‘Legends of Tomorrow’ season 2, episode 6 review: Jonah Hex returns; Stein’s memories change
While there are several reasons to be excited about an episode of “Legends of Tomorrow” at any given time, the thing that easily made us the most intrigued about “Outlaw Country” going into it was the presence of one Jonah Hex. He was awesome the first time that we saw him, and he proved to be entertaining again — albeit a little bit closed-off to the idea of women leading a team. Well, actually more like A LOT closed off. Sara Lance had to fight for every inch with this guy.
The Legends were called on both to stop a time aberration in the Old West while also helping Jonah take care of a little problem in Turnbull, a gang leader who managed to use this aberration to his advantage in getting himself some super-bullets. If you mess too much with time, it’s very easy to have someone become insanely over-powered. This is what happened here.
Of course, the Legends managed to defeat this guy, and there wasn’t that much drama around it, either. With that, let’s focus more on the fun we had along the way. First things first, how ironic was it to see Mick Rory get sent into a saloon to have a fight with Turnbull, only for the two to get along instead? Rory is absolutely the sort of guy who does the opposite of whatever you say, even if whatever you say actually makes a great degree of sense and it is something that he would almost always do. Also, we appreciated pretty much every moment of Sara putting Jonah Hex and every other one of the sexist people in the Old West in their place.
Oh, and did we mention that Nate Heywood now has his own proper Citizen Steel costume? It’s very American; he’s almost like the metal version of Captain America, no?
Do we need romance? – This is the question we find ourselves asking right now in terms of Amaya and Rory, who seem to have some sort of brewing connection based on what we’ve seen to date. For one, we’re not sure Rory knows how to actually love someone in a romantic way; he did show that he can care for another person with Leonard Snart, but that was more of a partnership where the two were working towards the same end in oodles of cash.
Our major concern mostly comes out of trauma over how terrible the romantic subplot was with Ray and Kendra over the course of the first season, and in general, we do think that this universe struggles with finding organic, interesting romances. We’ll give it time, though, and see if it goes in the direction it’s appearing to right now.
Is Martin Stein a Flashpoint victim? – Does it take a little bit of time for someone like Martin to experience the effects of this? We’re wondering so somewhat given what’s transpiring to him right now. Throughout the episode, he started to see different visions and memories pop into his mind, and in true reluctant-superhero-on-TV fashion, he refused to tell anyone about it, thinking for whatever reason that he’d be better off trying to handle this himself. No such luck! He eventually realized that there was something more going on here, and he and Jax started to realize that Martin loved the woman that he was seeing … which certainly doesn’t bode well to Clarissa.
Maybe this is the result of another aberration, similar to what happened when Stein ran into his former self earlier this season. Yet, at the same time we worry about Flashpoint given that so many other little things changed over time because of it. It’s certainly feasible that something in Stein’s life could have, as well. We know that it can produce some of these symptoms…
Our overall take – Jonah Hex is a classic DC Comics character, so we’re not going to be mad anytime we see him. Our one lament is that through two episodes featuring the character, his stories have been fairly disposable. There has to be a better way to integrate him into the future moving forward. “Legends of Tomorrow” especially struggles when it comes to these standalone plots, mostly because you want to think that there is a way that you can just travel through time and get to the meat of the story. It just doesn’t always work that way. Grade: B.
For a look ahead at some of what’s coming when “Legends of Tomorrow” returns to the air in two weeks’ time, be sure to head over to the link here right now! (Photo: The CW.)