Jessie Robertson reviews the eighth episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow season 3…
Our finale, part 4, has as many highs and lows as The Beast, a local roller coaster. The death of Martin Stein hangs heavy over this episode. Let’s just all stand up and clap for Victor Garber (aka The Professor) as his final scene is one of weight, emotion and superb acting. It was known for a while that he was leaving the show but I always half expected him to find a way to allow Jax to keep the Firestorm powers and just separate him from them (nice try on making him “Spider-Man”, Professor.) But, alas, that was not to be. It’s an emotional scene, and unfortunately, Franz Drameh (Jax) isn’t equipped to handle. He’s definitely emoting, but his performance totally fails for me. The subsequent scenes of the heroes reacting are all un-emotional and dull. No tears. His funeral scene is a much better fitting tribute. Only the Stein family’s reaction feels correct, until the funeral. Franz redeems himself a bit here with his ending dialogue to Clarissa. Victor, you will be missed, sir.
This episode our full roster shows up, and it’s a bit over-crowded, honestly. Zari just finds a superhero costume as well, in a very Schumacher-esque moment. Truthfully, with just evil Oliver, Over-girl, their Nazi regime and their Nazi Waverider left to contend with, the final battle feels a lot like every other battle in the show and the death of Martin hangs heavy over the next few scenes as if that should have happened later being such a major moment. Most of the heroes are just beating up weak Nazi dudes. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the tracking shots of the fight feel like a poster where characters are just posing in fights. Hell, Oliver and his twin fight on top of a van the whole time; how much room is up there? You couldn’t even set up lawn chairs comfortably!
Honestly, the final battle is not good. Flash & Thawne’s special effects and short fight seem even more in fast forward and then for Barry to just let him go seems like the worst idea in Barry’s career as a hero. Honestly, this feels like one time too many for Thawne, this exact Thawne to show up and begins to cheapen his first appearances in season one. All the Superman-esque callbacks between Supergirl and Overgirl are tremendously appreciated though: “Care to step outside, General?” is direct from Superman II ( I believe) The completely unnecessary death of Over-girl is right from All-Star Superman and Kara falling back to Earth reminds me of many great Superman images.
To cap off the episode, we end with a surprise double wedding in a pretty good moment. Diggle throwing up after getting carried by Barry is always great. I found Barry’s vows a bit weird; he considers Joe a dad but never Iris a sister? Iris’ speech was the highlight because she wasn’t giving some monologue; it was a simple story of love, and a good one. Overall, the crossover was fun, despite many, many bad flaws in the writing, had so many great in-jokes and callbacks and some decent action. I would love to see the crossover next year get a little more creative and not be so predictable in many ways. The death of Martin was good TV, and sad, as well as the double wedding but these final battles are just window dressing to show off amazing special effects. I think there’s def. room to improve next year but I would put this right up there with last year’s, if not just slightly behind.
Rating: 7.5/10
Jessie Robertson
