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    Where Eobard Thawne fits in the timeline 
  • It is strongly implied that Eobard Thawne and Rip Hunter knew each other, given Eobard's passing mention of him in "Fast Enough" as well as the fact that they both seem to possess Gideon. Moreover, the timeline seems to more-or-less fit, but that's where complications lie: Eobard mentions he was born in 2151. 15 years after that is 2166, when Vandal Savage conquers the planet and Rip Hunter travels back in time which sets into motion the events of Legends of Tomorrow. However, Eobard seems to be in his forties when he first comes to the year 2000 to kill Nora Allen, implying that he lived for a number of decades in the hellscape of Vandal Savage's earth. What was his role in this? Does he meet Rip Hunter somewhere down the line?
    • Given that Vandal's future doesn't seem like one where someone like Thawne would be able to really exist openly, the most logical explanation is that Thawne's own time-travel (possibly combined with The Flash's S1 finale) screwed up the timeline and allowed Vandal to take over. It's even possible Thawne was a Time Master, or closely affiliated, in his own timeline (assuming he wasn't always murderously evil).
    • It's important to note that we don't actually know how old Eobard Thawne is. He could be 40, or given the type of medical technology they would have in the future, he could be well over 100. Also, there is some evidence that Eobard Thawne may have lived through Vandal's reign, or something similar: During the episode "The Reverse-Flash Returns," Thawne apparently had to go back in time to different time periods in order to find the one when the Flash operated. Considering that Flash operated a little over a century after Eobard Thawne's birth (and the existence of metahumans including the Flash would obviously be an important timeframe to be mentioned in the history books), it seems rather weird that Eobard wouldn't actually know when the Flash existed... unless someone deliberately erased that era of history texts. And we know Vandal Savage is both genre savvy and petty enough to do something like that.
    We Refuse To Blend In. We're From PC Land! 
  • I think it's great that the show is trying to be progressive, give equal representation, etc. But half of the conflicts that result in this show could have been completely avoided, if the legends had just sucked it up and pretended to go along with local values. For example, in "Night of the Hawk," they would have garnered a lot less suspicion if they had pretended Ray and Sara, or Jackson and Kendra, were the married couple, rather than having an interracial couple in the prejudiced deep South. (And then they have the nerve to look confused when the locals are shocked.) Would it really have been so hard for Ray to say "Heil Hitler" in "The justice Society of America"? And then Sara goes and introduces lesbianism to Salem, Massachusetts, and doesn't expect to be hung as a witch? I could point to similar instances in nearly every episode. Do they even understand the concept of maintaining a low profile?
    • They don’t blend in because they are not Time Masters. Or trained time agents. They are head strong and strong willed individuals who have not been trained for the job. Basically they carry their time and mindsets with them no matter the time they visit. Despite being time travellers they dont adapt to the time because of who they are. If they were trained for it, trained to adapt and vanish in the background then it would not be a problem. But as stated they are not Time Agents. They are stubborn, impulsive, reckless and quick to fight. Their interactions in the past is not them being PC but basically being themselves. Which makes sense, to them they are tourists, and don't plan to stay in the times lines they visit. They are strong enough to protect themselves and don’t follow Time Master rules to get the job done. They were gathered for their ability think and act out of the box. Which is why during S1 they were a headache to Rip, and why he gathered them in the first place. No about being PC but being themselves and not giving a damn most of the time.
    • Adding to the above, they are all essentially the embodiment of the My Friends In Funny Clothes trope - if nothing else, it's repeatedly lampshaded (and by "repeatedly" I mean it happens at least once an episode) in S1 alone just how little "keeping a low profile" matters to any of them when there's a possibility of exploring a new time or place or just meeting a new version of someone they know. They never stick around in one time period for long, and none of the characters are professional actors (the closest they have to that is probably Snart in S1 and Rory thanks to them no doubt having to have pulled a few cons in their criminal careers). Whenever they stop off anywhere, they have a very specific thing to find or someone to talk to and then they're back on the Waverider within a few days tops. It's hardly surprising none of them particularly feel like going through the hassle of researching their respective expected societal positions for a couple of days pretending. Also, there's really no getting away from the fact that even though we haven't completely sorted out issues like racism or discrimination against women or those in the LGBT+ community, we've still come a long long way from, say, the '50s. Jax, Kendra and Sara all came from a world where they had substantially more freedom (and would be immensely aware of how hard that freedom had to be fought for) than they would if they were natively from that time period. I highly doubt they would take too kindly to the thought of having to play the part of being (for want of a better word) subservient for the sake of allowing the straight white males natively from the 50s to feel comfortable and secure in a world view they know will start to be shattered a few years down the line anyway.

    What the Hell are the Time Masters doing? (SPOILERS) 
  • So, it turns out Rip actually got kicked out of the Time Masters for stealing the Waverider, and they sent somebody to bring him in. Fair enough. But why would they send someone like Chronos, whose MO seems to be "shoot everything, kill everyone"? Did they not vet him before hiring him (assuming "bounty hunter" means third party), or are the Time Masters just idiots?
    • He did check to see if those two random schlubs had any effect on the timeline. Presumably he did that to the entire team before he started shooting—or the Time Masters had already told him. The ship was out in an open field with no witnesses around but a guy who was going to die in 24 hours, so presumably he felt it safe to unload his full arsenal.
    • The problem is more that he starts off by opening fire on Rip and the Waverider. Besides the fact that you'd think the Time Masters would want their ship back in one piece, "immediately start blowing everything up" is just an all-around terrible way to try to apprehend someone.
    • Chronos seemed focusing on making sure that the Waverider could no longer function. If it can no longer function then his target ( Rip) becomes stationary and easier to catch. He was using heavy firepower on the others but as Rip later confessed their loss would have negligible effect on the timeline. Also there is no evidence the Council wants the ship back in one piece. They would chalk up its loss as acceptable, compared to the unknown damage a renegade Time Master with no oversight can do with a fully functioning time ship.
    • Now fully explained. Chronos is actually future!Heatwave and remembers that day. Also, his mission was to kill Rip since Savage has control of the Time Masters.

    Time Masters role 
  • Also, what exactly are the Time Masters doing, literally? They seem to have no function whatsoever. They didn't stop Eobard when he went back in time, and they didn't do anything about the Flash S1 finale. Exactly what "dangers" to the timeline are they protecting against? And who else even has the ability to time travel?
    • It is possible that Eobard was always meant to go back in time. The Flash that prevented Barry from saving his mother could be an indication of that. It is possible their function is to preserve history and smooth over wrinkles that may occur now and then thanks to Time travel of rogue elements. As for who has the ability to time travel? Considering that the Time Masters had to be created to protect the Timeline the answer is enough to be an ongoing problem. It is possible that this will be further explored in the show.
    • Regardless, if there's a crossover with the Flash on this show, then I'd imagine Barry will call out the Time Masters on being incapable of stopping changes to the timeline.
      Rip/Chronos/Random Time Master: Our role is only to preserve the integrity of the timeline.
      Barry: Yeah? Then where were you the night my mother was murdered?
    • I imagine they would only present the Flash that prevented him saving his mother originally who would then explain to him that saving his mother would have made the World into a living hell.
    • Well, there must've been a timeline where Barry grew up with his mother and yet still became the Flash, otherwise Thawne would've had no reason to kill Nora. But in answer to the original question: why don't the Time Masters do anything to stop Flash or Reverse-Flash? Honestly, it's probably because they can't do anything to stop them. Even if the Time Masters sent someone like Chronos to the exact same moment where a speedster traveled through time, it would be incredibly difficult to stop them when they could be a hundred miles away the moment Chronos arrived. Add onto the fact that Barry Allen and Eobard Thawne are absolutely critical to the timeline, and there's not a whole lot that the Time Masters can do to stop them.
    • I assumed it wasn't so much as preserving the events of time, but rather, they stop paradoxes forming. IE, they wouldn't stop Thawne changing events since its not their job, but they would stop Thawne if his actions threatened to cause a paradox (IE, if he succeeded in killing kid!Barry, meaning no Flash, meaning no Reverse-Flash, meaning no time-travel to kill kid!Barry, meaning the Flash would happen, meaning the Reverse Flash would happen, meaning he would kill kid!Barry, etc). Its actually likely that it was them, possibly Rip Hunter himself, who made sure Barry went back to save his child self, and probably instructed him that if he saw another Flash-indicating that he went back in time to prevent something, that he should stop them to prevent a similar paradox forming.

     The plot could be resolved in seconds. 
  • Okay, Rip, you have stolen a time machine and are now beginning your 'Recruit A Team From The Past To Fight Savage Throughout History' Plan. Here's an easier idea: Why don't you just go back in time to Ancient Egypt before Savage became immortal and either shoot him in the head or capture him then? Heck, do it after he became immortal but while he was still weak so that the Hawk's could still reincarnate into their later lives. You have a Time Machine Rip, this isn't hard. And you're screwing around with time anyway!
    • While Rip is clearly fine with changing the timeline, presumably he doesn't want to erase it totally. If nothing else, he has a vested interest in not erasing himself. Since Savage is so important to basically all of human history (no matter how terrible his effects are) it's probably just too risky to straight-out kill him so early. Rip's plan likely revolves around weakening Savage enough that they can take him down in somewhere around our present (possibly our future), while making sure history still goes as planned. Remember, even in his long-shot proposal he was arguing for an intervention during Savage's WWIII.
    • This. While Rip wanted to alter the timeline to prevent Savage's reign in the 22nd Century, he still wants to keep time relatively stable. This is the whole reason he recruits the Legends in the first place: because they have little effect on history if they die. It's why he goes to Doctor Boardman 24 hours before he's destined to die, and why he tries to make sure that they only affect Savage's past while minimizing any other alterations to the timeline.
    • He mentions that the physical side-effects of time travel get more severe the farther back in time you go. Maybe going 4000 years into the past is more than anyone can survive.
    • Unlikely, since at least two characters travel 75 million years back in time with no ill effects whatsoever.
    • Here's another way he could deal with Savage: Savage recharges his immortality by ritually hunting and killing the reincarnating Hawk couple. Why doesn't Rip just take Carter and Kendra into the future and let old age catch up with Savage?
    • He doesn't kill the Hawkes to stay immortal, he kills them to get a power boost. As long as they live he lives. They keep reincarnating so he keeps being immortal, he basically hunts them to become a living god. Even if they where moved to the future he would still be in the past accumulating power leading to the future that Hunter fears. Not only that it is unknown what would be the affect of altering the Hawkes reincarnation cycle. Seeing that it seems to have a pattern a Time Master like Rip may be hesitant to disrupt the pattern.
    • That's really a lot of steps to go through that might be chalked up to Rip being irrationally afraid of Vandal Savage. That and the Hawks being intent on killing him. At the end of the day Vandal Savage is presented as a human. Above average sure but ultimately nothing that would escape Flash's vault. Firestorm beat him with minimal effort in S 1 E 2. Despite Firestorm leaving Savage utterly unguarded for a few minutes he was still pretty winded when the hawks took their shot. It would have been easy for Snart to freeze Savage solid. Once he's incapacitated there are any number of ways to be rid of him. Presumably the Waverider can travel through space. Savage hasn't displayed any magic sufficient to think that dropping him off on Mars wouldn't keep him out of our hair for at least a few decades and farther out than that if you simply wanted to be rid of him. And that's without time travel. Dropping Savage off hours before the Earth is engulfed by the sun would likely solve him even if he did survive. This becomes less baffling of course if you accept that Rip is just traumatized and not thinking about the tools he has available to him and the Hawks and now the full team effectively in vengeance mode and thus focused entirely on ways to kill an immortal rather than permanently incapacitate him.
    • Vandal is more then above human, he is literally superhuman. He has thousands of years of skills, plus the fact that every time he kills the hawks he becomes faster, stronger, and more durable. He takes a nuclear blast at point blank range and survives. He has highly advanced deductive and reasoning skills, able to determine the group's futuristic origins from a slip of the tongue. He has been killing the hawks for thousands of years, getting more and more powerful each time. Add the army at his beck and call, and you have an opponent you do not want to underestimate. Not only that, but Rip is constrained by two factors. He cannot go too far back least he unravel time all together, because it is unknown what influence Vandal has had on world history. He can't go forward too much because Vandal would be far too powerful to stop. So Rip has to target a limited time period where Vandal is still dangerous but Rip has a chance to stop with his small group. Even smaller with the loss of Carter Hall. Add in the fact that Rip has the Time Masters and Chronos after him as well, then you have a man who has to try and prevent the rise of an unstoppable force while being hunted by his former group. Rip knows too well Savage's power, he just wants to make sure he stops him once and for all. Hence his caution. Even in Ep 1.2 when the team was there, Savage had his army to back his play by taking on the Legends. Rip is cautious because so is Savage.
    • Firestorm is not presented as actually being the equivalent of a nuke, certainly not on average. But regardless he took Savage down. We have been presented with no reason at all do think Snart couldn't freeze him solid. We aren't given a timeline for how long it takes him to regenerate either, back in Flash/Arrow we only know that Malcolm has Savage's ashes and that he will eventually revive. So the even if it's temporary having Firestorm kill Savage would still have worked in the short term and in the long term they are time travelers. Heck if Savage is still recuperating when WWIII is supposed to happen then that solves Rip's problem.
      • Knocking a guy over does not count as taking him down.
    • A man who gets up from being blasted out of his own house by nuclear flame most likely won't be held by ice for long. Savage's durability and resolve is formidable, and that was before he got a power boost from Carter. Rip decides to run because he fears that Savage may come back and take his team out. Savage had just absorbed Carter Hall so he is on a power high. If he confronts the group, his skills could take out the non-superhumans like Canary, Snart, Rip, and Mick. Then all he has to do is engage Atom and Firestorm until more of his men arrive. Not only that, he could divert their attention by forcing them to try and protect their downed colleagues at the same time. The man has thousands of years of war behind him, can take huge amounts of damage, and knows literally thousands of ways to kill. Two are down, Mick is still groggy from his previous encounter, and the rest just finished from a prolonged fight with Savage's group. A tactical retreat to save one of their own and to prevent losing more is the best option.
    • He doesn't need to be held for long. Thus far nothing we've seen suggests that Savage could even get out of a sufficiently advanced prison. He's smart mind you but clearly not the smartest guy in any room since he had other people working on Palmer's tech. So as of 1975 because by 2016 he may very well be as good as Cisco and Felicity together on computers, a cell with a computer lock made by Palmer and walls that human strength couldn't break would hold Savage pretty much indefinitely. So the ice only needs to hold him until they find a more permanent solution and additionally the ice should hold until Snart's gun runs out of power. And if that happens Firestorm can always hold him down as was already demonstrated. And again even if dropping him off on Mars wouldn't be fatal to him I'd love to watch him gather the materials necessary to return to Earth.
    • Remember how when Savage got the Staff of Horus, the altar it was originally in was totally cracked open? How do you think that happened?
    • Not only that , after Atom blasted Savage, his men was literally after them less then a minute later. Even if they took the time to freeze him. His men showed up in enough numbers to force the group to retreat. Should they risk capture when outnumbered, with two down and one still recovering from being assaulted? Or should they retreat when the only person who could kill Savage is down? Of course they retreated, simply put there was enough time to freeze savage and get back to their ship. His goons where already on their flank.
    • Rip could have just asked Kendra and Carter about Savage's defeat in 2015, go back to the moment just after Team Arrow and the Flash left, and take the ashes before Merlyn could. Even if Savage could regenerate from that, he wouldn't pose much of a threat outside the planet. Being smart, strong, and immortal doesn't grant one space flight powers.
    • There is no indication that the Waverider is capable of space flight so the whole dump him on Mars is a moot point. As well as there is a limit on what Rip actually knows. So far he has had to track down leads where Savage is. Even if he tracked down the Halls to find out what happened to Savage and where he is the fact remains he still may get there after Merlyn took the ashes, after all he took only a portion. He doesn't know, even if he cut it close he runs the risk of encountering the Hall's before he meets them in 2015 cancelling out the meeting and causing a time paradox. The reason that Rip gathered a team is because 1) Savage really is that dangerous and 2) Going solo and using nifty time tricks to take out Savage isn't an option when he has the Time Masters against him who can do the same tricks. he needs a team because he needs to operate in more then one fashion. Stealth, violence, science, theft these are tools he needs and he knows it.
    • One thing constantly being ignored: Savage isn't just immortal, but he's demonstrated other supernatural abilities as well. He's clearly shown using magic to disappear when no one can see him (even when falling out a window), is able to enter locked doors and escape handcuffs (and put the handcuffs on others), and has access to other mystical artifacts, and that's just what's shown. Even if they went the 'capture him and lock him up' route, there's nothing to indicate that holding him would even be possible given he can get out of binds and get past locks without any effort, and is evidently not easy to fight; if they tried that, he'd get out of whatever restraints they used on him and probably kill a good number of them before Kendra was able to strike a finishing blow.
    • He seems to need trinkets to use his magic and falling out of a window may have been as simple as it didn't kill him. The rest of these tricks are not beyond what we've seen Oliver, Merlyn and Ra's do. As of Episode 3 Vandal's 4000 years of elite martial arts training had him lose singles combat to Rip who has to date not been shown to be at all above average in combat. Vandal's knowledge is still finite. Ray could build a cell Savage couldn't escape simply because Vandal in 1975 has never seen 2015 computers.
    • Except there was no evidence he even hit the ground, so clearly it's more than just 'it didn't kill him'. He's shown doing magical stuff without 'trinkets' (he didn't appear to need anything for his disappearing tricks, or at least wasn't shown grabbing any), and even if he did, they have no way to know if they removed all his trinkets first (assuming they'd be able to restrain him in such a way to do that in the first place). There's nothing to indicate that anything Ray could build would be enough to keep him prisoner, especially given very little is known about his abilities even in universe.
    • There is a much simpler way for Rip to solve the plot: just go back in time moments before his wife and son are killed, and get them out of there. I know that Savage killed them mainly because of Rip's meddling with time, but their absense could be excused for unaccounted casualties. And admittedly, this would make the foreshadowing at the end of the Arrow episode, Legends of Yesterday, pointless.
    • He tried that, too: "Countless times." Apparently, time wants to happen. Also, it wouldn't stop the whole Savage-taking-over-the-world thing.
    • If time wants to happen, then that contradicts the whole point of a show about time travel. This then leads to literally every other change in the timeline that has happened in the whole show (and the entire Arrowverse in general) to becoming a plothole.
    • That's not necessarily the case. The "time wants to happen" thing is presented as the show's parallel to that other time-travel show's thing about "fixed points in time that can't be changed/prevented in any way...but we can save maybe a handful of people". It's probably safe to assume that there are certain events in the timeline that cannot themselves be stopped from happening, merely the circumstances surrounding it can be changed: Aldus Boardman would always die on that particular day, the Legends just stopped him from dying alone at his desk; Lewis Snart would always go to prison, it was just for a different crime than it would have been; Miranda and Jonas would always be killed by Savage, Rip just kept changing the method and timing of their deaths. The timeline itself is actually changed plenty by the Legends' time-travelling, it's just very specific events that aren't. That doesn't create any plotholes.

    Soviet nukes in Norway 
  • In the final scene of the first episode, which takes place in 1975, we see that Vandal Savage has attacked a convoy of the Norwegian soldiers (you can see the Norwegian flags in their fatigues) that was carrying Soviet nuclear missiles. But Norway was never a part of the Eastern Bloc, it's always been a Western democracy, and it was even one of the founding members of NATO. So why the heck would the Norwegian army be transporting Soviet missiles? It wouldn't make any more sense than if the US army was doing the same.
    • Doylist: the writers made a mistake.
    • Watsonian: Maybe the Norwegian army caught a Soviet convoy and were transporting the nukes back for holding/study.
    • Anyway you look at it, this answer doesn't really cut it. It would mean that either the Soviet Union was transporting nukes within the Norwegian border, or that the Norwegian army crossed to the Soviet side of the border and took the nukes from there. But the Soviet Union would never have risked transporting missiles within the borders of NATO country, nor would Norway have any reason to breach the Soviet border and steal some of their nukes. Either of these actions could've lead to World War III, so it makes no sense whatsoever for either Norway or the USSR to do it.
    • Soviet aircraft crash in Norwegian territory and the Norwegians are going to hand it over to the US for study?
    • Those missiles were in pristine-looking containers with Russian writing on them. I don't think they'd been in that good a condition if they were rescued from a crashed aircraft.
    • Possible idea: Those soldiers were black market dealers transporting stolen nukes and Savage just stole it from them before they could sell it/use it themselves.
    • The Soviets had a tendency to cover up almost any misstep or misfortune if it involved nuclear material. It is entirely possible one of their subs had an accident or breached the three-mile limit, provoking a warning torpedo launch from a NATO sub that ended up exploding closer to the hull than intended. Either way, if NATO knew where that sub was they might conceivably try to confiscate the nukes on it precisely to keep a privateer's mitts off them.
    • The arms fair is being held in the northern most part of Norway, right next to Norway's border with Russia. There is nothing that says they were stolen there, just that Norway is where they are being sold. It is more likely that Savage ambushed and stole the Soviet nukes in Russia and then nipped across the border, somehow, to sell them in the relative nearby safety of Norway.

    Billing Question 
  • As much as I like the character/actor, why does Victor Garber get top billing over Darvill, Routh, Renee, or Lotz?
    • He's a much bigger name that people have heard of and has drawing power. Routh has a relatively successful movie career, which is why he gets second. Darvill, Miller, and Purcell have successful television careers, but if you don't watch those shows, they aren't the same draw.
    • TV credits are controlled by very stringent rules set by the Screen Actors Guild, including things like what kind of billing you get, whether your credit appears in the opening or closing credits and where in the order of credits you get billed. A production can get into serious trouble with SAG for not following the rules, which is why opening credits so often spoil the appearance of actors in surprise roles.

    Savage is not unstoppable 
  • So, the Time Masters clearly were founded by someone, at some point in time. It is highly unlikely that Savage lets people build functioning time machines and then create reality-spanning temporal superpowers. So that means at some point, he must have been defeated. Rather than traipsing across time, potentially screwing up every time period he visits, why doesn't Rip just either recruit the person who defeats Savage (if it's an individual) or give futuristic technology to the group that defeats Savage (if it's a group)? The only logically- and temporally-sound possibility I can see that would explain the Time Masters' reluctance to interfere at all is that the Time Masters themselves defeat Savage. And if that's the case, Rip is going to create a paradox by defeating him regardless of how important the members of his crew are.
    • The Time Masters don't engage Savage because that is not their function. As they said, they protect time. Savage is part of an established timeline, so defeating him would go against who they are. Also, we don't when or where the Time Masters where founded. They could have been founded in the past or the future. The problem is that Rip wants to alter the timeline. He wants to stop Savage before the whole world burning war, not after. Rip doesn't want to find the hero or group that defeats Savage after he does his damage. He wants to stop him before he gets that far. While Rip does care about keeping time intact, he is looking for ways to make careful changes that prevent the rise of Savage. Also, he can't risking the person or groups responsible for defeating Savage because of how it would affect the timeline. Such a person or groups would be too important. That's why he took the Legends: Minimal effect on the timeline, meaning minimal risk of taking them from their point of origin to fight Savage.
    • It turns out, Savage is not unstoppable... but he does allow people to form the Time-Masters, as they have been working with Savage all along.

    Shouldn't killing Savage in 1975 cause a huge paradox? 
  • In "Pilot, Part 2", the plan of is for Carter and Kendra to kill Savage while they're in 1975. But wouldn't this result in a Grandfather Paradox? We know that Savage has killed all the previous incarnations of the Hawks. This means that the incarnations native to 1975 will eventually be killed by him too. But if the 2016 Carter and Kendra kill Savage in 1975, that would mean that their 1975 incarnations won't die a violent death... Which could mean that the 1975 incarnations might still be alive in 2016, which in turn would mean Carter and Kendra don't exist, so they can't be there to kill Savage, which results in paradox. Judging by Professor Stein's disappearing wedding ring, we know that the changes made to the past will have an immediate physical effect to the time travelers, so the paradox is inevitable. And even if the 1975 Carter and Kendra had already died of old age by 2016, their 2016 incarnations would have been born much later, probably to a different family... So the versions we know would still cease to exist if Savage is killed in 1975, and the paradox would remain. The only way to avoid the paradox is for Carter and Kendra to kill Savage in a time period where the current incarnations of the Hawks have already been born, which, judging by their physical appearance, can't be earlier than in the late 1980s. Since Rip Hunter is an expert on time travel, shouldn't he know all this? Yet killing Savage in 1975 appears to be his plan, or at least he's okay with it.
    • Legends of Tomorrow shares a universe with Flash and it seems that the only answer there is that time does what it wants, because it wants and there is little point in thinking to much about it. More likely however is that Carter and Kendra, much like Eobard Thawn are somewhat fixed structures in time. Or some kind of needlessly complex stable time loop is in play.
    • But in The Flash, Eddie killing himself so that Eobard wouldn't exist creates a paradox strong enough to destroy the Earth. This is directly comparable to the Hawks killing Savage: a time traveller travels in the past, and his existence becomes paradoxical because something happens there that alters his own history. Also, nowhere in The Flash is it stated that "time does it wants", the S.T.A.R. Labs team seems to have a fairly good understanding about the rules of time travel, For example, in "The Reverse Flash Returns" Cisco starts to fade out of existence because of yet another paradox altering his past, and Wells explains his situation as such. So Grandfather Paradoxes are an established part of time travel rules in The Flash, and there's really no reason why the same shouldn't apply to this series.
    • Except that's exactly the problem. Eobard wasn't killed, he was retroactively erased via Eddie's suicide. Which killed that Eobard but left this earlier one intact apparently because he needs to set up the entire series. These concepts are mutually exclusive however. So yes the Grandfather Paradox is apparently in play, when it's in the mood. If that weren't the case the entire series wouldn't work because Rip is essentially in a paradox. His motivation for going back is to prevent Savage but if he prevents Savage. . .
    • The way the shows treat time travel isn't consistent at all. For example, grandfather paradoxes shouldn't be an issue there, as they have established an existence of parallel universes (which is one way of resolving the paradox; i.e. any change to the past will simply split off another reality without changing your own). Then there's the idea that some events have to happen, for some reason, such as Barry's mom's death. The latter is complete B.S., of course, as reality was perfectly fine in the original timeline, where she wasn't killed (and yet Future!Barry still lets his mom die, for some reason). They also forget a convenient way to solve the whole "Savage" problem without gathering a team and traveling through time - go to the moment just after Savage's disintegration by the Staff of Horus and get his ashes before Merlyn does. Then hide them where (when?) no one will ever find them (say, on the Moon just before it's scorched by the sun in the distant future).
    • The problem as stated above is timing. Even if he gets there after the fact , Merlyn only took a portion of the ashes. Rip could take the rest think its all over, when it's not. If he gets captured by the Time Masters after that, he then loses his one chance and doesn't get another shot. Another thing he risks a time paradox if his timing is off and he meets the Hall's before they tell him about the ashes, cue the giant paradox eating wormhole. Also the Time Masters knows the same tricks he does. Hence him gathering a team, the Time Masters know his playbook and his options. So he has to dump the usual Time Master tactics hence his use of a team.

    How does Snart recognize Stein? 
  • They never crossed paths on The Flash, yet Snart immediately knows who he is.
    • Snart has displayed that he's quite a bit smarter than he actually lets on. We know he can work on the Cold Gun and only lacks some very specific bit of expertise that Cisco has. So he may have interests that sound unusual for him. That and Stein is a cutting edge scientist. He may be somewhat famous, perhaps on par with real scientist celebrities such as Elon Musk, Neil Degrasse Tyson or Stephen Hawking. Finally Stein is an associate of Team Flash and Snart does his homework. The idea that he knew who Firestorm is and perhaps even Team Arrow is not outside what he's shown to be capable of. Once you know who Barry is and perhaps have some way of keeping track of STAR labs Oliver Queen visits STAR labs and Arrow and Flash Team up becomes incredibly easy to piece together.
    • Alternatively, there was a span of six months between Season 1 and Season 2 of The Flash where Stein acted as Team Flash's mentor after Ronnie Raymond's death. It's possible that Snart ran into Stein during some Noodle Incident adventure during that time.

    Leipzig has a non-state-owned bank? 
  • In 1975, Leipzig rested quite far inside what was then East Germany, and the banking system was, more so than in the West, a key plank in the government's management of the economy; any bank in East Germany back then would have been subject to considerable scrutiny, if not being outright owned by the government. Why would Vandal Savage, for even two seconds, think of entrusting his money to a Communist-run bank? This series plays way too fast and loose with history.
    • Aside from the Arbitrary Skepticism, who says the USSR actually knows the Brümberg Group is a bank? And even if they do, presumably the guards are there for a reason.
    • It's really important to remember that while the history of the Arrowverse is likely similar to ours, it is not exactly the same. One of the more obvious differences is that our world didn't have an immortal psychopath running around history causing every single major war in the hope of someday conquering the planet... not as far as we know, anyway. Besides, as shown in this episode, Savage has a massive cult that pays tribute to him and are rewarded with extended lifespans. It's possible that he already has several important communist officials in his pocket, including bankers and important business leaders.
    • In general, in the GDR a company would probably have been formed as a "Volkseigener Betrieb", which implies government ownership, so if Vandal did tempt some highly placed officials with the promise of extended life (including, critically, the Stasi) then a lot of looking the other way could happen regarding what the "bank" gets up to.
    • This could be easily solved by remembering this is a bank that has Vandal Savage as one of its clients, if not it's main client. It's obviously an evil bank, for evil people, so the USSR ignores it because they probably get benefits from it.
    • As is shown in the 1986 portion of the Season 1 arc, Savage is now actually within the Soviet Union; parking his assets with a GDR joint-owned bank makes a lot more sense in light of his intended bankrolling of a Soviet supersoldier.

     Stabbing Vandal 
  • When Carter stabbed Vandal Savage with the enchanted dagger, Vandal pulled it out like it was barely an issue and killed him for his trouble. When Rip Hunter stabs Vandal Savage in the mission to recover Carter's body, of course it doesn't kill Vandal, but it severely wounds him - enough that he doesn't show up to cause trouble on that level again until 1986, eleven years later. What's the difference in the two wounds?
    • I though Rip cut Vandal's throat. If he did, the most likely explanation is that Vandal heals from any non-fatal wounds, but actually being injured to the point of "death" weakens him for a while. Also remember that they didn't just kill Savage: they raided his secret base and showed his followers he's not all-powerful. Even if Savage healed in a week, he may have had to spend the intervening years rebuilding his power base.
    • Not to mention, since Vandal DID kill Carter and absorb his life force, that probably immediately healed him up from the wound.

     Why didn't they capture Savage after he was unconscious? 
  • Are Rip Hunter and the rest of the team suffering from brain damage? He was unconscious, there's no reason they couldn't lock him up and have Hawkgirl stab him when she was recovered.
    • The army of semi-immortal cultists wasn't defeated, they were regrouping for another attack. Getting Savage's corpse out of there wasn't an option.
    • As I noted for the Recap and character pages while removing the Good Is Dumb entry, taking Savage then would be a terrible idea since they don't know how long it takes Savage to heal, they have no way to contain him (since, besides being immortal, he's also got mystical escaping powers and an unknown amount of other abilities), and, as noted above, an army willing to die for him who are right there and would be more than capable of killing the group before they could escape. That's without taking into consideration how Kendra is in no fit state to do anything at the moment given her own injuries, so they'd need her to heal before Savage does; until she's recovered, they should be keeping her as far away from Savage as they can.

     Sara, worst girlfriend ever 
  • With Sara getting a new love interest... WAIT WHAT?! Is Nyssa suddenly chopped liver? Last time I checked, they were a couple. Did they break up? Because I was under the impression that after Season 2, the two were dating. Does Death just make you forget your love intrest? Plus, my second problem with it. This is a woman in the 50's. It will never work. Sara will just have to break her heart! Does Sara just bring her? Yeah, I bet Vandal will just be like 'Oh, a civilian, and your love interest? Cool Beans!' And not harm her? Sorry Sara, I love ya, but this romance stuff will just end in two ways. Make Sara look like a douchebag, or will just be stupid.
    • Well, considering it hasn't happened yet, it doesn't make Sara "look like" anything. Nyssa was still imprisoned when Sara joined Rip's crew, so Sara couldn't exactly go back and visit her. While the rest of your points are valid – it would make more sense for Sara to be with someone who can handle themselves – we don't know the specifics. "Love interest" can just mean that Sara likes her, and it's not like love is a choice.
    • Given Nyssa and Sara's relationship, while they make a cute couple and have great chemistry, did have some stockholme syndrome implications, and Sara only got back together with her as it was so the LOA would help save Starling City, I don't think Sara not reconnecting with her after her resurrection makes her a horrible person; she might love Nyssa, but Nyssa was hardly a great girlfriend herself, and their relationship had a good number of problems (not to mention, Nyssa herself seemed reluctant to renew their relationship, given she was against bringing her back in the first place).
    • Sara's claim about being happy and choosing her own fate and the end of season 2 always seemed a bit ridiculous, what with how much she wanted to not be a member of the League earlier in that same season. It's ridiculous to call Sara the "worst girlfriend ever" when the woman she was dating poisoned her sister and kidnapped her mother.
    • Well, there's a reason for that last part. A reason which has been rectified, but before Nyssa broke out.
    • Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder...

     Damien Darhk: Master of disappearing when it gets good 
  • While it was cool to see him in that scene with all the other bad guys at the auction... Where was he when the heroes came in? Damien Darhk not fighting one of the legend members was a huge letdown! I would have loved to see him fight Sara, Atom, or Firestorm!
    • That would require him revealing himself as a badass in charge. We don't know if the different immortals are aware of each other or each others' organizations. If you're an immortal manipulating the world from the shadows and some people charge into your plans spewing fire, you get out of there and regroup. The Legends showed up on Vandal's home turf, but Damien has nothing to gain from fighting.
    • While you have a point, didn't Vandal say that you get a nuke for something really low for killing them? I think Damien would love a nuke over wasting a little secret like he can use magic.
    • A "little secret"? Aside from the fact that "I am magic" is a huge goddamn deal unless everyone else in the room is also superhuman, the only reason Vandal offered that price was to get the terrorists to stall the Legends. Vandal knew the Legends would make short work of the terrorists, and Darhk is too smart to get caught up in a firefight of that level if he might lose.
    • It's also possible that Darhk was not yet a magic user in the 70s.
    • From the current flashbacks of season 4 of Arrow it seems he didn't have his current magical powers until at least a few years before s01e01 of Arrow.

     An army of Firestorms 
  • So the outcome of creating a Soviet Firestorm is that the Soviet Union creates a bunch of them and invades the US, taking over everywhere but Star City? How? It's not like you can just turn any two people into Firestorm. Henry Hewitt became Tokamak specifically because he wasn't a valid match for Stein. Building an army of Firestorms would involve A) getting a bunch of people willing to fight for you and participate in the experiment (the easy part) and B) having every single one of them turn out to be compatible matches with one other member of your group (much harder and something you have no control over).
    • You assume that all the Firestorm soldiers survived the ordeal; its likely that they had hundreds, if not thousands, of people undergo the process, and the ones who survived became the Soviet Firestorm soldiers we see (note, we only see a handful in the future prediction, not a whole army). Given Firestorm is literally a living nuclear weapon, only a handful would be enough to level the US.
    • We also have to consider that they were able to figure out what fluke made Ronnie and Martin compatible within a few days to separate them, and then used that information with very little additional research a year later to narrow down to two possible matches. Savage has had his team researching the technology from practically nothing to recreate the accident. Savage would be able to iron out the selection process much better having perfected it in the lab.

     Rescuing Stein from the Gulag 
  • Sara was told by Rip to pull the trigger on Stein in case he's going to cave into the Soviet's demand for the Firestorm matrix. But while Sara is aiming with her sniper scope, can't she shoot the guards instead of Stein himself? The prison break makes the perfect chaotic scenery where most of the guards are preoccupied with crowd control; and even if Sara only took down one guard escorting Stein, the prison riot should be able to hinder the guards further.
    • Reality Is Unrealistic: Ignoring the fact that Sara is better skilled with a knife and staff than a gun, taking that shot would have been difficult, even for a trained sniper. Ignoring the fact she needs to account for bullet drop and wind resistance, but as they were moving from left-to-right in Sara's perspective rather than towards/away from her, being able to hit a guard, and only a guard, would have been difficult. If she was aiming for Stein, the only risk is the guards next to him, which wouldn't be a problem, but if she was aiming for the guards and trying to avoid killing Stein, then taking that shot would have risked hitting Stein anyway. It was either 'shoot and Stein will probably die' or 'don't shoot and hope they can save him'.

     Why not Kneecap Savage? 
  • So in the recent episode, Hunter gets the drop on Savage and holds him at bay with his laser gun. Now, since Hunter clearly had the element of surprise and Kendra was right there, why didn't Hunter just have her keep Savage talking and then Hunter could kneecap him from behind? Shoot up his legs from surprise and he'll be in a perfect position for Kendra to gut him and solve the problem right then and there. They could blow him up afterwords to celebrate.
    • They don't have the weapon necessary to kill him, and it's doubtful that it's on his person right now.

     Take down the Time Pirates as Firestorm 
  • In one scene where Jax and Stein are surrounded by the pirates, why are they waiting for Rip's signal instead of merging together as Firestorm? They could easily surprise the pirates and take them out while Rip's preoccupied with kicking the pirate leader's ass. Isn't that pushing the Rule of Drama too much?
    • Honestly, I was expecting exactly that to happen when I first saw that scene, and I was rather disappointed when they didn't go that route. However, as mentioned on the Fridge page, it does make sense: Jax and Stein turning into Firestorm and going to town on the pirates might end up with them trashing the ship and destroying the computer core, which was the whole reason that they boarded the derelict Time Ship in the first place. Plus, if the decompression plan hadn't worked (or Rip had been killed), Firestorm might have been the backup plan. We see Stein and Jax standing within arms reach as the pirates surround them, and you get the impression that if Rip hadn't reported in, they would've merged and gone for that route.
    • They're also in a spaceship in the middle of, well, space. I imagine turning into a fiery, radioactive nuclear man wouldn't be the safest course of action; at best, he does damage to the computer equipment without intending to, at worst, he burns up the limited oxygen supply and damages the life support systems just by existing, or the life support protocols act against him (IE, cut him off so the radiation and heat don't harm anyone). In any case, he runs the risk of harming the ship rather than harming the pirates.
    • Confirmed next episode: Going Firestorm inside time ships is dangerous and damaging.

     Heatwave's punishment 
  • Okay, so you have a crazed pyromaniac that just betrayed the team and tried to directly kill a protagonist, how do you utilize the time machine/space ship to get him out of the way without hurting people? Well obviously killing him is the solution! (Maybe) Why not cuff him and drop him off outside the Central City police department? It's not like he's show much skill at escaping from prison on his own. Or drop him off at S.T.A.R. Labs' pipeline if security's an issue! Hell, why not get clever with time travel and drop him off somewhere isolated, kill Savage, then travel back to two minutes after you dropped him off in the first place? There were other solutions!
    • Mick Rory, even before his flamethrower, was considered one of the deadliest criminals in his timeline. Even Leonard thought he could kill his sister and Sara's dad, both of whom are badasses. Besides, one wrong thing, and Mick could break free, killing everyone. Plus, he can recreate the flamethrower with enough tools. Mick is too deadly, even with all the prisons.
    • Not to mention, while they could leave him somewhere and pick him up later, why would they do that, given the fact he clearly doesn't like them and would probably go out of his way to hurt them. Even if they pick him up, he's probably going to respond by attacking them as soon as they show up. Then, if they fail and don't ever come back to pick him up, he'll either die, or, depending on where/when they left him, do what he can to damage time to get back at them.
    • Snart actually did try that last one. It didn't work out so well.

     Killing two birds, and one Savage 
  • Okay this is a little Fridge but what would happen if Hawkman/girl killed each other? Would Savage eventually die off seeing as the only thing keeping him immortal is killing them? I mean he would be able to use their bodies (if he could get his hands on them) to keep himself alive until they reincarnate again, but what if every time he tried, they killed each other/committed suicide then had their bodies burned, would he eventually die? this is working under the assumption, HE has to kill them, or at least has to be in proximity when they die. Also what would happen if one of them kills Savage? Does it work the same way?
    • Savage is immortal. He kills the Hawks to gain more power, not to live forever. And we don't know what will happen when the Hawks finally kill Savage. It was brought up when they thought they had killed him that maybe he reincarnates while the Hawks are immortal now, but in the end we don't really know.
    • I always assumed from conversation in the show, that Savage gains a power boost and his Immortality boost, maybe its like a winner stays on game, whoever gets killed gets reincarnated and the winner stays alive to face again, just that savage is 200+ up in the score.

    Why doesn't Gideon warn the crew about the space pirates? 
  • In "Marooned", Rory is flying the boarding ship back to the Waverider, and Gideon informs the Waverider crew that Rory is coming, and even tells them she helped Rory to pilot the ship. However, when the boarding ship docks, the crew finds out Rory has betrayed them, as the ship is full of space pirates with guns. But why didn't Gideon tell the Waverider crew about the pirates? She's a pretty lousy AI if she's not been programmed to inform them about a bunch of armed strangers about to enter the main ship.
    • Likewise, it seems at first glance odd that Gilbert was taking orders from the pirates. It makes more sense, though, when one considers that these problems would exist in-universe as well; if the time ships' AI could detect pirates and refuse their orders, the pirates would cease to be a viable role, and so to even exist the pirates must have some way to subvert and conceal themselves from the ships - or, in short, the pirates hacked the AI. This also explains why the "explosive decompression" anti-pirate strategy couldn't just be ordered by the captain from the brig; without having an ally in place to provide a target, Gilbert simply couldn't know where to eject them from.

     The ethnicity of Savage, Hawkgirl, and Hawkman 
  • Vandal Savage, Hawkgirl, and Hawkman are all from Ancient Egypt, and it is seen in flashbacks that every incarnation of Chay-Ara and Khufu look identical. Despite all being from Ancient Egypt, only Chay-Ara is a person of colour—Falk Hentschel is German and Casper Crump is Danish. In many instances within the show this can be seen as an acceptable break from reality (although still a controversial casting decision), but it really becomes noticeable in "Night of the Hawk", which takes place in The '50s. Kendra specifically faces racism as a woman of colour, yet Vandal Savage, also hailing from Ancient Egypt, does not—because unlike her, he is white. The whole situation is quite odd, and I wish there was some internal logic of the show that could justify it. Perhaps Khufu and Chay-Ara's various incarnations aren't always identical individuals, and we only view it that way as a convenience to the viewer? Maybe in real life Ancient Egypt there actually was a large variety of skin tones amongst the populations that could allow someone like Vandal Savage to pass as white? (I highly doubt this was the case in real life, though perhaps we are supposed to expect this to be the case in the Arrowverse).
    • Ancient Egypt was a major crossroads of trade and travel. It was a major civilization at the junction of the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southwest Asia. Merchants, invaders, and migrants from all over passed through all the time. It is impossible to know for certain, but there were probably people in ancient Egypt who were darker-skinned than Ciara Renée, and others lighter-skinned than Casper Crump.
    • You can check the Black Vikings page to see real world cases of things happening that are exactly like that
    • Contrary to popular belief, there's very little evidence that Ancient Egyptians were as dark-skinned as people from more southern African nations were/are. Even now, native Egyptians tend to appear more Middle-Eastern in terms of skin colour than anything else. While casting two definitively white men as Egyptians is less than ideal (to say the least), neither's skin tone can be said to be that far off the mark in terms of being potentially accurate.

     Has it always been Mick? 

  • The show has established the rule that time travelers cannot interfere with events in which they participated themselves while time traveling yet Chronos interfered multiple times with events in which time traveling Mick was present. Is there an explanation or it is just a plothole?
    • I imagine it's because Chronos went through the necessary brainwashing to prevent any major paradoxes from happening. As long as he follows the 'script' of what was supposed to happen to lead up to Mick becoming Chronos, then there shouldn't be any problems.
    • What would have happened if Chronos had succeeded in blowing them out of the sky prior to their arrival in the 2046 Star City. Remember, Mick was still on the ship at this point, so if Chronos had screwed up and destroyed the Waverider, wouldn't he cease to exist? While I grant that Mick is known for his recklessness, it seems like the Time Masters would have warned him not to pursue a self-destructive course of action.
    • The show is clearly incorrect on the rule of time travelers unless Speedster Time Travel is fundamentally different from Time Lord Time Travel. We know we've had present (S1) Flash and Future Flash both present at the death of Nora Allen. They didn't touch but they were clearly aware or each other. As for the paradox we're not entirely certain what caused the rip at the end of Flash S1. It was heavily implied that time travel that way was exceedingly dangerous and could open a vortex. Well founded as it is we're not certain Eddie's death was the source or just the straw that broke the camel's back. If it's the latter the Time Lords not only might not care that could be the plan. Chronos kills Rip and Crew, past Mick dying kills Chronos. No need to take out the trash as it were.
    • My understanding of that time travel method is that they essentialy lost containment. It wasn't so much that he traveled through time as how he did it.

    Snart's hand 
  • Why does Snart scream in pain when he smashes his frozen hand? It's already frozen through to the point that it's possible to smash. He wouldn't have been able to feel it anyway.
    • The impact could have gone up his stump and into the tender nerve endings behind the frozen bits.
    • There's also the possibility that Snart screaming was a purely psychological reaction rather than him reacting to any actual physical pain. Similarly to how amputees can feel a phantom pain in their amputated limb in the aftermath of them losing it. There's no way for Snart to not be aware of the fact that he is destroying his hand (and, for all he knows, permanently which sort of adds to the inherent horror of the situation) and while there may not be any real pain, his brain might register the knowledge of him losing a limb and recognise that he should feel pain as a result.

     Fixing Jax's torn ACL 
  • As seen with healing Snart's missing hand, the Waverider has the medtech to regenerate lost limbs. So why not do something about Jax's torn ACL? It almost got him killed when he had to run a gauntlet of Soviet soldiers, and the first time he went to S.T.A.R Labs was to see if they can fix his ACL - so it's not like he doesn't care about it.
    • Maybe it can't fix things that have already healed (even if they've healed improperly).
    • But later, Ray tries to tell Jonah that they have the technology to fix his face - an injury that has long since healed.

     The Pilgrim's Time Stopping Power 
  • So it's established that the Pilgrim has the power to stop time (or at least slow down time significantly) within her vicinity. Though it's pretty cool of her to halt the combined attacks from the Legends, how did Young!Rip Hunter move in for the kill and not be affected by the Pilgrim's power?
    • She doesn't stop time in her vicinity, she stops the timeline of whatever she's targeting at the time. She wasn't targeting Kid!Rip.

     So The Pilgrim is reversing time... 
  • Doesn't that mean that a shot fired from, say, Cold's freeze gun should travel back into the gun rather than hitting Cold? She's not physically redirecting the "bullet" (for lack of a better term), she's turning back the clock in a localized area.
    • If she reverses the projectile while keeping the person frozen until the last second, the projectile would hit the person and knock them back.

     Badass Decay for Vandal Savage? 
  • Is it just me or does Vandal Savage seem like a much noticeably weaker physical combatant in this series than he did in the original Arrow/Flash crossover? In those episodes we saw him use lightning-fast knife skills that somehow made him a match for The Flash despite not actually having Super-Speed himself. In fact, he later faced The Flash, Green Arrow, Hawkman and Hawkgirl in battle and easily defeated them all. Later on those four retry this battle but this time bringing along Diggle, Thea and Laurel, and even then they barely win. Of course, much of this could probably be chalked up to the fact that he wielded certain mystical artifacts in many of those fights (e.g. the Staff of Horus), but it still seemed like he was overall much stronger in these two episodes than he is on Legends of Tomorrow. Thoughts?
    • I always felt the crossover episodes overhyped Savage. In his first encounter with the heroes all Barry did was stop the knives then he just stood there looking worried. He didn't even try to stop Savage, just let the Queen siblings shot arrows at him. Nothing he did was really special or great before he got the magical staff. The problem Savage has is that we're told he is so dangerous and this great fighter, but he is still fighting a group consisting of super powered individuals, trained assassins, super powered weapon wielders. Savage isn't really supposed to be a physical threat. He is mostly dangerous because as Rip says he hides in the shadows, shapes events and people, immortal, thus he is planning a long strategy of his conquest. That does not mean he is a dangerous physical threat to the team.
    • One possible explanation is that Savage is said to be becoming more powerful by draining the life-force of Khufu and Chay-Ara after he kills them, which basically that he gradually grows more powerful over time, the more times he kills them. Most of Savage's appearances in this series have occurred before those crossover episodes in his personal chronology, so he might be comparatively weaker because he hasn't killed the Hawks as many times as he will by the time of those episodes. Granted, it isn't made clear exactly how killing the Hawks enhances him and in what form, other than perhaps making him even more of a Badass Normal.
    • Arrow may have answered this in terms of dealing with Darhk; people require totems to channel their magic, and doing so makes them a much more powerful fighter, so its safe to assume that Savage probably keeps a certain number of enchanted objects on his person. However, as he was actively hunting the Hawks in the crossover while here they're hunting him, its likely that he packed more magic mojo with him for the hunt, and thus was a stronger fighter in the same way Darhk is, but when they attacked him during the 70s and 80s he only had a limited number of them at the time, if any at all. It should also be noted that whenever he gets into a one-on-one fight with anyone he usually wins (Carter, Rory, and Sara, who are the best fighters on the team, all lost against him), and the only ones who actually won a straight up-fight were Rip-who was operating on pure adrenaline and had the advantage of Savage being distracted-and Kendra-who had the Savage-killing Mace on her side-so even with that possibility, its highly likely the main reason he doesn't look as terrifying is that the Legends are more powerful than Team Arrow/Flash/Hawks were.
    • There's an easy explanation for Savage being such a badass in the crossover: at that point he'd been faced multiple times in his history by a group of people with metahuman abilities or high tech, and he knew they came from the future and were trying to kill him. It's entirely plausible that Rip's repeated attempts on his life and the attacks by the Legends in various times specifically caused Savage to train himself in how to deal with such threats because he couldn't rely on working from the shadows to keep himself safe.
    • Also remember he was used to fighting with his enhanced magic and immortality. Once that was gone, he had to cope with it, and since it was the battle where he was against metahumans and high tech users who killed him, he couldn't adapt.

     Does Steve Blum actually voice Chronos? 
  • This site lists Steve Blum as the voice of the masked Chronos, which was likely taken from the wiki page for "The Flash" (which is NOT the official Arrowverse wiki, mind you). However, aside from these two sites, I have not been able to find any reliable sources that it is indeed Steve Blum who provides the voice, and in fact all along it may have just been Dominic Purcell.
    • Can anyone find any reliable sources confirming that it is indeed Steve Blum?
    • Nothing on IMDB for the show or Steve Blum. But a handful of articles like this one (dead link) do mention it. It's not in the end credits for Episode 9 either. Chronos doesn't really sound like Blum, but he's a versatile voiceover actor.

    Locating Vandal Savage 
  • Rip Hunter keeps lamenting how hard it is to track Savage through history, but why not just use Kendra's past lives to predict his appearances? If Savage's goal is to hunt down every incarnation of the Hawks, then it should be easy to turn that to an advantage. All the team has to do is use Gideon to record Kendra's dreams, check them against matching individuals and events in the timeline, and then ambush Savage when he shows up to kill past-lives!Kendra and Carter.
    • That's probably harder than it sounds. We have no reason in general to believe that the Hawks are notable people in most of history. The Wild West incarnation makes it clear that while they apparently are most likely to reincarnate physically it's not always the case. Even it was photography is only about 200 years old and wasn't common until much later. However locating Vandal shouldn't be particularly difficult, in the case of the Wild West they have located the current incarnation of Shyera. Just sit on her until Savage finds her. The death of the Boardmans (Carter and Kendra's incarnation that had a son in the 70's) would almost definitely be a matter of public record. Additionally Boardman seemed to have photos of him at various historical events.
    • As revealed in the latest episode the reason they've had difficulty locating Savage throughout history is because he's also been travelling through time.
    • Whether Savage time travels or not should make no difference. The photographs alone show exactly when he was in a certain place. Find out when the picture was taken, and they could just go to a day or so before hand to make preparations. Also, if you really think about it, he hardly changes his appearance at all, so his beard at least should make it all the more easier.
      • No it shouldn't. Because even if they find photographs that pinpoint where he was, he will be able to leave by the time they get there. It doesn't matter how recognizable he is. Every time they find him, he can use his time ship to go back and prepare for when they arrive.

    The Time Masters want to stop Rip messing with the timeline by messing with it themselves? 
  • The Time Masters send the Pilgrim to kill the members of Rip's team as children, so that they can't kill Savage in the past and mess up the timeline... But killing those people before they reach adulthood would cause huge ripple effects in itself. For just one example, take Professor Stein. If he gets killed as a newborn, there will be no Firestorm, and if there's no Firestorm, Earth will be destroyed due to the events of the season 1 finale of The Flash (2014). So what exactly are the Time Masters thinking? How does it make sense to try to stop the damage to the timeline by causing even greater damage to it?
    • First thanks to the Butterfly Effect time travel is wonky. We don't know there wouldn't be a Firestorm, maybe someone other than the professor would be standing there and Ronnie gets the same powers. Maybe without Firestorm Barry never defeats Eobard and instead of the whole bit with Eddie just lets him leave or is force to kill him. Maybe a lot of things to many to count. The real answer is that the Time Masters are working with Savage intentionally.
    • The Time Masters knew the Pilgrim would fail; the whole thing was little more than a way to push the Legends down the path they wanted. But in a more normal use of the Pilgrim, she's a tactical nuke: Massively destructive and a last resort. Remember that first they sent Chronos, then they sent a team of hunters, and only then did they send the Pilgrim.

     The Vanishing Point 
  • How does time travel work and when/where is the Vanishing point? All time should be more or less simultaneous from the Vanishing Point and the only reason Rip didn't know about the Thanagarians is because he's native to 2166 and for whatever reason had never journeyed to that specific point. We aren't told the outcome so perhaps Vandal Savage dies during the invasion or any number of things that would allow Rip to have seen the future but also be unaware of Savage saving the world.
    • It's unclear. Rip claims that time does not exist at the Vanishing Point, and says a few things about it being at the far end of the timeline. But their technology is clearly the same as 2146, and Druce refers to everything past it as the future. Likewise, a guard refers to the Vanishing Point as the present. I think the final answer is that the Vanishing Point is a Negative Space Wedgie deep in space in 2146.
    • The whole "existing at the end of the timeline" thing makes no sense. The timeline can only end when the universe ends. Therefore, the Vanishing Point cannot even logically exist if the universe has ceased to exist.
  • Well, as of the Crisis On Infinite Earths, we have now seen that, even after literally everything in the whole multiverse has ceased to have ever existed, the Vanishing Point was still around, outside of time and space, still in the same state as the Legends left it in when they stopped the Time Masters, so clearly it was indeed accurate and possible for it to exist outside of any reality or time.

    The Time Masters' Villain: Unmarked spoilers for S 1 E 15 Destiny 
  • Or rather, their TimeyWimey Villain Ball. So, it turns out the Time Masters have been engineering their own version of You Can't Fight Fate in order to keep Savage in power. This is because Savage is needed to unite the Earth to prevent the Thanagarians from wiping out everyone. Did it never occur to them that they could manipulate time in order to unite the Earth in literally any other way? Is a borderline Omnicidal Maniac the only way that the Earth can fend off the invasion? For that matter, how does Savage keep everyone from revolting; where did he find a large enough group of people willing to kill millions and take over the world; and what makes a depopulated and war-torn but united Earth better suited to fending off alien invasion than a populous and technologically advanced Earth that hasn't been united?
    • They claim that yes, they did try every other way, that they searched history for other uniters and couldn't find anyone suitable. Rip thinks they didn't look hard enough, but we can't say for sure. As for Savage's empire, we already saw it in Leviathan and Progeny. The world had descended into a wasteland with only a few corporate monarchies keeping civilization alive. Savage broke the world the rest of the way using the Armageddon Virus (and blamed Per Degaton), and then worked to rebuild it by claiming to be a savior. Dictators have risen to power for stupider reasons in real life. And if nothing else, you can't say that Savage lacks experience. As for fighting off the invasion, robots were advanced enough to be used as police by the time he began his conquest. So a virus wouldn't affect the world's battle-readiness too much, as long as Savage doesn't destroy too much war materiel.

     May 2016? (1st season finale unmarked spoilers!) 
  • Perhaps I missed it, but why did Rip take the Legends back to May 2016 rather than January 2016 both at the beginning of the episode and then later at the end (before finishing the episode in 2013, when Snart is still alive)?
    • Because if he takes them to January, then Sara will be around to fight Darhk, and not only will Laurel still get killed, but so will Sara and her father. And apparently Darhk is strong enough to take on all of the Legends at once. It sucks, but Rip believes that this is the best outcome. Of course, there is the question of why they didn't jump into the hospital right before Laurel died and save her then using the Waverider's future technology, but there it is.

     So what happened with the helmet? 
  • How did the helmet that Kendra left that note in find its way to the Waverider? I know they gave an explanation, but I'm not sure I fully understood. And another thing, how did Kendra know that the team would get the message? It seems like she recognized the helmet, but where did she recognize it from?
    • Rip had the helmet in his quarters, on the left side of the room when you enter. Kendra recognized it, and changed the past by putting a note in it. The change wasn't big enough to split off a new timeline or affect anyone's memories, but it was enough to make it end up on the other side of the room. Just some tiny chain reaction change that made things slightly different. Maybe the soldier died a few hours or days later originally, and Rip already had something on the right side of the room, so he put it on the left.
      Basically, extremely minor changes to the timeline cause minor physical changes but not memory changes. The specifics aren't super important.
    • Still doesn't explain how she recognized it was the EXACT same helmet as the one aboard the Waverider and not just an identical one (it was part of a military uniform after all!)
    • It's pretty distinct, and painting a rank insignia on a helmet isn't always standard. Could it have been just a helmet that looked the same? Sure. But she took a risk, and it panned out. What else was she supposed to do?
    • The helmet had the rank insignia of a master sergeant, a deep ding on the right front, and three closely-spaced bullet holes on the left front that formed an equilateral triangle. The odds of it not being the same helmet would be astronomical.

     The decision at the end of Destiny (SPOILERS) 
  • Couldn't Snart just use his freeze gun to keep the failsafe in place and not have to sacrifice himself?
  • Couldn't the Time Masters have just shot Snart or whomever? Since the heroes don't resort to shooting it clearly it's at least bullet resistant or any damage from conventional means would be repairable.

    Kendra's decision in "Leviathan" (SPOILERS) 
  • She acts like it boils down to either killing Savage and never getting Carter's mind back, or letting him live and potentially getting Carter back. Couldn't Kendra just kill savage, and then have the team travel to a time before that version of Carter had been brainwashed and rescue that Carter?
    • Probably not. We don't know a whole lot about what happens with messing with the timeline in such direct ways but I imagine the entire story doesn't happen if Rip can snatch his family from 'yesterday' and carry on.

    Shouldn't killing Savage just cause a similar paradox they were trying to prevent? (Spoilers for the season 1 finale.) 
  • In "Legendary", Savage is trying to destroy Earth in three different points of time to cause a paradox, because if the Earth gets blown up by the meteorite in 1958, the same can't happen in 1975. But the heroes plan to stop this from happening is... to kill Savage in all three time periods?! Wouldn't that just cause a similar paradox; if Savage is killed in 1958, he can't be killed in 1975 or 2021? Wouldn't it have made much more sense for the heroes to just stop the meterorite exploding in 1958 and 1975, but only kill Savage in 2021? That way there'd be no paradox.
    • The way I thought of it was that the paradoxes created by killing him in 1958 and 1975 essentially cancelled each other out, leaving 2021 as his real, final death.
    • But if that was the case, wouldn't the paradoxes Savage was about to cause in 1958 and 1975 similarly cancel each other out, meaning that his plan would fail? You can't have it both ways, the same rules should apply to the heroes as to Savage.
    • While time travel is pretty nebulous on this show, the Legends killing him that way seemed to be the lesser of two evils. According to Rip, him detonating the meteors would snapback time to ancient Egypt which would let Savage be the immortal ruler of humanity. Instead they killed him in all three time periods, which also caused a paradox, but a seemingly "lesser" one somehow.

    What about the reincarnated Carter? (Spoilers for the season 1 finale.) 
  • At the end of "Legendary", Kendra and Carter decide to live together in 2016. But the version of Carter who stays there is not the 2016 Carter, since he's dead; it's a future incarnation of Carter from 2166. The 2016 version who died would still be reincarnated into a new body. So what happens when that Carter grows up and comes looking for his soulmate, only to find out she's living with another version of him?
    • Technically it's 2013, actually, since that's when Mick is to see the alive Snart one last time.
    • Doesn't matter, even if they for some reason decide to stay in the year 2013, the problem still remains the same: what happens when the new reincarnation of Carter grows up?
    • First off, its 2016. No reason to assume Rip didn't take them all back to their own time. The Carter thing is interesting though - one way of looking at it is, after Carter died in 1975, he kept reincarnating (and dying) alone until he made it to 2166 where Savage got hold of him. So yes, there possibly is another Carter out there somewhere, taking The Slow Path in a manner of speaking, who will eventually become the Carter that Kendra is currently with. (That's assuming Carter didn't skip years or decades in between reincarnations.)
    • But the protagonists killed Savage and stopped the Bad Future of 2166 from happening... So the Carter of the present era will not grow up to become the 2166 Carter that Kendra is with now, the one who was found and brainwashed by Savage, because there's no Savage anymore to brainwash him. And since the 2166 dystopia was averted, that means that in the new, Savage-less timeline Carter will have no reason to travel back in time when that year comes. So either there will always be two Carters from now on, or the Carter from the dystopic 2166 should've vanished as soon as they killed Savage, just like Eobard Thawne vanished in the season 1 finale of Flash. But since Carter didn't vanish, the headscratcher remains.

    Either Rip's family is still alive, or Savage is still alive. (Spoilers for the season 1 finale.) 
  • After the events of "Legendary", Vandal Savage has been killed long before 2166, so this should mean he doesn't kill Rip's family in that year. But Rip is still acting all suicidal and clearly thinks they're dead, and he even sees their ghosts. What's up with that? The only thing that could explain this is that the Savage who was killed in 1958 and 1975 and 2021 wasn't the original Savage of those time periods, but the time-travelling Savage from 2166, who had already killed Rip's family and traveled back in time in "Destiny", and who was reliving those years for the second time to carry out his world destruction plan. But if that's the case, the heroes only killed that time-travelling version of Savage, and the original Savage of the timeline is still alive. Which would mean the Bad Future of 2166 is still bound to happen, and the heroes didn't actually accomplish that much, beyond stopping the Time Masters from meddling with the timeline.
    • Its really confusing and paradoxical and ultimately doesn't make sense. The one way to look at it is that Savage's personal timeline is protected somehow, much like Eobard Thawne's is, so that all his actions up till that moment in 2021 still 'happened' in some sense, perhaps because the immortal Savage is such an integral part of world history at this point. Maybe the Savage's who were killed in 1958 and 1975 were only killed in some weird 'bubble' of time caused by the meteorites synchronizing and after the team departed their 'real' lives continued. The Savage in 2021 was actually the 2166 version and he died, ending Savage's story, but it doesn't undo all his actions in 2166.
    • But, as said in the original post, if Savage's actions up until 2166 weren't undone, that means the dystopian future where he's the ruler will still happen and the heroes didn't really accomplish that much.
    • Savage conquered the world in 2166. Thanks to the Legends screwing up the Time Masters' plans for Savage, though, he quickly left 2166 to try his meteor plan instead. And because the Legends killed Savage while he was in the past, he never returned to 2166, so his tyrannical rule of Earth ended up lasting less than a year. I'd say that counts as accomplishing something.
    • Savage is an immortal tyrant who was destined to conquer the world and the clear implication is that unlike most dictators his rule wasn't going to be limited to a few decades. He was going to rule everything forever. In fact even from our perspective we don't have much reason to doubt it, he was going to fight the Thanagarians and win and after that we know nothing. So taking him out at any point accomplishes a great deal, it simply doesn't get the one thing Rip honestly cared about done.

    The purpose of the meteorites? 
  • So it turns out the meteorites that gave Kendra and Carter and Savage their powers were sent by the Thanagarians. If their plan is to invade Earth, why do they keep sending meteorites there that will turn people into metahumans? Wouldn't that be detrimental to their plans? Indeed, one of those metahumans ends up uniting the Earth against the invasion, so the Thanagarians get hoisted by their own petard.
    • Its possible they had spies there who were supposed to intercept the meteorites, but failed or died, or their watching Earth and testing it by randomly sending meteorites.

     2013? (1st season finale spoilers!) 
  • At the end of "Legendary", Kendra and Carter take off to finally have some time to themselves without being hunted by Vandal Savage. The problem? They're actually in 2013, not May 2016 like earlier in the episode (they had traveled back so Mick could say goodbye to Snart). Wouldn't it be better if they were back in the same year at which they left?
    • No reason to assume they weren't taken back to 2016 after Mick's brief visit to Snart.
    • In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a brief shot after the 2013 scene where it establishes that they return to 2016, so yeah, they were dropped off in 2016.
    • Rex Tyler says "Is this 2016?" and Jax answers "yes". so yeah its 2016 NOT 2013.

     Can 2046 be averted? 
  • This episode is just really disturbing to me for how much of a shithole the world can turn into and the implication that none of the Arrowverse characters couldn't or wouldn't change a thing no matter how many lives they saved. Its pretty fucking grim. Can it get fixed if they kill Savage? (I haven't seen the episodes past this).
    • If you paid attention to anything that was said during the episode, they make it quite clear that this episode is a potential timeline, and thus, is not set in stone. Rip very explicitly lays this out (several times, in fact), and Oliver postulates that the reason things could've gone so badly was because in that timeline, the Legends never returned home. In fact, it's the whole reason Rip doesn't really care about that timeline's state, because as far as he's concerned, it never happened, and once they stop Savage and return to 2016, it will never happen.
    • Moreover, its entirely possible that, when the casts of both shows interact in the upcoming crossover event, Team Arrow will learn all about their potential dark future (even if its off-screen) and so, when the time comes, Oliver will know how to pre-emptively deal with Grant Wilson. That's assuming he will even have to, given the overall malleability of the timestream, especially after the destruction of the Oculus.
    • Well they didn't, but I'm calling it as the plot for Arrow season 7 or beyond if they go that far.

     Why scatter the Legends throughout time? 
  • In 2x01 ("Out of Time"), Rip develops the "Time Scatter" safeguard which he uses at the end of the episode to scatter the Legends (sans himself and Mick) through time in the event of a catastrophe. But why? Surely, he could have just sent them all back to 2016, instead of potentially leaving them Trapped in the Past permanently. Granted, you can argue his plan was for Mick to awaken from suspended animation and then go back and save him...except, that he only didn't scatter Mick as well only because he was injured and wouldn't be able to handle "the rigors of time travel". And yet, when he recorded his last message, he somehow expected all of the crew to eventually be back to the ship, despite the fact that its only by a series of coincidences that they ended up back on the ship eventually?
    • Well, they were about to be hit by a nuclear bomb. It's safe to say at that point that anything is a better chance than staying. Yes, it appears that the Waverider could have survived anyway (though it's also possible it was repairing itself from 1942-2016) but he didn't know that. It's likely his plan was that by the time the ship could fly (assuming it survived), Gideon would be able to locate and retrieve the Legends.
    • As for why he didn't send them back to 2016, there's a theory somewhere around here that at least one of the Legends was going to die soon after he recruited them. Sending them back to 2016 just means they're in danger again.
    • I suspect that scattering them was a safeguard because anything that was extreme enough to justify using the sending them away would probably have dealt with opposing time travelers. Scattering them means even if you found one of them you probably wouldn't have found ALL of them.

     2x 01 "Out of Time" Paradox 
  • At the end of the Season 2 premiere, the Legends go back to 1942 and visit Einstein before they 'originally' did, convincing him to make a speech at Columbia acknowledging his ex-wife's contributions to his research, thus ensuring that she wouldn't be unprotected and the Nazis wouldn't be able to abduct her and develop the nuke. Except...shouldn't that have undone ALL the events of the episode? Without Darhk firing the nuke, the Waverider wouldn't have gone down, the Legends wouldn't have been scattered in time and Rip wouldn't have gone missing; without that happening, Nate Heywood wouldn't have teamed up with Oliver to unearth the Waverider (because there would have been no Waverider at the bottom of the ocean!), revive Mick etc. Logically, from the Legends' POV, nothing from the time they left 19th century France would now have happened! Even if it is argued that Nate, and the Legend's personal timelines are protected from that last change to history they made, it does put a huge question mark on the fate of Rip Hunter. Where and when is he, and how can he be there/then if the events leading up to his disappearance have been erased from the timeline by other time-travelers?
    • Isn't it fairly well-established in this 'verse that time travel works extremely weirdly? More specifically, time travelers are more or less immune to that sort of ripple effect (short of actually killing their younger selves). Rip would have been exposed to the most time travel, and so would be the least affected by any changes.
    • Exactly, and it's worth noting that the reveal of Eobard Thawne in 1942 means that we also have to account for him and whatever his plans are.

    Dealing With a Family Member's Death 
  • Upon their return to 2016, Sara learns that her sister Laurel was killed (on the show Arrow), and Rip informed Sara that it had to happen in order for Team Arrow to succeed in stopping Darhk. My issue is that Sara is on a time ship with a medlab capable of regrowing damaged limbs, so why not grow an entire cadaver to replace the ailing Laurel in the hospital? They have access to the medical records and timeline of events that night, they'd be able to figure out a time to grab the gravely wounded or "only mostly dead" Laurel and drop off the fake body in her place. End result: Team Arrow "loses" a teammate and friend but find the necessary resolve to save the world, Laurel gets some highly advanced medical care with a good chance of saving her life, resulting in her still being alive. When Darhk is finally defeated, show up and reveal that Laurel is very much still alive and why it was necessary to let them believe otherwise. Laurel wouldn't be able to return to the life she had due to being both publicly dead and outed as the Black Canary, but would still be alive and would would be available to join a time traveling group of adventurers featuring her kick-ass sister.
    • Ok, you're assuming a number of things about the Waverider's medical lab. First off, the ability to regenerate someone's hand does not equate to creating a clone of an entire person. Secondly, the medical bay on the Waverider does have limits: It was unable to save Doctor Boardman from his injuries, and it was unable to remove shrapnel from Kendra, forcing Ray to go into her bloodstream and remove them himself. And even if they could do all those things, why would they bother with the whole faking her death part at all? Just intercept Oliver and co before they get to the hospital and just tell them that they can save Laurel.
      • They would need to fake her death because otherwise things happen differently and possible failure to save everybody is now introduced into what was previously a successful Team Arrow mission. But, yes, it is possible that Laurel could be saved and her death faked, and cloning a whole person complete with implanting the clone with a lifetime of memories is shown to be a common practice in the future (which the Legends can visit at will in their time machine). That's actually where Sara's girlfriend Ava came from. It is also possible at any point in anyone's timeline (so Sara can still decide to go back and do it at some point in season 3, or 4, or 5, or whenever)... but IRL that needs the actress to come back and the studio to rehire her and all sorts of IRL problems. Possibly, in universe, this has already been done and simply covered up to an extreme. (Also, even if Laurel was exposed as the Black Canary, if they clone her and bring her back later, they can publicly "reveal" that Laurel was never "really" the Black Canary, but that the Black Canary was secretly her long lost twin who was kidnapped at birth and became a superhero. After all, look, there's her body, clearly dead, next to me, the clearly still living Laurel Lance.

     The amulet in 2x 02 "The Justice Society Of America" 
  • So Eobard Thawne made a Super Serum and gave it to the Nazis in exchange for them to find the amulet, right? Why didn't he just look for the amulet himself? He's got Super-Speed and can mow down pretty much any human being in his path, so he should eventually be able to find it by the brute force method by himself and simply kill anyone who gets in his way, so making a deal with Krieger almost seemed like a case of Villain Ball.
    • Well, so far we don't know what Reverse-Flash's plan is, but he probably doesn't want to screw up the timeline too much. Plus, wasn't it said that that particular amulet was held by Hitler's own men in Berlin? It was why he was offering the Nazis the Super Serum in the first place. While Eobard could've easily gotten it himself, he probably doesn't want to be noticed in case the Legends or the Flash are looking through history, and find out that an amulet coveted by Hitler was stolen by a streak of red lightning. In short, while Eobard could probably have gotten it himself, it would likely put too much attention on him, which I doubt is something he wants.

     Why kidnap Einstein when you have Thawne? 
  • In "Out of Time", the Nazis kidnap Albert Einstein, and when that plan fails, his ex-wife Mileva Marić, so that they could build an atomic bomb. However, since neither Einstein nor Marić were not engineers, nor were they in any way involved in the production of the bomb the US eventually built, it would seem they are only useful because of the theoretical knowledge they have on atomic fission. However, since the Eobard Thawne is helping the Nazis, and he has access to all the knowledge of the future, it'd be very easy for him to simply acquire the information needed to build the bomb. So why doesn't Thawne get them that info? Why do they need to kidnap anyone?
    • Maybe he did. Despite the Legends making sure that both Einstein and his wife are safe, the Nazis still gain a nuke and attempt to destroy New York. At that point, Eobard might've just decided to make it for them himself. As for why he didn't do it in the first place? I'm not sure, but then again, we don't know what Eobard's plan is, so we'll just have to wait and see.
    • No, the Nazis gain their nuke with the help of Mileva Marić. After they've shot it at the Waverider, the Legends go back in time and change the past so Marić is safe, and after that there's no indication the Nazis would've still gained a nuke in the altered timeline. So it definitely seems they needed either Einstein or Marić to build the bomb.
    • While he could ask Gideon if he has access it's possible that Eobard simply doesn't know how to make a nuke.
    • But Eobard is a time traveller! He could easily travel to any point in the future and snatch an engineer (or more) who knows how to build the bomb.
    • It is later explained that Eobard is constantly "on the run" from Black Flash, so even if he could gather the necessary knowledge to build a nuke for Darhk himself, he would constantly be at risk from that menace. From his perspective it probably works just as well to blatantly screw with history by giving the Nazis the necessary theoretical knowledge to build a nuke first.
    • In our reality and timeline, Einstein didn't directly design any part of the nuclear bombs, but in the Legends' multiverse/timeline, he and Mileva must have been involved and know how to make one, since they do in fact make a nuke. Eobard could have picked up any random nuclear engineer who could make one, but he also already knew that Einstein and Mileva knew how to make one, so why bother finding somebody else who could replace them, when you can just pick them up? If the Legends stop him successfully, then he can still go after another scientist instead.

     Why was Ray angsting so much over the destruction of the ATOM suit? 
  • In episode 2x03. Sure, I can get he'd be upset about blowing up his 'baby', so to speak. But he made it sound as though that was the end of him as a superhero. Why? Couldn't he just build a new one? Hell, he built the first one in 2015 after months of work. Now, he's living on a time ship from the future, with access to advanced future technology (not to mention, he can literally go to the future). He can easily whip up another ATOM suit... a better one at that.
    • While he certainly knows how to build a new one, we don't know if he can. Remember, he seems to have spent years gathering the required materials – it took him a few months to put everything together once he had everything – and he has no way to get any more Dwarf Star Alloy. For all we know that was all there was.
    • It was also a few billons worth of materials and labor.
    • While we don't know how much of the future is roughly intact (curious they haven't address the plot hook of the Thanagarians AT ALL) we know that at some point in the future Palmertech lead by his brother's decedents manage to mass produce the things. So that's not all the Dwarf Star Alloy in existance and nothing we see suggests the humans of that era have mastered interstellar travel either. The only reasonable answer is that Ray simply thinks of his armor as unique and in a few episodes some solution will come up. Like the fact that they are on a ship that seems to be capable of fabricated nearly anything.
    • It's possible that the future ATOM drones were not made of Dwarf Star Alloy.

     Don't break Japan's History guys. 
  • In season one Cronos actively scans people before killing them to make sure they aren't important. Flash's Eddie Thawn proves that even a seeming nobody can be absolutely vital to history as a whole. Even if the Legends don't actively trade stories at the very least Professor Stein is aware of both of these events and thus knows how fragile history is. Along comes Nick and the power of boners and the Legends kill a major historical figure, leave what appear to be shattered bits of 21st century tech scattered about and nobody so much as bats an eye? I get they weren't going to leave the Shogun with it but one would expect a whole lot of "we goofed and goofed BAD" afterwards.
    • I don't recall any bits of 21st-century tech being left. As for the Shogun, I might be wrong, but I think the subtitles said they landed in 1651; he died that year anyway.
    • The subtitles state the year is 1641, which means the Shogun was killed 10 years before he died in the original timeline. This should have a major Butterfly Effect, but it seems the Legends don't care, even though their stated mission is to protect history from people who try to change it. Apparently it's okay for the heroes to change the timeline for their own selfish reasons, but when the villains do it, that's wrong.
    • Well, they didn't exactly have many options. Once the Shogun had the suit, the only option was to destroy it, as there was no way he was going to give it up willingly. And frankly, the alternative is to let the Shogun run around conquering Japan armed with technology from the 21st century, which would have had an even more catastrophic effect on the timeline. They really didn't have a whole lot of choices in the matter. As for messing up the timeline, maybe in this universe, the Shogun did die in 1641. People keep forgetting that the Arrowverse timeline is not exactly the same as ours: we don't have an immortal psychopath influencing all the historical wars (as far as we know), we didn't have a bunch of superheroes running around during World War II (as far as we know), and we definitely don't have a city full of metahumans that was the result of an experimental particle accelerator exploding in our timeline (I'm pretty sure we would've noticed something like that if we did).
    • First of all, Ray was already half-way through neutralising the Atom armor when he was fighting the Shogun. With a better plan, and the help of the other Legends, it shouldn't have beem impossible to damage its circuitry so it couldn't move anymore, as Ray was already starting to do. After that, they could've just gotten the Shogun out of the armor and leave with it. As for the alternate timeline explanation, Marvel and DC universes generally follow the principle of Like Reality, Unless Noted. Based on earlier episodes, as well as the one after this ("Abominations"), we know that the Second World War and the American Civil War took place during the same years as in real life. So there's really no reason to assume that Japanese history went differently than in our world, unless the show explicitly says it did, but it doesn't. But even if we were to assume that in the Arrowverse the Shogun died 10 years earlier (even though there's no reason to believe so), and that by a Contrived Coincidence Nick just happened to randomly fall out of the time vortex into the exact year when he died, at least the issue of whether it's okay to kill him should've been discussed. Since Nick clearly knows his Japanese history, they could've simply added a line of him saying, "the Shogun would've died this year anyway, so us killing him won't probably make a big difference". In the following episode there's a big moral debate between Jax and Vixen whether they should interfere when a slave owner tortures his slaves, or whether this might have a Butterfly Effect, even though such interference would probably alter history much less than killing a national leader. But in this episode there's no such debate, no one even raises the question whether it's okay to kill the Shogun. Which carries the unfortunate implication that interfering with American history (i.e. events most viewers are familiar with) is problematic, while doing the same with some foreign countries (whose history the majority of viewers probably don't know very well) is not a big deal.
    • In order: Ray was damaging the suit, it's true, but it didn't really seem to slow the Shogun down for very long. And considering Ray, who built the ATOM suit and knows every one of its flaws and weaknesses, felt the only way to stop the Shogun was to destroy the suit (and the Shogun sure as hell wasn't going to give it up willingly), then there may not have been any effective way to disable it without killing the Shogun anyway. As for being different then reality: Well, in our timeline, the Shogun in question wasn't a wife murderer (he was actually gay), so that's already a pretty significant difference. And considering these events seemed to be a stable time loop for Katana's family history, the Shogun may have indeed died in 1641 in this timeline. Alternatively, the production crew made a mistake and meant 1651 instead of 1641. It's not implausible that someone off camera made a mistake like that and it wasn't rectified in time or was overlooked. Either way though, I do agree: there should've been at least some discussion among the Legends as to whether or not killing the Shogun would've been good for history. That would've cleared things up. As for the implications of only caring about American history, that's definitely not true. The very first thing the Legends do this season alone is safeguard France's history and ensure the Sun King will be born, so they're definitely not just focusing on American history.

    Vixen 
  • Was it common or possible for "colored" women to be allowed to move about reasonably freely in Occupied France? She makes remarks that suggest she did some undercover missions there, presumably acting as a wealthy civilian or perhaps as a high-class "lady of the night".
    • Unlikely; Nazi Germany really hated blacks, more than your average racist
    • While Occupied France nominally had its own government, Paris was in the zone which could be controlled militarily by Germany for security reasons (mainly to keep the Wehrmacht in position to forestall an Allied invasion along the French coast), and was a favored R&R spot for German soldiers. How much they might have tolerated a non-white (but also non-Jewish) woman working bars and pubs in Paris is unclear.

    JSA training academy 
  • Did they really never change the entry code in 45 years? Also, 1940s!Vixen should've been just a bit disconcerted at seeing an electronic numeric keypad instead of what very likely would have been a very different combination lock (perhaps like an adding machine's array of keys).
    • It's possible the code she entered wasn't a generic access code, but rather a special code specifically for her, which there would be no reason to change. As for her surprise, she literally lives on a timeship. The Waverider already has electronic keypads; why would she be shocked at seeing one in the 80s?
    • And it's not impossible that in addition to that the JSA was simply ahead of their time. It wouldn't be the first Justice group to have technology unknown to the rest of the planet.

     Vixen Time Travel Issues 
  • On the show so far, Gone to the Future is very much applicable i.e. if a time-traveler jumps into the future, he/she won't encounter a future self but rather be confronted with a world where they disappeared however many years ago. This is what happens to Sara and Ray when they travel to Star City in 2046, and its what happens to Vixen when she travels to 1987. And therein lies the problem. Now that the Legends have extracted Vixen from her natural timeline, doesn't this mess up the timeline of Arrow. After all, if Amaya disappeared in 1942, then she wouldn't have had the child who would eventually become the mother/father of the 2016 Vixen, Mari Mc Cabe, who played a brief but important role on Arrow last season. And even assuming she had a child before 1942, she took the amulet with her to the future, so it wouldn't be possible for her child or her grandchild to inherit it.
    • Flashpoint. Barry's alterations to the timeline could've changed the events Vixen was present for. He accidentally replaced Sara Diggle with John Diggle Jr. when he reset the timeline, so who knows how many alterations could've been made. Alternatively, Mari Mc Cabe still became Vixen. The rules of time travel in the Arrowverse are incredibly inconsistent. Take a look at Eobard Thawne, who's still running around in the timeline, even in spite of the fact that he should be erased from existence since his ancestor Eddie Thawne is dead. Maybe Mari still played her role in Arrow, despite the fact that her ancestor and amulet were removed from the timeline.
    • It's worse than that. The events of Flashpoint involve Eobard returning to the past, killing Nora and not being trapped in in the past. So he has no reason at all to have spent fifteen years building up to season 1 of the Flash. There is no reason for Eddie to be dead in this reality. He is and we have to assume that Flash S1 happened in roughly the same way we remember it despite 2 alterations we're aware of but to call it inconsistent is to be kind.
    • This is later addressed when Ray tells Nate not to get too close to Amaya, since she still has to return to her own time, have kids and eventually make sure Mari McCabe is around to fulfil her role in the timeline.
  • Season 3 introduces another such issue: because Nora stole Amaya's totem, the timeline eventually changed so Mari never inherited it and became a vigilante without powers. The only issues with this shown in the episode are that she got injured while saving some people from a burning building. But shouldn't this have had a larger impact? After all, in the Arrow season 4 episode "Taken" Mari helps Oliver fight Damien Dahrk, and destroys Dahrks idol just as Dahrk is about to kill Oliver. Now imagine a timeline in which she never had her totem. Darhk would have won that fight and Oliver would have died.
    • Well, obviously not, since that aspect of the timeline didn't seem to have changed. Apparently, if Vixen was a nonpowered vigilante, she would still have been as effective in fighting Damien Darhk as ever and Oliver would have been saved anyway. This is, in fact, proven to be the case by the very lack of change in that part of the timeline.

     Why doesn't Professor Stein recognize Eobard Thawne? 
  • In The Flash episode "Rogue Air," Firestorm is seen helping Barry defeat Reverse Flash. Now, Professor Stein was half of Firestorm, and would probably have seen everything that happened during the fight. So we can all assume that he would be able to recognize Reverse Flash, which brings the question up, why doesn't doesn't Professor Stein recognize him? I mean, he doesn't know about Zoom and definately wouldn't know about Savitar, so when someone mentions the rogue speedster he should be able to remember Reverse Flash and tell the rest of the team. And we can't use the excuse of him being old and having bad memory, he is one of the smartest people on the team.
    • Because at this point in the show, Stein hasn't actually seen Reverse-Flash yet. In fact no one has, the only reason the Legends even know a speedster is involved is because he spirited Darhk away in front of them, an event Stein wasn't even present for. Also, Stein does know about Zoom, he was present to hear about it, so it's not impossible for him to think that there are other speedsters (which there are). In fact, Stein has every reason to believe it's anyone but Reverse-Flash, since the last time Stein saw Eobard Thawne, it was when he was erased from existence.
    • That might be true, but those other speedsters would be more likely to go after the Flash. And besides, he could at least say something to the rest of the team that he thinks there might be a possibility that Reverse Flash has returned. Also, the distinct red lighting might also be a indication that it's Reverse Flash, as all the other speedsters either have blue or yellow lightning.
    • If anything, Reverse Flash would be more concerned with going after just Barry than the other speedsters. Thawne specifically wanted to face Barry, while Zoom just wanted Barry's speed.
    • Stein was not present and it's possible that the color of the lightning simply wasn't a detail any of the other Legends thought to mention. After all it's never brought up that you can ID a speedster by the color of their lightning. The real snag here is not knowing how much communicating Team's Flash, Arrow and the Legends actually have. Clearly word got to Sara almost immediately that her sister was dead, and while strictly speaking the Legends have almost no excuse for not coming home between every mission it's pretty obvious they aren't doing that. Still Nick just joined, knows Oliver's secret and I'm sure Oliver knows about Eobard. At this point without knowing what Future Barry's message was the fact that it could include some combination of Eobard and Darhk being a team is probably the best assumption as to why Stein hasn't spoken.
    • First of all, we may not know how much communication there is between Team Arrow and Team Flash (though we can assume a lot, since Caitlin said they loved Laurel and Barry was very visibly upset when he first faced Black Siren, even though Caitlin has never had a scene with Laurel and Barry and her have almost never directly spoken to each other). They've been in contact with 2016 Team Arrow four times, when they all came back and Sara came to the cave and talked to Quentin and he told her about Laurel (I believe that was like a month later), when Oliver met Nate and Rory at the beginning of the series, when Felicity contacted them to come to help with the Invasion, and when they did come to help with the invasion. And they've contacted Team Flash once, when they helped with the invasion.
    • I'd just like to point out that Thawne's red lightning isn't distinct. Edward Clariss/The Rival had the same color of lightning, so they couldn't identify him simply from that.
    • We know its Thawne because of Dramatic Irony and because that's how TV works (using an existing actor instead of getting a new one). As far as the Legends are concerned, it could be Thawne, or Zoom, or a totally new speedster from the Arrowverse equivalent of the DC One Million era or something for all they know.
    • When Stein finally gets a look at Thawne standing still, no one ever mentions Thawne's name and Thawne isn't in the Reverse-Flash costume. Further, not only was Eobard Thawne erased from existence in Stein's presence, Stein had never seen his real face, only his Harrison Wells identity. Combined with the fact, as mentioned above, that Stein knows there are other speedsters aside from Barry, there's no reason for him to assume that the person they're dealing with is the person he knows was erased from existence right in front of him.
    • Then how do explain the camera angle?
    • Simple, if Stein was still watching at that point, instead of being distracted by everything else that's happening, given Eobard's position as he's being erased, all Stein would really see is the back of Thawne's head. Is he expected to think, "oh, this speedster is blond just like Reverse-Flash, it must be him, even though I know for a fact that he was erased from existence"?
    • OK, that could be possible, but in the last episode he outright stated that he saw him being erased from existence, now there is no more excuse other than that the season would be shorter if he immediately recognized him. And even if stein knew about zoom, he knew only knew about him traveling through dimensions. While Thawn is the only evil speedster in the arrowverse who can travel through time.
    • Yes, Stein apparently saw that Eobard was erased from existence. Again, given the camera angle, Eobard would've been facing away from it, so Stein would've only seen the back or top of Thawne's head at best. And yes, Stein already knew Thawne's name, which is how he knew he had been erased, but he didn't actually see his face. And all speedsters can time travel, Flash can, Zoom can, Reverse-Flash can. Time travel is a power they all possess, so it could've been any speedster that they didn't know about.

     What exactly is Thawne's motivation for causing the aberrations? 
  • In season 1 of The Flash, Thawne was very careful in not altering the timeline too much, because he wanted to return to his own time without it having been changed. And in the beginning of season 3, he angrily points out to Flash the damage he has done to the timeline by saving his mom. (Okay, he also wanted to save his own ass, but he still seemed to believe in what he was saying.) But now his plans include helping the Nazis nuke New York during WWII, and trying to assassinate Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. These are major alterations to history, and if they had been successful, the resultant butterfly effect would've meant future Thawne came from would have been very different, so he could never go back home. So why have his motivations changed in such a drastic way? What is he trying to accomplish?
    • Overall, we don't know what he's trying to accomplish yet, so we'll find out soon enough. Still, in regards to nuking New York at least, it's important to note that while it's a significant change to the timeline, the Allies still won World War II, it just took a bit longer. As for preaching about the preservation of the timeline? Remember, Eobard Thawne is a massive hypocrite; the whole reason he was there the night he murdered Nora was because he was trying to murder young Barry and erase the Flash from existence, which would screw up god knows how much in his own time. So his change in motivations aren't really that significant.
    • We also don't know which version of Thawne this is, chronologically speaking or even timeline-wise. For all we know, this Thawne is a 'time remnant', akin to the one who showed up in the Season 2 Flash episode "The Reverse Flash Returns". He might have discovered that his ancestor was killed in 2015 and a version of him was consequently erased from existence - but he himself continues to exist as a living paradox. And now that he's free from causality, he's decided to f#ck history and reshape the world to his liking. Or maybe this is an even earlier Thawne (from a time before he even met the Flash) who's playing a bit more fast and loose with history. Hell, it'll be interesting if at some point, there's a Flash/LOT crossover which sees a future version of Barry helping the Legends stop Thawne, and that is when Thawne's enmity with Barry really begins.
    • Revealed in S 2 E 10. This Eobard is from the Flashpoint timeline, having been pulled from 2000 by Barry into Flashpoint 2016 when Barry saved his mom and created Flashpoint. His existence in the post-Flashpoint timeline is a paradox, so he's being hunted by the Black Flash (an "undead" Zoom) who wants to fix the timeline by killing him. The aberrations are to obtain all the pieces of the Spear of Destiny so that he can rewrite reality to get the Black Flash to stop hunting him.

     Would the Legends really...INVASION SPOILERS 
  • At the end of the crossover episode "Invasion", Stein asks Jax not to reveal to the rest of the team that his meddling in 1987 led to the birth of a daughter that didn't originally exist, the reason being that he fears that the team will want to 'correct' the aberration by erasing her from existence. Now, does Stein seriously believe that the Legends would want to do that? Would the Legends seriously even consider doing that? I mean, sure, its their mission to fix aberrations, but those aberrations tend to be major changes to global events. Lily's existence doesn't pose a threat to the timeline at all. In fact, since she helped stop the Dominator invasion in 2016, she's now become a vital part of history, and erasing her would do more damage. And the Legends have changed history plenty already just by virtue of being the Legends (they originally led pretty unremarkable lives as per Rip Hunter) to say nothing of changes like pulling Amaya out of 1942. Surely, Stein having a daughter is hardly that much more of a change. But leaving aside the temporal mechanics of it, from a purely moral standpoint, would they want Lily erased? Doing so would be as good as murder (worse than it in fact). If Stein actually believes his teammates would make such a call, and if the Legends actually would even consider something like that... well, its doubtful any of them can be called "heroes"!
    • While it's unlikely any of the Legends would in this specific scenario, only a few of them are opposed to killing on principle, making Stein's fears at first more justified. While even Rip would likely choose not to erase Lily given that she did help stop an alien invasion, Stein almost certainly doesn't want to take the chance. Another thing to consider is that Stein is, in many cases, ironically the most hardline of the Legends – if the others find out, he might be afraid he'd consider it his duty to erase Lily.
    • Well, let's start with the fact that time travel in the Arrowverse is so heavily plot driven it's not even funny. Erasing her might not undo the victory at her hands, especially since it's highly probable that Ray and Stein could have done the same thing. The Legends were chosen specifically because they lead uneventful lives, as utterly unbelievable as that is. It mean that none of them would have even played major roles in Flash S2 or Arrow S4 which is all kinds of absurd, it also means none of them ever had kids who mattered. But that was the point, killing the Legends right then wouldn't have caused any ripples. Finally, erasing her wouldn't be murder, it would be erasing her. The show tries to make it clear that Cisco (who's brother was actually killed) and Diggle (who's daughter was turned into a son) were not being entirely rational about the scenario. I don't think they could be called heroes without having a long talk about the possibility that she could be a huge problem and just given the secrecy and how plots work most likely she will. Also, isn't the tag line "don't call us heroes"?

     The Dominators and Flashpoint 
  • How do the Dominators know about Flashpoint? I would have found it more plausible if the actions of Cisco & the Legends in 1951 was the main reason for the invasion since it alerted them to metahumans. But how would the Dominators know Barry messed with the timeline when they're from a different planet. And even if they did know, why is it that Barry's actions broke the truce between Earth and the Dominators when people like Eobard Thawne and the Time Masters have cause far worse damage to history?
    • How they detected the Flashpoint is the question here. Maybe they have their own speedster, Jay simply noticed someone in the Speed Force screwing with time and stepped in so maybe despite Barry not doing it is just a matter of experience and experienced speeders 'just know' somehow. Maybe he's calling himself a god and is trying to destroy Barry in S3. As for why they didn't break the truce due to the actions of others while it's only a WMG perhaps time distortions are linked to when they originate not where they terminate. Meaning Eobard would qualify in another century, the Time Masters similarly won't count for another five hundred years. Also when you consider when the Dominators dropped the bomb it seems pretty obvious that Barry was the just the excuse. They were concerned about metas and lets face it with good reason. A handful of metas along with one alien from the universe next door were doing a pretty good job against their military. If/when humans get deep space travel what would the Dominators actually do against an actual army of metas, something on par with what Zoom lead against Central City?
    • The reason they were pissed at Barry in particular – aside from general Fantastic Racism/paranoia about metahumans – is that his actions showed that humanity was a threat. They seemed mostly concerned that humanity (which they likely consider a barbaric/backwards/primitive/etc. race) was developing metahumans who could destroy both humanity and other races. This concern does not apply to those other cases.
    • Eobard is from the future, where humanity (including the apparently well-established community of metahumans, speedsters, and time-travelers) has by and large advanced sufficiently that they understand what they're doing; also it's worth noting that Eobard's changes ultimately weren't very large: everything basically still happened, just a little bit earlier.
    • The Time Masters are a totally different case. They are (as far as we can tell) a legitimate organization, at least at first; they actually have the expertise and jurisdiction to make changes that will only affect their own planet.
    • Lastly, the Dominators seem to have a slight case of Small Name, Big Ego. They claim to have seen metas develop on "a hundred worlds". But notice they never say they conquered those worlds. In fact it appears they're actually relatively not that dangerous: they actually failed in both of the invasions we've heard of (Krypton and 21st-century Earth), while the Thanagarians and White Martians took much, much more to defeat.
    • How the Dominators even knew about the changes to the timeline is a good question, but it's not impossible to think that they would have some way to detect when time is being altered. As to how they knew Barry was the cause? Here's the thing: I don't think they did, at least not when they initially landed. If they had, you would think they would've done something to him when leaving their dropship. Of course that begs the question: How did they learn about it? Well remember when Oliver and Team Arrow were being held aboard their ship and were sifting through their minds? One of their most recent memories was hearing Barry confess about his involvement with Flashpoint, which would explain how they knew in the final part of the story.

     Worst invasion ever! 
  • The whole invasion plan in the episode "Invasion!" is just full of everyone carrying the Idiot Ball, but especially the Dominators. First of all, the Dominators are shown possessing high-tech weapons (the heroes used one to escape their ship in the Arrow part of the crossover) and gagdgets, and yet when they land on earth they fight everyone bare-handed and nude?! What was the point of those weapons then? Sure, the "invasion" was meant to just distract everyone from meta bomb, but that doesn't meant all the invaders want to die, does it?
    We see that even the Bad Ass Normal type of heroes can beat them, and Green Arrow's arrows pierce their skin, which means conventional projectile weapons used by Earth armies should easily kill these aliens, since they didn't bother to wear any armor... Except that the armies of various countries apparently do nothing to fight the Dominators?! Did everyone just assume that a handful of superheroes, all located in one American city, would be enough against a global invasion?
    Also, it remains unclear why that one Dominator even warned the heroes that the Dominators have a meta bomb? Apparently he felt he owed to them for saving him, but letting the heroes know about the bomb ruined their entire plan, which would surely lead to some serious trouble for him. If he wanted to save the guys who saved his life, couldn't he have given them some vague warning that wouldn't risk the Dominators' plan, like, "get out of the USA if you want to live"? Or couldn't he simply have beamed them away with the teleport device the Dominators are shown to have?
    And speaking of the teleport device, why wasn't it used to beam the heroes away from the battlefield, or even before they go into battle? If the Dominators didn't want them to mess with the meta bomb, what better way to do that than to beam them up to their ship and keep them imprisoned until the bombs has set off?
    All in all, these so-called "Dominators" sure suck at trying to dominate other planets. It's implied they've done the same to many others before Earth, but the competence level they display makes one doubt how they ever managed to do that.
    • Well the Idiot Ball is certainly strong with them but we don't actually know how much it takes to genuinely kill one, they didn't seem to be dying. There is no excuse for warning the heroes or really even engaging them in combat at all. They could easily have just arrived, dropped the Metabomb and probably have been done. As far as we know Metas are currently only in the US and primarily only in a single city so all the rest of that invasion nonsense was just distraction bluster. As for beaming the heroes away that may not have been a great plan, I wouldn't want a pissed off Supergirl on my ship.
    • In the 1951 scene, Heatwave's flamethrower does some serious damage to that one Dominator, so grenades or missiles or other explosives certainly should've been effective against them. As for an angry Supergirl, if the Dominators didn't want her on their ship, they could've just beamed her to the vacuum of space. She can't survive there for long, and at that point they were already set on killing all the metas. And even if they're afraid of Kara, it still doesn't explain why they didn't beam the others away.
    • First off, Heat Wave's gun is much hotter than your average flamethrower (I know we rarely see that, but it is), and even that really did very little to the Dominator. It took Nate punching him in Steel form to bring him down. Secondly, we don't know how their beaming works; it may only be possible to bring people to their ship, which considering the power of most of those metahumans and Supergirl, would be a bad idea (not to mention it seems that it can't work on anyone who's indoors, so it wouldn't be able to teleport anyone out of the Waverider). The only reason they kidnapped Oliver and his team was because they were average humans and easier to deal with. Thirdly, as mentioned in the folder above, the Dominators seem to be a case of Small Name, Big Ego. They claim to have seen metas on other worlds, but notice how they never say that they've conquered those worlds. And frankly, I hate to fall back on this argument, but... they're aliens with an alien mindset. What would seem like common sense to us possibly wouldn't even occur to them.
    • They explicitely state that having Dominators show up all over the world was a distraction, so that people wouldn't be paying attention to the Meta-Bomb.
    • Yes, and as was already said above, they wouldn't have even needed the distraction if they hadn't revealed the existence of the meta bomb to the good guys. They could've just dropped it before anyone had the time to react. And even if it was just a distraction, that doesn't explain why they choose to fight without the weapons and technology they're shown to possess. (Based on the 1951 scene this seems to be their normal fighting method, not just something they did for this particular invasion only.) As for their supposed alien mindset, that doesn't change the fact that they had a clear goal they wanted to reach (drop the meta bomb and stop the heroes from interfering with that), and they would've had the means to reach that goal quickly and efficiently, but for inexplicable reasons chose to act in a way that got them defeated. If the writers had, for example, made them into a Proud Warrior Race, for whom it's a question of honour to fight naked and without weapons, and who would view it as dishonourable to drop a bomb on the enemy before warning them in advance, then their alien mindset could've been used to explain away they're apparently idiotic behaviour. (Though the fact that in the earlier episodes they brainwashed the heroes to fight each other, and beamed some of them to their ship to imprison them would suggest they do not follow a Proud Warrior Race code of honour.) But no such explanation was given, so their stupid and inefficient actions are still a headscratcher.
    • Well, it was really only that one Dominator who told them about the meta bomb, and it's not like that really would've mattered, seeing as the heroes had already figured out that the Dominators had some sort of weapon and were planning to use it (with Central City being the most likely target, given their obsession with Metas and since Central City is where the bulk of known metas are). As for their mindset, it is... questionable as to how intelligent they really are. They make some rather smart moves and then undermine them with their own arrogance. They use a mind control device to turn the heroes against the planet, then don`t bother with either moving the device somewhere else or stationing their own guards to prevent it from being destroyed. They kidnap the heroes who don`t have superpowers and put them in pods to sift through their minds and learn about their enemy`s weaknesses... and don`t even bother guarding them in case they break out (there isn`t even a locked door between Team Arrow and the next hallway for god`s sake!). It`s because of this that I think the Dominators have a mindset that`s rather stymied by their own arrogance. They`ve had some rather brilliant tactics, which were then compromised by their own stupidity.
  • Honestly, question their motivations for wanting to invade in the first place. It seems to all be led by that one Dominator who got saved and so realized "humans like that evil one who kidnapped me could potentially get meta-human powers, let's stop that from happening" which is a much bigger jump of logic than both A. his only plan was to wipe out the current set of meta-humans, who clearly don't include anyone evil trying to attack the Dominators, and B. even so, he was rescued from Agent Smith's capture by a group of people who he knows have meta-human powers, and have proven themselves benevolent enough to protect his race from the bad humans. Of course, there is the reasoning that they could cause inadvertent damage, but the Dominators don't know about the group's time travel, so he couldn't know about that possibility. Though perhaps that one Dominator wanted to prove to the rest of his species that "these guys are powerful enough to defeat us, but they don't want to, they just don't want us to attack them, let's leave them alone".

     Abberations vs. "Time wants to happen" 
  • In the first season, Rip explains to the team that their biggest obstacle is time itself; that the timeline is very resistant to change and will try its damnedest to happen in more or less the same way even if time travelers intervene. All well and good, questions raised about free will notwithstanding. However, we soon see that even accidental meddling with events can have dramatic consequences (i.e. an army of Soviet Firestorms) and also that meddling can be ultimately pointless (i.e. Papa Snart being arrested by an undercover cop instead of during a failed robbery). Hell, season 2 is all about the Legends stopping aberrations, changes in the timeline that have disastrous consequences and are caused by time travelers. As completely nonsensical as Arrowverse time travel is, can anybody make sense of the show's basic premise?
    • If you recall in season 1 it turned out it was not so much time wants to happen as the time masters were making sure it happened now that they don't exist time is subject to change.
    • Time aberrations having "disastrous consequences" depends on your perspective. Stuff like World War II lasting an extra two years or Al Capone becoming mayor of Chicago would obviously be really bad for a whole lot of people, but it's been established since the beginning of the series that many people's lives really aren't important in the grand scheme of history. Rip recruited the Legends specifically because, if they died or vanished from the timeline, a hundred years later nothing much would really be changed as a result. It's possible that the time aberrations are similar: in the short term, they cause a massive amount of harm, but a century or two down the road, society at large will be pretty much the same regardless.
    • "Wants to happen" does not mean "will happen." We've seen the US conquered by Soviet Firestorms, The Roman Empire conquering the Americas, and Vandal Savage killed, so I'd say it's quite possible for history to be permanently and majorly altered by a time traveller. While Snart's attempt to prevent his own history was minor enough that time could easily correct it, there doesn't seem to be much it can do in the face of someone shooting George Washington to death with a Glock.

    Ignore the Thanagarians? 
  • Shouldn't the Legends be a bit more concerned about aliens possibly conquering the world? They haven't even mentioned this, and even if only Rip knows, why hasn't he (or Gideon) said anything?
    • In-universe, hard to say, but then again, with time travel, they have a lot of time to prepare for the Thanagarian arrival. Of course, the 'real' reason is that the creators want to save the Thanagarians for another season to use as antagonists.
    • The Thanagarians are a "local" threat (i.e. they can only affect the Earth at a certain era in time). The Legion, fellow time travelers that can't be confined to one era or confronted when ready is the far bigger threat.
    • But the Thanagrians ARE STILL A THREAT, it just seems weird that there's been no MENTION of them thus far...
    • They're probably saving them for Season 3.
    • Nah, Season 3's trying to fix time. But honestly? A) There's been more important stuff going on then to prepare for a future invasion. B) It'll probably just be one cool massive crossover with all the Arrowverse to deal with them, better then Invasion! was.

     Would Carter at the end of Season 1 eventually experience "Time Drift"? 
  • Season 1 established the concept of "time drift" i.e. slowly experiencing a sense of dislocation and Loss of Identity after spending a prolonged period of time in a time period not your own. Since the Carter who ends up with Kendra in 2016 is technically from 2166, will this Carter experience "time drift" the longer he stays in 2016? It does seem that the Hawks' reincarnation ability doesn't make them immune to the effects since Kendra experienced them in "Left Behind". Or would the fact that he's with Kendra, his soul-mate who's currently in an incarnation that does belong to 2016 somehow make him immune?
    • He probably would experience time drift, but considering in his previous time he was brainwashed into serving a psychotic immortal dictator, I don't think he or Kendra would care that much.

    Lily doesn't know about her father being part of Firestorm? 
  • How come Lily apparently doesn't know her father is one half of the superhero Firestorm? Where did she think her dad was during the 14 months he was fused with Ronnie, and thus officially missing? Sure, Stein must have given her some kind of plausible explanation, but why not tell her the truth considering that he would have to regularly fuse with Ronnie (or later Jax) from now on? And if she doesn't know he's Firestorm, then what does she think he is doing when he's away with the Legends?
    • In "The Flash", why Joe didn't Iris to know about Barry's powers? Why did he try to stop Wally for being a superhero? Parents are like this, they want to protect their children ... and sometimes they think keeping something very important from them is for their own good. At least in the Arrowverse ...

     S1: Kendra and the rest of the team holding the Idiot Ball 
  • Back to Season 1. Anyone have any idea why the team don't even consider just killing off brainwashed Carter, letting him resurrect, and killing Savage? I'm really hoping there's a better reason than the writers needing Plot Armor for Savage. Is it because they're afraid that their resurrections are linked to him?
    • When you are a good guy, you don't kill other good guys, even if they are brainwashed, even if they can resurrect. Killing is bad.

     Why weren't Amaya and Rex in 1956 in the flashback? 
  • Another time-travel related Headscratcher (this show has them by the tons!). So in Camelot 3000, Courtney tells the Legends how, in 1956, the JSA and Rip Hunter went on a mission to retrieve the Spear of Destiny and subsequently, the JSA members were dispersed in time to safeguard fragments of the sphere - the members in question being Courtney (Stargirl), Charles (Dr. Mid-nite) and Henry (Commander Steel). Now the absence of Obsidian has already been explained back in Compromised (due to his homosexuality, he was considered a liability by the McCarthy-era US Government) but where were Amaya and Rex?
    • Remember, Rip must have gone on that mission with the JSA before the events of Season 2. That means, that when Rip visited 1956, Rex hadn't been killed by the Reverse-Flash yet and consequently, neither had Amaya joined the Legends. Granted, its possible in the original timeline they'd both left the team by 1956 (according to Ray, Amaya eventually returns to her village in Zambesi)...but then it comes across as being rather coincidental that the two members who weren't around for this crucial mission ended up also being the ones who were removed from the timeline (Rex by being killed, Amaya by leaving with the Legends).
    • Amaya mentions that she and Rex planned to leave the JSA after the war so that they could be together. But even if that didn't happen, it's entirely possible that originally Rex and Amaya were part of Rip's team to collect/protect the Spear of Destiny, but thanks to Thawne changing the past, now they weren't.

     Moonshot 
  • So nobody is at all flummoxed and likely, rather alarmed, that "Swigert" disappeared off the Apollo 13 capsule and the real one is most likely either dead or hidden out of the way?
  • As well, the mission director being absent during a critical descent failure, loss of communications, and two apparently barmy Brits singing in the middle of Mission Control should've caused major problems and probably some pretty probing questions from the FBI about whether he knew of any sabotage going on, since Soviet or Chinese interference with the moon shot would be the most likely explanation, barring actual space aliens (which the Legends kind of technically are).

     Eobard Thawne in Moonshot 
  • In "Moonshot", Eobard reminisces about working with Cisco and Caitlin...except that this version of Thawne has not experienced the events of Season 1 of Flash. This Thawne is a time remnant created because of Barry tampering with the night of his mother's murder - he didn't stay in 2000 and assume the identity of Harrison Wells, but returned Season 3 Barry to 2016 and then went his way. It makes sense for him to know about everything that happened in Season 1 that led to Eddie's suicide and his erasure from history, but not for him to have actually experienced all of it first hand.
    • Time Travel works rather weirdly in this universe, especially considering that Stein has memories of time spent with his daughter in spite of having never lived through it, so it could be something similar to that happening to Thawne. Alternatively, he's just lying through his teeth and trying to make himself seem more sympathetic to Ray (it helps that it did actually happen, so Ray can't really say he's lying).
    • That isn't what happened. We clearly see the original Eobard disappear at the end of Flashpoint, which means the only possible Eobard that could have been around in the new version of Season 1 of The Flash is the Eobard from Flashpoint. So Eobard that returned Barry did stay in 2000, and did all the stuff he did originally, and somehow survived those events, and then came back to return Barry (Obvious clue: He's now clean shaven.), and then went on to Legends of Tomorrow. He's not a time remnant.

     Henry's free skydiving lesson aversion (SPOILERS) 
  • In "Moonshot" Henry blows the cargo bay door to adjust the angle of the Waverider, which throws him out and kills him, yet in the previous episode, Jax held on to the railing RIGHT NEXT TO THE LEVER and survived a similar incident blowing out Mental!Firestorm, the reason he knows this would work is because he knew the ship inside out, so surely the same kind of thing would have a chance of making sure Henry survived, my HS is why he didn't at least try that?
    • That was a mental construct, not a real thing.

     The Legends, are they the bad guys? (SPOILERS from Doomsworld) 
  • In the Brave New World created by the Legion of Doom, cold fusion exists, there is no global warming and some previously endangered species are saved thanks to Eobard Thawne. Even if they aren't heroes, the world seems to be a better place. So yeah, no superheroes and the bad guys had petty revenge on the Legends but still. Trying to get back the real one looks like a bad thing for me. What the point of destroying a better world just because it was created by bad people ? Especially when a failure means the destruction of time itself ...
    • It's also ruled over by Thawne, a petty and cruel man who works his employees like slaves, has super powers and literally nobody to keep him in check, and is prone to fits of murder. It lets Thawne be the hero he's always wanted, at the expense of killing anyone who might challenge and threaten him. By the same token, Darhk is still an evil megalomaniac who rules the city with an iron fist, turned Amaya and Sara into his personal assassins, and killed all of Team Arrow, for no reason than they stopped him in the normal timeline.
      • If reality were rewritten by Thawne and no one else, he wouldn't have treated his employees like slaves, and the world would still be better than the original, sure there would still be no super heroes, but there wouldn't be a need for them. Every negative change to reality was done by the other members of the Legion of Doom.

     Thawne is Too Dumb To Live 
  • Why exactly did Thawne get Stein to invent and build a machine that could destroy the Spear? He both has the Spear and knows how to use it, he could just will a machine that could do it into existence at any time. Literally every risk that he is building the machine to protect against would be made impossible if he just used the damn Spear and made it so. Making Stein invent and build the machine just gives his partners and the Legends time to realize and stop it, and the only reason they even have the ability to do so in the first place is because he outright let them retain it! Why not just use the Spear and make everyone who knows about it besides himself not ever want to use it, then destroy it? Why keep his partners around when he can use the Spear and has had apparently months of alone time to use it with no one to stop him?
    • The Spear doesn't appear to have the ability to just makes things appear out of thin air. Instead, it makes small, discreet edits to reality (Nate compares it to surgery), which add up to major changes that no one can notice, unlike time aberrations. So Thawne put himself in charge of STAR Labs, but still had to invent everything manually.

     Time Travel Shouldn't Help 
  • Why exactly do the Legends think that traveling back in time to prevent the Legion from getting the Spear will work? The Spear alters reality itself, including time, so why would the Legion have left the past prior to them obtaining the Spear intact as it was? Building on that, if this was possible, then why would Thawne not immediately realize this flaw in his reality warping, considering he's an experienced time traveler who's traveled through time and made changes more than literally anyone else in the known reality?
    • Presumably the Legion has to leave the events that lead to them actually acquiring the Spear alone in order for it to work. If they use the Spear to make it so they never got the Spear in the first place, it would create a paradox.
    • But the Spear dictates reality itself. The order of what dictates reality should logically be The Spear > Causality/Time. Even time travel is irrelevant by comparison since the spear remakes the original event itself into whatever the user wants without them having to bother with causality and timelines. Logically, the user should be able to make it so nobody in history ever travels back to it. The only way that anyone could ever go back and change anything is if the user of the Spear did not specifically dictate that it didn't happen, which would be a pretty huge oversight to make for the most experienced time traveler ever, Thawne. Furthermore, since the spear alters reality itself, there's no excuse for Thawne to not have removed the previous timeline entirely and simply retained himself exactly the same, just to eradicate any possible traces that could be a threat. The spear inherently doesn't care about paradoxes, otherwise it couldn't possibly function to begin with. Doomworld itself wouldn't be possible if everything up until the legion getting the spear happened in the Doomworld timeline, since none of the Doomworld legends became legends.
    • Rip explains that altering reality has a delayed ripple effect just like time aberrations do. The Legion rewrote reality in 2017, but it took time for the effects of that reality alteration to reach back to 1916. Sort of like how, when the Pilgrim went back in time to kill the Legends' younger selves, they didn't instantly disappear from the timeline, but instead had time to follow her into the past and stop her.
    • How can the staff be limited by something it can alter freely? What point in time is the timer in reference to? Shouldn't history prior to the changed event plus the length of the timer always be un-hardened since they're always the same amount of time from the event and before the end of the timer? How can there even be a time limit while you're outside of time? Isn't the whole point of that place that time explicitly doesn't exist there? If time still flows there, doesn't that mean it's not really outside of time, it's just another dimension of space?
    • It's plausible that Thawne actually overlooked making sure that the Legends would be unable to go back and change things. For all his intelligence, he has made some pretty big mistakes, the largest one being keeping the Black Flash around and in a cage instead of erasing it from existence, which ended up biting him in the ass. The Legends were depowered and their memories erased, and the Waverider had been shrunken down and its time drive disabled so that it wouldn't work. From Thawne's perspective, there was no threat, especially not after he destroyed the Spear of Destiny. It was a huge oversight by the self-proclaimed genius, but if the bad guys never made mistakes, then the heroes would never win. And the villains are ultimately human and can make mistakes, just like the heroes.
    • That sounds like a pathetic excuse to allow the heroes to win, even when it should have been impossible. And there's a difference between making mistakes and then just being extremely ignorant. Twice, Thawne chooses to let the Legends suffer instead of killing them right then and there. And he leaves the Waverider AND the ATOM Suit available for the Legends to use.
    • The first time he spared them was because it was his agreement with Snart on behalf on Rory’s request. As the group worked together the first time to create Doomworld a mutual agreement was needed. The second time was Thawne being petty, he believed he had all the power. Money, wealth and super speed and that the Legends had no way to go back in time to stop him. Also as seen in his interactions with Barry and his taunting of Eddie, Thawne could be extremely petty. He enjoyed in it, revelled in it. After murdering Barry mother the second time he delighted in it. For all his intelligence he is not infallible and he never thought that Rip could get the Waverider up and running again never the less the Legends using it to back track. The Legends suffered the first time was on agreement with the Legion. Dhark delighted on having henchwomen, Malcolm had his petty vengeances and Rory spared his friends. The second time was in tune with his personality as seen in the Flash. Arrogance, pettiness and being blindsided by the Legends desperation and improvisation brought him down.

     Why is Thawne Not In The Future? 
  • Why exactly is Thawne in his new world living in 2017? Literally all of Flash season 1 happened because Thawne longed for his native time period too much to settle for the early 2000s, and he outright murders people just to speed up his return by just a few years. Yet, when he gets to control reality itself, he neither lives in his own time nor does he make the time he's in like his own. The Thawne who was stuck in the early 2000s likened it to living in hell, yet when he gets to dictate the rules of reality he just puts himself right back there?
    • Because in the 2000's, he gets to be the hero he's always wanted to be. Thawne's whole character is that he idolized the Flash until he became Reverse-Flash. Now that he rules everything and Flash is gone, he can take his place.
    • Then why not make himself the hero he's always wanted to be in his own time? He despises everything about the early 2000s, the only reason he stuck around was because he couldn't leave. I don't see any reason he wouldn't have reshaped his own time instead when he so blatantly prefers it, he dictated reality itself. Realistically, it's probably because the writers didn't want to split the legion over multiple time periods, but in universe it doesn't make sense.
    • He hated the past because it was barbaric from his perspective, plus the fact that he had to keep his hated nemesis alive so that he could return home probably contributed to his hatred. With reality under his control and the Flash dead, Eobard was free to do whatever he pleased with the timeline. And considering it was mentioned that he was solving problems and unlocking new fields of science years if not centuries in advance, therefore making it more like home to him. Combine that with the hero thing above, and it does make some sense as to why he's still in the past.

     How dangerous exactly is meeting your past self? 
  • In "Aruba", the Legends meeting their past versions is shown to immediately cause universe-threatening timequakes, something which Rip seems to think is inevitable. However, in earlier episodes both Mick and Professor Stein (as well Zoom and Barry in The Flash) have interacted with their past selves without any such catastrophic effects. So why were there no quakes then?
    • There were a lot of Legends in one place in "Aruba", so that likely increased the danger (or at least the speed of that danger). Speedsters explicitly operate under different rules because they use the Speed Force.
    • It was mentioned in the first season that it was dangerous to effect events that they already altered. Chronos interacting with Mick was fine because it was a Stable Time Loop. The Time Masters were responsible for Chronos' creation thanks to the Occulus. I think a part of it may also be due to the form of time travel. We know that time "takes time to set" as we've seen throughout both seasons and even with the Doomworld in finale. The speedsters seem to avoid that and seem to travel to the timeline after their actions are set in stone. The timestorm probably has more to due with them trying to travel through the temporal zone with their alternate future selves. Sara was "erased" when the Spear was inactivated, rendering any chance of her existence as it played out moot. By trying to travel with their selves that would be "erased" like Sara was, they would be letting the changes from World War I start to take effect, while the Doomworld changes would still be happening since at that point the Spear was still active. Pretty much they double teamed time so hard that once everything was fixed at the end of the day, it was too screwed up to operate normally.

     Sara and Laurel 
  • Ok, so Sara has moved on from Laurel's death, and with encouragement from her, does not rewrite reality to bring her back, having gotten closure. Sure it's great Character Development, but um... what about Quentin, you know, your dad who's buried his daughters about 3 times now, and relapsed into alcoholism because of Laurel's death? And Oliver, the guy who started killing again because of Laurel's death and still loves and grieves her? Your mom? Team Arrow? A competent D.A. finally, maybe? All I'm saying is that while it works, just for Sara, it doesn't mean she's the only person who should get a say. I'm not complaining or anything, I just really need to know why she at least didn't talk to Quentin or Oliver about it before making her decision.
    • ... Maybe the fact that an army of Reverse-Flashes was right there beating the living shit out of the Legends, and was planning to use the Spear to erase them all from existence? That might have had something to do with her decision.
    • Alright, fair enough, but I might not have been clear, I'm just asking why Sara didn't think about whether or not she was the one who should make that decision—yes, there were the Reverse-Flashes, but she could've altered things so the Spear would only worked on her, or something. It's not about literally bringing Quentin or anyone else right there at that exact time, I just want to know why she didn't think about her dad or anyone else's say or feelings about the matter before making her decision.
    • First off, Quentin doesn't know about the Spear of Destiny, so that's going to be hard to explain. Secondly, their whole mission is basically to destroy the Spear and not use it for any reason. Thirdly (again), an army of Reverse-Flashes is beating the living shit out of the Legends, and will flat out kill them all if they can. Can't really discuss it with Quentin or Oliver if Eobard wipes them from existence. She wasn't supposed to be using the Spear of Destiny anyway, and she can't really discuss it with her family when she has an army of murderous speedsters right in front of her. TLDR: There wasn't any time or opportunity to discuss bringing Laurel back with her family.
    • In-Universe it's because Sara was told that trying to bring Laurel back will just make things worse for everyone, and once she got her closure, she decided to believe this, although it's up in the air as to whether or not this is actually true, since there were alterations to the timeline that ended up working out, like Lily Stein. Out-of-universe, it's probably because the Arrow staff gets priority in terms of inter-series continuity and they are adamant that Laurel can never come back.

     About Malcolm Merlyn 
  • Why do the Legends decide leave to him alive or at least not have him thrown in jail (if not public jail maybe ARGUS or the Island can hold him) after defeating the Legion of Doom? It feels like he is only going to cause more trouble in the future if left alive or at least running around free if given the chance.
    • Two reasons. 1. By the time Thawne and Darhk picked him up, Malcolm was an alcoholic living in a shitty apartment, had only one hand, no money or connections left he could use, his only living relative left hated his ass, he was no longer Ra's Al Ghul, the plan he spent 20 years on and all others he had failed miserably and never accomplished any of their goals, and he had no allies or anyone else he could hope to help him. It's possible that if he hadn't joined the Legion, he might have been Driven to Suicide. By dropping him right back to where he had been when he was recruited, not only does he have to deal with all of the above, he knows that not only did his plan to change his fortunes fail, he had gotten everything he wanted and lost it all. 2. John Barrowman is such a magnificent actor at this they want to keep him around so they can put him back on Arrow probably.
    • Plus, if they looked ahead in time a little, they would have seen they needed to drop him back where he was to assist in the finale of Arrow Season 5.

     The Legends. Where are they now? 
  • At the beginning of season 3, Rip disbands the team and the Legends all go their separate ways for 6 months before reuniting. Some of their choices make sense. Stein goes back to his family and Jax finally enrolls in college, with the 2 meeting weekly to fuse so they don't explode. Amaya and Nate decide to settle down, but Amaya, upon learning more about Mari, decides to go back to Zambesi in her time period. As a result, Nate ends up joining Team Flash. As for Mick, he finally goes on his vacation to Aruba and is likely back to his criminal ways. This makes sense for each of their characters. What doesn't make sense, however, are the choices that Sara and Ray made. Sara is working retail while Ray is working for a Tinder rip-off. Why didn't Sara either a) rejoin Team Arrow (the most logical option in my mind given that she clearly misses fighting) or b) reunite with Nyssa? As for Ray, WHY has he STILL not gone back to Palmer Tech? As far as they're all concerned, their days of travelling through time are gone forever, so why didn't these two go back to their old lives like the others did (save for Nate who is doing what he's always wanted to do)?
    • In regards to Ray, I'm pretty sure it was mentioned that he tried that, but Palmer Tech wants nothing to do with him since he gave the company to Felicity, who didn't exactly do well with it. And since he no longer has controlling interest, there's not much he can do about it. As for Sara, well, depending on the timeline, Nyssa is assumed dead after the explosion on Lian Yu, so it's not like Sara can reunite with her, though why she didn't rejoin Team Arrow is admittedly a good question... Perhaps she didn't want to deal with the memory and knowledge that Laurel was gone, and had been replaced by Dinah.
    • Sara probably didn't go back to Team Arrow for the same reason she kept her distance and went with the Legends in the first place. Because she might be compelled to attack Thea because of the first time she killed her.
    • Not entirely true with Sara as she rejoined Team Arrow in the novel Arrow: Fatal Legacies, which is set between Season 3 and 4 of Legends of Tomorrow and Season 5 and 6 of Arrow.

     President Obama? 
  • The penultimate episode of season 3 features Grodd attempting to kill young Barack Obama . Later, Sara asks him for advice and tells him she misses him at the end of their meeting before wiping his memory. The problem here is that Invasion established that the president in 2016 (the year Obama's second term ended) was an old, white guy (played by Jerry Wasserman). How can Sara miss him if he was never her president?
    • Time travel. More specifically, the timeline's been altered so much that Obama's term might've been erased only for another alteration to change it back.

     Jax is retired for 5 years 
  • He mentioned so in the Season 3 finale. So is this version of him from the future or what? Or did he drop out in the past?
    • He's from the future. It was said he was from five years later from the "present".

     Charlie transforming her clothes 
  • How can Charlie transform her clothes? If they're part of her, how can she take them off after she lost her powers?
    • Her powers are magical. It's possible that when her body transforms, whatever clothes she's wearing transform as well. There doesn't need to be any 'logical' explanation for it!

     Legends and clothing 
  • I know that Rule of Funny is very likely in effect here, but still...why are the Legends dependent on funding from the Time Bureau? Especially for food, historical costumes and other miscalleanous expenses? Surely, Gideon's fabricator arranged for their food and clothes, as we've seen her do in previous seasons. If the Legends needed funding from the Time Bureau, then how could they have survived before the Time Bureau existed, or before they were allied to the Bureau? At least the Legends needing the Bureau's help to get a new time core makes sense, though one wonders why they couldn't simply use a time-courier or Bureau ship to jump to the future and find a time core somewhere rather than needing to build one for millions of dollars in the present day!
    • Constantine was even seen using the fabricator to make rare spell components this season, so clearly it's still around. There's a theory that Gideon is embezzling money from the Time Bureau for some reason, but that's still just a theory.
    • Rule of Funny aside, it's likely the fabricator needs a lot of energy to work. When it's being used to generate food, that's fine, but if the Bureau sees them wasting all that power on silly costumes for their adventures...

     "Doesn't a legend have to be dead?" 
  • The whole "Don't you have to be dead to be a legend?" question in the first episode and several of the main characters taking issue with that just confounds me. Hunter just said he's from the year 2166. Did all of them expect to live to be two hundred years old?
    • It's not just that they would be dead by Rip's time. It's the fact that, according to him, their lives didn't actually matter much to the timeline.
    • You can take this or leave this as a potential explanation but legendary figures also have a notable tendency to suffer some pretty grim and/or tragic deaths (which is arguably what helps lend them their "legend" status in the first place). It could be that Stein was concerned that the label of "legend" applied to them all for this same reason, particularly given the obviously dangerous nature of their proposed mission. Kind of makes things Harsher in Hindsight when you think about it...

     Staying out of the war? 
  • Sorry if I missed something here, but if there's a whole group of awesome superheroes hanging around in America, why the heck didn't they stop the Second World War?
    • The JSA? They did fight in the war, they mention that in their debut episode. Unfortunately, even superheroes can't simply stop a war, especially when they don't have powers akin to Kryptonians or Speedsters.
    • Must have missed that, okay.
    • Post-Crisis there was also Gravedigger, but his past ended up being classified by the government.

     Advertising Heyworld with Supergirl 
  • What sense does that make? Sure, Flash and Arrow, they are known to the public alright, but Supergirl? She is from a different Earth, has been to this one no more than 3 times, she should be totally unknown to the public.
    • Apparently you forgot Supergirl helped the CCPD defeat AMAZO and she probably became well-known after that.

     Behrad and Zari 
  • Why do Behrad and Zari have different last names? They're not mentioned to be half-siblings nor have we ever heard of Zari getting married, so why is her last name Tomaz and his is Tarazi? Gideon also calls her "Ms. Tarazi" when she comes aboard.
    • Crisis did it.
    • Word of God is that the family's original last name was Tarazi, but the original timeline's future had a ban on religions and religious names, necessitating the name change to Tomaz. In the post-Heyworld timeline, the ban does not exist, so the last name remains Tarazi.

     Khan keeping track of time 
  • How did Genghis Khan know how much time it took him to dig out of his grave? He wouldn't have known what day or year it was when he resurrected, and he wouldn't have had any timekeeping devices down there. Did he pull a Senku or what?
    • He knows when he died, and the Encores all seem to come back very shortly after their deaths.

     Nate's past 
  • How could Nate be a party boy in college and survive falling off a ladder given his condition? Or did hemophilia somehow got retconned by the Crisis? Then how did he become Steel, since the serum was given to him specifically because of his condition?
    • We didn't see him land, but it looked like it would have been from just the second story on grass; not something any hemophilliac should attempt, but he'd probably survive more times than not. Also, even if Crisis did get rid of Nate's hemophillia, that was only part of his reason for taking the Super Serum: he felt useless next to the other Legends, his dad had never respected him, and he wanted a purpose for his life.

     Sara's Loom wish 
  • When asked what she would want to do with the Loom of Fate, Sara says nothing. Did she forget about her sister? I'm sure the Loom could being her back while avoiding the "doppelgänger sickness" with the Black Siren.
    • Sara's gained a lot more experience and understanding of the risks and issues involved in changing the past or reality, via time travel, magic, or a combination thereof. She knows that bringing Laurel back is likely to cause unexpected problems, and doesn't want to pull at that thread. Additionally, she's pretty much come to terms with losing her sister (Season 2's vision being her pivotal moment of realisation), so Sara no longer feels the desire to bring her back. It's not on her radar, and if it is, she doesn't want to risk it anymore.

     Changing Reality with the Loom 
  • So, the Loom changed reality so that it's a 1984-like dystopia. The Legends free this, but they don't actually reverse the reality changing, so everyone keeps their memories. As such, when the Legends skip forward a year, everyone is obsessed with the Fates' watches to escape their despair from being freed from such a hellish world. So... why is this never addressed by the rest of the Arrowverse shows? Did the writers really not think about that? I mean, this plot is a repeat of Season 2, where the gang restored the old universe. Are you telling me Kara, Barry, Clark, Lex, Lena, Thawne, etc. were all trapped in the TV shows too and were so wracked with despair that they willingly accepted essentially slavery to the Fates?
    • Legends always had the loosest relationship with the main Arrow-verse of all its shows, so the writers really didn't care. For an in-universe explanation, maybe after all the messing with reality previously the Legends all got soft-booted into their own universe?
    • First, they didn't jump ahead a year, just a few months. And that makes me think all the Loomworld stuff was meant to take place during the summer break between seasons ... but thanks to complications from Covid shutdowns, new seasons of the shows (except for Black Lightning) picked up right where the previous seasons left off, which complicates matters.
    • Don't think about it too hard. The previous episode had a zombie outbreak through all of England, which would definitely require Superman, Supergirl and Martian Manhunter to drop whatever they were doing to come help. Plus, since the fates could rewrite reality at any moment, but they still had their phones, calling Flash (who they didn't know was currently powerless) or maybe Brainy with whatever teleport tech he uses would definitely have been worth it.

    Gary being an alien 
  • Okay; where the writers planning this reveal all along? Because to me it seems more an Ass Pull they made up on the fly, since it raises so many questions regarding Gary's role in previous episodes. For example; his true, alien form clearly lacks nipples, so if his human nipple was just an illusion, how could it have played such an important part in season 4? And what about "Terms of Service", when one of Gary's wishes to make the Legends understand how he feels was for Nate to become as unattractive as Gary himself was during his high school years? Has Gary been on Earth for that long? Was teenage Gary this unattractive by his species standards, and how Nate ended up looking was just the human equivalent?
    • They may explain this in upcoming episodes, but I can think of a couple different ways to reconcile it:
      • First, maybe the glasses don't just make Gary look human, but physically transform him into a human, complete with nipples. And if he loses a nipple in human form, that stays lost, even if his alien form is unaffected.
      • Or, if that doesn't work, there's always the fact that the Gary's Nipple Saga happened before Crisis on Infinite Earths, so maybe Gary was just a dweebish human Pre-Crisis, but is a dweebish alien posing as a dweebish human Post-Crisis.
      • Or, considering that there's a cocoon on the wall in Gary's bedroom, maybe before that point he was biologically a human, and that coccoon was his recent transition back to his real alien form. Possibly due to the Time Bureau's dissolution, maybe they had some sort of technology to detect aliens, so he had to actually be a human until they went away.
    Crisis Mick 
  • Wasn't the Mick who appeared in Crisis one from another Earth where the Legends had all retired and the Waverider's AI was based on Leonard Snart? So then why, in real beginning of Season 5, does Mick walk back onto the Waverider with Ray and Sara with a bandage from an injury he got during Crisis, and everyone act's like he's been gone? Were the multiple Mick's fused into one by Oliver at the end (and memories restored by Martian Manhunter)? Did Alt!Mick die at some point and the one that battled the giant Beebo was the one from Earth Prime, or am I forgetting something?
    • The Mick Rory from the first three episodes of Crisis was one from another Earth. The Mick Rory who appeared in part 5 and fought Beebo was the one from Earth-Prime.
    The Nick/Zari/John relationship 
  • So, let's pretend for a minute that Matt Ryan isn't leaving the show and that Nick/Flannel!Zari and John/Celebrity!Zari are the intended endgame romances for those characters. How exactly would that work? Would Nick move in with John and Zari and they basically have weird threesomes? Also, if one of the Zaris becomes pregnant, would the pregnancy stay in the "real world" when they switched, or would the pregnant Zari go back into the totem?
    • The two Zaris physically switch places...they don't 'possess' each other's bodies. So if one of the Zaris gets pregnant, she and her unborn child would both go back to the totem (or out of the totem, depending on where the conception happened). A more interesting question is what would happen if Zari 1.0 (AKA Flannel!Zari) gave birth to a child with Nate. Would the child be able to exist in the outside world when Zari 1.0 is in the totem, or would its continued presence outside cause the timeline to unravel and potentially kill Behrad?
     Bishops plan and established aliens 
Okay, so Bishop wants to make alien and human hybrids that can survive the harshest of environments. To do this, he goes out of his way to get never seen before aliens. This is definitively post crisis, Bishop clearly know how time travel works and how to do it. Why isn't he collecting samples from Martians, Dominators and Kryptonians? Martians can literally transform on a whim, can fly, have comparable strength to kryptonians and have phenomenal psychic capability. Dominators have similarly strong psychic abilities, and Kryptonians are well... Kryptonians, one of the strongest species in the galaxy under a red sun. And that is just the tipping point, all the other aliens the DEO has taken and catalogued and Bishop didn't think about using any of those species?

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