Legends of Tomorrow Episodes 9-10 review - Left Behind/Progeny

Left Behind

Left behind… for 5 minutes of screen time before everyone gets back together, except for 2 of them but that’s another story

So, Left behind is probably my favourite episode of the series to date because it has character arcs and good action (despite the numerous excuses to not use Firestorm because of effects budget)

So, Sara, Kendra and Ray are forced to live 2 years of their life in the 1940’s, during that time, Ray eventually gives up hope becomes accustomed to his life, Kendra begins to lose her powers and Sara heads back to the League of Assassins.

Meanwhile, Captain Cold is captured by Kronos and much as people did predict in the last episode, he is in fact Mick Rory aka Heatwave who was picked up the Time Masters for some reason and essentially kinda sorta brainwashed, maybe. His method of escaping is freezing off his own hand fortunately dues ex machina can sort that out right away, yeah I know, it’s a nitpick.

But the meat of this episode is them finding Sara, in Nanda Parbat. No good episode of Arrow took place here, from stupid plans to really stupid plans to even stupider plans, no good episode (ok, I’m basing the ones from season 4 based on other people’s thoughts since I’m not watching it)

But… They do something pretty decent here, even introducing Talia al Ghul, who I don’t believe has shown up before and you never know, she might show up again (it’s been over 50 years but there’s a Lazarus pit right behind them, so…)

But more importantly, they allow time to explore character arcs, and whilst I am not a fan ever of appealing to someone’s better nature to snap them out of mind control/whatever this was because it’s so cliché and ultimately false in my opinion, I think it works fine here

Oh and Vandal Savage does not appear in this episode, but it doesn’t feel like filler because Kronos is an established character at this point. The revelation that he’s Mick Rory does add something more to the character. It seems like he’s been manipulated all his life, whether by Snart, or by the team, or the Time Masters and now by the team again.

It’ll be interesting to see which direction they go with this, there’s definitely more story to be told. And of course it’s possible the Time Masters will escalate action against the group now that their bounty hunter is no longer in play

Overall it’s a fun episode with decent action, a very good moment from Snart, a few nice jokes, and some genuinely good character bits. I’m still not invested in Ray and Kendra as a couple but they were endearing in this episode.

Rating 8.5/10

Progeny

We have yet another episode about the futility of trying to change time. I thought we were past this!

Joking aside, this is actually an interesting episode as the team travel to the future and face a moral quandary, they know a child is going to rise to power and Savage will take his place, but is it right to kill or abduct him before he becomes a murderous a*shole?

So yeah, we have sides here. Rip Hunter, Sara and Captain Cold are all for killing him but Ray, Martin, Kendra and Jefferson are all against it and manage to talk them down to child abduction, which in fairness looks pretty damn solid

The problem is there are a few holes in this story. After abducting the child, they discover that his abduction had no effect on the time-stream at all, so they’re left to the option of killing him. Except if they don’t intend to give him back, and Giddeon said this would be the case no matter where they dumped him, he’s as good as dead to everyone around him. Killing him would not make a difference

Then we have another hole, Jefferson asks why they don’t try talking to him, Rip responds that it’ll change nothing since he’s been subtly brainwashed by Savage over the years, except they’re keeping Mick Rory in a cage, wanting to change him despite lifetimes of brainwashing! Rip Hunter: HYPROCRITE!

Speaking of Mick Rory, his arc comes to a very sudden change-around as for some reason he can’t bring himself to kill Leonard any more than he could bring himself to kill Mick. He now informs them that Time Master assassins are on their way who will hopefully prove more interesting

But it’s an interesting dilemma, and offers a pretty decent action scene as Savage mounts a rescue on the kid in full force. OK, so Kendra has nothing to do in this episode but have some flashbacks about having a child in a previous life and leaving Ray to wonder and… You know what, I don’t care

Ray notices that the state police of Kasnia are using upgraded versions of the ATOM suit and thinks maybe the Palmer in there is his granddaughter, turns out it’s his brother’s, this is not entirely pointless or anything.

So, yeah, a fun episode but the problems are getting difficult to ignore

Rating 7.5/10

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Images/clips used in this review are from DC's Legends of Tomorrow and belong to their respective owners. All images/clips in this review are subject to fair use