Part 2 picks up with our cadre of comrades looking to break out their friends that were captured by Vandal Savage in the 80s. The show opens up with Dr. Stein going over the formula for the Atom process with Cisco from The Flash. Cameos are sure to abound on Legends of Tomorrow, but this isn’t as it seems as the whole thing is just a hallucination caused by Vandal Savage to coax the Firestorm formula out of the professor. Not sure where they got the future Cisco information (probably a construct from Stein’s own head), but it’s always nice to see familiar faces from other DC shows.
Back on the Waverider, the other half of Firestorm isn’t doing so well as he is feeling the pain that Stein is going through thanks to their connection as Firestorm. The team concocts a plans to break them out by finding someone that has been in and out of the Nightmare Gulag many times before. This leads them to track down the Russian mob and put on their on Prison Break -nailed it! But before they can enlist any help there is a bathhouse showdown in which everyone is wearing the most incredible towels ever created. Hell, I can’t even keep a towel wrapped around me while going from the bathroom to the bedroom without a firm hold on it, yet these Russians can be tossed around without so much as a slight slip of the old Johnson. The team gets back to the ship with the information and Rip tells them how tough the breakout will be, only to have Captain Cold tell him, “This isn’t my first Prison Break,” cementing the line of the episode.
Rip lets Canary know that if they fail today their 2016 will be forever changed, as an army of Firestorm soldiers will have laid waste to most of the world. He lets her in on this, and not the others, because he gives her special orders that if things go south she is authorized to kill Dr. Stein to keep Firestorm out of the hands of Savage. This will no doubt come up again, but it shows the lengths that Hunter is willing to go to save the future from the power of Savage. Cut to our boys in the prison, and Palmer doing the nice guy thing at the worst possible time. Stein in the meantime is dealing with feeling like he has been left abandoned, but does seem to find that Dr. Vostok may have feelings of some sort for Savage (it does;t ever really come up again). Back on the Waverider Hawkgirl and Jefferson have been left on the ship because they can’t get captured, but that doesn’t stop them from being helpful in other ways. The pair manage to get word to Stein that help is coming via their connection and some self-harm while Rip and company make their way to the prison.
Palmer and Heatwave get brutally tortured, with Palmer once again playing hero and taking the bulk of the pain. Meanwhile Canary and Cold go their separate ways with Canary looking for Stein and Cold leaving to find Heatwave. Stein is taken away to give up the formula but instead goes into a speech about how Russia fell and the United States is still pretty much the best. He also gives a pretty sweet shout-out letting Vostok know why America is great, saying we are free to vote, live, and love who we want to love. This is a direct reference to the actor that plays Dr. Stein, which I found quite lovely. Legends of Tomorrow has a team of writers that really care not only about the show, but about the actors that are portraying their characters. Canary loses tabs on Stein which means she now has the kill order, but back on the ship Jefferson and Hawkgirl both demand to go into the fray and rescue their friend.
Vostok figures out that Stein is one half of Firestorm thanks to the huge message etched into his forearm and proceeds to use his formula (that he gave up willy-nilly) to merge with him and create the first Soviet Firestorm. Stein and Vostok enter the reactor and they merge, but without the splicer things will probably go bad in a fast way. I will say that seeing a female Firestorm is pretty darn cool, even if this little combo isn’t meant to last. Cold saves both Palmer and Heatwave, while Canary skips putting one between the eyes of Stein, and Hawkgirl faces of against Savage. Things got really busy, really fast on Legends of Tomorrow! Hunter comes in to save Hawkgirl as she is planting charges (for something?) and does a bad ass walk out of the building as he triggers the charges and kills… temporarily kills Savage.
Meanwhile Jefferson deals with Firestorm Lite and manages to split the two, saving Stein in the process. Unfortunately this means that Vostok is going into melt-down without the splicer and so the team bails as Vostok becomes a mini nuclear explosion ridding the world of Firestorm. The team manage to save the future, and for a plan that was all over the place they all worked pretty well together for once. Just as the company are celebrating not having everything got tits up, Bargin Bin Boba Fett (Cronus) comes back and begins shooting them out of their spacetime vortex, Doctor Who Tardis, Wormhole thing. They crash-land somewhere in space and time and end up in Star City circa 2047 starting down a very different Arrow!
Final Thoughts:
- Captain Cold steals the show with his one-liners
- The team is beginning to work better together
- Savage was less a threat in part 2
- The Arrow cliffhanger was pretty sweet
- Parts of the script felt cut or just dropped for no reason
About Author
