UK TV recap: Legends of Tomorrow, Season 2, Episode 15 (Fellowship of the Spear)
Review Overview
Captain Cold returns
8Tolkien references
7Cliffhanger ending
8Matthew Turner | On 02, Apr 2017
Warning: This is a recap and contains spoilers, so do not read this until you have watched the episode. For information on how to watch it, click here.
There are only two episodes left on this season of Legends of Tomorrow, so this episode is effectively part one of a three-part finale. As such, it’s extremely promising, pulling together some key threads of the season and ending on one heck of a cliffhanger. Now let’s just hope the showrunners can keep up this level of quality into the actual finale.
Fellowship of the Spear begins with the Legends having the upper hand for once. Rip figures out that the Legion of Doom are hiding out at the Vanishing Point (the scene of Leonard’s sacrifice in the Season 1 finale), so they stage a heist, stealing the last fragment of the Spear right from under the nose of Eobard Thawne. This includes a cool moment where Firestorm transmutes an obelisk into jellybeans (in order to free the fragment) and a bit where Mick pointedly remembers the scene of his former partner’s death that will be Important For Later. It’s rare to see Eobard Thawne bested, especially on his home turf, so this is all very satisfying. He even obliges us with one of those amusing “Noooooooo” moments beloved of meme enthusiasts everywhere.
Back on board the Waverider, the Spear reassembles itself, which worries pretty much everyone, with Rip warning them that it will attempt to play on their regrets and desires. They decide to destroy it and Mick helpfully zaps it with his heat gun. Everyone says some variation of “Mick, you idiot”, until it turns out that the heat has revealed a message on the spear that wasn’t there before, just like on a certain other object in popular culture that might be coming up again very soon.
The message says “Born by blood, undone by blood” (in Latin, obvs) and Nate (who is, let’s not forget, a historian) figures out that that means they need the blood of Christ to destroy it. Sara’s all for plotting a course straight to the Crucifixion, but Rip’s all, “Woah, woah, woah, cool your jets, sister. Let’s not mess with one of the most important moments in all of history, especially given our propensity to royally mess things up.” (Also, it doesn’t do to rile religious groups unnecessarily when you’re a network TV show.) So they decide to head to WWI France instead, intending to get hold of one John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who apparently served in WWI at the Battle of the Somme, but, more importantly, was the author of a paper about Gawain returning from the Crusades with a vial of Christ’s blood. Nate figures Tolkien will know where Gawain is buried and that he can lead them to the blood.
Meanwhile, back at the Vanishing Point, Thawne is still fuming at his recent defeat and he tells Damien that it’s time to change the game. Mmmm… ominous.
The Legends head to France 1916 and Sara sends Amaya, Mick, Nate and Ray to find Tolkien, who’s apparently awaiting transportation back to England after contracting trench fever. Amaya’s visibly distressed by the injured soldiers in the sick bay, because it reminds her of the future fate of her village, as revealed to her by Gideon last week. In case the audience hasn’t quite grasped the significance of this, the show helpfully includes an otherwise useless prologue bit with Amaya urging Sara to use the Spear while in the trenches. But we’re not there yet. There’s an amusing bit where someone gives Mick some food for the wounded and he starts eating it, before he gets told off and wanders out of the tent, only to run straight into Snart. Mick immediately (and to be fair, quite reasonably) assumes it’s the same hallucinatory version of Snart that’s been bugging him for the last few episodes, so he defends himself against Snart’s taunts and basically gives away their whole plan regarding the destruction of the Spear. Snart then slaps him to prove that he’s not a hallucination, which leaves Mick decidedly confused. Snart’s parting taunt is that the Legends treat Mick as their trained pet, which is a bit harsh and not really true, but it eats away at him anyway. He’s then ordered to steal an ambulance, as the rest of the Legends have retrieved Tolkien.
Back on board the Waverider, Gideon cures Tolkien’s trench fever and Nate tells him that they need to know where Gawain is buried. Rip joins in and the pair of them go way over the top on the Lord of the Rings references, explaining that their “fellowship” is on a journey to destroy an object of unimaginable power. Tolkien is remarkably unfazed by all of this and basically just goes ‘Yeah, sure, whatever you need’. Credit is definitely due to episode director Ben Bray for resisting the urge to have shots of Tolkien making That Gives Me An Idea faces.
While Tolkien is researching Gawain’s whereabouts in the Waverider’s library, Sara finds a down-in-the-dumps Amaya, who reveals that she’s depressed because her future involves her village being burned to the ground and her daughter becoming a refugee. Sara tries to reassure her by telling her that Mari – Amaya’s future granddaughter – becomes a hero with her own cartoon TV show and everything, but it doesn’t take.
After Tolkien determines Gawain’s location, the Legends head out to a cathedral, but they’re confronted by Snart. In the episode’s best moment, Mick realises that everyone else can see him too, and Rip works out that the Legion must have pulled an earlier version of Snart from the timeline, from before he joined the Legends. Damien then pops up to confirm that theory and there’s a shoot-out, with Snart still taunting Mick about his new hero friends. Fortunately, Tolkien has time to take a rubbing of an engraving (like a primary school kid) that tells them the location of the blood, and the Legends make their escape.
Back on the Waverider, things get very heated as the Legends accuse Mick of selling them out to his old partner and say that his loyalties will always lie with Snart. You’d think the Legends would be a bit nicer to Mick, considering what he’s going through (the reappearance of his dead partner, all the previous hallucinations, etc.), but no, they’re all pretty mean. Even Stein, who helped Mick through all the hallucination stuff in the first place.
Mick does at least have a nice bonding moment with Amaya, who shares her fears about her future and admits to him that the Spear has been calling to her in her mother’s voice. Mick says it’s been telling him to spare his parents instead of letting them burn to death, and he’s seriously considering it. Amaya then gets her hands on the Spear and says they should wipe the Legion from history while they have the chance, but Sara talks her down. Amaya gives in, but tells them she thinks they’re making a big mistake. Clearly she’s flipped to the last page of her script for this week.
Anyway, the vial of Christ’s blood is buried in No Man’s Land, for some reason, and rather than go back (or forward) in time to when there isn’t a bloody war on, the Legends decide to go and get the vial in the middle of the Battle of the Somme, using the Spear to locate the vial, as we saw in the brief prologue. Not their smartest idea, it has to be said. They do have a plan of sorts, though, and they manage to arrange a ceasefire, by appealing to the army generals on both sides.
However, just as the Legends finally get their hands on the blood, Damien and Snart appear and successfully persuade Mick to join them. Sara tries to appeal to Mick, saying she knows he’s better than this, but that doesn’t quite tally with the speech she just gave on the Waverider about how she doesn’t fully trust him, so Mick is understandably sceptical. Snart makes things worse by telling Mick that the Legends only believe in him when he’s useful to them, and Mick says that they have been trying to change him ever since he joined them, and – you know what? – there are things about himself that he wants to change and it looks like the Legion will let him do that by using the Spear. He asks Amaya to come with him and get what she wants, but she refuses and the Legion, plus Mick, all leave with the Spear, after throwing a grenade that gets both the English and German sides firing at each other again. Nate then compounds their misery by failing to save the blood of Christ as it’s hit by a bullet, so now, not only have they lost the Spear, they’ve also lost their only means of destroying it.
Back on board the Waverider, the team lament their failure and wonder if maybe they weren’t too hard on Mick, in retrospect. (They totally were). Rip says that maybe they’ll be okay, because he thinks the Legion won’t know how to operate the Spear, but then we cut to the episode’s cliff-hanger, which has Malcolm returning from who knows where (actually, from the musical episode of The Flash) with a How To Operate The Spear guide in the form of the Kalabros. Eobard tells all four of them to grab the Spear as he begins altering reality. Ruh-roh!
Overall, this was another great episode, even if the serious themes of war, betrayal and genocide (in the sense of Amaya’s village) meant that it was understandably lighter on humour than usual. Either way, it’s a terrific set-up for the final two episodes of the season, so fingers crossed that the show-runners manage to stick the landing. Tune in next week for a Legion-altered reality that the episode appears to be calling Doomworld.
Footnotes of Tomorrow
– Phenomenal work from Dominic Purcell this episode. Well, every episode really, but he’s on terrific form here as he considers his various allegiances and is drawn back to his former partner. It’s not hard to imagine that there’s some serious redemption in store for Mick, much as we saw for Snart last season. Let’s hope their Prison Break commitments don’t keep them out of Season 3 though.
– The Tolkien stuff wasn’t nearly as successful as the George Lucas stuff, but the references and quotes were a lot of fun, particularly Rip using one of Aragorn’s speeches to persuade the general to enact the ceasefire.
Legends of Tomorrow is available on Sky Box Sets. Don’t have Sky? You can catch up on-demand through NOW, as part of a £7.99 monthly subscription, no contract. A 7-day free trial is available for new subscribers.
Ivan Radford
Editor, VODzilla.co
The UK’s only video on-demand magazine
www.vodzilla.co
Warning: This is a recap and contains spoilers, so do not read this until you have watched the episode. For information on how to watch it, click here.
There are only two episodes left on this season of Legends of Tomorrow, so this week’s episode is effectively part one of a three part season finale. As such, it’s extremely promising, pulling together some key threads of the season and ending on one heck of a cliff-hanger. Now let’s just hope the show-runners can keep up this level of quality into the season finale.
Fellowship of the Spear begins with the Legends having the upper hand for once. Rip figures out that the Legion of Doom are hiding out at the Vanishing Point (the scene of Leonard’s sacrifice in the Season One finale), so they stage a heist, stealing the last fragment of the Spear right from under the nose of Eobard Thawne. This includes a cool moment where Firestorm transmutes an obelisk into jellybeans (in order to free the fragment) and a bit where Mick pointedly remembers the scene of his former partner’s death that will be Important For Later. It’s rare to see Eobard Thawne bested, especially on his home turf, so this is all very satisfying. He even obliges us with one of those amusing “Noooooooo” moments beloved of meme enthusiasts everywhere.
Back on board the Waverider, the Spear reassembles itself, which worries pretty much everyone, with Rip warning them that it will attempt to play on their regrets and desires. They decide to destroy it and Mick helpfully zaps it with his heat gun. Everyone says some variation of “Mick, you idiot”, until it turns out that the heat has revealed a message on the spear that wasn’t there before, just like on a certain other object in popular culture that might be coming up again very soon.
The message says “Born by blood, undone by blood” (in Latin, obvs) and Nate (who is, let’s not forget, a historian) figures out that that means they need the blood of Christ to destroy it. Sara’s all for plotting a course straight to the Crucifixion, but Rip’s all, “Woah, woah, woah, cool your jets, sister. Let’s not mess with one of the most important moments in all of history, especially given our propensity to royally mess things up”. (Also, it doesn’t do to rile religious groups unnecessarily when you’re a network TV show). So they decide to head to WWI France instead, intending to get hold of one John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who apparently served in WWI at the Battle of the Somme, but, more importantly, was the author of a paper about Gawain returning from the Crusades with a vial of Christ’s blood. Nate figures Tolkien will know where Gawain is buried and that he can lead them to the blood.
Meanwhile, back at the Vanishing Point, Thawne is still fuming at his recent defeat and he tells Damien that it’s time to change the game. Mmmm…ominous.
The Legends head to France 1916 and Sara sends Amaya, Mick, Nate and Ray to find Tolkien, who’s apparently awaiting transportation back to England after contracting trench fever. Amaya’s visibly distressed by the injured soldiers in the sick bay, because it reminds her of the future fate of her village, as revealed to her by Gideon last week. In case the audience hasn’t quite grasped the significance of this, the show helpfully included an otherwise useless prologue bit with Amaya urging Sara to use the Spear while in the trenches. But we’re not there yet. There’s an amusing bit where someone gives Mick some food for the wounded and he starts eating it, before he gets told off and wanders out of the tent, only to run straight into Snart. Mick immediately (and to be fair, quite reasonably) assumes it’s the same hallucinatory version of Snart that’s been bugging him for the last few episodes, so he defends himself against Snart’s taunts and basically gives away their whole plan regarding the destruction of the Spear. Snart then slaps him to prove that he’s not a hallucination, which leaves Mick decidedly confused. Snart’s parting taunt is that the Legends treat Mick as their trained pet, which is a bit harsh and not really true, but it eats away at Mick anyway. He’s then ordered to steal an ambulance, as the rest of the Legends have retrieved Tolkien.
Back on board the Waverider, Gideon cures Tolkien’s trench fever and Nate tells him that they need to know where Gawain is buried. Rip joins in and the pair of them go way over the top on the Lord of the Rings references, explaining that their “fellowship” is on a journey to destroy an object of unimaginable power. Tolkien is remarkably unfazed by all of this and basically just goes, “Yeah, sure, whatever you need”. Credit is definitely due to episode director Ben Bray for resisting the urge to have shots of Tolkien making “That gives me an idea” faces.
While Tolkien is researching Gawain’s whereabouts in the Waverider’s library, Sara finds a down-in-the-dumps Amaya, who reveals that she’s depressed because her future involves her village being burned to the ground and her daughter becoming a refugee. Sara tries to reassure her by telling her that Mari – Amaya’s future granddaughter – becomes a hero with her own cartoon TV show and everything, but it doesn’t take.
After Tolkien determines Gawain’s location, the Legends head out to a cathedral, but they’re confronted by Snart. In the episode’s best moment, Mick realises that everyone else can see him too, and Rip works out that the Legion must have pulled an earlier version of Snart from the timeline, from before he joined the Legends. Damien then pops up to confirm that theory and there’s a shoot-out, with Snart still taunting Mick about his new hero friends. Fortunately, Tolkien has time to take a rubbing of an engraving (like a primary school kid) that tells them the location of the blood, and the Legends make their escape.
Back on the Waverider, things get very heated as the Legends accuse Mick of selling them out to his old partner and say that his loyalties will always lie with Snart. You’d think the Legends would be a bit nicer to Mick, considering what he’s going through (the reappearance of his dead partner, all the previous hallucinations, etc), but no, they’re all pretty mean. Even Stein, who helped Mick through all the hallucination stuff in the first place.
Mick does at least have a nice bonding moment with Amaya, who shares her fears about her future and admits to him that the Spear has been calling to her in her mother’s voice. Mick says it’s been telling him to spare his parents instead of letting them burn to death, and he’s seriously considering it. Amaya then gets her hands on the Spear and says they should wipe the Legion from history while they have the chance, but Sara talks her down. Amaya gives in, but tells them she thinks they’re making a big mistake. Clearly she’s flipped to the last page of her script for this week.
Anyway, the vial of Christ’s blood is buried in No Man’s Land, for some reason, and rather than go back (or forward) in time to when there isn’t a bloody war on, the Legends decide to go and get the vial in the middle of the Battle of the Somme, using the Spear to locate the vial, as we saw in the brief prologue. Not their smartest idea, it has to be said. They do have a plan of sorts though, and they manage to arrange a ceasefire by appealing to the army generals on both sides.
However, just as the Legends finally get their hands on the blood, Damien and Snart appear and successfully persuade Mick to join them. Sara tries to appeal to Mick, saying she knows he’s better than this, but that doesn’t quite tally with the speech she just gave on the Waverider about how she doesn’t fully trust him, so Mick is understandably sceptical. Snart makes things worse by telling Mick that the Legends only believe in him when he’s useful to them, and Mick says that they have been trying to change him ever since he joined them, and, you know what, there are things about himself that he wants to change and it looks like the Legion will let him do that by using the Spear. He asks Amaya to come with him and get what she wants, but she refuses and the Legion, plus Mick, all leave with the Spear, after throwing a grenade that gets both the English and German sides firing at each other again. Nate then compounds their misery by failing to save the blood of Christ as it’s hit by a bullet, so now, not only have they lost the Spear, they’ve also lost their only means of destroying it.
Back on board the Waverider, the team lament their failure and wonder if maybe they weren’t too hard on Mick. (They totally were.) Rip says that maybe they’ll be okay, because he thinks the Legion won’t know how to operate the Spear, but then we cut to the episode’s cliffhanger, which has Malcolm returning from who-knows-where with a How To Operate The Spear guide in the form of the Kalabros. Eobard tells all four of them to grab the Spear as he begins altering reality. Ruh-roh!
Overall, this is another great episode, even if the serious themes of war, betrayal and genocide (in the sense of Amaya’s village) mean that it’s understandably lighter on humour than usual. Either way, it’s a terrific set-up for the final two episodes of the season, so fingers crossed that the showrunners stick the landing. Tune in next time for a Legion-altered reality that the episode appears to be calling Doomworld.
Footnotes of Tomorrow
– Phenomenal work from Dominic Purcell this episode. Well, every episode really, but he’s on terrific form here, as he considers his various allegiances and is drawn back to his former partner. It’s not hard to imagine that there’s some serious redemption in store for Mick, much as we saw for Snart last season. Let’s hope their Prison Break commitments don’t keep them out of Season 3, though.
– The Tolkien stuff isn’t nearly as successful as the George Lucas stuff, but the references and quotes are a lot of fun, particularly Rip using one of Aragorn’s speeches to persuade the general to enact the ceasefire.
Legends of Tomorrow is available on Sky Box Sets. Don’t have Sky? You can catch up on-demand through NOW, as part of a £7.99 monthly subscription, no contract. A 7-day free trial is available for new subscribers.