Welcome back and happy belated holidays, Legends fans! This week continued our tour of formative moments in American history with the Revolution...just, you know, with the added bonus of automatic weapons, care of the Legion of Doom. Or, more specifically, care of the Legion of Doom’s new agent, Rip Hunter.

Talk about rubbing salt into the wound, right?

So, Rip is Rip again but only in the sense that he no longer thinks he’s a film student named Phil. Everything else we’ve known and loved about our former captain seems to be pretty firmly thrown out the window—and Sara’s got the near-death experience to prove it. What the Legion did to Rip’s mind before “reinstalling” his old personality isn’t exactly clear, but...man, whatever it was, it clearly zeroed on a lot of Rip’s old scars. He says flat out that “history is war and slavery and holding a dead son in your arms,” by way of explanation. Ouch, right?

It’s funny (admittedly in a very bleak way) how quickly the things that motivate a person to become a hero can just as easily motivate them to become a villain if they’re just put into a slightly different context.

But despite Rip’s current villain problem, I have to believe there’s still hope for him. I keep coming back to the Spear of Destiny and its powers to rewrite reality as a sort of failsafe for all the biggest problems the Legends are coming up against this time around. But, honestly, I don’t even know if that will be necessary in this case. Call me a hopeless optimist, but I have to believe that there’s still something of the old Rip left in there that will be able to be saved even without the help of a reality warping artifact.

...Maybe?

Clearly, there are plenty of methods in which the Legends could get their old captain back and in one piece, but that begs the question: Should he come back? Obviously, saving Rip is pretty paramount to everything, but once they’ve got him out of the Legion’s hands (if they get him out of the Legion’s hands), do you think he still has a place on the crew? Or would he be better off away from the Legends for a while?

And then there are the matters with…well, the whole rest of the crew. Jax has been consistently stepping up, which has really been amazing—how cool was his Home Alone’ing of the Waverider tonight? But escalating complexity in Dr. Stein’s life (what with his secret daughter and everything) makes me a little nervous for the future of the Firestorm matrix.

The more Jax seems to step up, the more Martin seems to stumble all over himself, and tonight was a pretty clear-cut example of that. Thankfully Sara didn’t pay for it with her life, but man, it was cutting it pretty close.

Thankfully, there was more than just existential anxiety in this episode! We also got to learn some pretty valuable lessons about the virtues of fighting dirty from our very own Revolutionary soldier, Mick Rory.

The Legends have made an art out of breaking rules when they need to, and tonight, Mick got to put that into practice—even if he probably didn’t really realize it (or, even genuinely intend to) at the time. I don’t know about you guys, but I for one would really welcome a Heat Wave statue somewhere at the capital.

Mick might not like admitting it, but he’s been stepping up this season almost as often as Jax. That’s probably a good thing considering that there’s definitely some slack to be picked up with Nate, Amaya and Ray’s burgeoning love triangle acting as a distraction.

Speaking of, how do you guys feel about that one? Because from here, I’m getting the distinct impression that Nate is waaaaay more into Amaya than Amaya is into Nate, and I’ve spent this whole article trying to be optimistic, but I’m not completely confident in Nate and Ray’s ability to handle that sort of mutual crush drama between the two of them.

Let’s face it, both Nate and Ray are great at a lot of things, but maintaining emotional maturity isn’t very high up on that list.

Do you think Nate and Ray are headed for a rough patch in their friendship? Are you as worried about the future of the Firestorm matrix as I am? And what do you think about Rip’s new lot in life?

Let me know in the comments!
 

Meg Downey covers DC's Legends of Tomorrow as a part of the #DCTV Couch Club. Look for Meg on Twitter at @rustypolished. DC's Legends of Tomorrow airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. (7 p.m. CST) on The CW.