Legends of Tomorrow - 'Progeny'

"Do you like your quasi-futuristic outfits? I designed them myself."

"Great. We've gone from infanticide to child abduction. Progress."

It's back to the future for the Legends, as they travel to the Kasnian Conglomerate (which is apparently all of the Balkans) in 2147, where Vandal Savage is manoeuvring to begin his takeover of the world through the release of the population-decimating Armageddon virus. His catspaw in this is Per Degaton, destined to be the greatest tyrant in history before Savage steps in to top him, and currently a child of about thirteen.

Yes, it's time for Legends of Tomorrow to ask if it's okay to kill baby Hitler.

Jewel Staite makes her much publicised appearance... for half an episode.

Per Degaton is the son of Kasnian CEO Tor Degaton, a benign and strictly local dictator whose rule is backed by ATOM suit-style police drones. While Vandal Savage is present and acting as Per's tutor, the Legends have - as best I can keep score - still failed to hold onto the Amun dagger, so killing him is a non-starter. Instead, they opt to remove his stepping stone by abducting Per from the timeline.

Meanwhile, Ray investigates the drones and finds that they are supplied by a company run by Rachel Turner, the great-great-granddaughter of the father of robotics, Ray Palmer. Ray is poleaxed and perplexed, given that he knows of no children in 2016 and his future post-Waverider is currently a temporal questionmark. Coupled with Kendra's returning memories of her past lives and love for her eternal partner, this plunges him into existential angst until he discovers that the statue is of his brother, Sidney Palmer, who apparently managed to gain enough control of Palmer Technologies to militarise Ray's work.

"And yet not the weirdest thing we've ever done."

Meanwhile, Per Degaton is kidnapped, but with no effect on the timeline. Rip takes him off in the jumpship, but can't pull the trigger, instead appealing to the good in Per to reject Savage's teachings and be the man his father wants him to be. Savage leads a team to attack the Waverider, leading to a standoff with Per Degaton and Sara held hostage (I'm a little disappointed that Sara was the hostage, but we've established that no-one can take Savage one on one and she shoots him a serious evil as soon as she's loose) which ends with both released and the Legends given safe passage.

Spurred on by his father's refusal to sacrifice him, Per Degaton assassinates Thor and allows Savage to act as his proxy, resulting in the release of the Armageddon virus five years ahead of schedule.

Go team!

Throughout this, various people have tried to talk Mick out of his state of hatred, finally leading to Snart offering a deal. They fight, and if Mick wins, he leaves; if he loses, he stays. Mick wins handily, but seeing Snart willing to take the pummeling to reach him does the trick. Somewhat himself again, for better or worse, he tells them that with his failure a group called the Hunters will be sent to excise all trace of the Legends from the timeline with really extreme prejudice.

"We're the good guys. right?"

'Progeny' - the title referring to Per Degaton, Rip's son and Ray's possible legacy - is not a bad Baby Hitler story, but suffers from the usual failure of time-fu. The Legends are in control of a fully functional timeship, but ignore various potential courses of action, such as going back another ten years and getting Ray hire as Per Degaton's tutor, kidnapping Savage out of time, or just popping Ray back into his old continuity to prevent Sidney Palmer militarising the tech which gives Tor Degaton his original control of Kasnia. In all honesty, I was kind of expecting for him to be marooned somewhere in order to later get rescued by the Time Masters and steal their tech to become the time-traveling Per Degaton of the comics.

With the introduction of the Hunters, the series seems to realise that the Legends badly need an effective time traveling foe, if only to keep them from having the option to hop around time. Hopefully they'll be a more interesting foe that Chronos, who only really had any substance once he was revealed to be Mick. 

Actually, perhaps the most interesting thing to come out of the first ten episodes is the realisation that on balance the Time Masters were right all along. So far the absence of the 'meaningless' heroes of the Waverider crew has knackered up history almost as much as their actions, which have at best averted catastrophes of their own creation.