Legends of Tomorrow is getting pretty close to the season finale. Season 1 Episode 13, titled Leviathan, has the Legends confronting Vandal Savage just days before he is supposed to conquer the world and kill Rip’s wife in 2166. Josh provides the recap for this episode, and following the recap both Josh and Violet share their thoughts about the episode.
- His thoughts on Leviathan, Episode 1-13 of Legends of Tomorrow
- Her thoughts on Season 1 Episode 13 of Legends of Tomorrow
The Legends Make Their Move on Vandal Savage
Leviathan begins with the Waverider arriving in 2166 under heavy fire from Vandal Savage’s men. Rip finds a place to land the Waverider, close to what remains of the resistance still fighting Vandal Savage. Rip gets a team together to hunt down Vandal: Snart, Rory and Sara.
They head to a rally being lead by Vandal, disguised as some of Vandal’s soldiers. The rest of the team gets the jump ship ready to extract the team once their mission is complete. Rip, Sara, Rory and Snart move in to follow Vandal and a couple of Lieutenants. Rory and Snart make a move, pushing Rory, drawing notice. Snart and Rory head after Savage while Rip and Sara deal with the guards. One of the soldiers, a woman, is wearing a bracelet — the bracelet that Kendra wore in her first death. Things go south in their attempt to get Savage though, and Jax has to evacuate the team with the jump ship.
The Resistance and the Legends Team Up
Back at the Waverider, the resistance forces have been detected near the Waverider. Jax, Ray Palmer and Professor Stein head out with Rip Hunter to find the Resistance, and they are ambushed by the Resistance. Rip explains they are allies, and the rag-tag team seems to accept Rip’s alliance.
Ray Palmer talks with Rip at the camp about why he has not attempted to save his family. Rip explains that no matter what he does, he is unable to save his family, even if he jumps back farther.
The leader of the Resistance demands to know who Rip and his team is, given there is no record of Rip, and the rest of the team is 150 years old. They are interrupted though, as a group of resistance fighters are attacked. By the time Rip and the group get to the location, the attack is over, and the Resistance is eliminated.
Back at the Waverider, the team is working on a plan to steal the bracelet the female Lieutenant has on her wrist, and how to use it as a weapon to kill Savage. Sara helps Kendra out with the task, and the two discuss Kendra’s romantic issues of Carter being her 4,000 year love, while Ray has the advantage of still being alive.
We then get a brief flashback, where we see Carter giving Kendra a mace to use as a weapon against Savage. The two seem to share a deep love in this flashback as well.
A Weapon Is Forged to Take Down Savage
Back in the present, Kendra thinks she has figured their problem out.
We then see the Lieutenant target sparring with soldiers. Rory and Snart get the jump on her, but an alarm is sounded. Snart and Rory are able to get this woman back to the Waverider though. On the ship she reveals that she knows who everyone is on the ship. Then she drops an even bigger bomb — she is Cassandra Savage, Vandal’s daughter.
The team discusses their next move, given their new information. Snart moves to question Cassandra. She refuses, of course. He tries to bond with her, saying they have similar fathers. Cassandra then tells Snart how Vandal saved the world from a man named Per Degaton. She seems to see her father as a hero.
Meanwhile, Rory has now decided to help Kendra. Rory melts down the bracelet recovered from Cassandra, and coats Kendra’s mace with it, weaponizing the bracelet as the team hoped she could figure out. Meanwhile, Rory discusses his doubts about Kendra being able to pull off the killing of Savage.
Leviathan and ATOM Square Off
Ray and Stein have been analyzing how the Resistance is defeated so easily. They learn that some sort of giant is attacking the camps. Just as they learn this, we see that Savage’s men has located the Waverider. The ground shakes has the giant — Leviathan –approaches. Ray and Stein help the Resistance board the Waverider, to save them from Leviathan. Rip is annoyed by this move, and tells Gideon to get ready for take-off. They are too late though, as we see the gigantic robot–Leviathan attack the Waverider. Leviathan grabs hold of the Waverider and tosses it.
The Waverider lands, but is in disrepair, unable to take off. Stein was injured in the crash, and is put under a sedative. Snart continues to try to convince Cassandra to talk. He shows her the Resistance and the conditions they live in. He then shows some news footage of Vandal releasing the virus on the population, and proves it wasn’t Per Degaton that released the virus.
Ray comes up with a method to fight the Leviathan. He gets his ATOM suit on, and rather than shrink down, enlarges himself to battle Leviathan. Snart’s effort seems to have paid off as well, and it looks like Cassandra will help get Snart and the team in to get Vandal.
Jax helps Ray get the suit prepared, and the everything goes well getting Ray to be a giant. Leviathan approaches, and the two go at it–man to…robot. They duke it out for quite some time, exchanging blows, and other various weaponry. Jax tries to provide some back up, watching the fight from the Waverider. Ray takes some bad blows, and winds up unconscious. Jax tries to convince Ray to get up, and it looks pretty grim for Ray. Ray eventually comes to though, and takes down the robot Leviathan.
Confronting Vandal Savage Again
Cassandra, meanwhile, has returned to Savage. He catches on pretty quickly about Cassandra turn-coating though. Snart, Rory, Sara and Rip show up, and the fight begins. Soldiers have come to back up Vandal, and Vandal has sensed Kendra as well. Kendra swoops in, taking Vandal away from his soldiers to take him down solo. The two battle as the rest of the team battles Vandal’s soldiers.
Kendra hits Vandal, ands Vandal realizes he is in trouble after a couple swings of the mace collide with him. Vandal gets some backup through, and Kendra has to fight this new soldier. Kendra takes the soldier down, and we get another big reveal–this soldier is Carter. Vandal says that he has brainwashed Carter, and he doesn’t remember who he is.
Kendra attacks Savage again, and seems to have the upper hand. But Savage says only he can free Carter’s mind. Kendra is unable to follow through with killing Vandal because of this. Kendra opts to not finish off Vandal, and the team takes him prisoner on the Waverider, along with Carter.
Cassandra, meanwhile, volunteers for the Resistance to help take down her father’s soldiers. On the Waverider, Kendra breaks the news of Carter being recovered.
Thankfully, Stein is okay, and Rip brings him up to date on what happened while he was sedated.
Speaking of Rip, he pays a visit to the captured Vandal Savage. Vandal seems pretty happy with his situation–given that he has a way to keep himself alive.
His Thoughts on Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1 Episode 13: Leviathan
It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for Rip and the team to head into the height of Vandal Savage’s power to try to take him down, given they have failed in every other attempt, but I guess it makes for an exciting episode. As soon as I saw Cassandra, I had a feeling she would turncoat. It took a little while to figure out she was Vandal’s daughter, but it makes sense for the drama of the show.
There were some pretty cool scenes in this episode though. While the fight scene between the ATOM and Leviathan didn’t look spectacular in terms of CGI quality, given this is a TV show, it looked pretty good and was a lot of fun to watch.
Snart seems to be coming around on his good-guy persona, finding a non-violent way to convince Cassandra to come to the good side.
One problem I have with the episodes lately is the lack of FIRESTORM though. I am wondering if the cost of the special effects makes it difficult to put him on screen. But it seems like there have been numerous times where FIRESTORM would be helpful, but we have Jax and/or Stein not really providing much “superhero” support.
I am curious to see the how the current predicament plays out for Rip and the team. Vandal can’t be killed, as that means Carter is forever brainwashed, so currently the opposing sides are at a standstill.
Also, Ray and Kendra look to be on rough waters given that Carter is now back in the picture. Carter has the sympathy card going for him too, considering he is back from the dead, and he has the whole brainwashing thing going on.
Her Thoughts on Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1 Episode 13: Leviathan episode
So… Legends of Tomorrow has been failing the Bechdel test quite a lot lately. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, it requires that a work of fiction feature at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. As you may recall, it seems like pretty much the only thing that Kendra and Sara talk about are Kendra’s relationships with Ray and Carter. It’s starting to become bothersome.
Kendra herself was quite bothersome at the end of this episode, when she failed not only Rip (to his face, might I add), not only the team, but the world, by not killing Vandal Savage when she had the chance. And for what? So that this future version of Carter wouldn’t be brainwashed? She doesn’t even know this version of him, and he has probably lived at least a couple of additional lives since the Carter we knew was killed, so even if he did have his memories, the two wouldn’t exactly be on the same page. Plus, I’m sure every version of Carter would approve of one reincarnation of himself remaining brainwashed in order to defeat Vandal Savage and save the world. I mean, Kendra wasn’t even saving his life, but his mind. Actually, she wasn’t even necessarily saving his mind, but the possibility that the team might somehow get it out of Savage how to un-brainwash Carter, which isn’t a surefire thing. Savage could also be lying. Plus, the team could have worked on some sort of solution to un-brainwash him. They have science-y people on the team, plus Gideon, so go do the science!
But anyway, other than that annoying flub, the episode overall had some fun, action-packed moments. I thought the CGI Leviathan looked nice and sleek. At first, I thought it was going to be a dinosaur, and was a bit disappointed when it turned out not to be (come on, you thought of Jurassic Park when everything started shaking too, right?), but giant robot is a good secondary choice. The CGI of giant Ray didn’t look all that great, but it was pretty good for TV.
The season is quickly drawing to a close, with only three episodes left. I’m wondering if we’ll actually see Vandal Savage defeated this season, as the “big bad” of Season 1, and move on to a different storyline in Season 2, or if we’ll be stuck with Vandal Savage as a menacing villain for the duration of the show, being a villain that could pop up at anytime. I’ll admit, it’s getting a little tedious only ever going after him. Well, going after him for an episode or two, then having a one-off, then going after him again, and so forth. It sounded like 2166 was their last ditch effort to go after him, so hopefully we’ll come to some conclusion about him soon.
Scenes from Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1 Episode 14: River of Time
Preview of Season 1 Episode 14 of Legends of Tomorrow
I was pretty sure that I had read that there would be a new big bad for the second season, but with this progression of the storyline, it definitely seems like Vandal is going to stick around. They have a lot to resolve in just a few episodes.
I wasn’t really surprised that Carter made a comeback especially given the amount of time the season has spent on Hawkgirl. For awhile, I was beginning to think it was Legend of Hawkgirl.