Legends of Tomorrow uses its time-hopping to the fullest extent in its latest episode, “Last Refuge.†With the failure of Chronos stopping the time-hopping legends, The Time Masters employ the services of The Pilgrim. Apparently she is a ruthless killing machine that will, except for in this case, get the job done. They employ a neat strategy to get rid of the Legends by killing their younger selves, and if they do so at the exact right moment, the damage to the timeline will be minimal. When they see their younger selves in the past, there are certainly some nice interactions, albeit they all could have been fleshed out a bit more.
Rip always preaches about not messing up the timeline, but it seems the further they go into this show the more they potentially alter the timeline. Although they do have a magic bullet of sorts with a handy amnesia pill. Where it began as trying to fit in as much as possible, now they seem to go out of their way to cause ripples throughout the timeline and apparently are going to slip them pills to forget what has happened. Seeing the younger versions of these characters is certainly fun, though a few stick out in particular. Â
Of all the characters, we don’t really know all that much about Mick, Jefferson and Rip. Sure we know the basics of their backstories, but they get some nice scenes in this episode.
We catch up with the younger Mick when he accidentally burnt his house down, with his parents inside. Up until this point we didn’t really know anything about his parents, as we did with the other characters, but now we know it was his fire that got away and lit the house up. You could kind of guess that it was something to this effect, but watching current Mick lecture his younger self was strangely dramatic. It also gives a little more credence as to why he and Snart are as close as they are. In a way, Snart became his family after his perished.
Jefferson, on the other hand, had a very different interaction with his much younger self. We meet Jefferson’s father, which Jefferson thought that his father never even got to see his newborn son before he was killed in action. The meeting is pretty emotional because it really changes the way that Jefferson sees things now. He finally gets to see that his father was a loving, caring man. So, as much as he tried to fight it, he just has to tell his father that if he deploys he will be killed in action shortly thereafter. Of course, this is all moot if his father did indeed take the amnesia pill. But, all is not lost. During their interactions, his father talks about how he is so proud of who Jefferson has become. I feel like this will change his entire outlook on what they are trying to achieve since Rip and his son are essentially in the exact reverse situation in the sense that he is trying to save his son where Jefferson was trying to save his father.
Throughout the entire episode, Snart quips that Rip doesn’t even have a past, but boy does he ever. He may even have the most depressing past of the entire group. Rip was an orphan and seldom had shelter or food and thus was a perfect candidate for the Time Masters. He was weak and had no connections keeping him in the current timeline. They essentially preyed on this specific type of individual and mortgaged his future. It’s no small wonder why he is so adamant about fixing the timeline to get The Time Masters as far away from him as possible.
The climax of the episode comes when Rip agrees to trade his younger self for Jefferson’s father since he was going to be killed by The Pilgrim. Of course they have some tricks up their sleeves, and the fight scene ends up being one of my favorites of the season. The Pilgrim can essentially freeze time and, at one point, freezes all the Legends’ attacks at once. The spectacle is awesome and really reminds you of the greatness of the series. Then, younger Rip stabs her, and thus everyone is saved.
