DC’s Legends of Tomorrow: Progeny travels along lines of “would you kill Adolf Hitler as a boy to save lives.” In this case it is not going back in time but forward and it is not “baby Hitler” but Per Degaton. As another website quite rightly points out, the group of heroes were never going to kill the kid who kills billions. Their efforts leave things in an Oedipal mess with no resolution.
Regardless of homicidal intentions, the storyline was all about changing history not killing part of it, even though that was the initial plan. The episode managed to work in the beautiful and talented Jewel Staite as, seemingly, the great-great-great-great… granddaughter of Ray Palmer, aka The Atom (Brandon Routh).
Palmer had a few issues apart from worrying that his offspring was left back in 2016 without him. The Atom was vexed about how his technology was turned into “evil robots” and Kendra Saunders, Ray’s 1958 sweetheart, was acting a bit off.
Hawkgirl (Ciara Renée) keeps having flashbacks to an earlier time with Carter Hall and their son. Obviously brought on by the decision to kidnap Per Degaton, it hampers her current relationship with Palmer.
Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) is rushing to stop Degaton, who will release the virus that kills Hunter’s wife and child in just five years time, and it is his idea to either kill the boy or remove him from the timeline. Gideon reveals that neither of these actions make a change to future events. The virus is still released.
Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell) still wants to kill Snart (Wentworth Miller) so it is up to the rest of the team to grab the kid. Toward the end of the episode, Rip brings Per back to his father after a heated engagement between Degaton Senior’s troops (including Vandal Savage) and the Legends.
By the end of the episode, Per is back with his day, but also under the influence of his evil tutor Savage. Vandal (Casper Crump) tells young Degaton (Cory Gruter-Andrew) about Oedipus Rex and hands the boy a knife. Later, Per stabs his father to death as he sleeps.
Ray learns that Rachel Turner (Staite) is not his great-great-great-great granddaughter as it was his brother Simon who developed the evil robots. Gideon informs Hunter that his attempts to stop the virus being released has resulted in the event being moved up. Instead of happening in five years time, it will occur in a few days.
Rory and Snart engage in a fight to “the death” but when Rory wins he does not kill Captain Cold. Heatwave explains to the rest of the team that they are all dead anyway as the Time Masters have hired mercenaries called Hunters who will kill them all.
It was lovely to see Jewel Staite and at the risk of sounding like Christopher Walken, there should have been more Jewel Staite. Falk Hentschel returning as Carter Hall was another nice touch.
Ray Palmer telling Rachel that his name was Dr. Hannibal Lector was priceless as was Snart’s moaning about how pristine the city was and “can we go yet.” As has been pointed out by fans of the Arrow-verse, the recent death of the Black Canary, aka Laurel Lance has not yet reached sister Sara’s ears, aka the White Canary, so there will be more trauma for the Legends to face.
This episode of the series was a tad slow, the Hawkgirl flashbacks did not help, but next week should be pretty exciting with the group gong to collect Jonah Hex.
Legends of Tomorrow airs Thursdays on CW.
Oops sorry matey! I don’t think the time thing would work, just like the kidnapping Per didn’t help… Nice idea though!
Thanks for the Arrow spoiler! Argh! My bad for not keeping up, I guess.
Anyway, this episode was all right. The flashbacks were a bit out of place. I thought they were just occurring naturally, not because of the whole “Is it bad to kill a kid who in a short time becomes responsible for mass genocide?” debate.
Convincing his brother’s great great great great granddaughter to help them seemed a little easy. “Hey, I time-traveled from the past, can ya’ help?” seemed a bit rushed.
And here’s a thought: Because Vandal is immortal, but not a time traveler, wouldn’t it make more sense to keep going further BACK in time? When they encountered him in the 80’s, he referenced their earlier encounter back in the 70’s, as I recall, but in the 50’s he recognized only Kendra and not Ray. So they could keep the element of surprise if they kept going backwards in time because the earlier versions of Vandal would have no idea who they are. Or would that be too easy? 🙂