budding romance between the two that feels forced. While Renée and Routh have a certain degree of chemistry, the relationship feels like it’s in service to the plot, not organic. It’s a played out trope that I wish the show would avoid.

Here’s the thing: so far on this show, Kendra hasn’t had very much to do. She and Carter, arguably the most important characters with regard to the overall plot, are instead treated as throwaways. Carter’s dead (for now) and Kendra gets to be the love-struck puppy in between beating up bad guys? Not much of a chance for her to get some depth that defines her on her own terms. Having moved away from being “Cisco’s love interest” through “Carter’s amnesiac soulmate” to her current semi-balance identity, Kendra only now can be defined as a solo character. But that opportunity gets squandered by the writers, who apparently feel that there has to be the luuvvv triangle of Ray-Kendra-Cisco to contend with.

That’s boring.

I mean, come on! Kendra’s the only one who can kill Savage with the mystic knife! She’s central to the resolution of the main premise of the show. There should be an entire storyline built around this, with so much potential. Does she feel any urge at all to go after Savage? Does she need to meditate to recover more memories? Does the team feel the need to protect her and as a consequence stifle her? Does she need additional training to make sure the knife finds its target?

There was one moment in this episode where I got a hint of something that could be ginormously great and spectacular: bad guys in the corridor getting their hats handed to them by Sara and Kendra. That’s a team-up I want to see more. Sara could teach Kendra how to properly serve a beat-down.

Ray’s a clown in an Iron Ant Man suit. Firestorm is going to be a conflicted character because Stein and Jax don’t always see eye-to-eye, and now Snart and Rory are on the outs. Given that each episode gives us a different combination of characters, depending on the mission, I want to see Sara and Kendra fly solo.

I also enjoyed Sara’s moments freezing to death with Leonard. It gives us insight into his character that help us understand just how difficult he has it when he has to confront Mick. Does his kill his long-time partner? Probably not. He’s probably a Capsicle™ at the moment.

Now to the most important parts of the show: the Easter Eggs. Because we got them in spades.

• Akeron — maybe a wink at Akeron’s Inferno?
• “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” — and with that, Jax sets up the fact that this episode will be very meta
• Time Pirates — I believe the word you’re looking for is Bandits, actually
• Rick Star, Space Ranger — come on, how many of us built the cardboard ships in the garage?
• the pirate take-over simulation — echoes of the Kobyashi Maru scenario?
• “I thought you’d be taller.” — more of a trope than an Easter egg, although it hearkens back to “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?”
• Away Team — Kendra is a Trekkie, comparing Ray to Picard (whom he likes over Kirk?)
• “Give me a chance to negotiate” — Star Trek II, when Kirk says “Give me a chance to recall the data…”
• Imperiex Onslaught — Imperiex first appeared in Superman #153 (February 2000), and was created by Jeph Leob and Ian Churchill.
• “Great Scott!” — Stein gets to say it. These writers didn’t miss it, like they did over on The Librarians.
• Sulu and Han Solo — Ray has ambitions of being a pilot after having ambitions of being Captain Kirk.
• Kanjar Ro — He first appeared in Justice League of America #3 (February 1961) in a story entitled “The Slave Ship of Space” and was created by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky.
• IQ of meat — “meat” is what the Reach called humanity in Young Justice
• Ray’s allergies — could it be a wink at Ron Stoppable’s dad in Kim Possible? I choose to think so.
• 3,720 to 1 — Ray’s chances of coming back from cardiac arrest are just as good as successfully navigating an asteroid field
• Rory to Sara: “I’m only gonna kill you a little bit.” — so.. she’d be “mostly dead”?
• Wilhelm Scream — when the pirates are blown into space at the 36-minute mark, it’s there. Because it has to be, thus bookending the episode along with Jax’s bad feeling comment.

Next episode: 1959. And given the current times in which we live, look for Hollywood social commentary about the Fifties to creep in.

 

Legends of Tomorrow airs Thursdays at 8/7c on the CW.