Legends of Tomorrow: Last Refuge review

This Legends of Tomorrow review contains spoilers.

Legends of Tomorrow Season 1 Episode 13

Well, this was kind of a nothing episode, wasn’t it? And like a time loop or paradox, I feel I’ve been saying that to myself, if not out loud, more and more recently.

See, Legends of Tomorrow is never bad. But it is, at times, aggressively mediocre. Lately I’ve been getting the impression that they never expected to have to fill 16 episodes (which is a weird number for an episode order by most TV standards) and have been forced to spin their wheels to make up for the fact that maybe there was only 10-13 episodes of actual story.

And make no mistake, “Last Refuge” feels like an afterthought. An entertaining afterthought, mind you. I’m never bored and rarely even all that annoyed by Legends of Tomorrow. But this one kinda rambled like a bright student who didn’t do his homework who gets called on to give answers in class. Not that I would know anything about that, of course.

The Pilgrim was pretty disposable, and never really brought any kind of Terminator-like menace to the proceedings. And again, she felt like a footnote to the whole Chronos thing. I did thoroughly enjoy the early parts of the episode where she just kept getting wiped out by different members of the team. That was some quality Wile E. Coyote shit, right there, with good comic timing to offset the violence.

But really, things just kind of plodded along. I can’t even begin to try and wrap my head around the time travel logic this week, which was shaky even by this show’s admittedly shaky logical standards. I know, I’m not supposed to think too hard about it, and I even promised you fine readers that I wouldn’t back around episode two, but I found this one particularly tough to swallow.

The Ray/Kendra stuff continues to be the show’s low point, week in and week out. It doesn’t take a comic book fan to know that these two are doomed, it’s quite obvious to even casual viewers, so why torment them? And why torment us by association? I realize that romantic entanglements are unavoidable with an ensemble cast like this, but there’s no tension here with Kendra. We know that Carter will return, and that’s gonna be that for poor Ray.  

Thank Grodd for Caity Lotz, though. I’m really fond of this entire cast, but Ms. Lotz always seems the most relaxed and naturally cool. “Look for the one with horns,” was a quality laugh. For that matter, I never expected Dominic Purcell to become a highlight, since Mick was even more over-the-top in his Flash appearances. But I’ve really been enjoying Heat Wave, and I’m not sure yet if that’s a function of his post-Chronos evolution yet or not.

I guess that final throwdown with the Pilgrim was fun, and they got to show off some of the quality special effects that have been a nice hallmark of Legends. In particular that “frozen” shot of Cold’s gun beam was really eye-popping. I even love the sound that thing makes.

DC Universe Time Bubble

– I…I don’t have to explain to you where “come with me if you want to live” comes from, do I? Please say I don’t.

– OK, I know that we’ve known the first name of Ray’s lost love for awhile. I had forgotten her last name was Loring, to be honest. Is this the first time we’ve actually seen an image of her, though?

– This is the first I’ve ever heard of Rip Hunter’s name being “Michael.” This is cool, because fellow time traveling DC superhero (and a character that I desperately want to see on this show!) Booster Gold is named Michael Jon Carter.

Oh yeah, and Booster is Rip’s dad.

Seemed like that was it for DC Universe stuff, doesn’t it? If I missed anything, shout ’em out in the comments or hit me up on Twitter!