My Review of Legends Of Tomorrow's 1x10: "Progeny"

Written by Phil Klemmer & Marc Guggenheim
Directed by David Geddes

Rip: "Did I do the right thing, Gideon?"
Gideon: "Not committing murder is generally considered the right thing, Captain."

It's strange. I thought if we were ever going to get one of those Let's Kill Hitler type of episodes, it would be the gang going back over 4000 years and actually trying and failing to kill Vandal Savage as a child. Instead, it's a boy named Per Degaton who is being heavily influenced by Savage nonetheless as the issue of whether to let him live or not is largely discussed.

These sort of episodes usually stick to a certain path and this didn't really deviate from that. You had most of the team against the idea of killing a child, which even included the mostly locked up Mick pointing out how murdering a boy isn't exactly heroic while Leonard seemed a bit more in favour of the idea as did Rip.

Sara wanted to see if Per could be brought out of the darkness and corruption that Savage had placed him in and even Rip faltered predictably enough at murder to try and reason with the boy. Except for all his good intentions, the situation was made worse with Per actually killing his father and releasing a virus years before he was originally meant to do so. Morally Rip did the right thing by not killing a child but it came at one hell of a cost though. Savage won this round pretty much.

Of course when we weren't dealing with child tyrants, we were also delving into Ray's future and Kendra's past and the overall impact that both have on their current relationship. I have to admit I'm finding their pairing a lot nicer and better written than expected and the stuff we got here was genuinely insightful.

I liked that we got some flashbacks with Carter and Aldus. In fact they were the best stuff we've ever actually seen of Kendra/Carter, despite the former's dodgy hairstyle while in the present day/future, Ray encountered someone who turned out to be his great grandniece rather than great granddaughter. Ray's reaction to this particular news while trying to his future suit/robot things from causing more carnage was absolutely priceless.

As for the rest of the episode, I liked that Sara slowly paved the way of both Cold and Heatwave to effectively kiss and make up. Provided you understand their version involved knocking seven bells out of each other before Mick informed the team that a group of Hunters are on the way to kill them. It might have been a quick way of getting Mick back on board but it had the desired effect though and I think he does genuinely want to be a part of the team in his own way.

- Ray's great grandniece was played by Firefly's Jewel Staite. She didn't really do a lot here though. Ray has a brother named Sidney and he went under the name of Hannibal Lecter here. Jax's reaction to that was hilarious.
- While this episode did have a shippy moment with Sara/Snart during their armory scene, it was nice that Gideon (who can read dreams) pointed out that Sara was dreaming about a certain nurse from two episodes ago. When is Sara going to learn about Laurel though?
- Gideon certainly had more to do but both Stein and Jax felt a little underutilised and Kendra only really interacted with Ray.
- The action was mainly in 2147 Kasnia Conglomerate for this episode but next week, it's the Wild West.

I liked Progeny as an episode overall and while it didn't do anything too new with this particular sort of time travel dilemma, the pacing was decent enough and I certainly didn't mind the flashbacks with Kendra/Carter or Ray learning more about his future but it could've been a little better though.

Rating: 7 out of 10