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chuckroAfter Vandal Savage kills his wife and son, Rip Hunter goes AWOL from the Time Masters and recruits an assortment of supporting cast members from The Flash and Arrow to travel through time and kill Savage before his rise to power. Surprisingly, recruiting a ragtag group of misfits doesn’t actually go that well, as infighting, incompetence and a complete inability to plan ahead cause them to screw up history even worse than when they started.
I was interested in the concept, but concerned about the execution. The first episode only increased my concerns. Then, in episode 2, they fridge Hawkman. Let me say that again: THEY FRIDGE HAWKMAN. They kill him off in a stupid way to show how powerful the villain is and to give Hawkgirl motivation. This was so refreshing I was willing to give them the rest of the season.
In episode 3, they actually manage to take down Vandal Savage…kinda. See, he can only truly die if Hawkgirl kills him with a magic dagger. He’ll regenerate from anything else. Since Hawkgirl is out of action at that point, they just stab him a few times and leave him there. Anyone else see the glaring solution they missed? Like, say, carrying him back so Hawkgirl can coup de grace him? Or covering his body in quick-set concrete and dropping him into the deepest part of the Pacific?
There’s a similar moment in episode 5 where Rip has Savage at gunpoint and I started chanting “Shoot him! Shoot him!” I felt a bit better when Rip blew up the room—and Savage—when he walked out. At least by later episodes they’re knocking him out of windows, which makes it less obvious that they could have captured him if they tried. The thing is, doing this early on actually makes Savage a crappy villain—the fact that they beat him, albeit temporarily, removes a lot of his threat.
As a bit of comics geekery, I’m a little irritated that they merged Savage with Hath-Set, because making him a jealous Egyptian removes some useful characterization of the character: Namely, that he’s an uplifted caveman. As Alan Scott once noted, Vandal Savage would happily eat his enemies. Properly written, that makes him terrifying.
Meanwhile, the Ray/Kendra romance arc had one good point and a dozen stupid ones—the fact that it really took off in earnest after they spend two years stranded in the 50s together was great! Plenty of time for them to really get to know each other and cling to each other as fellow fish out of temporal waters. The back-and-forth that takes place over the course of a few weeks afterwards? Ugh. I mean, it’s just a star in the greater constellation of “Ray Palmer makes poor life choices,” but even so.
They spend far too much time falling back on the “time solidifies so it can’t be changed” and “we want to minimize our impact on the timeline” excuses to not do anything, when it’s clear from early on that time changes fairly easily, just not in the ways they want it to. If a change in the timeline would benefit Vandal Savage, it’s easy. If it would hurt him, it’s impossible. The reveal at the end that the Time Masters were pulling everyone’s strings to begin with mitigates some of the team’s stupidity and incompetence, though not all of it. And at least that’s a decent explanation for the highly variable malleability of time.
(Their approach to time travel in general is highly “timey-wimey”. Given the genre I think that’s okay, but the lack of consistency or at least hand-waving is irritating.)
Overall: Okay, honestly, there’s a lot of stupid in this show; it’s arguably the weakest of the four Arrowverse shows. That said, it’s still fun comic-book action if you’re willing to turn your brain off for it. Word has it so far that season 2 gets better, dropping some of the weaker characters and having more fun with the time-travel premise.
I was interested in the concept, but concerned about the execution. The first episode only increased my concerns. Then, in episode 2, they fridge Hawkman. Let me say that again: THEY FRIDGE HAWKMAN. They kill him off in a stupid way to show how powerful the villain is and to give Hawkgirl motivation. This was so refreshing I was willing to give them the rest of the season.
In episode 3, they actually manage to take down Vandal Savage…kinda. See, he can only truly die if Hawkgirl kills him with a magic dagger. He’ll regenerate from anything else. Since Hawkgirl is out of action at that point, they just stab him a few times and leave him there. Anyone else see the glaring solution they missed? Like, say, carrying him back so Hawkgirl can coup de grace him? Or covering his body in quick-set concrete and dropping him into the deepest part of the Pacific?
There’s a similar moment in episode 5 where Rip has Savage at gunpoint and I started chanting “Shoot him! Shoot him!” I felt a bit better when Rip blew up the room—and Savage—when he walked out. At least by later episodes they’re knocking him out of windows, which makes it less obvious that they could have captured him if they tried. The thing is, doing this early on actually makes Savage a crappy villain—the fact that they beat him, albeit temporarily, removes a lot of his threat.
As a bit of comics geekery, I’m a little irritated that they merged Savage with Hath-Set, because making him a jealous Egyptian removes some useful characterization of the character: Namely, that he’s an uplifted caveman. As Alan Scott once noted, Vandal Savage would happily eat his enemies. Properly written, that makes him terrifying.
Meanwhile, the Ray/Kendra romance arc had one good point and a dozen stupid ones—the fact that it really took off in earnest after they spend two years stranded in the 50s together was great! Plenty of time for them to really get to know each other and cling to each other as fellow fish out of temporal waters. The back-and-forth that takes place over the course of a few weeks afterwards? Ugh. I mean, it’s just a star in the greater constellation of “Ray Palmer makes poor life choices,” but even so.
They spend far too much time falling back on the “time solidifies so it can’t be changed” and “we want to minimize our impact on the timeline” excuses to not do anything, when it’s clear from early on that time changes fairly easily, just not in the ways they want it to. If a change in the timeline would benefit Vandal Savage, it’s easy. If it would hurt him, it’s impossible. The reveal at the end that the Time Masters were pulling everyone’s strings to begin with mitigates some of the team’s stupidity and incompetence, though not all of it. And at least that’s a decent explanation for the highly variable malleability of time.
(Their approach to time travel in general is highly “timey-wimey”. Given the genre I think that’s okay, but the lack of consistency or at least hand-waving is irritating.)
Overall: Okay, honestly, there’s a lot of stupid in this show; it’s arguably the weakest of the four Arrowverse shows. That said, it’s still fun comic-book action if you’re willing to turn your brain off for it. Word has it so far that season 2 gets better, dropping some of the weaker characters and having more fun with the time-travel premise.
