To say that there was some death on this week’s season finale to DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is both an overstatement and an understatement.
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The fact that many of the episode’s deaths were ultimately undone by changes to history doesn’t alter the fact that audiences watched as some of their favorite DC superheroes were fed through a meat grinder on the battlefields of World War I.
Poor J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t seem to know what hit him!
We figured that after that crazy blitz of action and carnage, it was worth taking a look back at just what went down, who made it out, and who won’t be returning for season 3.
Read on!
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- Legends Of Tomorrow’s Upcoming Sisterly Reunion Will Give Closure
- Legends of Tomorrow EP Klemmer Compares Season 3 To Game of Thrones
HONORABLE MENTION: LAUREL LANCE
Obviously, Laurel’s death didn’t happen in this episode — it happened in the fourth season of Arrow — but it ran through tonight’s Legends of Tomorrow finale in a big way.
It informed a lot of what Sara did, and ultimately that conversation between the two sisters — in which Sara decided how to best handle the Spear of Destiny and the pair decided, once and for all, that Laurel was really gone — could be considered the biggest bit of character-building for Sara yet. Sending Darhk back to his home time period and allowing Laurel to die is also literally the reverse of what she set out to do in the premiere, and speaks to her character growth and the change in her priorities after becoming the captain of the Waverider.
RAY PALMER (Post-Doomworld)
The first big moment — and arguably the most traumatic death, given the fact that at this point killing a Legend was still a bit shocking — was when Eobard Thawne murdered Ray Palmer, The Atom.
Eobard speed into Ray’s chest and removed his heart, then left the audience to watch as Ray simply collapsed backwards on the battlefield.
If time hadn’t already been radically altered by the battle, leaving Ray and his 21st Century tech to be discovered in 1916 France could have been a really, really bad decision…!
JAX (Post-Doomworld)
It’s not long after Ray’s death that things start to get really ugly in a hurry. After realizing that they’re doomed anyway, the post-Doomworld versions of the Legends essentially set themselves up as cannon fodder, a first line of defense to protect the pre-Doomworld versions of themselves from being killed as the younger Legends try to make their way to the Waverider so they can save time.
When One of Merlyn’s arrows knocks Firestorm out of the sky and he splits, the post-Doomworld version of Jax is the only one who can get there in time to save the pre-Doomworld version of Professor Stein. In so doing, he throws himself in front of one of Merlyn’s arrows and dies.
MICK RORY (Post-Doomworld)
Things got really bad, really fast, after Jax died. When the post-Doomworld version of Mick Rory tried to take Damien Darhk one on one, it might have worked if not for the intervention of Captain Cold, who killed his longtime partner before the pre-Doomworld Mick was able to take him out of the fight (non-lethally).
NATE HEYWOOD (Post-Doomworld)
Given that he had already lost Amaya, one could have walked into the episode thinking that Nate didn’t have much left to lose.
To die, stabbed in the back by Damien Darhk, only to have his death motivate his pre-Doomworld self to do right by Amaya is probably the best destiny he could have hoped for.
EOBARD THAWNE
The final, and most important, death of the episode (largely because it’s one of the only ones not undone by time travel) was the death of Eobard Thawne at the hands of the Black Flash.
As Legends fans will remember, Black Flash has been on the hunt for Thawne throughout the back half of the season, due to the nature of him being a speedster out of the general order of time.
Eobard was able to outsmart this by constantly moving about in time, so as to not catch Black Flash’s attention. But needless to say, bringing on an army of his duplicates seems to have done just that.
Even though Eobard met his end in tonight’s finale, it certainly was a perfect way for him to have done so. Having his final battle against the Legends be of such an impressive and epic scale felt like a fitting conclusion, especially given his significance to Flash and Legends, as well as his long history of comic book appearances. In a way, it arguably helped establish Eobard as the most impressive and ruthless villain the Arrowverse has seen yet.
