TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews Legends of Tomorrow Season 7 Episode 11: Rage Against The Machines

After a great bounceback episode last week, I was very curious how “Rage Against The Machines” would do…and sadly, they took some major steps backward in both characters and logic.

So, after delaying WWI, the team had to go and get aboard the Waverider, stop evil Gideon, and ensure their robot counterparts wouldn’t get in their way again. And it started out pretty great, including the plan immediately going off the rails because of evil Gideon’s foresight. This forced the team to try various methods (once again) to try and get their plan to work and most of the time it hit well. Including Sara wanting to talk to the robots first (though I would maintain that was a dumb move due to them seeing the robots kill a bunch of people, but it paid off at the end) and Davies stepping up to play dirty.

In fact, seeing Davies finally find his confidence in a major moment of crisis was actually rather moving. Granted, I STILL wish Matt Ryan was playing Constantine (whose departure many LOT fans mourn and hate), but this moment, and the leading of the team by Davies does show that there was more to this character than just him being the “father of time travel”.

There was also some genuine hilarity to be had in regards to the “disturbances” caused by the Legends. From the talking bass, to the VR and computer showings, it was funny to see what would disrupt the timestream (even though it’s sad that the Legends couldn’t think of that first…).

But where it fell off the rails was their random switches between comedy and drama, and the “impact” of certain choices.

For example, we literally start off the show with the Fake Legends killing off all the time travelers we met last episode. Like, literally, all of them. Not only was that random, it was rather…jarring. Yes, we had seen the Evil Legends kill before, but not like this. And then to go from that to certain comedy elements (including the Fake Nate cycling through voices) was just as jarring. Which happened later when the death of Thawne (more on that in a sec) led to Sara needing to take his place…but then Nate tricked evil Nate into doing that…and it was like…really? There is no way that guy A) knows what to do with that device, and B) would be able to stop things without causing more problems.

Speaking of Thawne, to bring him back only to die like that was dumb. Not to mention, how did the Fake Legends know he was a time traveler? OG Gideon didn’t even know about the Fixed Point bar, or that someone like Thawne was acting as a protector of the timeline, so how did evil Gideon and the Fake Legends know about Thawne and kill him? And technically, his death threatened to disrupt the timeline more. So…why kill him?

Meanwhile, a rather random storyline was Astra’s sudden “mother hen” instincts about Gideon, which was kind of heartwarming…if Gary didn’t ONCE AGAIN overplay things. Seeing Gideon and Astra save the day together was fine, and their hug was genuine. But then…the very next scene is Ava getting stabbed by the fake Astra (in melted Terminator form) and once again we had that jarring shift in tones. Make up your mind on what you want this episode to be.

Another key thing I want to point out, if they needed Zari 2.0 to impersonate a “90s Hacker Zari”…why didn’t she just…you know…summon OG Zari? You know, the ACTUAL hacker? That way she didn’t have to do the random “pulling of cords” that almost crashed the ship? Exactly.

In the end, “Rage Against The Machines” tried to mix many different ones in ways that stood out rather badly. One part of this storyline is now done, but how it ends? We’ll find out soon.

3/5