Picking up where last week left off, the Legends are now aware that the bounty hunter known as ‘The Pilgrim’ is after their younger selves, and they are making moves to counter. First, Gideon tells them the most likely member to be attacked first is a young Mick Roary (kind of overly convenient that Gideon can just give them this information, but whatever, it’s ‘Legends’ logic), and while the Legends keep an eye out, it is the ATOM who saves a young Mick from the Pilgrim, and then follows that with taking Mick Jr. onto the Waverider for safe keeping. Next, the Pilgrim makes an attempt on Sara Lance from 2007, who happens to be at the Starling City police station with Quentin Lance (nice casual ‘Arrow’ cameo), who is teaching his daughter about law and order. The Pilgrim attacks and easily takes down all of the SCPD there (including Lance), and young Sara is saved by her older self, with Heat Wave helping out by driving the Pilgrim away with his gun once he has a shot. They take young Sara to the Waverider as well, and keep her with young Mick, both whom do not get along.
By this point, the Pilgrim knows what the Legends are up to, so she masks her travels to make it difficult for the team to stop her executions. Unbeknownst to the team, she strikes at Ray Palmer of 2014 next, the team learning of what is happening when Ray begins to die aboard the ship. They hurry to 2014 to stop the Pilgrim, and Firestorm and Rip do manage to drive her away, but not before the younger Ray takes serious injury and is rushed to the hospital. Firestorm realizes that the Pilgrim has the ability to freeze time and diffuse the attacks they throw at her, so they know they need work harder to take her down. When asked why she does not simply go back and finish the job, Rip informs the team that hits by the Pilgrim are precisely calculated, and more than one attempt could irrevocably alter the timeline.
Meanwhile, while Ray is “dying” on the Waverider, Kendra learns about the ring he almost gave her, and he proposes to her, which she hastily accepts despite the warnings from her former self in the old west. She speaks of her issues with the whole situation with Sara, but Ray manages to overhear, bringing the couple to another romantic quandary as Ray learns that they are doomed to fail as a couple…supposedly. In the end, they decide to go for it regardless and not believe in this cursed love business.
To safeguard the team, Rip decides they need to kidnap everyone as babies, so the Pilgrim will never have a chance to kill them. He, of course, does not mean himself, as his history is shrouded in secrecy (which annoys Snart), nor Kendra as her ability to re-incarnate makes killing her pointless. So first they head over and kidnap baby Snart from the hospital he was born in, then they manage to convince Stein’s father to hand over baby Stein (Stein was born in a car on the side of the road, and his father easily hands him over to the “doctors” [Rip and Mick] who arrive on the scene (apparently the 50s were a much more trusting time). When they go to kidnap young Jax, Jax has the chance to finally meet his dad, who died in active military duty not long after Jax was born. Rip’s plan is to keep the babies/ children safe until they can finish dealing with Savage and the Pilgrim, but does warn that they cannot remove the children from the timeline for long, as eventually time will reset without any of the Legends present in their former lives.
To keep them all safe, Rip brings the younger versions of the Legends to his “mother,” (really his adopted mother), who apparently runs a kind of orphanage for future Time Masters in a kind of temporal safe zone. She assures the team she can keep everyone safe, and they all learn that Rip’s real name is ‘Michael,’ and that he grew up with this woman, who seems just the kind of tough and spunky woman that would shape a man like Rip. Back aboard the Waverider, the Pilgrim sends them a message, threatening to kill everyone close to the team if she cannot find their younger selves (Quentin Lance for Sara, Stein’s wife, Ray’s wife [which is kind of crazy as she is already dead in the present], Snart’s sister), holding up Jax’s father as her first hostage. Rip offers a bargain to her, offering his own younger self in exchange for the safety of everyone else. The Pilgrim sees the sense in this, as with Rip erased the Legends team will never be formed, thus ensuring her job is complete. She takes the deal, and the team heads out to meet up with her.
Rip’s mother arrives with his younger self in tow, and the exchange begins, with Jax’s father pushed forward. Once the switch is made, the Legends attack the Pilgrim, all at once, all approaching her from different directions in the hope to offset her ability to freeze time and stop their attacks. Unfortunately fore them, she is still able to stop all of them mid-attack, and all seems hopeless except that in that moment, young Rip pulls out a knife and stabs the Pilgrim in the leg, wanting to help as he knew the woman was out to kill him. Her control broken, every attack the Legends launched collides on the Pilgrim, and she is reduced to dust and ashes, a particularly gruesome fate. We learn that young Rip was somewhat of a thug (thus explaining the knife), and Snart is satisfied to know something of Rip’s past.
In the episode aftermath, Mick speaks with his younger self, who apparently inadvertently burned down his family home right before being kidnapped, killing both of his parents in the process. Mick chides his younger self to find a way to forgive himself. Jax has a heart-to-heart with his father, warning him about his impending death, and while Jax knows that time wants things to happen, Rip informs him that there is a chance that time may actually want Jax to have a father, so might have allowed his interference to pass. As for the rest of the team, their time is short, as the Time Masters are still after them, thus forcing them to keep their younger selves hidden with Rip’s mom. In order to move on Savage as soon as possible, Rip makes the decision to take the team to the time where Savage reaches the height of his power, a time that Rip had earlier in the season said would be impossible for them to take on Savage. However they are short on time and it is the only period where they know where Savage is currently, so they have no choice. They set course for the future.
THEORIES FOR TOMORROW:
– So if Jax’s dad does survive now, and makes it home to be Jax’s father, does that not irrevocably alter Jax’s life and the timeline? Would Jax even be a “Legend” if his dad were around?
– Does Mick having a talk to his younger self really change anything? Or is he creating a parallel reality where he’s not such a jerk?
– I still cannot believe the Time Masters would condone this kind of killing, especially with all of their supposed concern about not altering the timeline. I mean, if any of these heroes never existed, just think about how different the world would be based on their heroics on ‘Arrow’ and ‘The Flash!’ If Stein had not been around to create Firestorm, the entire world would have been swallowed by the black hole over Central City, how do the Time Masters justify that?
The season is definitely picking up steam, though I fear that it is all heading for a massive cliffhanger, which would kind of suck after all of the build-up. Definitely looking forward to the heroes they are sure to meet in the future, and with seeing the team finally get together to take down Savage. See you back here next week!
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.
