Legends Of Tomorrow, S2E7

The highly-anticipated “Invasion!” crossover came to a stunning close with Legends of Tomorrow‘s installment on Thursday night. While the Legends were all present in the episode – aside from the still missing Rip Hunter and the much mourned Leonard Snart – they were not really the focus of the story. Sara and Ray joined Barry (The Flash) and Oliver (Arrow) in seeking answers from the new president and ended up discovering the reason for the invasion. Amaya, Mick, and Nate went back in time to 1951 to research the Dominators and ended up being part of the reason for the invasion. Meanwhile, Stein tried to avoid forming a connection with his daughter lest he get to attached to an aberration he planned to eradicate.

It would be nearly impossible to follow the plot of the episode without having watched at least the previous two DCTV programs this week, but Legends of Tomorrow helpfully begins with a short recap of the previous events: the Dominators mind-controlled the heroes and made them fight each other, then kidnapped Ray and Sara and stuck them in a collective dream world, which they recently escaped on the Waverider. Now that they’re back in Central City, the group branches off to attack different priorities. Barry and Oliver take Ray and Sara as back-up to meet the president, while Kara (Supergirl) gets inexcusably sidelined. It may have been in-character for Oliver to get grumpy and send her away, but the rest of the team simply accepting that choice was very hard to believe. Obviously it had to do with scheduling, so I’ll let it slide, but it took me out of the moment at first.

Best team-up ever!

The important part of that story line is that the team learns that there is a branch of the government working against both them and the President, and the Dominators want Barry Allen to turn himself over because he messed with time to create Flashpoint. Barry is of course immediately willing to make the sacrifice to the point of forgetting to say goodbye to his family and the love of his life, since they weren’t allowed to cross over. But the group comes together to prevent him from making that choice, and instead we are treated to the best drawn-out battle sequence on any of the four shows. Kara returns to help fight some aliens on the rooftop and receives Oliver’s respect, and Sara helps save the day by piloting while Jax and Stein use a new Firestorm power to destroy the bomb the Dominators were going to drop on Earth.

The reconnaissance mission that Amaya, Mick, and Nate went on is actually what helps the other characters – especially Cisco – forgive Barry and keep him from sacrificing himself. But it also leads to a fun fight sequence between Mick’s heat gun and a Dominator, and it affords Amaya a few opportunities to show off her Vixen powers. She was sadly not invited to the rest of the crossover, so I enjoyed seeing a little of her skills this episode, even if it wasn’t much. Once the three of them are kidnapped, Cisco and Felicity (from Arrow) rescue them and they are faced with the moral dilemma of saving the alien they originally attacked from government experiments. Because they do save him during the 1951 invasion, they wind up furthering the bias against metahumans both within the government and within the Dominators and helping create the atmosphere for the 2016 invasion. Time travel really messes with cause and effect, doesn’t it?

Martin tells Jax about his daughter.

Martin Stein was really the only Legends of Tomorrow character with a solo story this episode, as he struggles with the existence of a daughter he accidentally willed into existence. It was a little unclear at first whether something had happened to Clarissa and that was why he was so shaken up, but instead the problem was that he recognized his daughter Lily to be an aberration that needed correction. Once she confronts him about his distance and helps him create a weapon against the Dominators, which the team effectively uses on the previously mentioned amazing rooftop battle sequence, he starts to change his mind. At the end of the episode, he confides to Jax that he will not be restoring the timeline and begs him to keep it a secret, which seems to be the Firestorm duo’s new tradition. We can only assume that will have far-reaching consequences in the back half of the season.

If you made sure to watch all three parts of the crossover and really enjoyed the conceit of Dominators invading Earth, then this week’s Legends of Tomorrow was a great conclusion. There was even some beautiful closure for longtime Sara Lance fans who first fell for her when she left on a boat with Oliver Queen. However, in terms of furthering the stories of the rest of the Legends? This crossover didn’t do much of that. Stein and Sara gained some actual development or insight from it, Nate got to make a grand entrance on Arrow, and Mick had several comedic relief moments throughout. Jax and Amaya suffered the most in terms of reduced screen time and story, which has been a problem all season outside of the Civil War episode.

The midseason finale will air next Thursday, and it seems the Legion of Doom will finally add Captain Cold to the mix!