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TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews Legends of Tomorrow Season 01 Episode 03: Blood Ties

February 5th, 2016 by Todd Black Comments

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After the rallying call that happened last week, you had to wonder where Legends of Tomorrow would go from there. Interestingly, instead of a full-on charge to Savage (which is different than what the Avengers did, see my review for what I’m talking about), Rip Hunter for a more subtle approach, one that exposed his past even more. All the while, many of the other members of the Legends team had their own stories to deal with.

I think the true benefit of Legends of Tomorrow’s cast is that there’s a ton to play with, all the while keeping it tied together. For example, Team A with Rip and Sara went after Savage, Team B with Cold, Heat Wave and Jax went to change history, and Team C with Ray and Stein were trying to save Kendra. Now true, I doubt it’ll be this simple in every episode, but it’s nice to see them break everyone up for the bulk of the episode so they don’t feel left out. In fact, the only character who didn’t technically have a story was Jax, who was a focus of last week, so I don’t mind.

Back to the teams, Rip and Sara’s story was very interesting, and enlightening. As we found out that Rip had indeed tried to kill Vandal Savage before, but a moments hesitation (a classic hero trait) cost him his revenge. Meanwhile, Sara was not as free and clear of the bloodlust as we thought. This was beautiful time wise, as yesterday’s Arrow episode note that she was “cured” cause of what John Constantine did, apparently not so much.

The true takeaway from their story though was just how powerful Vandal Savage was, as well as insane. As he took Carter’s body, and used it’s blood to enhance both himself, and his loyal followers. This is definitely a Savage move, one that’ll no doubt come into play as the series goes on. Cause now, it’s truly not just one man they have to deal with, but an army.

Meanwhile, with the Rogues + Jax, Snart decided to hijack a ship and take it to Central City to steal something. Classic Captain Cold right? Wrong. As he did this thievery to try and “fix” his life. It was an interesting play, one that both Heat Wave and Jax noted could erase Cold from history, but he was more than willing to do that as “history screwed him” when he was a child. This storyline also showed once again the dangers of rewriting history, as time itself is a living entity. As such, despite Cold’s efforts, his father again went to jail, and his life remained the same. It’ll be interesting to see if he’ll be willing to try again should the time period allow it.

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Sadly, the weakest part of the episode was Ray and Stein’s adventure to save Kendra. On one hand, it was visually fun, as we got to see Ray shrink and use that ability to eliminate dagger fragments inside Kendra, but, it came with an odd “crisis of faith” story for Ray. If Ray was only just created, that’d be fine. But he’s shown both on Arrow and on Flash that he’s very comfortable in that suit. So much so that he was willing to short-circuit it in one case to destroy a swarm of enemy bees. Not to mention fight a metahuman in order to save Felicity. And yet, because of a piece of shrapnel hitting his suit…that’s all gone?

The banter between Stein and Ray was fantastic, as they have very different personalities, and the whole “how do you not remember me?” joke between them was very fun as it took some nice turns to balance out the low points.

There was one other problem in this episode. One of logic. Rip had Savage dead to rights, no pun intended. His followers were down, the whole team was basically with him. And yet…he left him in 1975, instead of carrying him out. If he had taken him to the Waverunner, sedated him, and say…dropped him into that null space where time doesn’t flow? Wouldn’t that have saved the timeline? Yes, I realize that would’ve ended the story more than likely. But still, it’s one that I know some people have already picked up on.

Overall, “Blood Ties” did a good job of furthering both the characters and the plot of the season. Some logic questions aside and a few weird character moments ignored, it’s another solid episode.

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Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!