Legends of Tomorrow Season 2 Episode 4 review

I've found myself, when watching time travel shows, asking whether or not they will acknowledge how attitudes towards race, gender and sexuality have changed over the centuries. Seeing as most of these shows are family friendly, they tend to shy away from anything too controversial, with little nods here and there, but God damn did Legends of Tomorrow not shy away from it this week!

Following a Time Pirate who had crashed in 1863 with some kind of virus, the Legends found themselves mixed up in the middle of the United States Civil War, now with added zombies. Almost straight away Martin tried to convince Jax to stay on board the Waverider as it might not be “safe” for him. Jax pointed out the obvious; he's been black his whole life and there's nowhere he could ever go where he wouldn't face some kind of racism. From that point on, short of not showing the violence full on, the episode did very little to sugar coat just how bad it was for black people in 19^th century America.

The Legends quickly came across Union spy Henry Scott being chased by some of the newly zombified Confederate soldiers, but it was only after Scott was mortally wounded that he revealed to them that he was on a mission to sneak behind Confederate lines and steal troop plans from a slave plantation. Jax bravely stepped into Scott's place citing that no matter what the Union could not lose the Civil War. Taking Amaye with him, Jax planned to slip in and out unnoticed, hoping that the course of history would still lead to the emancipation of his people.

It's fair to say that it was pretty bloody obvious where this episode's feelings on the Civil War and by extension slavery lie, what with only Confederates being turned into the mindless, savage zombies and their depiction of the southern slave owners as nothing but cruel with barely any humanising characteristics at all. Slaves were whipped, beaten, threatened and degraded in ways I never expected to see on a CW show. When Jax was briefly captured and Martin could feel his fear and anger through their psychic connection, my heart broke. It was a simple moment, using science fiction to get across the whole point of the episode, just as good sci-fi should – empathy for the people and experiences beyond your own.

Splitting the team up into 3 meant 3 different character studies with Nate and Sara allying with General Grant to help the Union army beat back the zombified Confederate horde, a storyline which offered some fun stuff, such as Nate referring to himself as Colonel Sanders (Is he ever going to stop doing that?) and Sara overcoming gender stereotypes, ending with a rather sweet moment where Grant referred to Sara as “Captain Lance”. The biggest development with these 2 though was Nate's sacrifice – assuming his powers would save him from the zombies, he lured them all out only to blow himself up with the Union's cache of TNT once they had swarmed him. It show's how far the self proclaimed time detective has come because if he hadn't had powered up in time, he'd surely have been killed. Good on you Nate.

On the Waverider, Ray sans his Atom suit and Martin sans Jax, were left with naught but their intellects to deal with a freshly zombified Mitch chasing them round the corridors. Though obviously filler, the brainiacs finally figured out that the cure needed to be aerosolized to be effective, managing to stop Mitch before he chowed down on Martin's big brain. Mitch however was grateful enough to Ray for saving him and, pitying him somewhat, gave him Snart's cold gun – a huge show of faith in Ray, one that I'm sure won't backfire at all I'm sure (snigger).

Back on the plantation, Jax and Amaye managed to gain the trust of the slaves through a combination of Jax's fine speech about “things getting better” and the dues ex machina of one of the women recognising Amaye's amulet as a sort of symbolic totem of their cultural heritage as well, you know, an actual super power as Amaye kept on summoning that gorilla strength this week. When the zombies attacked the owner's house, Jax, caught in the midst of stealing the Confederate plans, pointed out to the owner that they had to work together to fight them off if they were going to make it out alive. Refusing to “arms his slaves” the despicable son of a bitch was eaten by a zombie literally seconds later in an example of “you could only write it” karma. It was also gratifying as hell that the show took a moment alongside Jax to watch the place burn to the ground, for all misery that was endured there and everything it stood for.
 

"There will always be those who will seek to dehumanise us but I believe there are more that cling to hope, despite the darkness." - Martin Stein

Delivering the plans to General Grant, Jax introduced himself as Henry Scott so as to preserve Scott's place in history (he had a high school named after him evidently) and the Legends departed 1863 safe in the knowledge that the history of the United States of America was safe. For now.

The episode also teased out one more sentence from future Barry's message, a mention to some kind of war coming. I'm sure that's in reference to the big crossover event coming at the end of the month, so I'd better start catching up with Flash and Supergirl in preparation.