NOTE: Full spoilers for this review of “Legends of Tomorrow” are present in this review
Legends of Tomorrow is still chugging along, despite both The Flash and Arrow staying on hiatus until towards the end of the month. Despite that though, “Marooned” was a bit of a strange offering. It didn’t really feel like a Legends of Tomorrow episode, and felt like something more akin to a Star Trek episode. It wasn’t bad, but it also didn’t feel that great either.
One of the main frustrations of the episode is with Rip, who is normally a fantastic anchoring character for this DC ensemble series. Rip had a big focus this week, but it was a bit unevenly done. On the one hand, we got some fantastic insight into Rip’s earlier days with the Time Masters, which also effectively showed why he’s become a bit of a cynic, even before his family was murdered by Vandal Savage. On the other hand though, present-day Rip really felt like he was having an off-day this week. He was often outwitted by the other characters, who had to do most of the work for him in the show’s latest conflict, even when it doesn’t make sense for them to be more effective at solving the problem at hand. This was especially true of Martin, who seems to have become a superspy saboteur overnight, complete with the ability to knock out goons that are possibly 30 years his junior, despite the fact that this really doesn’t make sense with his character.
Fortunately, the looks into Rip’s past helped to somewhat distract from some of his ineptitude this week. It was satisfying to see some of the insight into how Rip met his wife, Miranda, who was also a former Time Master in the past, and how Rip already defied the Time Masters previously by marrying Miranda later. Miranda leaving the Time Masters to avoid disturbing the potential that she believed Rip had as a guardian of the timeline is also a great development, and helps to add weight to Rip wanting to stop Vandal Savage, and preserve the memory of his wife, and how she saw him.
That’s why it’s too bad that Rip had his worst episode yet in, “Marooned.” When he finds a distress signal from another Time Master, Rip somehow fails to anticipate the presence of, “Time Pirates”, which are apparently a thing in the future of the DC Television Universe, and stupidly gets himself, Mick and Jefferson captured. Despite Rip seeming to have plans, they always seemed to result in further complications for the team, who then had to bail everyone out themselves.
Another arc that really dragged down the episode was that of Ray, who has to patch a hole in the hull of the Waverider, which ends up trapping Sara and Leonard in the area, slowly freezing to death, with Leonard being able to buy them time by using his Cold Gun to freeze over the breach temporarily. Apparently ice somehow makes a room less cold in space, because science. Apparently, space also doesn’t immediately flash-freeze and kill everyone when they suck the Time Pirates out of the airlock to save the day either. It’s true that the DC Television Universe often has a rather casual relationship with scientific credibility, but surely, people are smart enough to know now that this is not how outer space works!
Regardless, there’s more tedious relationship drama with Ray and Kendra, and Ray nearly dies after trying to patch up the hole. Obviously though, he’s not going to die, and Kendra ends up hitting him in the chest until he comes back to life, following his saving of Sara and Leonard. Then, Ray and Kendra kiss, and are apparently together now. Well, so much for Ray’s big rejection by Kendra last week. I guess she got over the whole, “Being overwhelmed by her heritage” thing pretty quickly.
Fortunately, another element of the episode that worked to wonderfully salvage it was the brewing conflict between Leonard and Mick, after Leonard forcibly took Mick out of Star City 2046 during last week’s episode. While slowly freezing with Sara, Leonard finally gives a nugget of info as to how he and Mick stuck together for so many years, revealing that he was the smallest kid in Juvie at 14, and that he was nearly shived to death, before Mick saved his life, and looked after him from then on. It’s a cool twist to see that Mick was the one who originally looked after Leonard, and not the other way around, which lends more credence to Mick suddenly being furious with Leonard, at the supposed, “Betrayal” of forcing him to stick with Rip’s ragtag group of heroes. This only added more weight to Mick’s arc this week too, particularly when Rip reveals that he never needed Mick to be part of the team, and only took him because he needed Leonard, and that Leonard and Mick were a, “Package deal.” Ouch.
This also beautifully leads into a big twist with Mick this week, who talks from the brig as if he’s going to bail out Rip, Jefferson and the captured Time Master captain, only to end up betraying the team, and willfully lead the Time Pirates to try and capture the Waverider! Kendra, Ray, Sara and Leonard manage to fight off the pirates, with Leonard surprisingly siding with the heroes in the end, and Sara eventually subdues Mick, after they manage to dispose of the pirates. T
he next scene is honestly pretty dramatic and engaging, as the group debates what to do with Mick, since they can’t forgive him for his betrayal, but they can’t hold him in the brig forever either. Even dropping him back in 2016 isn’t an option, since he’ll just take revenge on the heroes’ loved ones. Leonard is left to say that he will handle it, and in a brilliant final scene, Leonard takes Mick to a secluded area, tells him that there’s no other way, and fires his Cold Gun on Mick, right as the episode ends! It’s a big cliffhanger, and a bit of an annoying one, but it will certainly make next week’s episode quite interesting, especially in showing that Leonard is really changing since his debut on The Flash in 2014, and could be becoming a very different person now, though one that is still able to make the hard calls that the other heroes aren’t comfortable with!
It’s too bad that the whole Time Pirate problem didn’t make for a very compelling story (especially since the whole debacle was completely avoidable if Rip wasn’t an idiot this week), even if some of the standout character moments (minus the tedious Kendra/Ray drama) ultimately compensated. “Marooned” ended up being a bit of a disappointing episode as a result of these issues, but at least it had a handful of bright spots to avoid the feeling of it being a complete waste. It’s no doubt obvious that Leonard didn’t kill Mick in that ending cliffhanger, at least not permanently, but it will still be interesting to see how that promising conflict between the two supposed ‘villains’ of the group plays out, especially with Leonard looking more and more like the hero he never wanted to be with each passing week on this show!