Last Refuge
In the opening this week, we discover just exactly how the Omega Protocol works. Kind of nasty, actually! Once the offending time pirate is disposed of, the Time Masters give the Pilgrim (played by Faye Kingslee) her next assignment, our team. Fair warning, the episode itself contains some timey wimey inconsistencies, and some huh?? moments but what the hey! It’s a TV show, not rocket science or Doctor Who, and still thoroughly enjoyable if you take it with a grain of salt. Oh and BTW ladies and gentlemen, Leonard Snart is not only a damn fine looking cowboy, he also makes one damn fine looking fireman!! What? I can appreciate!! It’s allowed!
We find the Legends at the scene of a burning home, searching for young Rory (Mitchell Kummen), who is tearlessly watching his world burn from some nearby bushes. His parents are quite deceased inside the home. Len observes that this is not his element, and does little more in this scene than to prop up the firetruck. But he does so in style!
Behind young Rory is a menacing woman getting ready to shoot him out of existence. The Atom bursts out of the grass in the nick of time, and blasts her into the middle of next week, while channelling his inner Terminator. (Come with me if you want to live!). The team scoops up young Rory, and take him back to the WaveRider, where grown Rory leaves Jax in charge of babysitting in the hold.
On the bridge, Rip and Rory inform the team that because of the precision required by the Omega Protocol, the Pilgrim only gets one shot at each of their younger selves. If she makes multiple efforts, this could result in possible irreversible temporal damage. Conversely this also means that the team only gets one shot at extracting each of their younger selves from the timeline. More on this later. Gideon has traced the Pilgrim to Sara in Starling City in the year 2007.
Young Sara (Caity Lotz) is handcuffed to a desk in the police station, getting a first hand look at the criminal justice system from the inside for a paper that she is doing for school. Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorn) makes a joke about it being every father’s dream to lock up their daughters till they turn 30. The Pilgrim continues the Terminator motif, crashing the police station and shooting from the hip at every cop in her way, while searching for young Sara. Sara runs, only to end up at the end of a hallway containing a window and two locked doors. Rory busts through one of the locked doors to defend young Sara, just as the Pilgrim rounds the corner. White Canary jumps out of nowhere and engages the Pilgrim with her staff. Having defeated the Pilgrim again, they take young Sara back to the hold to keep young Rory company. Grown Rory is not sure that this is a good idea. Grown Sara notes that even before the League of Assassins, she could handle guys like him.
The Pilgrim has now hidden her temporal wake, so Gideon cannot track her. Ray begins to panic, wondering how they will know which member the Pilgrim is after next, how long it would take to feel the effects of being erased, and is he maybe already dead, can anybody hear him. There is plenty of stunned disbelief and eye rolling from the rest of the team. Snart highlights this in a succinct “No”. I have said it before, and I will undoubtedly say it again, but for a smart man, sometimes Ray is just not very bright. But! he looks good.
Rip tells the team that he and Kendra are safe from the Pilgrim. Snart observes that this is convenient for Rip. Rip wants Snart to explain, so Snart points out that they know next to nothing about Rip’s past, and that he doesn’t trust a man with secrets. Rip explains that this is deliberate as the less they know about him, the less valuable they are to their now numerous enemies. Once again, Snart snorts “Convenient”. Sara distracts them by pointing out that there is a fight going on in the hold. Young Sara smacks young Rory, and grown Rory laughs. Sara breaks it up, telling young Sara to keep her hands to herself but next time hit with a flat palm, and telling young Rory that he is not young Sara’s type. While young Rory seems to be calm, cool and disconnected, young Sara is a little freaked out, and has a lot of questions, most of which grown Sara answers with a blanket “you have to trust me”.
In Ray and Kendra’s quarters, Ray tells Kendra that when stuff gets overwhelming, his safe place is the years they spent in Hub City. He tries to tell her about the ring he wants to give her, but is inexplicably suddenly being knocked around and rapidly bruising. The WaveRider heads to 2014 at Palmer Tech. Firestorm tries to blast the Pilgrim but she is able to stop him by turning time against him. Rip grabs a bit of younger Ray’s Atom suit and blasts her out of the window. While this fight is going on, older Ray is in the med bay on the verge of dying, when he (finally) tells Kendra about the ring. Kendra picks the ring up off the floor where it has fallen and slips it on her finger, saying that she wants to spend the rest of their lives together. When the Pilgrim is defeated, younger Ray is sent to the hospital, and older Ray begins to recover.
It seems that Firestorm’s power was stalled because the Pilgrim has the ability to use temporal micromanipulation, which essentially means that she can mess with time in her immediate vicinity. Rip feels their time would be best spent by kidnapping the remaining team member’s newborn selves. Martin thinks this is a brilliant plan, Snart thinks it’s morally questionable, and Rory thinks it is outright suicidal. Rory and Rip explain that if they take too long to return their younger selves, history will be altered. Snart thinks that it beats dying.
Kendra tells Sara that she is engaged, but is very obviously not thrilled about it because of the circumstance in which the engagement occurred. Sara asks her to go to the hospital to snatch baby Snart, and they will figure out how to tell Ray after. But hey, guess what? Ray overhears the conversation, and predictably gets the whipped puppy look.
In Central City at the hospital, circa 1972, Kendra and Sara, disguised as nurses, enter the newborn nursery. They waste a little time oohing and aahing over baby Snart. In Sara’s words, “he is just the cutest baby in the world!”.
In the WaveRider’s hold, young Rory tries to pry the door open, but when young Sara inadvertently places her hand on the ID strip by the door Gideon cheerfully opens it. Grown Rory, Sara, Kendra and baby Snart enter. The team leaves baby Snart with young Rory and young Sara, but grown Rory can’t resist growling at young Rory not to drop his future criminal partner. Martin imagines holding his own baby self, but Rip says that they are not to participate in their own abductions, citing paradox prevention. Martin thinks it would almost be worth the risk to see how their fathers felt. Jax confides that he never knew his father, who had shipped out the day before his Mom went into labor, and was killed 2 weeks later in Somalia.
Rip and Rory appropriate an ambulance and show up at a car on the side of the road where baby Martin is being delivered in the back seat by his father. They whisk the baby away, telling Martin’s parents that they will meet them at the hospital. Martin rounds a corner in the hospital where baby Jax is, to see a man in army fatigues looking into the nursery. He notices that the man’s name is Jackson, and fetches Jax, so that he can meet his father. It seems that James Jackson (Eli Goree) did in fact get to see his newborn son, because his transport was delayed. Time constraints meant that he did not get to see his wife, however. James Jackson tells Jax that Jefferson Jackson was destined for great things. He has to go, but asks Jax to tell his wife that he saw the baby and will be home just as soon as he can. Jax wants to tell him about the IED in Somalia, but because of paradox, feels that he can’t. The Pilgrim is thwarted again.
Back in the WaveRider, Rip announces that “We are here”. Snart wants to know where “here” is and Rip invites them to come see for themselves. An older woman (Celia Imrie) comes out of a Tudor style home and greets Rip. Rip says “It’s good to see you too Mother”. Shocker! This is a safe haven, and a home for orphan children who are marked for eventual Time Master status. It exists in a secret location in history, and the Time-Masters will never think to look for their younger selves there.
Snart warns Mother that he is a handful. Mother gives Rip a meaningful look and assures Snart that he is not the first tough case to arrive at her door. Mother is Rip’s adoptive mother, and she is more comfortable using his birth name, Micheal.
Grown Rory catches young Rory playing with a match in the hallway, and rips a strip off him, making him feel worse than he already does, although he appears defiant. Young Rory accuses him of sounding just like his father. OUCH!
Mother gives Rip a pep talk, telling him that feeling selfish is a load of codswallop, and that he won’t accomplish anything by wallowing, so for goodness sake pull himself out of it and get the job done! Tough bird, she is!
Jax is upset, and of course because of their psychic connection, Martin knows this. Jax has always wondered how his father would feel about the good things he has accomplished.
Kendra finally tells Ray about her earlier incarnation, and what she said. Ray tells her that he overheard her conversation with Sara and when she decides what she wants, to let him know.
Gideon has intercepted a trans-chronal beacon from the Pilgrim. She is now holding their loved ones hostage, and will release them if they give her their younger selves. She shows pictures of Sara’s dad, Martin’s wife, Snart’s sister, Ray’s first fiancé, and has Jax’s dad with her in the camera view. Rip has Gideon hail the Pilgrim, and offers his younger self in return for the safety of all the team members, their younger selves and the release of their loved ones. She accepts, and they arrange to meet at an abandoned Time Master Outpost. Mother comes, bringing the younger Rip/Micheal (Aiden Longworth) with her. She doesn’t approve, but takes time to assure everyone that their younger selves are safe and sound. The Pilgrim arrives, Mother tells Rip to give her hell, fistbumps the younger Rip and leaves. The Pilgrim asks where the rest of the team is, and Rip says that they are around. She wants the younger Rip immediately but Rory demands proof that she has their loved ones. She zaps Jax’s Dad into the outpost, Rip tells his younger self that he will be absolutely fine, and the exchange takes place. The minute that Jax’s Dad is in the clear, and young Rip is talking to the Pilgrim, Ray gives the signal, and everybody attacks. But the Pilgrim’s ability to micromanage temporally means that everyone and their weapon beams are moving in very slow motion. Younger Rip stabs the Pilgrim in the leg, distracting her so that the team can converge. The Pilgrim is destroyed. Grown Rip says that he knew what younger him would do if threatened, because he had been a cutpurse from the age of 5, who starved more than he ate, and yet survived.
Grown Rory sees that young Rory is still playing with matches, trying to burn his hand. Grown Rory tells him that they are the same person, that none of it was young Rory’s fault, that he had spent his whole life blaming and hating young Rory for something that he didn’t mean to do. He tells young Rory that he can’t change what he did, but he can change what he becomes. He advises young Rory not to be like him, but to be better.
The team members speak with their loved ones. Jax’s father is astounded at how Jax has turned out, and thinks that is because he did a good job of raising him. Jax tells him about the IED that will end his life, and begs him to be careful. Kendra tells Ray that there will never be a right time for them to get on with their life together, that they should stop waiting, and get on with it. Rip tells Jax that maybe time wants he and his father to be together this time. Rory says that he has just finished pulling younger him’s head out of his ass and though he is not certain it will stick, he had to give it a shot, since he saw that younger Rip was able to change. The teams’ younger selves are left at the Last Refuge under Mother’s care. Their loved ones are returned to their timelines after taking amnesia pills.
Rip tells the team that history is starting to set as evidenced by Clarissa not remembering Martin. No one knows how long they have till the changes stick, but they do know that they have to move swiftly to stop Vandal Savage, because with their younger selves removed from history they have quite literally run out of time. They need to challenge him at the height of his power in 2166, even though to do so is highly dangerous.
At this point I normally do my favorite moments, and I did have plenty, believe me! Mostly Rory’s speeches to his younger self. Rory is developing empathy, and three cheers for that! Not to mention he has some serious admiration going on for Sara. And finding out that Rip was a right little bastard as a youngster. However, this time I want to point out the huh?? moments and the timey wimey inconsistencies that left me wondering.
HUH?? Moments:
Snart doesn’t seem to be even a little upset over Lisa being taken. In spite of the fact that Snart’s love for his sister is FIERCE! Yes, Lisa is a tough girl, but still.
During girl time with Sara, Kendra reveals that she has not yet told Ray that the woman she met with in the old west was herself because she and Ray are happy together, so they should be able to enjoy that before she drops the doomed relationship bomb on him. When, since 1958, have we ever really seen any actual happiness between Ray and Kendra? Their relationship seems to me to be fraught with sadness, anxiety, tension, near death experiences and whipped puppy looks, but not a lot of happy.
Timey Wimey Inconsistencies:
The major one for me is that the Pilgrim only gets one shot at each team member’s younger selves. I can accept that. However, if that’s the case, then why was it necessary to take the younger selves after the Pilgrim’s attempt on each was balked? After all, younger Ray was left in the hospital in his time. And why couldn’t the younger selves be put back immediately once the danger to them was over? I hope we eventually learn the reason for leaving them at the Last Refuge.
The next one is the paradox prevention step of not allowing Martin or Jax to help abduct themselves. Again, I can accept that it would be best for grown selves not to interact with young selves, but both grown Sara and grown Rory had helped abduct their younger selves and interacted quite vocally with them. And apparently, Rip has amnesia pills that would by definition cancel out any possibility of paradox.
Well, folks, this post has gone on long enough. Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to follow all the great bloggers and our vlogger at skatronixxx.com. See ya next week!
[…] via DC’s Legends of Tomorrow SN1 E12 – ‘ Last Refuge ‘ — […]
LikeLike