Legends of Tomorrow season 2, episode 3, “Shogun,” saw the Legends travel back to feudal Japan with a JSA stowaway.
I’ve been wary of this episode since reading the synopsis — and it turns out that my worry was well-placed. This episode was the epitome of the White Savior Complex, with outsiders stepping in to save the oppressed population of a Japanese village from the cruel Shogun.
While it’s true there is a black woman among the other white characters, Amaya has been Westernized by her recruitment by the JSA. She, despite having background that can relate to the people she is helping protect, is an outsider. And it takes the “superior” outsiders to defeat the Shogun, save the girl, and gallop off into the sunset time stream.
The exploitation of exoticism isn’t helped by the fact that the Japanese characters randomly say Japanese words (like gaijin and konichiwa) despite the fact that everyone is technically speaking Japanese, we’re just hearing it in English because of the Legends’ translators.
But let’s rewind. The episode begins with Amaya stowing away on The Waverider, convinced Mick was the time traveler Rex was referring to with his dying breath. She knocks out the entire crew and prepares to kill Mick, but Nate saves him. His entire body has turned to steel because of the Nazi serum Ray injected him with. This turns out to be an ability Nate can turn on and off, but he doesn’t know how to do it.
While Sara convinces Amaya not to murder anyone aboard the ship, Ray and Jax help Nate try to figure out how to turn his steel powers on. In the process, though, they damage the ship and Nate falls out into the time stream. Ray goes after him, and the two are stranded in feudal Japan. Ray is captured by the Shogun while Nate is recovered by a local girl whose family has been tormented by the Shogun.
See where this is going yet? It’s painfully obvious and icky.
Anyway, while Sara, Amaya and Mick go after them, Jax and Stein stay behind to repair the ship. In the process, they discover a hidden compartment that Rip had kept secret from Jax. They break in and find a message left for Rip from Barry Allen — in the year 2056. We don’t learn what the message is, but it sounds serious. And they plan to keep it a secret for now, because secrets always work so well.
Back in Japan, Nate falls for the girl (ugh), the Shogun steals Ray’s suit, Mick fights ninjas and yadda yadda.
I will say, I did enjoy seeing Sara and Amaya bond. They come to an understanding and fight well as a team. With the loss of Kendra, the team has been even more male-heavy than usual, so adding Amaya to the mix brings in a new, welcome dynamic.
I also would have liked to have seen a bit more of Amaya relating to the Japanese villagers. She understands what they are feeling, based on her upbringing in Africa. I feel like a bit more attention on that and less on Nate’s ill-fated romance likely would have dulled the sting of the heavy-handed trope at the center of the episode.
I also thought Nate’s full-on steel look was decent enough for the budget. And I continue to enjoy the character, though the romance angle was not working for me. It felt exploitative of her and contrived in terms of the narrative. It was also nice to see him step up and embrace his powers in the final fight against the Shogun. It’s just too bad he was stepping in as his Japanese love interest literally laid on the ground about to die. That was the White Savior Complex in one screenshot.
Ray, meanwhile, has been dealing with the knowledge — hammered in by both Amaya and Sara in recent episodes — that it’s his suit that makes him a hero. He spent billions of dollars and years of his life, plus he nearly died, perfecting it. But for the team to succeed in their mission, they have to destroy the suit to keep the Shogun from using it. And they do.
In his own way, Ray is having his own origin story. While he’s been operating as The Atom for a time now, he has never really felt like a hero. He wants to be one, wants to be what he was unable to be for his late fiancee. But he keeps being reminded that his abilities come from his suit. He needs to find the hero within and come into his own. Ray needs to be the hero, not The Atom. We saw the beginnings of that in this episode, as he faced the Shogun without his suit, but he wasn’t particularly successful.
The dynamics between the characters in this episode were the best part for me. I’ll have to hope the show approaches any future storylines set among other cultures more sensitively in the future, though.
Watch a promo for the next episode
