Kyle’s Thoughts

Legends of Tomorrow has gotten past its awkward pilot and developed Vandal Savage as a formidable villain, but the gang of misfits struggles to pull things together. The episode’s title, “Blood Ties,” refers to Captain Cold and the Snart family, and we get another reason why Cold may be on this trip, but Snart’s ability to do something about his rotten childhood is serendipitous. Wow! That worked out real well for him, didn’t it? He just happened to be in the right time to prevent his father from going to jail. Too bad the time line corrected itself by the episode’s end. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the effort Legends is putting into giving Snart (and company) a reason for being on this team but providing a new motivation for Snart each episode is a lot like giving him no reason for being there.

Meanwhile, we don’t get a single scene with the two halves of Firestorm, which makes sense because Dr. Stein roofied Jackson into going. I’m sure Legends is trying to distance itself from that, so that can’t be the real reason why the two didn’t share time, but it’s conspicuous just the same. Jackson is closer in age to the two thieves (Legends doesn’t offer another reason why the African-American half of Firestorm would be paired with the two criminals for a second time in three episodes; I don’t think Legends has an agenda, but this is partially why the Firestorm split is conspicuous), and Palmer and Stein have science to bond over, even if Stein can’t remember Palmer from his class. The two scientists share forced moments but they were decent in those moments despite clunky dialogue.

Stein and Palmer spent the bulk of “Blood Ties” fixing up Hawkgirl. Now I was excited when I heard that Hawkgirl would be on Legends. I thought, finally, a female character with a heap of power who can kick butt. And she’s spent the first two episodes wallowing in self-pity, only to spend this episode in a coma. To be fair she did wake from her coma but she’d better get tough and fast.

Rip Hunter and White Canary made up the third major grouping and it worked better than most of the others. My biggest issue is, again, the blood lust. Didn’t we just hear in Arrow that Sara should be fine (in regards to her “blood lust”) because John Constantine made her whole? Well, that’s not the case here, although White Canary sells the blood lust a lot better than Thea. I believe that the Canary has a blood lust, but she shouldn’t. Despite this shortcoming, we discovered more about Rip and Canary. I loved watching Canary size up an opponent; that’s something Arrow didn’t explore and it fits with the character.

In fact, Legends put in a lot of work developing Cold, Rip, Canary, and Savage. I had my doubts of whether or not Vandal Savage could carry a series but he’s proven to be a great adversary. It’s too bad the CW is wasting yet another good villain on a show that’s flailing. Legends won’t have as many episodes as Arrow or Flash, so it doesn’t have time to waste; it has to get it together soon.

There were plenty of secrets in Legends of Tomorrow. Warp to our Legends of Tomorrow secrets page.