Legends of Tomorrow - 'Destiny'

This is the Oculus. It shines out of a hole or, if you will, rift.

Legends of Tomorrow barrels towards its season close as things fly apart and the centre can not hold.

So, quite a lot happens in this episode.

While the Time Masters' troopers search for Sara and Snart, Druse takes a moment to take Rip aside and get his Hannibal Lecture in. Rip is a mere captain; whereas he gets edited timestream data, the High Council have access to the source, a pure flow of temporal perception called the Oculus. This allows them to not only see all of time, but to manipulate it, and to know that the empire of Vandal Savage is the only way to save the Earth from utter devastation when an alien empire called the Thanagarians attacks, about a hundred years after Savage's initial conquest. Just to put the boot in, he also explains that the Oculus means that the Time Masters' control is absolute; free will is a lie and Rip's entire mission was ordained, his pain and isolation necessary to secure the desired outcome.

Rip is broken by this revelation, but Ray refuses to bend, even when Rip tells him that the Oculus showed Ray's death. Sara and Snart sabotage the other timeships, with help from the reactivated Gideon, by activating their AIs' 'Captain and Tennille' mode. They seem to light out in the Waverider, but actually Snart breaks into the prison block and Sara pops back to shoot up the Vanishing Point, while Mick shrugs off his renewed Chronos conditioning and kills his programmer.

Has anything good ever come from Ray tinkering with machinery?

The team - less Kendra, who along with Scythian/Carter has been given to Savage as a pressie just to utterly cement the douchebaggery of the Time Masters - realise that the Oculus control doesn't work in the Vanishing Point itself and double back again to eliminate the threat. They are ambushed, but fortunately Jax has been in 2016 getting past Martin to help him recharge the jumpship's engines, and returns to kick some bottom.

The team storm the facility housing the Oculus Wellspring, a supercomputer that looks kind of like a giant Companion Cube. Ray sabotages it, but as a failsafe it can not be overloaded without someone holding down a button; presumably to be sure you really mean it. Rip recognises this as the death that he saw, but Mick - who earlier admitted to Ray that he fought his conditioning by focusing on the team - knocks Ray out and takes his place. Minutes later, Snart does the same to Mick, earning him a kiss from Sara before it the Oculus explodes, pleasingly in Cold's signature ice-blue, taking out half of the Vanishing Point as well as Druse.

Incidentally, props to Wentworth Miller. It's damned hard to sell 'There are no strings on me' post Ultron, but he rocks it.

Savage kills Rip's family, then discovers that his partners in the Time Masters can no longer ensure the success of his empire or the defeat of the Thanagarians. Instead, he decides to use the time ship they gave him to control his own destiny.

And you know what, this is what this series ought to have been from the start. It's eventful, laser focused, and brings in every member of the team except Kendra, because lord love 'em but they have no idea what to do with Hawkman and Hawkgirl except that they need them around to kill Time Hitler. Instead, season one has dithered back and forth, with the revelation of the team's ultimate powerlessness only coming after much of the audience had begun to despair of their apparent incompetence. On the strength of this, I'd like to see a second season, but only if they can maintain this sort of pace for the entire run.