"My name is Damien Darhk. In 2016, I was murdered by the Green Arrow. But I was removed from the timeline 31 years before my death by a speedster from the future named Eobard Thawne. Together, with Malcolm Merlyn, a former head of the League of Assassins, the three of us are going to locate the Spear of Destiny; a mystical object which can rewrite reality itself. With the Spear in our possession, we will change our past and our future. And the world as you know it."
— Damien Darhk, Modified Opening Narration
The Legends debate on how to get Rip back and figure out the identity of their speedster nemesis. Meanwhile, cracks are beginning to show in the Legion of Doom's alliance as their egos begin to clash while Merlyn and Darhk chafe at being treated as "henchmen" by their "partner" Thawne.
Tropes:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: Merlyn and Darhk take Rip to his bank in 2025.
- Aesop Amnesia: Merlyn suggests he and Darhk stop fighting and team up to fight Thawne, with Darhk commenting that "Two former members of the League of Assassins against a speedster? I like those odds." Apparently Malcolm forgot that he was present the last time a speedster took on members of the League — an entire fortress full of them — and utterly curb-stomped them within seconds. And Barry was significantly slower and less experienced at the time than Thawne is. Of course the League was completely taken off guard by Barry while Darhk and Malcolm figure out that Thawne is not nearly as invincible as he wants them to think.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: The intro text gets narrated by Damien Darhk this time.
- Antagonist Title: Referring to the Legion. Doubles as Team Title.
- Armor-Piercing Question: A little prodding from Rip gets Malcolm and Darhk to ask why someone as powerful as Thawne would need allies? Because unlike them, he can't afford to stay in one place for too long.
- Arrow Catch: The Black Flash catches an arrow from Merlyn without even looking. It then catches a thrown sword from Darhk, just as easily...leaving it exposed to being attacked by Thawne.
- Ascended Meme: While arguing with Malcolm, Damien tells Rip that this is when Malcolm would state he was once Ra's al Ghul.
- Ask a Stupid Question...: Merlyn asks Eobard if he is supposed to be afraid of him when the latter grabs him by the neck. Eobard naturally answers yes, since he could kill him in a moment.
- Bad Boss: Eobard very quickly loses his patience with Damien and Merlyn, threatening them at every turn. This bites him in the ass, as they then join forces to put him in his place.
- Bat Deduction: Nate indulges in some rather bizarre leaps of logic to correctly intuit that the unknown speedster they're facing must be from the future, and that he's after the Spear because he wants to undo his own erasure from the timeline. This leads Stein to realize that he's perfectly describing Eobard Thawne.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Thawne essentially says this to Darhk and Merlyn when they're in the vault and hear the Black Flash's screech.Thawne: Well, the good news is you two finally got what you wanted. You managed to balance our partnership: we're now all equally dead.
- Blatant Lies: Malcolm claims that he is not afraid of Darhk. The camera then shows him holding a knife behind his back and his hand slightly trembling.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Rip becomes the Legion's minion; the ending scene shows him shooting George Washington.
- British Teeth: Referenced by Darhk after he cuts out one of Rip's teeth.Darhk: It may not be in the best condition, but then again Captain Hunter is British.
- Brutal Honesty: Mick is pretty upfront with telling Lily that she is a time aberration.
- Call-Back:
- Stein was the one who tells the Legends about Eobard and how he is supposed to be Ret-Gone'd, as he was present during the Season 1 finale of The Flash (2014). Stein also does not recognize Eobard immediately as he never saw Eobard regress to his real face before Eobard was erased from existence as Stein was serving as Mission Control at the time.
- Eobard's fear of Time Wraiths was first alluded to in "Flash Back".
- Cassandra Truth: Stein tells Lily that, while he's telling her the whole truth, she should know he's half of a nuclear-powered superhero. She thinks he's joking.
- Clock Roaches: The Black Flash is hunting Thawne in order to erase him, since he shouldn't exist in the timeline anymore.
- Continuity Nod:
- The team puts up pictures of every known speedster in the Arrowverse to try to figure out Thawne's identity.
- This isn't the first time that Eobard Thawne has been utterly scared shitless of Hunter Zolomon.
- Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Darhk threatens to feed Rip his own testicles if he tries to escape when their initial plan to get into the bank vault fails.
- A Day in the Limelight: This episode focuses more on the Legion than the Legends, complete with a modified opening narration.
- The Dreaded: Eobard Thawne is terrified of the Black Flash and says he's even more of a threat than the Time Wraiths.
- Drowning My Sorrows: We see Malcolm doing this after losing his hand in 2016, before the events of the series. Darhk finds it quite amusing.
- Dumbass Has a Point: "Pudding brained" he may be, Darhk and Merlyn do realize that Rip is making sense in saying Eobard is behind their strife.
- The End of the World as We Know It: Damien paraphrases this word for word as their goal during the intro text.
- Enemy Mine: It doesn't last long, but Rip a.k.a. "Phil", Darhk and Merlyn do have a brief "war makes strange bedfellows" moment when Rip points out that Eobard is their common enemy.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Considering that all the speedsters Barry knows are either good guys, dead, or godlike beings, the Legends assume that the speedster from the Legion is a new player. They don't know that Prof. Thawne was pulled out of the past... that is, until Stein reveals his identity along with the fact that he's a walking aberration.
- "Eureka!" Moment: When Stein hears Nate's theory that a speedster erased himself from history, he suddenly realizes that he'd overlooked one speedster that he knows had been erased from history, albeit not by his own choice.
- Evil vs. Evil: Tensions between Darhk and Merlyn reach the point where they decide to settle things League-style: sword fight. The Legion also teamed-up to fight the Black Flash, who technically was Hunter Zolomon/Zoom, the Big Bad of The Flash Season 2.
- Eye Scream: Threatened by Darhk when he's interrogating Rip.Darhk: Right eye or left?
- Fake Shemp: Black Flash doesn't speak but only growls, and his disfigured face is made up with CGI; as it is the "evolved" form of Zoom, neither Tony Todd (Zoom's voice) nor Teddy Sears (Zoom's face) reprise their roles.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Merlyn and Darhk win Thawne's respect, when it was their plan that enabled them to fend off the Black Flash. The trio become equal partners, instead of Thawne completely dominating the team.
- Flashback-Montage Realization: Downplayed. When Stein realizes the speedster is Eobard Thawne, he briefly flashes back to character's supposed death in The Flash Season 1.
- Foreshadowing: Stein tells the Legends not to tell Lily that she's a Time Aberration. While doing so he's looking at Mick.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Damien plays the bad and Malcolm the good cop to Rip, in order to convince him to open his vault for them.
- Hope Spot: While Darhk and Merlyn rob the Swiss bank a second time, Rip manages to free himself... just in time for Thawne to return.
- Idiot Ball: The Legends land in Central City and not one of them thinks to call on Barry for advice on who their mysterious speedster is.
- Ignored Confession: When Lily comes to terms with being an aberration from the original timeline, Stein tells her that he's one half of a superhero named Firestorm, so as there to be no more secrets between them. Lily giggles and tells her father to stop joking around.
- Irony: After Rip (who, remember, is British) has been brainwashed, what does the League have him do? Kill George Washington as a Redcoat.
- Internal Reveal:
- It took ten episodes, but the Legends finally figure out that the evil speedster they're up against is Eobard Thawne.
- Lily finds out she's a result of time travel. She takes a while to adjust, but she accepts it.
- Darhk and Merlyn learn the reason why Eobard is always running out is to stay ahead of something.
- Kryptonite Factor: Thawne reveals that, ironically enough, his power is his own weakness. The more he uses it, the easier for the Black Flash to track him down.
- Lampshade Hanging / This Is the Part Where...: Mid-argument, Damien explains to Rip this is the part where Malcolm reminds them how he was Ra's al Ghul (his habit of saying this fact often and dramatically has become a major fandom meme). Malcolm retorts that this is also the part where he reminds Damien about his future.
- Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Darhk and Merlyn made it that Eobard is stuck in one place and thus risk being caught by Black Flash, refusing to help him escape it again unless he agreed to make their alliance an equal one, which he did.
- Mundane Solution: Merlyn and Darhk simultaneously realize the solution to avoiding an entity that tracks down speedsters who use the speed force to run from it: stop running.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If Rip had just let Damien and Malcolm kill each other, then maybe he could have gotten out. As of the end of the episode, the Legion has now gotten over their bickering and work together as a team.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Eobard Thawne is scared shitless, you know it has to be bad.
- Opening Narration: Done by Damien Darhk, focusing on the Legion of Doom.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Merlyn at first wants to avoid causing a bloodbath, not out of moral reasons but because he wants to keep a low profile. Later, it is shown that he enjoys killing dozens of people just as much as Damien.
- Precision F-Strike: Damien (and Eobard) refer to the device storing Rip's memories as "technocrap".
- Reality Subtext: "I heard that 2016 wasn't a good year for me."
- The Reveal:
- Darhk and Thawne picked up Merlyn the night that Oliver killed Darhk's 2016 self, hence why Merlyn hasn't been seen on Arrow since last season.
- Eobard wants The Spear of Destiny to avoid his inevitable meeting with the Black Flash, who is trying to kill him after he wriggled out of being erased by Eddie's sacrifice. Turns out he's a time remnant created as a result of "Flashpoint".
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Nate has the inspiration that the unknown speedster has erased himself from history, and that's why there's no record of him, and he's trying to get the Spear before time sets itself and he stops existing. While he's right about Thawne's motive, he's wrong about why Thawne is in the situation.
- Say My Name: Gideon gets offended when Lily refers to her as "the ship's CPU", and Lily promptly apologizes.
- Sequel Hook: A brainwashed Rip killing General Washington with a gun.
- Series Continuity Error:
- Lily apparently has no idea that her father is one half of Firestorm. However, the 4-night Crossover shows that not only Lily lives with her parents, but she knows Caitlin personally. However, the implication seems to be that no-one told her about this.
- Averted with the flashback of Eobard being erased from existence: it shows him with Matt Letscher's face, despite having the body of Tom Cavanagh at that time. However, by the time that his arm had disappeared (as it had in the shot shown), Eobard had already reverted to his original form.
- Shout-Out:
- Rip compares the Legion's situation to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to get Darhk and Merlyn to realize Eobard is playing them against each other.Rip: The point is that neither of you are Clint Eastwood, and so neither of you end up going home with the gold.
- Darhk uses the term "pudding brain" to describe Rip, an analogy often employed by a certain other time traveller (with whom John Barrowman would be familiar).
- Rip compares the Legion's situation to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to get Darhk and Merlyn to realize Eobard is playing them against each other.
- Sidetracked by the Analogy:
- Downplayed: after Rip makes his The Good, the Bad and the Ugly comparison, Damien wants to know which ones he and Malcolm are. Rip wisely ignores the question.
- Similarly, Malcolm assumes the "gold" Rip mentions is literal, not figurative.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: Malcolm and Damien engage in this non-stop throughout the episode, constantly teasing the other one with his respective failures.
- Special Edition Title: Darhk does the opening narration instead of one of the Legends, and instead of the logos of the Legends flying in from off the screen and forming the letters of the title in clean metallic type over a bright colorful background, Darhk, Merlyn and Thawne's logos appear, and the title is worn, rusted type and red text over a dark background with flaming sparks.
- Stating the Simple Solution: Thawne trying to evade the Black Flash for so long. Since the Black Flash hunts him down by sensing his trace of the Speed Force, it was pointed out to Thawne that he just has to not use his Super-Speed in the first place. With this fact, the Legion manages to trick the Black Flash.
- Story Breaker Teamup: Thawne doesn't even pretend to treat Malcolm and Damien as equals, and they're uncomfortably aware of the power gap between them.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: After it first seemed like a Villainous Friendship, this episode shows that the Legion is not working well with each other. Somewhat improved in the end.
- The Tooth Hurts: Darhk cuts out Rip's tooth.
- Unexpected Character: The Black Flash, The Grim Reaper of speedsters, and the final form of Hunter Zolomon aka Zoom, is hunting Eobard down, having presumably begun chasing him due to the events of Flashpoint.
- Villain Episode: This episode focuses on the Legion of Doom.
- Villainous Breakdown: Eobard has one when he realizes Damien and Malcolm have him by the balls and that the Black Flash is approaching.
- Wham Line: Ray, Lily, and Mick are having a nice chat during a snack break until Mick says...Rory: Fake food for a fake person.
- Wham Shot:
- Why was Thawne literally on the run this whole time? He was being chased by the Speed Force's newest agent: the Black Flash.
- What does the episode end on? Rip pulling out a gun and shooting George Washington.
- Working the Same Case: an unusual variant, where both the Legends and the Legion try to figure out what Thawne's motivations really are.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Damien Darhk says he was pulled from the timeline 31 prior to his death. Thawne picked up Darhk in 1987, making the time gap between that year and 2016 29 years.
