Legends of Tomorrow season 2, episode 2, “The Justice Society of America,” introduced the famous group of heroes from the DC Comics.
The introduction of the JSA forced the Legends to ask themselves what makes a hero. The JSA want nothing to do with the Legends — and initially consider sending them to prison or a mental asylum. They consider the constantly-bickering group to be nothing but a bunch of losers who are in over their heads. And when you compare them to the JSA, which is a well-oiled machine, they’re not completely off base.
We zero in on a few characters in the episode to explore that theme more deeply. First, we have Rex Tyler assuming Martin Stein is the leader of the team, simply because he’s an older white male and the JSA is operating in the 1940s. The rest of the Legends go along with it for the time being, though it does go to Stein’s head. However, when push comes to shove, Stein is not meant for strategy during battle.
Stein turns over command to Sara after she proves over and over again that she can keep a cool head in the middle of battle (except when it comes to Damien Darhk, as we saw last episode). I love the idea of Sara, who spent so long struggling to find the goodness within herself after her resurrection and her time in the League, becoming the leader of a team of heroes. I’ve never been shy about my love of that character, so I was downright giddy.
To Stein’s credit, there is something heroic about recognizing your flaws and turning over a task you’re not suited for to someone more capable in that area. He learns an important lesson about humility here.
Stein’s shining moment in the episode, though, is when he sings at a club because he is undercover as one of Hitler’s favorite singers. Seeing Victor Garber sing “Edelweiss” is nothing short of a treat. There’s a musical crossover episode coming up in 2017… just saying.
We also zoom in on Commander Steel and Nate Heyward to consider what makes a hero. Commander Steel is actually Nate’s grandfather, and Nate grew up idolizing him. But as is usually the case in the Arrow-verse, meeting his hero wasn’t the best experience for Nate.
At first, anyway.
Commander Steel doesn’t want to be idolized, so he has a hard time with the look on Nate’s face whenever he looks at Steel. They have a really great conversation, though, and I loved Steel telling Nate that you don’t have to be a soldier to be a hero. Nate can be a hero as a historian — without him, after all, the Legends would still be lost in time!
Being a soldier is an especially bad idea for Nate, we learn, because he’s a hemophiliac; even the smallest injury can be life-threatening. However, Nate resents being shielded from the world, and when he gets the chance, he goes out and rescues Commander Steel from a Nazi rage monster. It’s great — until the pair is hit by an explosion, which causes internal bleeding that won’t stop.
Ray, who was captured by the Nazis and forced to make more super serum (which was provided to the Nazis by the Reverse Flash), injects the serum into Nate. This saves his life but will likely have more effects on him as well, since the Nazi who took it turned into a non-green Hulk whoops that’s Marvel.
Before his departure, Steel calls Nate a hero and there is a nice sense of closure for that hole Nate has been looking to have filled. This is especially powerful when Sara, earlier in the episode, wanted to take Nate back to 2016 where he would be safe and not part of the team. I quite like Nate and this story worked well for me; him being the legacy of a hero and wanting to live up to that (but having a physical limitation) is an interesting story.
Amaya, the present-day Vixen’s grandmother, also accepts Ray as a hero. She initially isn’t impressed with him since his only ability seems to be wearing a super suit. But Ray proves himself when the pair is captured by Nazis; he plays along with the Nazis wanting him to make more serum until he and Amaya can escape. This keeps their captor from shooting Amaya on the spot, and she realizes that there is more to him than meets the eye.
And isn’t that really true of the entire Legends team as a whole? They may be a ragtag band, but they’re spunky and they have heart. So, the JSA accepts the Legends as a team of time-traveling heroes before they part ways.
However, in the final moments of the episode, the Reverse Flash arrives in the JSA’s headquarters, steals the amulet the teams worked together to keep Hitler from getting, and killed Rex Tyler (I’m guessing Patrick J. Adams had to shoot Suits or something). Amaya finds Rex, and his dying words are that he was killed by a time traveler. Obviously this will cast suspicion on the Legends. Uh oh.
That darn Eobard Thawne, always messing things up.
Watch a promo for the next episode
