Recap / Legends of Tomorrow S2E17 "Aruba"

The Legends only have one last option to save reality: directly altering their own past.

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Tropes:

• Aesop Amnesia: Amaya flat-out states she doesn't care about the temporal problems caused by it, she just wants to stay with Nate.
• All of Time at Once: The Waverider crew have to steal a few things from their recent-past selves, all in 1916, because their actions have put them into a reality they didn't mean to create. They try to not bump into the versions of themselves, even though theoretically even meeting other members of the crew would affect...one of their realities. It's unsuccessful, and they have to explain why they'd break the first rule of time travel. Climax comes and all of the Future Legends die by Bad Future Reverse Flashes to help the versions of themselves in the reality they haven't screwed up yet escape and prevent the Bad Future. Of course, they now exist and not-exist at the same time from different realities in the same time and space. You can understand how the Present Legends end up crashing through the time-stream into a 2017 with dinosaurs.
• And Show It to You: After destroying the vial of Christ's blood, this is how Thawne kills Ray.
• And the Adventure Continues: At the end, it seems like the Legends are heading off to some well-earned vacation...only to crashland in a weirdly futuristic 2017 LA with dinosaurs.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: As a result of the plan to alter time, the "Doomworld" Legends are now Time Aberrations; once the original Legends destroy the Spear, they will be erased.
• Annoying Arrows:
  • Played with. When Merlyn first shoots Firestorm in the shoulder, this is enough to get him to fall and break up into Stein and Jax, with Jax still having the arrow in his shoulder. His future self them takes an arrow center mass and dies in a matter of seconds. Past Jax then breaks off the arrow in his shoulder and seems fine afterwards.
  • Jax later uses one of Merlyn's own arrows to stab him in the leg.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: When Thawne shows up, having known the Legends would return to World War I, and steals the vial of blood from Ray:
  Ray: [aims blaster at Thawne] Give me back the blood vial!
  Thawne: [crushes vial] ...what vial?
• Bad Liar: All of the future Legends make some horrible attempts of convincing the past Legends that they are their past versions.
• Because Destiny Says So: As much as one would like to prevent Damien from ultimately killing Laurel or Captain Cold from ultimately performing a Heroic Sacrifice, the Legends allow fate to play it out as it would have otherwise without Eobard Thawne's influence.
• Bloodless Carnage: In Jax' case only, as Nate and Mick bleed quite a lot when Snart and Damien kill them. There isn't a single drop of blood from both past and future Jax though when Malcolm shoots them.
• Bond Villain Stupidity:
  • Thawne used Ray's suit to shrink the Waverider... and didn't destroy the suit afterwards.
  • Zigzagged soon after: he destroys the vial of Christ's blood after Ray gets it and kills him... but doesn't kill the other Doomworld Legends. The other Legion members have no such reservations.
  • Despite bringing back dozens of copies of himself in order to defeat the Legends, Thawne decides to attack every one of the Legends...except for Prime Sara who is actually holding the spear at the time. It comes back to bite him hard.
  • Thawne likewise doesn't bother killing the other Legends when he's beating them up seemingly planning to use the Spear to erase them from existence instead.
• Book Ends:
  • The season premiere had Rip forced to leave the ship by circumstances, while this episode has him departing by choice.
  • As he did in the premiere, Mick suggests the team take a vacation to Aruba. This time, they take him up on it. Well, they try to, anyway.
• Brick Joke: Word of God is that the episode's title is a reference to a line spoken by Rory in the season 2 premiere about how he wishes there was a time aberration in Aruba, 2016. The episode ends with Mick having Gideon plot a course for Aruba (albeit in 2017). Granted, they don't make it, but...
• Brought Down to Normal: Sort of: the change to reality Sara makes with the Spear? Depowering the Spear.
• Brutal Honesty: Doomworld Mick makes no attempt to whitewash what happens to Ray, Amaya and Stein in the future.
• Cargo Ship: In-Universe. Ray's first reaction to finding the ATOM Exosuit is to kiss it on the faceplate and promise he will never leave it again. Jax, who sees this, is notably weirded out.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Eobard failing to properly destroy the Black Flash when he had the chance comes back to bite him in the ass.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: One Thawne rips Ray's heart out. A huge army of Thawnes run around smacking people and ignoring the person holding the Spear.
• Cruel Mercy: Sara does this to both Darhk and Malcolm, letting Darhk live to set him on the path of his inevitable death and letting Malcolm continue his meaningless life of washed up has-been.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Sara has little trouble with overwhelming Darhk, particularly after he killed Doomworld Nate.
  • The Reverse-Flash Army decimates the Legends, including a Steeled up Nate. It's like watching a barrage of lightning hammer the team over and over again.
  • Once he actually gets a hold of him it takes about two seconds for Black Flash to murder Thawne.
• Dirty Coward: Thawne is all smug and arrogant during his encounter with the Legends...but once he sees the Black Flash approaching, he tries to run like a scared little child once again.
• Dwindling Party: The Doomworld Legends all eventually fall to the Legion, leaving Sara the only survivor, until the Spear is depowered, at least.
• "End of the World" Special: Faced with an army of Reverse-Flashes, Sara takes hold of the Spear. She doesn't use it to alter reality, but to depower the Spear itself and free the Black Flash.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • Thawne is downright baffled that Sara didn't seem to do anything with the Spear's power.
  • Snart doesn't see any difference between being "a better man" and going soft. Not yet, anyway.
  • Darhk is left confused that Sara would return him to the point in time that Thawne initially picked him up since that will lead to killing her sister. He's then left even more baffled when Sara tells him that both her and Laurel have come to terms and accepted the latter's death.
• Expendable Alternate Universe: The "Doomworld" Legends suddenly find themselves on the business end of this trope. All of them except Sara get themselves killed while their earlier selves live on, after coming to the grim realization that they will be the ones who get erased from existence once the timeline is reset.
• Epic Fail: Rip has Gideon open fire on Darhk... while the ship is still shrunk down.
  Darhk: [laughing as the shots do nothing] Isn't that adorable?
• Fate Worse than Death: When asked by the remaining Legion members what happened with Malcolm, Sara replies that she send him back to his crappy apartment.
• The Final Temptation: Subverted. The vision that Sara gets from the Spear shows her the life she could get back if she used it, but it's to encourage her to do the right thing rather than to actually make that vision a reality. It succeeds, but at the cost of breaking time.
• From Bad to Worse: By travelling back in time, the Legends prevent the nightmare that is Doomworld from being created, but instead fracture the fabric of time.
• Get It Over With: Darhk tries to goad Sara into killing him, but she refuses.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • Despite it potentially resulting in time folding in upon itself, the Legends decide to go back to their World War I stop to prevent the Legion from getting the Spear.
  • This is one-upped by Thawne deciding to ambush the team with a crapton of himself out of his own desperation.
• Gunship Rescue: Rip shows up in the Waverider to prevent Darhk from killing Ray and Jax... only to learn the ship is too small to do anything other than amuse him.
• Hero Killer: Each one of the Legion gets a turn murdering a member of the Doomworld Legends.
  • Thawne rips out Ray's heart and slashes Rip's throat.
  • Malcolm shoots Jax with an arrow after the latter protects Prime Stein from him.
  • Snart impales Mick with an ice spear when he tries to kill Darhk.
  • Darhk stabs Nate through the back.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The Doomworld Legends are doing this just by following through with their plan to steal the Spear from their past selves, as they know they'll be erased from history as a result. Most of them die trying to hold off the Legion to buy time for their past selves to flee with the Spear.
• I Choose to Stay: Amaya decides to remain with the Legends rather than go back to 1942, despite this putting the status of her future granddaughters in a state of flux.
• I Hate Past Me:
  • Nate really just wants himself to tell Amaya his feeling for her.
  • Mick is also openly hostile to his past self, likely due to his guilt for betraying the team.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • Snart shoots an ice spear through Doomworld Mick's chest.
  • Darhk runs Doomworld Nate through with a sword.
  • After Sara depowers the spear, Thawne declares he'll just run her through with it. He doesn't get the chance, because...
  • The Black Flash kills Thawne with his own trademark move of speed-stabbing him in the chest with his arm.
• Karma Houdini: Merlyn, yet again. He's deposited by the Legends in the exact place and time that Thawne recruited him in the first place, with the idea being that his crappy life is punishment enough.
• Karmic Death: Thawne, whose favourite move to kill his enemies is speed-stabbing them in the chest, and who used said move earlier in the episode to kill Doomworld Ray, is himself murdered by the Black Flash in the same way.
• Keystone Army: The Black Flash only kills the Doomworld Thawne yet the rest of the Thawnes that he brought with him disappear with his death. This is likely because if Doomworld Thawne is erased from time he never would have recruited his younger selves in the first place.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • The Black Flash finally brings down Thawne.
  • Also Snart, somewhat, given that he is now being brought back on the path to becoming a better man...and eventually dying.
  • Ditto Darhk, destined to die at Oliver's hand.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Legends drop Snart and Darhk back in the points where Thawne first recruited them, and have their memories of time travel and their future fates erased setting them back on the course that leads to their deaths.
• The Last Dance: After the Prime Waverider crashes, the "Doomworld" Legends decide to face off against the Legions so that the Prime Legends can get to the other Waverider.
  Doomworld Nate: This was always a one-way ticket for us.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • Rip had no idea the Waverider was shrunk until he saw a desk lamp. Instead of realizing he was on a desk in S.T.A.R. Labs, he thought he was in a hangar. It's unclear if Gideon was aware.
  • Thawne keeps the rest of the past Legion in the dark about what really went on in Doomworld.
• Love Transcends Spacetime: Amaya decides that despite that she needs to be returned to 1942, she wants to stay with Nate.
• Me's a Crowd: Thawne recruits an army of himself to defeat the Legends with.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: The Legends try to avoid meeting their past selves, but inevitably wind up meeting. There's an immediate Time Quake when the two Rips see each other, and an even bigger one when they try to time travel together. Then suddenly there's dinosaurs in Los Angeles.
• Nerves of Steel: In comparison to Thawne, Sara stares Black Flash in the face and barely even flinches. This is partially due to the fact that it isn't after her.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Nate getting tripped up and delayed by seeing Amaya alive results in him, Rip and Mick getting stuck in the Waverider as their past selves return from the church.
  • The Legends drop Malcolm back in his apartment rather than killing him or imprisoning giving him the chance to once again be a thorn in Team Arrow's side.
  • Despite having no other options, the Legends interacting with their past selves breaks the timeline in a way that makes Flashpoint look like peanuts.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Since he burned his bridges with the other Legion members last episode, Thawne has to rely on their past selves to get rid of the Legends.
• No-Sell: Rip orders Gideon to unload all the Waverider's weaponry upon Damien Darhk, unfortunately due to the Waverider being miniaturized at the time, Darhk feels nothing but a ticklish sensation by the gunfire.
• Not Worth Killing: Despite not having any reason to leave him alive, Sara opts for Cruel Mercy for Malcolm and lets him live in his crappy apartment.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The two Rips are more than a little annoyed when they see each other, as they're well aware of the likely results.
    Both Rips: Oh, bollocks!
  • When the Black Flash shows up, Thawne has about ten seconds to look horrified before it shanks him.
  • The Legends have this reaction when they crash land in 2017 LA and realize they broke the timeline.
• Passing the Torch: After an entire season, Rip finally gets to officially pass captaincy of the Waverider to Sara, leaving the ship in her command as he departs.
  Rip: Permission to depart, Captain Lance?
  Sara: Permission granted.
• Plot Hole: Prime Sara somehow knows the incantation to activate the Spear despite the Prime Legends having never seen the tome that contained it. Although you could probably handwave that by saying their Doomworld counterparts told them the incantation before they left the Waverider.
• Put on a Bus: Rip decides, after everything is said and done, to leave.
• Reality-Breaking Paradox: Because the Legends interfered with their past selves, different time periods start to bleed into each other, hence why 2017 Los Angeles has dinosaurs roaming around as well as futuristic buildings.
• Ret-Gone:
  • Being the only "Doomworld" Legend still alive after the Spear is depowered, Sara gets this fate.
  • Eobard seems to suffer this fate once the Black Flash catches up to him, as his death is almost identical to his erasure from history at the The Flash Season One finale, except with orange effects instead of blue.
• Rock Beats Laser:
  • Rip unleashes a full salvo of the still shrunken Waverider's lasers on Damien, which have no effect beyond tickling him. In the next moment, Damien gets taken out with a plain old sucker punch from Mick.
  • Merlyn and Darhk do better against the Legends with a bow and arrow and a sword respectively than they do with futuristic laser guns, presumably, because their League of Assassins training did not include blaster training.
• Shout-Out:
  • Rip's insistence on invoking Never the Selves Shall Meet (along with the plan to steal the Spear from themselves) echos Back to the Future Part II. This is amplified by the fact the season recap that opens the episode begins with Stein quoting Marty from earlier in the season.
  • Doomworld Sara's last words are a reference to The Goonies, which Nate immediately lampshades.
    Nate: Really? The Goonies?
    Amaya: What's a goonie?
  • Did they just use a neuralyzer on Darhk and Snart at the end?
• A Simple Plan: Doomworld Mick tries to take command of the theft of the Spear from their past selves. Immediately after they start, they run into the past Sara, throwing them off.
• Stable Time Loop: At the end of the episode, both Darhk and Snart are forcibly set back on the paths they were trying to avoid in the first place.
• Stock Sound Effects: If you listen closely, you'll notice that Eobard's scream as he is erased from existence is the exact same one from the Season One finale of The Flash.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Apparently, Sara set the Black Flash free to put an end to Thawne, which he does quite easily.
• Taking the Bullet: Doomworld Jax does this for Prime Stein when Merlyn shoots an arrow at him.
• Technicolor Death: Doomworld Thawne's is even more impressive than the last time!
• Tempting Fate:
  • Doomworld Ray saying that taking the vial of Christ's blood "was easier the second time around". Right after that, Thawne shows up to steal the vial and destroy it, before killing Ray.
  • The other Ray also did that.
    Ray I can't believe we made it!
    Sara: Don't jinx it. [Thawne shows up]
    Jax: Aw, he jinxed it.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Sara finally asks for Mick's opinion on when and where they should head next, and he immediately suggests Aruba.
• Time Crash: The Legends break time, as it folds in on itself.
• Time-Travel Tense Trouble: Thawne has a bit of trouble explaining his actions to the Legion due to the need to clarify that he's not the same Thawne who brought them to 1916. The fact that he was already from the future doesn't help.
  Thawne: I'm not your Eobard. I'm from the future.
  Darhk: What else is new?
• Uncertain Doom: While Doomworld Thawne was erased from existence alongside every other version of him he brought from the past, it was never shown what happened to the original Thawne from 1916. Possibly justified, as he could have been among the army of time remnants who disappeared when Thawne was RetGoned.
• Villainous Valor: Two separate sets of Legends (minus Stein and Amaya) equals fourteen characters, versus only four Legion members, two of whom are only Badass Normals. Sounds easy, right? ^note though Doomworld Ray does die before the final clash, which means thirteen members
• Wham Shot:
  • Right as Ray has grabbed the vial of blood, Thawne shows up, destroys the vial, and rips out Ray's heart for good measure.
  • "THESE GUYS!"
  • At the end of the episode, The Legends decide to take Mick's suggestion to go to Aruba 2017... and then a timestorm causes the Waverider to crash-land in Los Angeles 2017, with futuristic buildings and ''T. rex''es running amok.
    Sara: Guys? I think we broke time.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: J.R.R. Tolkien vanishes from the narrative. And where did the Doomworld Legends leave their Waverider?
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: As a testiment to the Godzilla Threshold being passed, Thawne finally decides to start straight up killing the Legends, starting by ripping out Ray's heart after destroying the blood vial.finale
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Sara finally permits Mick to plot their destination, and he immediately chooses Aruba...except they never actually get there because of the Time Crash.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Said by Rip to get Sara to use the Spear to fix reality.
  • Done again by Laurel when Sara has the Spear.
  Laurel: The Spear doesn't need someone pure of heart. It needs someone strong enough to do the right thing. Sara, it needs you.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: The mutual reaction of both Rips when they come face to face with each other, knowing exactly what this means.

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