REVIEW: Legends Of Tomorrow, S2E15 – Fellowship of the Spear

Legends of Tomorrow opens this week’s adventure in media res, with our team stuck in the trenches of World War I. But how did they get there? The show turns the clock back 72 hours to explain. Sara (Caity Lotz) called a meeting to discuss how to handle the Spear of Destiny, and Rip (Arthur Darvill) reveals that he knows the Legion of Doom’s hideout location. The evil trio is apparently hiding outside of time, at the Vanishing Point from the first season.

Do everything right & still end up in a situation.

The Legends return there with the Spear, ready to face off and retrieve the other missing pieces. Only trouble is that if they fail, the Legion will have the whole Spear. Mick (Dominic Purcell) takes a moment to remember his best friend Leonard’s (Wentworth Miller) sacrifice, and we even get Sara mentioning that she misses him too. The promos and filming pictures had prepared audiences for Snart’s return, but Legends of Tomorrow laid the groundwork beautifully in this episode with that short but heartfelt scene.

Once they locate the other pieces of the Spear, Jax (Franz Drameh) gets to show off an awesome transmutation skill he and Stein (Victor Garber) have been working on by turning the obelisk hiding them into jellybeans. Both delicious and impressive, as Rip declares. Thawne’s (Matt Lescher) shocked screams over their success were equally delicious, if I do say so myself. But of course, such success early in the night only means that Legends has another surprise in store.

After being warned by Rip that the Spear can easily tempt any one of them, the team looks to Nate (Nick Zano) to translate newly discovered Latin writing on its side. “Born of blood, undone by blood” suggests that Christ’s blood causes both the creation and destruction of the Spear, but going there is impossible because it’s a fixed point in time. However, they can track down his blood after the fact if they find J.R.R. Tolkien… Which is why they wind up going to the trenches of WWI. The opening section of Legends of Tomorrow features some of its tightest writing, allowing the entire team to work as a cohesive unit for perhaps the first time all season. It’s especially brilliant to watch them progress as the Legion of Doom starts to fall apart a bit.

Amaya grapples with temptation and beats it.

In order to counteract the Legends’ progress, Damien (Neal McDonough) has the bright idea to switch up the game, which we can assume means bringing Snart back on the table. Soon enough, he’s appearing to taunt Mick once more while Nate whisks Tolkien away to get help with the Spear. Meanwhile, Amaya (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) still gets some moments of self-reflection about personal suffering and whether it is nobler to let someone be in pain for the greater good, or to risk it all to protect them. Sara and she share a scene discussing Amaya’s fears about her family’s future, and it is a simple yet beautiful moment between the two women. They absolutely need to develop this friendship more, and hopefully there’ll be another season with Amaya in it to do so.

The reveal that Snart is actually alive – as in a version of him before he died – was pretty epic, and just as the Legends were about to grab Sir Gawain’s stash of Christ blood too. It also leads to an important exploration of Mick’s character – is he loyal to his friend Leonard and his criminal roots, or is he a hero and part of the team? Unfortunately the way the other characters confront him about confessing the plan to (what he thought was) his hallucination feels calculated to make him feel small and push him further away. Only Amaya seems to reach out to him in a way that feels genuine, as they share their private temptations and fears regarding the Spear.

In order to destroy the artifact, the Legends require a cease fire. But neither side is willing to put down their arms for a single second, which is understandable given how confusing and strange the request must sound. Rip gives an inspirational speech instead, succeeding in convincing both sides to lay down their weapons to remove the injured from the battlefield. This is the point where Legends of Tomorrow stretches the suspension of disbelief a bit, but overall the episode balances the horrors of World War I with the fantastical task at hand.

Mick’s loyalties don’t fare as well.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to Mick and his loyalties. It’s heart-wrenching to see him choose the Legion’s side, but it makes sense at least within the context of “Brotherhood of the Spear.” Ray (Brandon Routh) brings up that the team never truly trusted Mick and thus hold some of the blame for his betrayal, which is a rather nuanced approach to the situation. Given how deftly the moral dilemmas were handled this week, it just might be the most well-crafted episode of Legends of Tomorrow yet.

The ending is a wham moment too, with Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) returning to the Legion with the Word of God in tow. Now that the bad guys have the owners’ manual for the Spear with them, how will our heroes defeat them and save all of time and space? I don’t know, but I’m excited to find out!