Did ‘Legends of Tomorrow’ do enough with Wentworth Miller during winter finale?

Let’s start off this “Legends of Tomorrow” article with the following: We enjoyed the winter finale very much. It was fast-paced, stuffed with surprises, and it started to give us a further sense as to the Legion of Doom’s agenda. We still have no idea why they need Rip Hunter, but it reminded us precisely of the progress the show’s made since the start of the series in early 2017.

Now that we’ve said this, we do have to pose a question regarding what may in retrospect be the glaring weakness of the hour: Whether or not the series did enough with Wentworth Miller and his character of Captain Cold / Leonard Snart. The CW promoted his appearance in both the synopsis and the promo for the hour, so we received a sense that he was, to quote a certain Ron Burgundy, kind of a big deal.

Yet, when we saw the story play out on television, the only character who could see Snart was Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell), and he served almost entirely as a guilty conscience to our reformed bad boy. Think of him as the devil on his shoulder — Snart even referred of himself as such. He knows that he’s not a bad influence, but he’s not trying to be anything less. He relishes the chance to be devious, and to put some of the characters through their paces … even if at the end of season 1 he was good enough to sacrifice himself for the entire team.

If you’re going to bring back Snart, why not have him as a living, breathing character? Why not bring back an iteration that was from before the team started their mission against Vandal Savage? Given that we heard previously that Miller is a series regular, it felt like a missed chance to kick-start his character as a part of the Legion of Doom — something that is apparently happening at some point before the end of the season.

Much of our desire for more Snart comes mostly from the greatness of Miller’s performance. We love his snark, his snarl, and the way he frames his words to put as much punch into them as possible. We consider his discussion with Rory before almost killing him in season 1 to be the high point of the entire series in terms of performances. So with that, we want to see him back in a way that matters more than as a conscience. You can argue that Rory would’ve made many of the same decisions even if he didn’t have that ghost peering into his soul.

Ultimately, we know we’ll be seeing more Snart in due time. We’ll see what the show decides to do with him then.

If you’re interested in getting some other news when it comes to “Legends of Tomorrow,” including a preview for when the show is returning, head over to the link here right now! (Photo: The CW.)