Legends of Tomorrow 2×11, “Turncoat,” featured the aftermath of the Legion of Doom brainwashing Rip.
Let’s start with the biggest revelation of the episode: Evil Rip Hunter is a far better character than regular Rip Hunter. I assume the team will save him at some point, but my eyes were glued to the brainwashed Rip, far more than it ever was for him previously — as, you know, he was kind of terrible at his job not to mention selfish.
This Rip, though, is cruel for the sake of cruel. He knows the team (though he doesn’t know about Amaya and Nate since they joined the team after he left, so I wonder if their presence will give the Legends an advantage) and their weaknesses. His first order of business, for instance, is to take out his biggest threat: Sara.
He then removes the second largest threat in Mick. Then an EMP knocks out Ray’s ability to use his suit as well as Stein and Jax’s to fuse or any of the team to use Gideon. It really is quite brilliant. He also knows the buttons to push with his former teammates, like when he tries to convince Jax to help him by offering to use the Spear to save Jax’s father’s life. Jax, to his credit, rejects him.
Poor Jax is put in charge while Sara is down, and he does his best to fight of Rip and his lackeys. Him knocking out the lackeys with a gas bomb and a present labeled “Merry Christmas, Douchebag” was awesome. He’s really doing well — until he tells Rip the truth about the location of the Spear fragment and has to watch as Rip murders the wounded Sara. (Speaking of, Sara has really got to be sick of dying at this point. First it was the Queen’s Gambit, then the Amazo, then Malcolm and now Rip. She’s practically a Winchester.)
Luckily, Ray is able to sneak through the ship and turn the power back on and Gideon is able to save Sara because she hasn’t been gone too long.
Jax, furious at seeing Rip kill Sara with no emotion, goes after Rip with a gun. He fights with himself about whether to shoot Rip or not, but Sara arrives and talks him down. I quite like this for a couple of reasons: First, we don’t see Sara and Jax interact a ton, just the two of them, so seeing how much Jax really cares for her was sweet.
And second, Sara is a trained killer and has taken more lives than she can probably count. But she knows Jax is an innocent and she wants to protect that innocence. She’s come a long way. (I still kind of wish Jax would have shot Rip in the shoulder or something.)
But can we just appreciate Jax? He doesn’t get much action, as it seems like there’s a budgetary limit on how often Firestorm can be used, but he was really great as just himself in this episode.
In this episode, we also see Mick befriend George Washington — because why not? And he instills in Washington the sense of what it truly means to be American: scrappy, rebellious and pragmatic. Washington is yet another figure to recognize that Mick is actually quite brilliant. And I love seeing that recognition. Mick might put on an idiot’s facade, but this man also spent countless years as Chronos. There’s a lot of depth to him, though he’d never admit to it. Mick remains my favorite surprise on Legends of Tomorrow.
(Hilariously, his dirty tendencies also lured in a rat, and Ray ends up catching it and giving it to Mick as a pet. But not before the rat chased Ray, who was stuck in tiny form from the EMP, through the ship’s vents. The humor this season on Legends of Tomorrow has been top notch.)
Then there was the Nate and Amaya debacle. And yes, I say debacle. This is one of the few missteps this season for the show. And it’s not even bringing Nate and Amaya together that bothers me (though it does seem a bit odd that Amaya is on a mission to avenge her dead lover yet sleeps with another man in the process).
It’s that they have sex in the middle of the woods when one of their friends (and the father of our country) has been captured, one has been shot and the rest are under siege on a powered down ship. I lost some respect for both of them in that moment.
I assume from a storytelling standpoint the writers wanted the two of them out of the way to give them the dramatic entrance in the morning and to heighten the tension on the ship, but from a narrative point of view, it was not only illogical but insulting that they would ignore their friends so fully.
Anyway, the episode closes with the team having a Christmas celebration. Amaya tells Nate that she doesn’t think teammates should fraternize, Mick gets his rat (and a statue in Washington, DC!) and Sara reminds everyone that they are a family and “no one fights like family.” So the Legion better look out.
Watch a promo for the next episode
