Legends of Tomorrow - 'Pilot Part 2'

This week, things get Darkh and Savage.

Still in 1975, our heroes use Professor Boardman's journal to track Savage to an underworld weapons fair in Norway, where they accidentally buy a nuclear warhead from their target, blow their cover (when Stein refers to 'this era') and lose both their quarry and a piece of Atom's tech suit in the ensuing brawl.

Go team!

About the only one having any joy in all of this is Jax - who despite his doubts is clearly a bit fucking jazzed at actually absorbing a nuclear blast. And who wouldn't be? - and Snart and Roary, who get to hit people. Unfortunately even these pleasures are somewhat soured by the realisation that the lost tech (a miniaturised launcher) will allow Savage to dominate the Earth by 2016.

While Stein, Jax and Sara look for the Professor's younger self to acquire an alpha particle tracker and find the launcher, the thieves and Ray head for a Norwegian mansion to swipe a dagger once owned by Chay-ara and thus able to kill Savage, and Carter guides Kendra through her memories to recall the incantation needed to activate the dagger's power.

"Let's just get this thing so I can get the hell out of these go-go boots."

Stein's team head back to college, where younger 'Marty' flirts with Sara and is basically an arrogant ass. Eventually, in order to acquire the tracker, Sara knocks him cold and on coming around he tracks his own device back to the Waverider, thus missing the faculty party at which he would have met his future wife. They get the launcher back, but Stein has a crisis of confidence until Jax assures him that while, yes, he is arrogant, there's a lot more to him.

Back in Norway, Ray's lack of experience and resistance to Snart and Roary's side-mission (steal a bunch of other stuff) cause friction, even before the owner of the knife shows up: Vandal Savage. The team launch a rescue and Hawkman goes in for the kill, only to discover that as it's Chay-ara's knife, she would have to use it. And then he dies*.

Now, I admit that this was unexpected, although not entirely unwelcome as Carter's square-jawed predestined loverman schtick has been kind of annoying. I wanted to smack him in Arrow and I don't know if I could have stood him for a whole series. Anyway, on the upside his death unites the team and gives them all a personal reason to go after Savage, even Snart and Roary, who consider taking out a member of the crew to be unacceptable whether they liked him or not.

So, that's the set-up pretty much complete, although for now we're clearly sticking with 1975 as our setting. So far it's been well-used, and the team is coming together well, with Sara in particular enough of a middle ground between the law and disorder elements to help the whole make sense. The series as a whole seems fun and set on having fun, instead of wallowing in angst, even when - as this week - it's killing off significant characters.

* Now I want to know if he'll reincarnate post-2016 or from when he died. Does his death in 1975 create a period of double-Hawkman?