Legends of Tomorrow - 'Legion of Doom'

"Your temperament's wrong for the priesthood..."

We change things up a little this time out, as Legends of Tomorrow takes a walk on the dark side with the 'Legion of Doom'.

Torture fails to extract the location of the remaining parts of the Spear from Rip Hunter, because the memories are absent, a fact established to the satisfaction of all by considerable quantities of torture. Oh, and just in case the considerable charisma of Neal McDonough and John Barrowman were to sway us into thinking they might be okay (especially as they are presented here as standing under Eobard Thawne's whip,) they take gleeful delight in their work, as well as stabbing the odd bystander for shiggles. Its not subtle, but honestly I think it might be needed. It would be very easy to see Darhk and Merlyn as antiheroes when viewed in isolation from their past crimes, and they're not.

"It's like looking in a mirror, only HOLY LIVING FUCK!"

Eventually they try to break into Rip's bank vault, while not-Rip tries to convince them to work against Thawne, who clearly considers them junior partners, or indeed minions. After an initial failure, they conclude that they do need to stop competing to be the least bitchy of Thawne's bitches and team up, drawing Thawne to them and forcing him to not rush off, because they - and elsewhere the Legends - have realised that he is running from something; from time itself - which is the realisation Stein needs to determine his identity - and from something like, but worse than, a Time Wraith.

Working together, the Legion retrieve Rip's memories from the vault, but before returning them they edit those memories, so that Rip is now one of them. Shock! Horror!

A clear case of Arrowcave envy.

Back with the Legends, Stein recruits his daughter to help work out how to power the compass, which reveals to the rest of the team that she exists (because apparently the loss of Star Wars resonates through whatever temporal shielding maintains the Waverider's internal chronology, but Stein mentioning that he doesn't have kids - or even passively never mentioning that he does - is going to stick with you whatever.) Mick is a tool - shock, horror - and reveals to Lily that she is an aberration, which is obviously a bit of a blow, but after some tension Stein assures her that she is not a mistake, and that he has no regrets of her existence, even if it is the result of him almost literally fucking with the fabric of spacetime.

Legends of Tomorrow takes the high risk strategy of devoting the bulk of this episode to its charismatic shitbags, and it pays off in spades. Even with the gratuitous evil, I wasn't sure whether to root for the guy who shook Cisco's heart apart or Zombie Flash in the final analysis, but it's still clear that these are the bad guys. I don't know if they could carry their own antihero show without softening and villain decay becoming inevitable, but as a team they make for excellent ensemble adversaries, possibly even better than they were as individuals, as their questing goal - much like Thawne's desire to permanently regain his speed - provides them with an arc which is neither dependent on nor especially furthered by direct confrontation with our heroes, so we aren't left wondering why they don't just kill them all and have done with it.