Picking pretty much exactly where last week left off, the team is on the damaged Waverider with both Carter and Savage aboard as prisoners, but apparently enough repairs have been completed that the team can take off, which is convenient because Rip thinks he finally has a play, and it does not actually involve killing Savage. Instead, the team scientists have figured out that Savage has been using future tech to take over the world, like from a time beyond 2166, which means he has been time-traveling himself, which is an offense the Time Masters will not tolerate, forcing them to arrest Savage and welcome Rip and his team back into the fray as heroes at last. So Rip, against the wishes of both Gideon and Sara who tell him not to push the ship too hard, takes off and sets course for the Vanishing Point, aka the end of the timeline where the Time Masters live.
Of course, Rip pushes the ship too hard, and the time drive is damaged, and instead of going to fix it himself, Rip sends in Jax, who takes a face full of radiation after successfully fixing the device, and is now rapidly aging, and will soon die from cellular degradation. As Stein struggles to find a way to save his friend, Mick and Snart smell that things are going south for the team, and decide that they want out, especially after Rip so casually risked Jax’s life by sending him to fix the time drive. Rip informs the team that the jump ship is capable of one time jump, and is set for 2016 should anyone wish to return (of course, if they do return, their lives will still have been erased right? because their younger selves have still not been returned to the timeline… right?). Snart and Mick still decide they want out, and head to the jump-ship, but Stein gets there first, strapping a quickly aging Jax into a seat and drugging him so he will not resist, explaining that a time jump should reset Jax and save his life. Jax tries to fight him as being separated from Jax will kill Stein (due to their Firestorm connection), but Stein is set on saving his partner, and sends him off alone, much to the chagrin of Snart and Mick, who arrive too late to go with him. We also get a Stein flashback to the day he left to join the Legends, where we learned he lied to his wife about where he was going, and promised her he would be home soon.
Sara speaks with Savage, who warns her that Rip is only interested in himself and his own family, and does not care about any of them, right before he asks her about Laurel, reminding us that when Sara does return to 2016, her sister will be dead, and there’s nothing she can do about it. Sara spends a lot of the episode somewhat skeptical of Rip, but she never betrays him, and it seems Rip has a lot of faith in her. We also get a flashback of Sara visiting Nyssa before she leaves to join the Legends, showing us a more optimistic time for Sara when she thought she was leaving to save the world and find herself.
Meanwhile, Savage is getting into Ray’s head as he knows Ray is jealous of Carter and Kendra (and this is the major storyline for this episode). As Kendra struggles to restore Carter’s memories, it becomes painfully clear that she will choose her former love over Ray, and Ray is incredibly bothered by that fact. Savage explains that he once loved Kendra too, but every time she has always chosen Carter, and hurt many men like the two of them over the years because of it. Ray also gets a flashback in this episode, and we see him about to leave Star City and when Felicity Smoake approached him, wishing him luck on his quest, and reminding him that he still has a life there and the people who will miss him. Eventually, Ray gets angry, especially after Savage keeps pointing out their similarities, and goes into Savage’s cell to beat him up (classic, moronic mistake), and Savage turns the tables and escapes. 
Savage first disables Gideon, forcing Rip, Stein and Sara to manually fly the ship, and then he then frees Carter and they attack the Legends, with Savage taking down the ATOM, Heatwave and Captain Cold first, leaving Kendra the only one standing, fighting Carter as Savage approaches. She is saved by Rip who joins the fray (leaving Sara to Captain the ship in his stead, showing how much faith he has in her), but he takes a laser in the arm and goes down. Savage starts to kill Kendra and the intensity of the moment finally is enough to spark Carter’s true memories of their past lives and save Kendra, but not before taking he takes another knife in the gut by Savage. 
From there, Kendra and Rip subdue Savage and put him back in his cell.
Carter is still alive, though, and Ray and Kendra stand guard over him as Ray breaks up with Kendra, stepping aside so she and Carter can be together, and thanking her for making him understand that he is capable of falling in love again, and still has a chance for happiness. 
The team finally arrives at the Vanishing Point, and Rip takes Savage to meet the Time Masters. He brings the villain before his cold colleagues, and presents evidence and a confession from Savage about his tampering with time, but it seems the Time Masters have been working with Savage all along, so they free the villain and arrest Rip instead and then head to the ship to arrest the rest of the Legends. Snart and Sara hear them coming and hide, but Mick is not so lucky, being taken as he is drinking. So with everyone arrested by the Time Masters, except for Jax who is ostensibly back in 2016 with the jump ship, and Snart and Sara, who are hiding out, it seems at last that Savage has won. He stops by Rip’s cell to gloat, and promises that he is looking forward to meeting Rip’s family when he returns to 2166.
THEORIES FOR TOMORROW:
– Why didn’t Stein just go with Jax? I mean, if the Firestorm separation is anything like what we saw on ‘The Flash,’ Stein will basically become a nuclear reaction and explode without Jax, so why is he risking the safety of the rest of the team? Why not just return to 2016 with Jax?
– Jax will be back, he alone seems to have figured out the ins and outs of the Waverider, and I bet he jury-rigs the jump ship to take him to the Vanishing Point to rejoin his team.
– Did it never cross Rip’s mind that Savage might be working with the Time Masters? That THAT might be the reason they would not help take him down? Seems a little short-sighted to me.
– Once Carter’s memories were back, WHY DIDN’T THEY JUST KILL SAVAGE!?! They had him! They had the mace! It was end-game!
This show can clearly be a bit frustrating, but it has definitely improved over the course of the season, and I am looking forward to seeing how they wrap it all up in the next two weeks. See you back here next week for the penultimate episode!
Nick is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, who belongs to the privileged few who enjoyed the ending to ‘Lost.’ For more of Nick’s thoughts and articles, follow him on Twitter.
