The Legends travel to Al Capone's Chicago and encounter the newly-formed Legion of Doom.
Tropes:
- Affably Evil: Merlyn is the "nice" one in the Legion trying to tempt Sara with a deal to go back and stop the Queen's Gambit from blowing up. Darhk mocks this for being a waste of time.
- All According to Plan: The Legion plays the Legends like a fiddle.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: After his ruse as "Stein" is exposed, Thawne opens the Waverider up for Malcolm and several of Capone's Mooks to board the ship.
- Ambiguous Situation: The episode doesn't make it clear to the viewer until near the end whether Mick is hallucinating Snart or if Snart is really there. A Dead Person Conversation is a common thing to see on television, but the reveal of the Legion at the beginning of the episode, with two of the three being explicitly dead and yet still around due to time travel shenanigans, and that they're playing the Legends with some kind of con raises the suggestion that they also recruited Snart and are using him to try and get Mick to betray the team.
- Artistic License – History:
- Cement Shoes have traditionally been treated as an urban legend with no documented cases of their actual use until a single case in 2016. There was certainly nothing like "Cadaver's Cove". "Chelsea Club" (actually Chelsea Hotel) was a place where unsavory characters stayed, but it wasn't Al Capone's main speakeasy - that was actually the Green Mill a little way down the street.
- There never was a single ledger which would've brought down Al Capone, and Eliot Ness wasn't involved in gathering the evidence that lead to his eventual sentence on tax evasion. These plot elements are fictionalised so that Ness' disappearance can lead to a For Want Of A Nail situation where Capone never goes to jail.
- The Bad Guy Wins: The Legion of Doom gets what they wanted - the amulet.
- Bait-and-Switch: The ending scene first looks like Rip is stuck in the future, outrunning the Police...and then someone yells "CUT!", a director storms onto the scene, and we get the caption "Los Angeles 1967".
- Batman Gambit: The Legion deliberately screws with 1920's Chicago knowing it will attract the Legends, allowing them to steal the amulet. It works.
- BFG: Upon realizing their mystery speedster is in town, Jax grabs a huge anti-speedster gun from the Waverider's armory.
- Big Bad Wannabe: While Al Capone is a ruthless crime lord, he is up against a group of superheroes here. It's made very clear that his goons are no match at all for the Legends, and he entirely depends on the support of the Legion to even remotely be a threat to the heroes.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Malcolm Merlyn comes back to the Arrowverse having not been seen since the "Arrow" Season 4 Finale (his appearance in the Arrow part of "Invasion!" was just part of the Dominators' Lotus-Eater Machine).
- Rip Hunter, having not been seen this season since the premiere (and a flashback in the second episode), is shown in the final minutes of the episode to be in 1967.
- Call-Back:
- Thawne uses the same device he used to transform himself Wells to turn himself into Stein, although he's tweaked it this time. The transformation isn't permanent, and it doesn't kill Stein, otherwise Jax would have felt it.
- As the ending scene reminds us, being stuck in a foreign era for an extended period of time can screw with your head.
- Continuity Nod: Jax and Sara don't like Ray and Nate sparring in the bay, as they remember what happened the last time they tried that.
- The Corrupter: The hallucination of Snart tries to get Mick back on track with his criminal ways. To a lesser extent, Mick also tries to show Amaya that being a bad guy can be fun.
- Crazy-Prepared: Rip had a special gun specifically designed to combat speedsters (that he apparently stole from Thawne) by removing their Super-Speed, though much like Ray's nanites, the effect is only temporary.
- Deal with the Devil: Malcolm offers to go back and stop himself from sinking the Queen's Gambit in exchange for Sara giving the Legion the amulet. Later, she agrees to do so in exchange instead for saving Martin's life.
- The Dragon: Malcolm as Sara puts it is the Legion's "lapdog".
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Malcolm is confident Sara will take his deal because he believes being happy is more important than anything else. The idea that Sara is concerned about the effect on the timeline changing history will have never occurs to him.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Malcolm plays the good cop, offering a deal to Sara, and Thawne plays the bad cop, torturing Stein when she doesn't comply.
- Hallucinations: Mick keeps seeing Snart, trying to egg him into reverting to his villainous lifestyle.
- Hostage for MacGuffin: Sara trades the amulet for Martin's life.
- I'm Standing Right Here: Ray says this when Mick refers to him and Nate as "those two idiots".
- Internal Reveal:
- Malcolm tells Sara that he was the one responsible for blowing up the Queen's Gambit.
- Stein tells Sara he has a daughter now.
- Large Ham: Matt Letscher is hammier than usual this episode.Eobard Thawne: THIS... belongs... to ME!
- Lethally Stupid: In-Universe, Nate's reaction to Ray letting Elliott Ness go with The Roaring '20s Chicago police officers.
- Logical Weakness: Once again, a speedster's vulnerability towards coldness is shown.
- Loss of Identity: If the ending scene is any indication, Rip got hit with this hard due to his extended stay in 1967.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: Sara clearly considers that their enemies consist of the mysterious (to the Legends) speedster and Darhk. Merlyn is just an annoyance to her.
- Never Trust a Trailer: It was thought that Captain Cold would join the Legion of Doom in this episode. It doesn’t happen yet. Snart only appears in this episode as a hallucination of Mick's.
- No More for Me: Inverted. When Mick begins to hallucinate seeing Snart, his first reaction is to drink more.
- Nothing Personal: What Al Capone says to Agent Eliot Ness before pushing him into the water.
- Oh, Crap!: Thawne is worried when the device on his wrist starts beeping, causing him to exit the Waverider and press his friends to leave 1927 as soon as possible.
- Only Friend: Mick tells the Snart hallucination that Amaya is this, as his only other friend went and got himself blown up.
- Poor Communication Kills: The team still hasn't figured out that their speedster enemy is the Reverse-Flash, Barry's Arch-Enemy, despite finally seeing him in the flesh (it helps that he doesn't wear his iconic Reverse-Flash suit in front of them). Had they simply exchanged notes during the crossover...
- Pragmatic Villainy: Apparently Thawne has modified his Kill and Replace device to be nonlethal to its target. This ultimately means that when Thawne's ruse is uncovered, they can still use the real Stein's life as a bargaining chip to obtain the amulet.
- Prima Donna Director: 1960s Rip has very little patience for his film crew, calling them idiots and shouting orders.
- Public Domain Artifact: The Legion has been looking for those amulets because together, they serve as a compass leading to the Spear of Destiny, which grants the power to reshape reality.
- The Reveal:
- The amulet that the Legion is after is a mystic compass that can be used to to find the Spear of Destiny and rewrite reality itself.
- Rip Hunter is in the 1960s and working as a director on a film or television show about...Rip Hunter.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Sara makes the decision that they're not going to erase Lily from history despite her existence being an aberration because she's going to protect her family, which now includes Stein and his family.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Malcolm tries to tempt Sara with this saying he'll go back and stop himself from blowing up the Queen's Gambit if he gets the amulet.
- Ship Tease: Amaya and Mick get some, even though Mick insists they are Just Friends.
- Shout-Out:
- To The Untouchables, over and over. Nate even mentions the actual film itself.
- Ray comments that the real Elliott Ness looks nothing like Kevin Costner.
- Ray later does a horrible Sean Connery impression, telling some mooks they shouldn't have brought guns to an ion blaster fight.
- Nate introduces Ray as "Bob De Niro". note
- When Ness doubts that Capone will be brought down by tax evasion, Ray comments that it would make a good movie someday.
- When beginning to do things Mick's way by auto theft, Mick says he's Clyde, and Amaya is Bonnie.
- When Jax warns the others that "Stein" is about to kill Sara in the library, Ray asks "With a rope or the candlestick?"
- To The Untouchables, over and over. Nate even mentions the actual film itself.
- Spoiler Opening: Subverted. Wentworth Miller's name is in the opening credits, which seemingly spoils the fact that Leonard Snart returns in this episode. Turns out he doesn't, and Miller only appears as Rory's hallucination of Snart.
- Take That!:
- When discussing the time aberration caused by the Legion's presence in the 20's, Gideon dryly notes that Capone becomes something "far worse" than a criminal — a politician.
- When Ness gets Capone's ledger, Ray asks why it'll still take four years for the feds to lock Capone up. Nate's response is "because they're the federal government."
- Team Mom: Sara has officially graduated to this, complete with forcing Nate and Ray to stop horsing around and to "not make [her] come back [there]".
- Toxic Friend Influence: Mick's hallucination of Cold keeps egging him on to stop being a hero and go back to being a Rogue.
- Villain Team-Up: In addition to revealing that Malcolm's joined the Legion of Doom, the Legion works with Al Capone in order to lure the Legends into a trap.
- Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Although he puts up a good fight, Sara gets the upper hand over the more experienced Malcolm; he clearly didn't learn anything from his ill-fated duel with Oliver.
- Villainous Friendship: The Legion seems to be quite chummy with one another.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Nate and Ray are constantly bickering and competing throughout the episode, but it's clear they have each other's backs.
- Wham Shot: Because of the extremely American accent, it's not clear that the director at the end of the episode is supposed to be Rip until we get a close-up shot.
- You Fight Like a Cow: Sara trash talks Malcolm before their fight.Sara: Those who cannot do, teach.
