This week we finally get original flavor Rip back, or as close to it as he’s ever going to be. This show has found its rhythm in season 2 and is currently the best in the Berlantiverse at doing what it sets out to do. It’s become such a joy to watch, and on top of that we get Sara Lance fighting Sara Lance! I could’ve watched another 10 minutes of Sara on Sara hand-to-hand.
Sara and Jax are trying to find out the location of Nate’s grandfather and the last piece of the Spear of Destiny using the medallion, interfaced with Gideon. Things aren’t going well. Nate rushes in, all rude and impatient with Gideon. Gideon doesn’t appreciate the slight. Best not to insult the AI who runs the ship you live in, buddy.
Evil Rip is still in the brig, and calling for Gideon. She tries to ignore him, since she’s not supposed to talk to the bad man, but finally relents to tell him she’s supposed to ignore him. He uses three code words on her: “Spaniel, broad, bicycle.” She tries to refuse the order, but Rip repeats it. The brig door opens, and every other door on the ship slams shut. The team realizes what Rip is doing.
Gideon tells the crew that Rip is heading for the jump ship, but first he goes for the medallion, then sets off the Waverider’s self-destruct sequence. Nate, Amaya and Mick stop Rip in the hall and try to get the medallion back. Rip tosses it in the air and shoots it so that it disintegrates. All of that time in the Old West with Jonah Hex before the series started paid off. He’s a great marksman. It was a fantastic looking move. Rip is still captured by the team, but he goes out with style.
Jax has gotten the ship ready to reboot in order to cut off the self-destruct sequence. The ship will be offline for a short period of time. With all of the craziness, navigation is out of control, and they’re forced to crash-land. Gideon takes them back to the earliest date in her time logs, 69 million BCE, which was when/where Ray was stranded at the start of the season. They are unable to leave right away because the ship needs repairs. The time delineator has been thrown clear of the ship, and will need to be retrieved before repairs can be completed. Ray jumps at the chance to revisit his old stomping grounds. Nate and Amaya will go with.
Sara, Stein, and Mick are left on the ship to figure out how to get Rip to tell them where the last piece of the Spear of Destiny is, now that the medallion is gone. Mick wanted to go on the Jurassic Park field trip with Haircut, but amiably focuses on Rip instead. He recalls the Time Masters going inside his mind to get information whenever they wanted. Gideon jumps in with an explanation of cognitive intrusion, the process in which one consciousness enters another. The Time Masters invented it in 2137 as a method of extreme coercion. It’s standard equipment on all Time Master vessels. Sara realizes that they could use cognitive intrusion to restore Rip’s mind and memories.
The Time Masters were never the good guys, were they? That was all a facade. However, Rip considered CI barbaric and dangerous, because he was mostly a good guy, and a rebel. And a main character.
Ray decides to take a hike through his old neighborhood to find the missing part, rather than use his suit. Maybe he can visit with some old friends. Of course Ray knew how to survive the dinosaurs. He was an eagle scout, wasn’t he? Amaya is also comfortable in the forest, but Nate is a city boy. Before long, they discover that Gertrude, an old enemy of Ray’s, is awake. The delineator is in her territory, and she doesn’t sound like a small dinosaur.
Mick will be in charge of this mission, with Stein as his assistant. I am so here for this pairing. He immediately orders Marty to fetch him a six-pack of beer. Sara and Jax will enter Rip’s mind. Another excellent pairing.
Meanwhile, back in the primeval forest, Amaya saves Nate from a python, and the python from Nate, then flirts with Nate. Stargirl convinced her to try the modern approach to relationships. Their conversation is interrupted when Ray runs through with Gertrude on his tail.
Sara and Jax will wear electric shock bracelets so that they can shock themselves out of Rip’s mind. They enter into his psyche. It looks a lot like a militarized Waverider with green lighting. The White Canary shows up to fight Sara. They are evenly matched until the Canary pulls out one of her swords. Jax finds them and shoots Canary with the gun they found on the ship.
Amaya and Nate ask Ray what he did to make Gertrude hate him so much. He stole one of her eggs and ate it. Poor baby dinosaur. 😟 They arrive at Ray’s old camp, which he protected from Gertrude by surrounding it with the smell of male T Rex urine. I’m so proud of his survival skills it almost makes up for the egg. Ray goes off to hunt for dinner, encouraging his guests to try the local cuisine. Nate and Amaya decide to take advantage of their moment of alone time, but Ray turns out to be a very efficient hunter. Iguana soup for everyone!
Jax and Sara run into evil versions of the entire crew. The Atom takes Sara’s bracelet and destroys it. She has no way out of Rip’s mind on her own now. They send her to the brig, where she finds the real Rip.
Jax follows the sound of someone banging out SOS in Morse code. He finds a personification of Gideon. Amy Pemberton gets to show that she’s more than just a pretty voice this week. Jax has a hard time believing that he’s looking at Gideon. He says he always pictured her as a redhead, but I suspect he didn’t ever really think of her as a woman all that concretely.
Gideon explains that Eobard twisted Rip’s memories of everyone he cared about, so that they seemed like enemies. It didn’t occur to him to twist the memory of the AI inside the Waverider. Rip’s original memories are fading, so they need to restore him to his normal self as quickly as possible.
Rip is cowering in fear in a corner of the brig. Sara tries to talk to Rip to remind him of what’s real. He has flashes of memory that frighten him even more and lashes out at Sara. Power surges out of Rip that throws Sara across the room. Rip is stunned to discover he has this power. Sara convinces Rip to use his power to try to open the door to the brig. The first try doesn’t work, but Jax and Gideon show up just then, so it’s okay. Sara and Gideon seem to like the look of each other, and I can feel an OT3 being born. Gideon releases Sara and Rip from the brig.
The kids at Ray’s Camp Castaway have finished dinner, and Amaya goes out to get more wood for the fire. Ray takes this opportunity to lecture Nate about dating Amaya, because she needs to go back to the 1940s to breed, so that Amara can become Vixen later and save people. The rest of the Legends don’t matter to history, so they can do whatever they want, but Amaya is special, so the two white men have to make decisions for the black woman, because it would be dangerous for her to have too much information about her own life and future and make those decisions herself. Of course, Ray knows very little about Amaya’s future. Does he know for sure that Nate isn’t Amara’s grandfather? Does he know for sure that her mother wasn’t born on the Waverider? Have we ever confirmed that Rip wasn’t lying in the pilot, because I’ve never trusted the story about them and their descendants never mattering. Becoming Legends may also make them or their descendants matter.
Oh, Ray, we were getting along so well this episode. You don’t get to make Amaya’s decisions for her. Neither does Nate. If Nate can be privy to this information, so can Amaya. It’s certainly a breach of Amaya’s privacy to tell Nate about it and not her. If something needed to be said, someone should have pulled Amaya aside and told her that she has a daughter and granddaughter in the future who are important, so she’d have to go back eventually. That’s it. But this is a typical misogynistic secret-keeping Berlantiverse plot device.
Ironically, we go directly from Ray and Nate infantilizing Amaya, to Mick calling Stein on infantilizing Jax. Stein is hovering and flapping his hands in worry over what’s happening to Jax in Rip’s mind. Mick tries to calm Stein down, but Stein’s not having it. Mick tells Stein that he needs to let Jax operate on his own more, and trust Jax’s abilities, because Stein won’t always be there. Stein makes some truly insensitive comments about Mick and Len’s partnership, including implying that Mick allowed Len to die, or caused it somehow. If I could jump through the screen and punch the arrogant b*st*rd, I would. Mick was willing to die for the team and reality as we know it, and Len did. Stein doesn’t get to insult that. Mick has the grace to refrain from mentioning that Stein also has a dead partner, showing that Mick’s really the better man when push comes to shove.
Rip, Gideon, Sara and Jax head for the parlor to help Rip with his memories, but they’re stopped again by evil Jax and Sara. Evil Jax fires up. His powers look weak to me. Is that a lack of CGI budget, or because he’s only half of Firestorm? Sara and Just Jax take on their alternate selves, while Rip and Gideon run for the parlor. Jax floats his alternate, and Sara breaks Canary’s neck. They soon run into evil Jax and Mick all over again.
Ray, Amaya and Nate find the time delineator in Gertrude’s nest. Each decides that they should be the one to sacrifice themselves to the dinosaur. In the end, it’s Ray who runs over and grabs the part, just as Gertie appears. Amaya calmly walks over to Gertie and uses her dinosaur energy to communicate with Gertrude and set things right. Gertrude lets them go.
Sara and Jax realize that only Rip can stop the attacks. Rip uses his powers to defeat the evil alternates once he figures out what’s real. With that, his Waverider mind construction begins to collapse. Jax jumps out, and shocks Sarah out as soon as he wakes up. Rip thanks Gideon for everything, during all of the time they’ve had together. He’s going to lose her human form when he wakes up, but he’ll always have the AI, and she’ll always be in his memories. He doesn’t want to leave her, but he won’t survive the collapse of his Waverider construction either. They share a passionate kiss as Rip wakes up. We could definitely build an android body for Gideon. Wasn’t Dr Mid-Nite doing something cool with cybernetic body parts?
Ray and Jax get the Waverider repaired. Nate and Amaya flirt some more. Ray interferes some more. Nate tells Ray he can’t be casual with Amaya. But maybe he’ll take her up on that invitation to her room tonight, and break up with her tomorrow. Which, wow, slimey, dude. If tonight is goodbye sex, at least let Amaya in on the program. Don’t let her think it’s the start of something, then break it off instead.
Rip ditches his very flattering black outfit for his season 1 outfit that covers him in 4 layers and a floor length coat. Let’s start a petition to get evil Rip back. Or burn that coat. Gideon tells Sara and Rip that the repairs are done, and they both answer to Captain, Rip mostly out of habit. He waves to Sara that she’s still the driver.
After Sara leaves, Rip apologizes to Gideon for everything he’s put her through. She asks if he means disabling the ship or their kiss, because she is a cheeky wench and couldn’t resist. Rip is shocked that the Gideon outside of his mind knows about it, but she was facilitating the procedure, and can read the crew members’ dreams, so of course she was right in there, making sure Rip’s rescue went as planned. They both agree that they enjoyed the kiss, but refrain from talking about what it means for the future of their relationship. Android body. I will bring one over from Agents of SHIELD if I have to.
Rip makes a triumphant slo-mo return to the bridge. Everyone welcomes him back as Mr Hunter, rather than Captain. He tells Sara that he knows where the final piece of the Spear of Destiny is.
The tag shows us that the Spear fragment is in 1970 with the Apollo 13 crew. Reverse Flash is already there. Get your inner space geek ready for next week!
I actually used the word soulmate originally in my recap of episode 12 when I was talking about Rip and Gideon being true partners with ultimate loyalty to each other, but then it felt like a bit too much, so I took it out. Should’ve left it in. In Dark Matter, the ship has an android avatar that can act completely human if she chooses. There is a movement among the avatars/androids in that verse to be seen as free entities and equal to humans. They could have Gideon go that route. Between her and Jax, they could whip up an android body in the fabrication room.
The way Mick told Stein that he wouldn’t be around forever, and then they showed us a semi-fired up Jax, doesn’t bode well for the long-term survival of Stein’s character. Maybe they’ll figure out a way to stabilize Jax and Stein so that they can live separately and Martin can go live with Clarissa again, while Jax can be a Legend with partial Firestorm abilities. I wouldn’t miss Stein’s overbearing arrogance at all.
What are the odds that Nate is Amara’s grandfather? The Legends don’t need a historian now that Rip is back. If Wentworth Miller is coming back, they could send Amaya and Nate back to 1942 and Stein back home to Clarissa. The replacements on the ship for season 3 can be Rip, Leonard Snart, and android Gideon. Rip would be so much happier and perkier, if his girlfriend had a human-type body. Lots of storyline potential in making and fine tuning the android, and taming the latest version of Snart.
Mick still misses Lenny. I get the feeling that he keeps an eye on Jax and Stein so that they don’t lose each other earlier than necessary. His comments mean he’s been thinking about it.
Mick also still remembers everything from being Chronos, he just doesn’t want to be the group leader, or consciously think about that time if he doesn’t have to. So he pulls out useful intel when and if he has it, and otherwise lets it lie. I really want him and Rip to occasionally get drunk and darkly reminisce about the bad old days together.
Brandon Routh had a ball this episode. He plays Ray best when Ray gets to be an overgrown, enthusiastic, idealistic kid who wants to help everyone. Ray doesn’t work when he’s too serious or too grown up.
The show remembered that Sara is bisexual, not a lesbian! Is that another sign that Lenny is coming back?
It’ll be sad not writing “Spear of Destiny” any more when this arc is over. It’s so wonderfully cheesy and self-important.
Please let Rip keep his powers in the real world. What with all of the messing around that’s been done in his brain, and the universe he lives in, anything seems possible.
Stein: How many times must I tell you people, Mick Rory is not to pilot this ship! [What makes me think that Mick/Chronos is a very capable pilot, but likes to go for occasional joyrides? Sara and Jax egg him on, but Old Man Stein is always anti-fun.]
Sara: Evil Mick. I guess that’s just regular Mick, but still.
Ray: Lady dinosaurs are rather maternal. And I may have eaten one of her eggs. I was starving. I needed protein. I mean, one egg made me, like, 70 omelets. I regret nothing. [At least Gertrude was a free range dinosaur instead of factory farmed.]
Metawitches 
You must be logged in to post a comment.