Legends of Tomorrow 2×16 Review: “Doomworld”

Welcome back to my weekly recaps of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow! To read all of my past recaps of episodes, go here!

Some doom, gloom, and fun

Despite the entire episode existing in an alternate reality and the stakes being fairly high, “Doomworld” was one of the most fun episodes of Legends of Tomorrow this season. The Legion of Doom has rewritten reality and everyone on the Legends team no longer knows who they really are. Sara and Amaya take down vigilantes under the leadership of Damien Dahrk, Ray is a janitor with a knack for tech, Stein works under Jax, who works for Eobard Thawne, and Mick has rejoined Captain Cold alongside the rest of the Legion. Mick betrays the Legion and goes to find the rest of the team, while the only one aside from him who feels there’s something wrong with reality is Nate, and so they must gather the team and get their memories.

The episode has lots of humor and it’s always nice when the cast gets to play different versions of their characters. Each team member is paired off with another or off doing their own thing. Mick, having realized his error in walking away from the team, seeks to rectify the situation. But after everyone gets their memories back, Sara and the team have a hard time coming to terms with Mick’s betrayal, which landed them in their current situation to begin with. So all of the trust issues are still there and the team is still broken by the end of the episode. It’s understandable that the team doesn’t feel completely ok with Mick. They’re in a seemingly hopeless predicament with lives at stake and yet they feel at a loss in the episode’s final moments.

Regardless of some of the episode’s darkness, “Doomworld” had some fantastic moments, great one-liners, and enough conflict to keep it both intriguing and entertaining. Trust wasn’t just an issue with the Legends, but with the Legion as well. Merlyn and Dahrk are not happy when they find out Thawne wants to destroy the spear and cement this reality. Their season-long bickering has finally come to a head and the showdown is delightful. Legends of Tomorrow has even found a way to integrate Captain Cold in a way that works (the hallucinations couldn’t last forever) and this episode highlighted the importance of the team working together that finally felt earned and warranted. 

Amaya’s death

Through all the crazy shenanigans, fight sequences, pep talks, and whatnot, the final showdown between Thawne and everyone else is forever changed when Captain Cold, in an attempt to stop Amaya from reciting from “god’s manuscript,” freezes her and then breaks her into tiny pieces. It was the most shocking part of the episode (and one I don’t anticipate sticking for long since this is an alternate reality). I didn’t see it coming. In previous reviews, I’d mentioned my fear of the show having Amaya leave because she wanted to protect her family and village. And though it would have been very, very hard to have watched her go (she’s one of the best characters on the show), the surprise was that she died in the middle of a battle instead of during the right time in her future.

This changes things moving forward because, while the episode was immensely crazy and fun, Amaya’s death will be the driving point until the rest of the Legends can figure out a way to stop Thawne and the Legion. This is saddening since she should be a part of the action and not away from it. Cold could have simply frozen her without going the extra mile. But given that the next episode is the season finale, I’m sure we’ll see her return and hopefully stick around for season three.

While the show’s second season has been a strong one, an issue does pop up in this episode since Legends of Tomorrow exists in the shared Arrowverse. A lot of it takes place in Central City’s S.T.A.R. Labs and, besides seeing The Flash’s cowl sitting in the Legion’s “defeated” collector’s case, there isn’t any hints about anyone else from The Flash. What happened to the city? Where are all the other Team Flash members in this alternate reality? If the show doesn’t want to answer any of these questions, then it might have been better to set the episode elsewhere.

Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on The CW and stars Caity Lotz, Brandon Routh, Victor Garber, Franz Drameh, Dominic Purcell, Arthur Darvill, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, and Nick Zano.