Legends of Tomorrow - 'Shogun'

I'm only just a man of steel.

Did you know that Ray 'The Atom' Palmer really sucks? Because if there's one thing Legends of Tomorrow Season 2 knows, it's that while he may have a heart as big as all outdoors, Ray Palmer really sucks.

Vixen improbably sneaks aboard the Waverider before it departs and tries to murder Mick because a time traveler killed Rex Tyler and it just has to be Mick. I mean, okay, it's a solid guess, but... Anyway, she takes out the rest of the crew with almost unseemly speed, but Mick is saved by Nate, who is suddenly made of metal and super strong, a gift that sadly he doesn't seem able to turn on at will. Thus it is that Ray is set to train him, which ends up with Nate falling into the timestream and Ray going after him.

They fall into feudal Japan during the Tokugawa Bakufu, which if you know anything about Japanese history was not a good time and place in which to be a white guy. Nate falls in with a blacksmith and his beautiful daughter, but Ray is captured by the Shogun's forces and stripped of his atom suit. Oddly for a man determined to expunge pretty much all traces of western influence from Japan, Tokugawa Iemitsu is well into the Atom suit, and having been made extremely user friendly finds it child's play to work the basic weapon systems (although notably, he doesn't make it fly, presumably because he has no idea it could do that.)

Poor Ray is due some seriously heavy-duty karmic upswing right about now.

Sara, Mich and a co-opted Amaya (Vixen's real name, since we don't go much for superhero identities around here) rescue Ray, while Nate is getting stabbed by goon come to enforce the blacksmith's daughter's forthcoming katana wedding(1) to the Shogun. As Nate recovers, Ray talks him through the means of triggering the Atom suit's self-destruct mode; something only Steel can do. When the Shogun comes for his bride, he finds all the villagers in hiding. Sara, Amaya and Mick defend them, while Nate tries to get his steel on and Ray...

Well, the Blacksmith recognises something in Ray and gives him a suit of armour and a sword he forged for his son, who was then killed by the Shogun anyway. He explains to Ray that for all their magnificence, he would rather have his son. Ray fights the Shogun, disabling key systems on the armour before being knocked down, allowing Nate to pull himself together and finish the job. This does, however, destroy the Atom suit and the Shogun(2), leaving Ray once again feeling like the load (although he would have to be going it some to be as much of a burden as poor, underwritten Hawkgirl.

"Hi. We'll be your badasses."

Sara and Amaya kick serious samurai ass with their comboof assassin training and animal spirit mojo, while Mick is off having an unlikely adventure with ninja (despite Amaya's insistence that ninja don't exist, Chuck Norris-loving Mick is insistent and keeps checking the trees, and in the final battle is randomly scrobbled by a bunch of ninja before showing up in a ninja costume at the vital moment; seriously, it's like he's had this whole other adventure.) For once, Sara doesn't get the action and it's Nate who gets a goodbye kiss from Masako Yamashiro(3) as he passes the sword on to her to be her village's defender.

Meanwhile, back on the Waverider, Jax and Stein have been doing repairs, and stumble on a hidden chamber when Gideon gets all disingenuous. This leads them to a message sent to Rip by the Barry Allen of 2050-some, telling him... Well, actually we don't get to find out yet, as the Firestorm boys are following Barry's request to keep schtum.

'Shogun' is another fun one off from the Legends, featuring a nice bit of bonding between Sara and Amaya, Mick getting to be kind of okay in spite of himself, Nate coming into his own and the universe kicking Ray Palmer when he's down again. Seriously, the series seems determined to grind him down, and I'm only even a little okay with it because I'm guessing it's building towards a turn around. Seriously, does no-one remember when he single-handedly turned around Starling City's economy, trained to a level of fitness roughly equal to Oliver Queen (if less combat trained,) built a super-suit and saved the day all those times? Sara did, last week at least, telling the JSA that she was going to assume that Ray was in the process of busting out of prison as they spoke.

I guess that they're working towards finding a new fit for Ray, with the wide-eyed idealism now covered by Nate. I really hope that they don't make him cynical, because it would be a terrible fit. I would not be unhappy to see them move him more towards the comic book Atom, with the focus far more on the shrinking power than on the Iron Man suit, allowing Nate to be the jovial juggernaut.

(1) Like a shotgun wedding, but in feudal Japan.
(2) I guess it's the 8th June 1651 then, because real historical figure, yeah.
(3) Ray realises that Masako and her father are the ancestors of Tatsu 'Katana' Yamashiro, but it's nicely underplayed.