YMMV / Legends of Tomorrow S2E17 "Aruba"

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Was that really Laurel Sara saw or just a construct from the Spear to convince her not to use it? The Laurel Sara sees has a wine glass in her hand — while the real Laurel kicked the bottle when she ended up becoming an alcoholic.
  • Considering Sara's perfect reality according to what Merlyn said in an early ep, wasn't just Laurel not dying, but Sara and Oliver never going on that boat disaster that ended with their families being shattered and Sara being taken to the League then dying and so forth, it's likely Ideal Laurel never experienced the pain that led her to being an alcoholic in the first place.
• Ass Pull:
  • Just like last season we'll treated to a very weak explanation as why Sara can't bring Laurel back to life. In this case using the Spear to do so would've been "wrong" — no further explanation required.
    • Except it's heavily implied that doing so would corrupt Sara into start rewriting more things causing her to be no better then The Legion.
  • Sara dumping Malcolm back into his miserable life as Cruel Mercy; it's obvious the writers have plans for him to come back to "Arrow" but they didn't care about the details on how to transition him back to his parent show.
  • Despite the fact that the power of the Spear has been described all season as "rewriting reality in a way that can't even be undone by using time travel to change history," in this episode we see that the Legends are able to undo its rewrite of reality by...using time travel to change history. Even by Arrowverse standards, this is still a pretty major case of New Rules as the Plot Demands.
• Catharsis Factor: The Black Flash killing Eobard was a long time coming.
• Informed Wrongness: Sara using the Spear to bring back Laurel would've been "wrong" even though there's no indication saving her life would have any cosmic consequences like when Barry saved Nora.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • Laurel coming back to life via the Spear, since she's the one character who the writers have repeatedly said they won't bring back to life, no matter how much the fans want it.
  • Despite him dying, nobody really believes Eobard is truly gone after all his first Ret-Gone didn't stick, so why should this one?
• One-Scene Wonder: Laurel's one scene in Sara's head.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Thawne's army of time displaced selves would have been the perfect time to bring back Wellsobard, at least for a cameo. Sadly he only grabs a bunch of blurry CGI people.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Nate and Amaya saying Screw Destiny so they could be together, as they basically Ret-Gone'd Mari by doing so. Although Amaya does still intend to go back to her proper life at some point.