As the title suggests, this episode is a deep homage to one of the greatest artists of our time, George Lucas. At first, the Lucas homage is laid out nicely, but it quickly turns a bit too intense and ups the campy factor too much for my liking.
The goal of “Raiders of The Lost Art†was to find the amulet in which Sara traded for Martin Stein in an episode prior. We finally learn that the amulet is a device that will lead them to The Spear of Destiny. The spear has the ability to alter reality, rendering those moments unchangeable even through time hopping. It’s an interesting dynamic to add into a show that changes any and all moments at will.
The episode starts off giving a flashback of when Rip scattered the other Legends across history, and finally showing us how he “survived†the whole ordeal. After grabbing a spear that was hidden from everyone, including Gideon, he grabbed onto the core powering the Waverider which completely scattered his brain.
When the Legends crew spot a time anomaly in the 1960s, and the way that two victims were killed were techniques of a person trained by the League of Assassins, they know that the newly titled Legion of Doom are on the hunt. But, when they eventually find out where they are going, they find a much different Rip Hunter. Rip Hunter is none other than a fledgling film student who just so happens to be filming a movie titled Legends, so it is clear that there is still some fragment of his former self in there. Seeing Rip as a film student with an American accent was hilarious, and this setup is something that Legends has done pretty well since way early on in the series. But the vast majority of screen time was devoted to his prop master, George Lucas.
Since the Legion and Legends got to them around the same time and the fight for them ensued, this moment drew George Lucas off of wanting to become a director, which has a direct impact on two of the greatest Legends on the team, Nate and Ray. It is explained that they are having trouble remembering various aspects of their jobs in which they should know, and it all comes back to George Lucas. SInce he was scared out of filmmaking, Nate never watched Raiders of The Lost Ark, which make him want to become the historian in which he is and Ray would have never watched Star Wars to become the inventor in which he has become.
Tying Lucas to Legends is something that hasn’t really been done in the show as of yet, and it provided a nice dynamic to the time aberration this week. George Lucas was an interesting take, especially since most of the aberrations are from more historical figures. Having said that, once it was known that it was indeed George Lucas, the camp factor increased ten-fold. Every single line was injected with an Easter Egg from Lucas’ works. The episode could have been a lot smoother if the allusions to his work were toned down just a bit.
Mick still struggles with his inability to get Snart out of his mind, but he finally opens up to Stein and convinces him to do some brain surgery on him. The Time Masters put a tracking device on his brain when he was Chronos, and that’s what they initially thought made him start to get hallucinations of Snart. But, it is later found out that he simply started having them due to the emotional bond they once shared. I’m not sure how Gideon never caught this, but alas it did provide for more characterization of Mick. Hopefully this means that he can get back to mixing it up outside of the Waverider soon.
