Legends of Tomorrow recap: Leviathan

Vandal Savage’s latest weapon? A giant robot. The team’s? A tiny bracelet.

Okay, maybe that’s a little unfair: A lot more happened when the “legends” arrived in 2166 London, the last major city with an actual patch of safety for the Resistance and, as Rip tells the rest, where they can definitely find Savage because he’ll murder his wife and children three days later. To figure out how they can get close enough to Savage, Rip, along with Sara, Leonard, and Mick — or “Killer, Klepto, and Pyro,” Mick says — watch Savage deliver a speech, and Leonard catches the eye of a woman who walks past them. Kendra, watching their progress, notices that the woman is wearing a bracelet — her Egyptian bracelet, in fact — and realizes that they can use the bracelet to kill Savage. The team, as usual, fumble on their way to Savage and are forced back aboard the Waverider, during which Kendra fills Rip and the rest in on her discovery.

But Rip needs more help understanding Savage’s plans and forces, and so he brings Ray, Jax, and Stein on a detour to the Resistance camp, where they learn that the refugees are actually exhausted civilians with little provisions. Jax and Stein sympathize with children, and Ray talks to Rip about his family. Rip reveals that it’s not even really about saving his wife and son anymore because each time he tried, Savage found some way to kill them anyway. “I watched my family die countless times at the hands of Savage and his forces before I realized time wants it to happen,” he says sadly, before an attack leads him and Ray to see the result of what Savage can do: wipe out an entire camp, leaving behind no survivors.

Ray decides to work with Stein to figure out Savage’s weaponry based on the samples at the site. But as for stealing Kendra’s bracelet back and turning it into a weapon against Savage? The team is stumped. Rip tells Kendra to read through Boardman’s notebooks again, but Kendra scoffs, saying she’s read them enough times. And yet…while rifling through their recent relics, she finds Carter’s mace, touches it, and has a flashback to Iowa City in 1941, when a previous incarnation of Kendra interrupts a previous Carter working out. (Thanks for the gratuitous shirtlessness, The CW!) It’s their anniversary, and he’s forgotten. But he makes up for it by encouraging her to pick up his weapon and learn to defend herself. And in the present, Kendra realizes what she must do.

Meanwhile, Captain Cold and Heat Wave make it to the lair of the mysterious woman with the bracelet and take her down, bringing her aboard the ship. There, she reveals she’s not Savage’s lieutenant; she’s his daughter. Savage Jr. turns out to be just as steely as her father, deflecting Leonard’s questions as he tries to pry intel from her about Savage’s weapon. Still, it seems as though she didn’t learn everything about her maniacal dad: She tells Leonard that Per Degaton released the Armageddon virus — and as we saw in the episode with the young Degaton, that’s definitely not true.

Before Leonard gets a chance to use this, the ground begins to shake from faraway stomps, caused by Savage’s ultimate weapon that’s big enough, as Ray and Stein realize, to create giant footprints in the ground. Stein, hoping to save as many refugees as possible, encourages Ray to help him bring the survivors aboard the Waverider over Rip’s protests. And as they take off, hoping to outrun the weapon — a giant robot nicknamed “the Leviathan” — they get snatched instead. As in…

Uh oh.

NEXT: There’s Leviathan on a spaceship… (sung to the tune of “Leaving on a Jet Plane“)

After the Leviathan’s attack, the Waverider is in desperate need of repair. As the robot gears up for another attack in about an hour, Stein realizes he’s been hit with shrapnel and is bleeding out. (Guess this episode traded in the Firestorm visual effects budget for the giant robot’s!) Rip brings him to safety, but at least Leonard’s having more success with Savage’s daughter: He relates to her personally over having a bad father whom he idolized until he understood that fathers can be, well, “crap.” He reveals that Savage lied to her about the release of the virus and shows her how the dangerous rebels she had been fighting were just impoverished innocents. Tears well up in her eyes…and with that, Leonard has managed to turn Savage’s own daughter.

With that piece in place, all the team needs is their weapon, and thanks to Mick, Kendra melts the bracelet and uses it to coat Carter’s mace so that she can use it to kill Savage. Even better news? Ray may have figured out a way to stop the robot — something that helps cheer up a despondent Rip. Kendra and Ray say their goodbyes, and Ray heads outside, where, with Jax’s help, he reverses the technology of the Atom suit so it’ll be able to grow to the size of the Leviathan. (In other words, he pulls a Pacific Rim and figures out a way to have the enemy fight something its own size.) The reversal works, and Ray fights the Leviathan while Savage watches, just before he gets called away to see his daughter, who has returned.

Of course, Savage, being Savage, quickly realizes that his daughter is no longer on his side. The “legends” then rush in, and a fight breaks out between them and Savage’s men while Kendra arrives to end Savage once and for all. At first, every fight goes the way of the “legends” — the Atom has the upper hand, the team is taking down the goons, and Kendra is bashing out the magic in Savage — but just as Kendra is about to deliver the killing blow, a shooter arrives, forcing her away from Savage. They fight, and Kendra brings him down. His helmet falls off, and it turns out to be…Carter?!

Yup, her ex-boyfriend is knocked out on the floor, just like her current one: Ray’s been pummeled by the Leviathan. Ray manages to get up again, thanks to a pep talk from Jax — and even tears off the robot’s head! — but Carter’s officially out cold. Even worse, he doesn’t remember he’s supposed to evade Savage. Savage explains that he found Carter without knowledge of his past lives, so he turned him into a soldier and locked away his memories. If Kendra kills Savage, she’ll never be able to save Carter — and with that, she disobeys Rip and backs away.

Back on board the Waverider, Kendra asks to talk to Ray (uh oh), Stein wakes up to a more crowded ship (Savage and Carter have been brought on board), and Rip goes to talk to Savage, who’s gleeful and confident he won’t be behind bars soon enough. “Time will tell,” he says, but at least this time, he doesn’t have the upper hand. He’s captured, and his daughter is also helping the rebel camp, offering to divulge Savage’s tactics and weaknesses. Maybe the “legends” will win, after all?

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Cheesiest Line of the Night: “Now might be a good time to start praying.” —Rip Hunter, who should have much cooler potential last words.

This Week’s Winner of the Unofficial EW Legends of Tomorrow Scenery Chewing but in a Good Way Award, a.k.a. The Legend-ary Ham of the Week: Wentworth Miller. That whole “interrogation” scene opposite Savage’s daughter was him at his Captain Cold hammiest.

Team MVP: Ray and Kendra. Their relationship might be on the rocks now that Carter has to be saved, but Ray defeated the Leviathan, and Kendra figured out how to change a bracelet into a weapon. These two events are equally important in the scope of this show, which is insane, as Kendra notes: “So I’m going to take on an immortal madman and you’re fighting a giant robot. I can’t believe this is our life.”

On to some timey-wimey notes!

• “A 4,000-year-long relationship seems like it would be hard to get over.” Sara, stop reminding Kendra of Carter! The Hawkcouple can stay in the past! Alas.
• “We just like bright sparkly objects like that bracelet… it works with my outfit.” Got it: Never take fashion advice from Mick.
• “And there I was thinking we would go a whole week without kidnapping anyone.” Rip may be Mr. Misery, but he sure can pull off deadpan humor.
• But then again, I don’t think we’ve ever seen a more miserable Rip than the one below:

• “Apparently it’s very true: There is a lid for every pot.” So, I’m guessing Stein never learned that Savage can attract wives, like the one they met in “Night of the Hawk“?
• So…the team’s marooned in 2166 for at least another episode, given the Waverider’s state. I would cross my fingers that Savage’s forces don’t take over the camp, but who am I kidding? This is Legends of Tomorrow.