‘Legends of Tomorrow’ season 2, episode 3 review: Barry Allen’s message; Feudal Japan
After spending much of this past episode of “Legends of Tomorrow” dealing with the Justice Society of America, Thursday night’s new episode distanced itself from most of that with one notable exception: Vixen. She traveled aboard the ship, but definitely didn’t appear to be on the side of the team in the early going. Luckily, she did eventually start to come around to them by the end.
The thick of the action tonight took place all the way back during the days of Feudal Japan. “Shogun” was for the most part fun, but at the same time we’d probably argue it as the most inconsequential episode of the season to date. After spending much of the first two episodes with a tighter narrative, much of this hour was spent touching on familiar themes that many members of the Legends should have learned by now.
Take, for example, the story of Ray Palmer, who had to figure out if he could be a hero without having his suit. We already know that he can be, so this really shouldn’t be much of a discussion point by now — didn’t we experience something similar in season 1? Meanwhile, Nate Heywood had to learn that even though he may want to change history doesn’t always mean that he should become fully invested in it. Seeing his new powers was rather awesome, though, mostly because he looks almost like a hulked-up Silver Surfer.
The one part of this story for Ray that was fun? Seeing him fighting a shogun who was wearing his Atom suit. It was completely odd, but it brought us a funny line when Ray said that “any idiot” could figure out how to use his suit if given the opportunity. Said suit was effectively destroyed for now after Ray / Nate as Citizen Steel teamed up to take him down. This probably forces Ray into more of an identity crisis, but that could be a good thing. You root for an underdog, and we really want to root more for Ray than we have.
The surprises at the end of the night were fairly minimal, in particular Jax and Martin Stein getting a message from future Barry Allen. We don’t know what this means just yet, but we’ll hopefully see in upcoming weeks. We just wish that it was treated with a little bit more impact.
Grade: B-. We were entertained by this episode without a doubt, but at the same time we did find ourselves wishing and hoping for something more. In the end, “Shogun” felt a bit too much like an episode we won’t remember at all in a few weeks unless the Barry message really leads to an interesting place.
Next week – Head over here to get some other details regarding what is coming up next! (Photo: The CW.)