History Notes: Legends of Tomorrow Episode 301, "Aruba-Con"

Fifteen minutes ago, Rip Hunter (ARTHUR DARVILL) left Sara Lance (CAITY LOTZ) in charge of the Waverider timeship and its crew, the Legends of Tomorrow.

Ten minutes ago, the Legends arrived in modern-day Los Angeles to dinosaurs and futuristic buildings, with Sara announcing, "I think we broke time."

Five minutes ago, a five-years-older Rip Hunter re-appeared to disband the Legends team, having used his intervening five years to establish a buttoned-up, by-the-book secret agency, the Time Bureau, who arrived with him to clean up the time anomalies and remove all memory of it from having occurred.

Now the Legends are unemployed superheroes, trying to make do in the mundane world. Sara Lance is enduring an OFFICE SPACE life as a clerk at Sinks, Showers & Stuff. Ray Palmer (BRANDON ROUTH) is trying to change the world as a programmer for a company making the next new dating app. And Nate Heywood (NICK ZANO) is the second most popular superhero in Central City after Kid Flash (THE FLASH guest-star, KEIYNAN LONSDALE).

But their luck seems to take a change when Mick Rory (DOMINIC PURCELL), living it up in Aruba, makes contact with Julius Caesar (KNIGHTFALL's SIMON MERRELLS. With a genuine time-anomaly on their hands, Sara sees a way to get back into Rip's good graces and get re-commissioned. But the Time Bureau takes a dim view of the Legends, seeing them more as dangerous screw-ups than professional time fixers. And the Waverider has been decommissioned and turned into a test simulator for agents in training, who re-live some of the Legends' prior emergencies, and fixing them with far fewer problems. Things don't improve when Mick comes through a time portal having captured the wrong toga-sporting person; it seems that Aruba-Con is going on, and all the fraternities are out in force dressed in Roman garb.

However, on their way out, Mick drops a piece of evidence that proves he did indeed encounter the real Julius Caesar, prompting Sara to hatch a plan to steal the Waverider, get the real Caesar, and prove their worth to the Time Bureau.

Which works swimmingly until they screw it up. Caesar is taken back to his proper time period with his memory erased -- but in possession of THE RISE OF ROME. As a result, the Ides of March are just another day on the calendar for Julius, and he goes on to conquer the known world, and beyond, turning the United States into Magna Hisperia. Which is when the Time Bureau steps in yet again to fix the cock-up, only to walk into a trap set by Caesar. It's up to the Legends to do what they do best -- go in with powers blazing, cause chaos, and rescue the captured agent.

In the end, for unfathomable reasons, Rip leaves the Legends to continue their adventures aboard the ship. We learn after their departure that Rip knows they are key to defeating a coming threat -- a threat they were also responsible for creating: Mallus. We'll see that later in the season, in a two-part episode featuring MATT RYAN returning to his role of John Constantine.

Other things we learn in this episode: Amaya (MAISIE RICHARDSON-SELLERS) has left the team to return to 1942 Zambesi to find her destiny -- which seems to also involve dealing pretty ruthlessly with poachers. Martin Stein (VICTOR GARBER) is going to be a grandfather, but is willing to go on more adventures in time with his Firestorm partner, Jefferson Jackson (FRANZ DRAMEH), feeling that he owes it to Jefferson for having forced him onto the team in the first place. And we get a BATMAN 1966 reference when Sara first powers up the Waverider.

Alea iacta est!