Legends of Tomorrow - 'Fellowship of the Spear'

All quiet on the Western Front.

If I were speaking dispassionately, I would probably suggest that time travel fiction is at its most effective when eschewing the lure of celebrity. I find Timeless' reliance on encounters with famous people to be one of its great weaknesses. "Here we are in 1927 to rescue Charles Lindberg. Only Josephine Baker and Ernest Hemmingway can help us now!" On the other hand, maybe because of its generally more four-colour themes, or maybe because Martin Stein punched Einstein, I find I mind less in Legends of Tomorrow.

This time, the gang have broken into Thawne's base of operations at the ruined Vanishing Point to steal the last parts of the Spear(1). Now they are looking for the means to destroy the self-healing, reality warping Spear of Destiny, and that means appears to be the Blood of Christ. I think it's fortunate that Rip nixes the idea of a mission to the crucifixion itself (the life and times of Christ are a time travel no-no of the highest order, due to their profound influence on the course of history,) and instead they seek out an academic who wrote an unpublished paper tracking the possible course of Sir Galahad as he returned from his quest for the Holy Grail, bearing with him a vial of the Blood of Christ. That academic is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, because of course he is(2).

 

It's that man again.

The team contact Tolkien - who is at least accurately portrayed as a shell-shocked average lieutenant with trench fever, rather than as an unstoppable badass like Timeless' shot at Ian Fleming - at the Battle of the Somme, because that puts him right up close to the supposed location of the Blood, and can't possibly contribute any complications (aside from throwing Mick off his game because the Germans aren't Nazis.) Mick and Amaya are both leaning Boromirward and suggesting that they could use the Spear to change reality for the better, by restoring Snart or preventing the wholesale slaughter of Amaya's people. The rest of the team stands firm, however: It's too much power. Pursuing a clue at a church, the team are surprised to encounter Snart, and not self-sacrificing hero Snart; pre-Legends gitbag Snart. This leads them to immediately treat Mick as suspect, and it's honestly no huge surprise when, having engineered a ceasefire to retrieve the wounded through a bit of PA hijacking and a ripped off Aragorn speech(3) from Rip, Mick defects to the Legion of Doom. Ray at least has the grace to take issue with the other Legends when they get huffy about how they trusted him.

So, the Legion gets the Spear and Nate drops the Blood, and as Malcolm Merlyn has retrieved the instruction manual for the Spear(4) they grasp the Spear and chant up a change in reality.

 

"Well, this war really sucks."

So, as you may have gathered the Tolkien connection is used as an excuse for a whole lot of Lord of the Rings riffing, although for reasons of recognition it's weighted towards the movie which Tolkien had no direct hand in. The most authentic line they drop in is our man's CO calling him a 'fool of a Tolkien'. So it's a bit, and it's cute, but it's more problematic than the George Lucas stuff earlier in the series and would have made more sense if Fran Walsh had turned out to have been hella into Arthuriana.

In and of itself, Legends is all but unrecognisable from the slog that was Season 1. The Legion of Doom is a much better antagonist, allowing for a cut and thrust conflict rather than the Legends shooting ineffectual spitballs at Vandal Savage, and while the turn against Mick was sudden, it was hardly unprecedented. Amaya has come into her own lately, as knowing of the fate of her county and specifically her village has positioned her to want to use the Spear and not feel selfish. The history of twentieth century Africa is a horror show even without the addition of magic-seeking warlords, and it's not like no-one else is bending any rules.

(1) By means of Firestorm transmuting an impenetrable case into jelly beans.

(2) Full disclosure, I once name-dropped Tolkien in a Stargate/Cthulhu crossover fanfic; I'm not taking the high ground here, I'm just being a snarky git.

(3) And I'm pretty sure it's a speech that's only in the movie, although I've not re-read in a while, which dilutes the whole thing they're going for.

(4) Who wrote such a thing? Had they worked it out through trial and error? What was the world like before they got into this whole thing? Will Sara Diggle be restored? No; not letting it go.