UK TV recap: Legends of Tomorrow Season 3, Episode 12
Review Overview
Dread Pirate Jiwe
7Sara and Ava
8Blackbeard
6Matthew Turner | On 17, Mar 2018
Warning: This contains spoilers. For how to watch Legends of Tomorrow, click here.
Legends of Tomorrow has had a lot of success this season riffing on famous movies, from The Exorcist and Apocalypse Now to E.T. and Groundhog Day. This episode, it’s the turn of Pirates of the Caribbean, and while it’s not quite as solid as the previous movie-themed episodes, it still delivers plenty of entertainment, as well as some important character development for Amaya, Sara and Ray.
With just six more episodes remaining in this season, there’s a renewed focus on the totems that the team will eventually need to defeat Mallus. Accordingly, the cold open for this episode features Blackbeard the Pirate (Jonathan Cake) giving his girlfriend, Anne (Cecilia Deacon), the Earth totem, which promptly glows bright green and turns her into a plant-controlling demon or something.
Aboard the Waverider, Ray announces to Amaya and Mick (who appear to be the only two that showed up on time for a meeting) that they still need the Fire and Earth totems, as well as an as-yet-unnamed mystery sixth totem. Ray says that the Fire totem is in a Detroit museum, in the care of Amaya’s granddaughter’s (i.e. 2018 Vixen’s) boyfriend, Professor Macalester, so they head out to retrieve it, minus Sara, who has finally acted on Zari’s advice from last week and asked Ava out on a date.
However, when they get to Detroit, they find that Damien Darhk has beaten them to it, and he’s even left them a hand-written note: “Now I have two.” Opting not to disturb Sara while she’s on her date, the Legends decide to head to 1717 Nassau in the Bahamas, after Nate figures out that the Earth totem is in the possession of Blackbeard. This, of course, gives them the perfect excuse to dress up as pirates. Yarrr!
When they arrive at a bar in Nassau, Amaya seems down. She confides in Mick that she wants to change Kuasa’s destiny, but she’s afraid of ruining her granddaughter Mari’s life in the process. She’s also depressed because she’s in love with Nate, but she knows she’ll eventually have to return to Zambezi in 1942 and marry someone else. At this point, since we’ve never been told anything about Amaya’s future husband, it seems increasingly likely that her story will end with her and Nate settling down together in 1942, but we’re not quite there yet. At any rate, Mick gives a surprisingly decent pep talk, effectively telling her to embrace her inner pirate (“A true pirate doesn’t live for tomorrow, they only live for the moment”).
In a surprise to no one, Mick makes a perfect pirate and he really gets into it, giving a speech to the entire bar and bigging Amaya up as the Dread Pirate Jiwe. Word quickly spreads and Blackbeard appears to meet her. He agrees to lead them to the totem, but their plan is interrupted by the arrival of Damien and Nora Darhk, who are posing as British military officers, in command of a fleet of soldiers. Damien gets the drop on the Legends and steals Amaya’s spirit totem while he’s at it. Oh noes!
Meanwhile, the Waverider runs into some trouble, as a result of being parked in the Bermuda Triangle, and Zari calls Nate and Ray back to the ship. Damien starts firing cannonballs at them and the Waverider gets damaged, so Gideon time-jumps the ship out of Nassau, right into Detroit 2018, where it crash-lands and spoils Sara’s date with Ava. Sara: annoyed.
Meanwhile, Amaya and Mick are stranded in Nassau and they get into a pretty cool swashbuckling fight (complete with swords), after Mick once again pep-talks Amaya into realising that she doesn’t need her totem to be a great fighter. (This is already more character development than Amaya has had all season.) Anyway, they rescue Blackbeard from execution while they’re at it, so he agrees to lead them to the totem. This, in turn, means travelling to a desert island, so Amaya rallies Blackbeard’s men and the show gets to use their CGI pirate ship.
When they arrive on the island, Damien and Nora are in the process of digging up Anne, thanks to the map Blackbeard gave them. However, they’re unprepared for Anne’s Totem Demon form and she comes on all Poison Ivy, tying up Nora with vines and knocking Damien off his feet. Amaya tries to talk Anne into controlling the totem, but Damien does his magical neck snap thing and kills her. So now the Darhks have three totems in the space of one episode, making it seem like they’re racing round a Trivial Pursuit board in a single go.
Meanwhile, back on the Waverider, Ava opens a time portal and shows up to give Sara grief about skipping out on their date, even though she did the exact same thing. Nate and Ray decide to leave them to their argument and Nate gets the idea to use Ava’s time portal to rescue Mick and Amaya. However, in a spectacular act of carelessness – even by Legends’ already lax standards – they leave the time door open, allowing Blackbeard and his men to board the Waverider and they arrive just as Sara and Ava resolve their problems and start kissing. Of course, Sara and Ava can take down a horde of pirates in their sleep, so that’s exactly what happens. Blackbeard, incidentally, turns out to be a bit of a coward (although he was prepared to die bravely when it was execution time), so he surrenders to the pair, telling them they’re the finest fighters he’s ever encountered.
Back on the island, Nate and Ray arrive just as Mallus-possessed Nora is draining Amaya’s life force. To save Amaya, Ray is forced to use the Nanite Gun and he kills Nora, which is especially upsetting for him, since he spent all that time getting to know her as a teenager a few episodes ago. Damien is understandably distraught, displaying more emotion than we’ve seen from him so far. Anyway, Amaya grabs the Earth totem from Anne’s body, but somehow doesn’t take advantage of Damien’s grief to snatch her Spirit totem. Still, at least the Darhks are back down to two.
Back on the Waverider, Sara and Ava agree that there’s no point in trying to be normal (which was the idea behind their date in the first place) and they should just accept that superhero-slash-Time Bureau stuff is going to get in the way whatever they do and be together anyway. So they’re officially together now. Congratulations if you called that back when Ava was first introduced. (Who had Episode 12? Anyone? Well done, anyway.)
As for Amaya, it turns out that her relationship with her own totem was much more complex than the show had previously established, judging by everything she told Mick and Anne. As a result, she feels oddly liberated by Damien having stolen it and decides to fully embrace her relationship with Nate, even indulging in a little bit of knife-to-the-throat (er, isn’t this a family show?) pirate role-play and flicking off one of his shirt buttons with her sword. (“Do you yield, sir?” “Aye, Captain.”) As if to underline Amaya’s new badass status, the bottle of rum Sara and Ava are drinking changes from Captain Godfree to Captain Jiwe.
With Amaya and Nate doing pirate fun-times, Sara (ahem) showing Ava her room and Zari doing whatever Zari’s doing, Ray confesses to Mick that he’s feeling guilty about killing Nora and that Mick’s own example proves someone who starts out bad can change. He says that at least there was hope for Nora, before he took it away. Ray’s despondent expression makes it pretty clear what’s about to happen and, sure enough, he takes the jumpship back to the island and offers to spare Nora’s life in return for Amaya’s Spirit totem. Damien immediately agrees (again, showing more vulnerability than we’re used to seeing from him), but unfortunately Ray’s plan backfires and Nora begins to drain his life force as soon as she comes back to life. Damien stops her, telling her they may need him later, which sets up the cliffhanger for the episode.
Oh, right, Wally and Rip. Remember the cliffhanger from the previous episode, with Rip tracking Wally down at a Himalayan retreat? Well, in a subplot that’s almost completely unrelated, Wally and Rip go on an epic drunken bender, during which they retrieve Rip’s beloved long brown coat from the Time Bureau and steal a time portal into the bargain. Oh, and Wally pantses Agent Gary, which sends him running to Ava, interrupting their date, the only way in which the subplot connects to the main story. On the plus side, Wally (and, by extension, actor Keiynan Lonsdale) is a lot more relaxed and fun here than he ever got a chance to be on The Flash and he has enjoyable chemistry with Rip, particularly when they sing George Michael’s Careless Whisper together at a karaoke bar in 1992. Anyway, this segment ends with Rip asking Wally to join the Legends, even though he’s not technically in a position to extend such an invitation. He’s not wrong about the fact that they could probably use a speedster on the team, though. Where were you last season, Wally?
All in all, this is an entertaining and colourful episode that delivers some fun swashbuckling (it’s missing a bit where someone has to swing on a rope or slide down a sail with a knife, but you can’t have everything) and a few decent laughs alongside some important character development for three of the Legends. Tune in next time when Ray needs rescuing and Damien has to stop his younger self from assassinating someone important.
Footnotes of Tomorrow
– The Pirates of the Caribbean-style music cues were a nice touch this week.
– Maisie Richardson-Sellers’ vaguely Cockney pirate accent was an unexpected highlight too, especially the way she got more and more into it as the episode went on.
– After her semi-solo Groundhog Day adventure, Zari was more or less sidelined this episode, which seems to go against the whole point of her episode, given it was about her finding her place on the team. Her contribution here? She got a new hair-do. Which she hates.
– Having said that, the line of the week goes to Zari for her assessment of Damien’s handwritten note: “You know, for a megalomaniac, he has very lovely penmanship.”
– Now that Ava and Sara are together, will Ava make it to the end of the season? Place bets now!
Legends of Tomorrow Season 3 is available on Sky 1 every Wednesday. Don’t have Sky? You can stream it live or 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.