Coming off of one of the silliest episodes in a while last week, the Legends shift gears to one of the more bittersweet episodes in a while–though we know that with the finale still yet to come, things aren’t quite as, well, final as they seem. Spoilers follow for Legends of Tomorrow Season 7, Episode 12, “Too Legit to Quit.”
“Too Legit to Quit”
With Gideon (Amy Pemberton) hurt, the Legends only have one way to save her. Once Evil Gideon is active, she continues to try to destroy the Legends, until Gideon reminds her of a certain protocol she must follow. Trying to help, Gideon negotiates a deal to save the Legends but to get them to agree, she breaks a major rule. Meanwhile, the Legends come up with another plan that could potentially solve all their problems.
When you’re tangling with a deadly AI that controls the very air around you, what do you do? You make a deal. That’s what the Legends had to do this week. After defeating their Evil Robot counterparts and getting back to the Waverider, the team still had to contend with the fact that the Gideon AI currently in control really wants to kill them.
Kill the Legends
Human Gideon finds a loophole to put off extermination while the team works to find a long-term solution, and what results is a bittersweet episode that feels like a sad ending to a show–good thing there’s one more episode left, though.
The Legends are left with little option other than to retire. Evil Gideon isn’t going anywhere, and the second any of them are alone on the ship, she’s going to fire them out of the airlock or cut off their oxygen supply. And so Human Gideon comes up with a plan: show the Legends their futures after the Waverider to persuade them that there is life after time travel.
We see a variety of different futures for the characters; Nate writes a book, while Ava and Sara become mothers to a daughter. While some of these futures sound positive, the information disappoints others. Zari, once operating from a fashion-comes-first mindset, is disappointed to see that she’s remembered primarily for making audible lipstick and being worth tens of billions of dollars. Spooner gets her wish to go back to see her mother in the 1920s–where this season began–but at the cost of never seeing her friends again. Gywn lives alone, unable to reunite with his lost love.
Back to the Future established the idea–at least among mainstream viewers–that one should not know their own future when time traveling, lest they jeopardize it by making contrary decisions. For the Legends, it’s just the fact that none of them are ready for their post-Waverider lives. Other members of the team were ready (casting issues aside) to move on or forced to leave, but this is the whole team at once. Members like Ava, Gary, Spooner, and Astra lived lonely lives before they joined the team. Nate, Sara, Zari, and Behrad were comparatively aimless, and the Waverider gave each a purpose.
Bittersweet Future
It’s heartbreaking to watch, and the show does a great job of letting us into the characters’ heads as they learn this information and try to figure out what to do. They have a retirement party, of course, but it’s stiff, reluctant, and sad. They don’t want to be partying for this reason. These kinds of scenes are always tough to watch, even if I know in the context of the show that there’s another episode left.
With that said, next week marks the finale of Legends of Tomorrow Season 7, and the show has not yet been renewed for Season 8, which puts a dark cloud over the whole thing. What if this really is goodbye for this absurd band of ragtag time idiots?
And so this episode works on both the literal, diegetic level and on the meta level where we’re possibly saying goodbye to a crew who has always had a way out–but who might not, this time. It feels much more tonally appropriate than last week’s episode for the characters and the show in general, and it’s a satisfying watch just for how well it communicates the reluctance and sadness of the team.
