“Out of Time” is episode one of season two of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
In the season one finale, “Legendary”, Vandal Savage was finally killed – permanently. His attempt to destroy time to let him start over from 1700 BC also left Savage vulnerable and he was killed in three time periods. Rip took the Legends home and he was going to try to do what the Time Masters did, or were supposed to do, protect time. All the Legends, except Kendra and Carter who wanted to sample living life free from Savage, agreed to help. But, before they could get into the Waverider, another Waverider landed and a man came out. He said he was from the Justice Society of America. They told him where to find them (time travel messes up grammar more than a little) and he said if they got in the Waverider, they would die.
This episode opens in Star City, 2016, at City Hall. A man is running through the corridors being pursued by security guards before he is finally taken down. Just outside Oliver Queen’s office. Oliver comes out and the man says that the guards wouldn’t let him in without an appointment, but how does an ordinary guy like him get an appointment with the mayor. The man introduces himself as Dr Nate Heywood, and he wants to speak to Oliver about Sara Lance, Ray Palmer and the rest of the Legends. He thinks they’re in trouble.
In Oliver’s office, Heywood is having some trouble getting to the point as he’s already three minutes into the five minutes Oliver granted him, and only because Sara and Ray are friends. Oliver says he doesn’t know the first thing about any Legends; Heywood says of course he does. Oliver is the Green Arrow.
Oliver has had enough of the meeting by now but Heywood says that he has exhausted all of his normal avenues and Oliver is the only person left who won’t think that Heywood is crazy. Oliver tells him not to be too sure about that. Dr Heywood is a historian, specialising in deductive historical construction. A time detective. And he doesn’t need to be one of those to notice that one week after Oliver returned Robin Hood turned up. Although Green Arrow and Robin Hood really only have two things in common – bows and green.
Heywood has spotted subtle, almost imperceptible changes to history. He wouldn’t even have detected them except a friend of his is a quantum physicist. Heywood has a variety of things from history that look like the Legends were there. There was also a UFO sighting in New York City in 1942. A flying machine dove into the Atlantic contemporaneous to reports of the underwater detonation of an atomic bomb (which is frequently referred to as a nuclear bomb only for the term to be frequently corrected to atomic bomb). And yes, that is three years before the atomic bomb was supposedly invented. Heywood said history was changing. Oliver thinks that if the Legends were involved in an A-bomb explosion, they aren’t in trouble. They’re dead.
24 hours later and Heywood and Oliver are in a small submarine in the Atlantic, closing in on the coordinates. Where the Waverider is. They enter the crashed ship – although how they manage to do that is glossed over – and find Mick Rory in sickbay. Oliver says the ship is keeping Rory in stasis. When Heywood asks how Oliver knows that, Oliver gestures to the panel next to Rory that has the word ‘STASIS’ on it. Rory is awakened and immediately attacks Oliver. Who restrains him. Oliver wants to know what happened to the rest of the team and Rory replies that they wouldn’t believe him.
The last think Rory remembers is Rip knocking him out. Which he considers embarrassing. Oliver says to Rory that Sara told her father she was leaving to protect history. Heywood asks why and Rory explains that the idiots who were supposed to be protecting history, the Time Masters, got blown up. Not mentioning that it was the Legends that did it. For six months the legends had been chasing time criminals and fixing the history they screwed up with no problems. Well, perhaps the occasional problem.
They were in France in 1637 to stop Louis XIII being assassinated before he had a chance to consummate his marriage to his wife, Queen Anne. Ray is watching the king and Sara is watching the queen. Who starts hitting on her. The team spot the assassins – who, as it happened, are armed with energy weapons of some type; not common in the time period – and Ray saves the king. Then they have to take out the rest of the assassins – without the help of Sara who is currently having a bit of fun with the queen. Both Ray and Firestorm start flying around, so they don’t exactly keep a low profile.
Back in the present, the relevance of this anecdote is questioned. Rory says that they wanted to hear the full story. They got in trouble by visiting a time period a guy in a hood, Rex Tyler, specifically told them not to do. After telling them this, Rex vanished. Which probably made it difficult to get more information. Rory is asked why they went to 1942 then.
Back on the Waverider, Rip critiques their mission. By which he tells Sara off for seducing the Queen of France – Sara says that the queen seduced her – and using their powers in front of people. Rory says that at least he didn’t screw up this time – and Rip removes a gold chain from him. Rory’s defence is that stealing is not screwing up. Afterwards, Sara goes and speaks to Rip when suddenly the ship lurches. Gideon informs them that the ship was hit by the shockwave from a timequake. Rip explains that a timequake is a disturbance in the temporal zone caused by an unusually large aberration. Sara wants to know why Rip has never mentioned timequakes before. That’s because Rip has never experienced one before. The aberration is in New York City, 1942. When the city is shown, Sara says that isn’t possible. In the present, Heywood asks what’s not possible and Oliver guesses it involves the Nazis. It did; they nuked New York City.
On the Waverider Jax wants to know why, if the Allied forces presumably lost the war, they are not speaking German. Two primary reasons; they are in the temporal zone and it takes time for the consequences of an aberration, even such a cataclysmic one, to ripple throughout time. Which means that they really need to go when they were specifically told not to go. Rip says that the best case is them not dying in 1942, and what if they make it worse. Professor Stein wants to know what’s worse than a genocidal fascist nuclear-armed superpower. A genocidal fascist nuclear-armed superpower with time travel?
Sara checks with Gideon on the location of Damien Darhk in 1942. She wants to get him before he gets Laurel. Papers show that the Allied forces still won the war – two years and 12 million more lives later than before. Albert Einstein also went missing shortly before New York was destroyed. It is not believed to be coincidental that a Nobel prize winning physicist disappeared just before the Nazis built an atom bomb. So the plan is to kidnap Einstein first. Rip is having Jax do a lot of work on the Waverider, instead of coming to New York with them. He’s been having Jax do quite a few things. Rip wants Jax to tune-up the time drive; a functioning time drive will be handy if they can’t stop the nuke.
Sara heads off from the others, saying she is going to check in with a grandfather at the FBI, and Ray follows her. The others head to a cocktail party at Columbia to find Einstein. Stein, who has had quite a bit of hero worship, may be a bit disillusioned by the man. Rory likes Einstein, saying that he’s a pig – he’s currently making friends with two young ladies. Sara and Ray find Damien Darhk, who is talking German to some people about weaponising uranium. Which means that Darhk is connected to the explosion. Which means Sara can’t get her revenge yet. Einstein is safely rescued from some German spies.
Of course, it can’t end that simply. There are bound to be complications. And if a, really extremely small, nuclear device floating around, what could possibly go wrong? There’s also someone else taking an interest in things, and it’s a bit of a surprise.