Thursday, October 12, 2017

My Review of Legends Of Tomorrow's 3x01: "Aruba-Con"


Written by Phil Klemmer & Marc Guggenheim
Directed by Rob Seidenglanz

Ray: "You're gonna steal the Waverider?"
Sara: "We're gonna fix our mistakes."

And we're back. Picking up from where things went all a bit The Wedding Of River Song, the Legends find themselves in a messy 2017 but they don't have much time to dwell on it because Rip just set up a new group of helpers called the Time Bureau in order to fix the mess Sara and company somewhat created.

The Time Bureau are just like the Legends, except they wear suits and are mostly humour defunct but they're not quite as good at fixing things as Rip would have anyone else believe as this episode also demonstrated. With the exception of the rather uptight Agent Sharpe, the rest of the Bureau are mostly background men doing and saying little of consequence. Sharpe on the other hand made her disapproval of the Legends known while also potentially being into Sara if rumours are anything to go by.

Of course with what I assumed was going to be the main plot somewhat resolved in the first two minutes, Rip effectively broke up the Legends and sent them on their separate ways. Nate and Amaya broke up as the latter went back to Zambesi and the former became a hero in Central City. Then there was Ray working on some holistic app with an annoying wonder kid while Sara worked in a store in Star City with an irritating boss, Stein got to learn he was going to be a grandfather, Jax dropped out of college and Mick actually got his vacation in Aruba with a hitch of course.

The hitch being Julius Caesar whom Mick managed to apprehend before the Time Bureau somewhat botched things up and Sara rebelled by reclaiming the Waverider, assembling her team and trying to send Caesar back to his own time and it would've gone pretty well if Nate hadn't blundered things but then the episode would've lost a few minutes.

Simon Merrills did a great job as the leader of Rome and I really enjoyed his scene with both Mick and Sara throughout the episode. I also liked the team up of Sara and Sharpe fighting Caesar's men as much as I had enjoyed Jax's rather weak impersonation of Ares as well. Of course with Caesar being sent back to his own time, memories erased and both Rip and Sharpe holding different views about the Legends, the episode also dropped an important clanger on us - Mallus.

Although this season is giving a resurrected Damien Darkh, his daughter Eleanor and Amaya's villainous granddaughter, Kuasa in later episodes this season, it seems that Mallus will be the main antagonist this season. However, they're also going to be a threat that we're going to be waiting to see until the second half of the season but I'll enjoy hearing more about the character until they make their way onto the show.

- Rip is now a recurring character this season and it seems that we'll be losing Stein while also gaining Zari as the season plays out.
- Kid Flash was working with Nate in this episode and we got some Felicity shade from Ray's boss as well.
- It seems this season will have eighteen episodes, which is a good thing.
- Chronology: Mostly 2017 but there was also trips to 49BC and 1942 Zambesi. It's also been five years since Rip last saw the gang.

A fun opening episode. Aruba-Con set up a lot of potentially exciting prospects while also hinting at some serious dynamic shifts at the same time. I've missed how utterly bonkers this series can be and this episode served as a perfect reminder of how that continuously works in it's favour. Welcome back, Legends. You guys might screw up time but you're a lot more fun than Rip's new project.

Rating: 8 out of 10

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