After a lengthy hiatus, the DCTV continues rolling out its season premieres. Legends of Tomorrow delivers its episode, “Aruba-Con” which follows an excellent season two cliffhanger.
Picking right after the last episode, the Legends are at a dinosaur ravaged 2017 Los Angeles that also sports a nicely looking Big Ben. However, before they get the chance to do something about it, one Rip Hunter from five years into the future returns as the creator of the Time Bureau, an institution that takes care of anachronisms and has replaced the Time Masters. He quickly solves the situation and relieves the Legends of their time-traveling antics.
Six months later, Sara Lance is back at Star City working at a discount Bath and Bodyworks and dealing with a shitty boss/supervisor (oh my god, she’s just like us!). Also out of luck, Ray is at Silicon Valley having his miniaturizing ideas shut down by his boss at a company that created a Tinder-like app. Meanwhile, Nate is at Central City being a part-time second-tier superhero. Additionally, he is not dating Amaya anymore. The only former Legend doing well seems to be Mick who is still spending his time tanning at Aruba. However, that’s about to change as he runs into the Julius Caesar.
Mick phones Sara who takes charge of the situation (and quits her job!). She reunites with Nate and Ray at Central City where they commiserate over their past shitty six-months. Going the obvious route, they make their way to the Time Bureau where they get recognized and held as volatiles before Rip has a chance to make an entrance and save them — oh, and just for “funsies”, I guess, Sara and the lady in charge (Agent Sharpe) immediately start being catty to each other. Nate accuses Rip of telling Amaya to go to 1942, but he claims it was her idea as she wanted to go back to Zambesi.
As the group goes on a tour, Sara asks to get back in the business by dealing with Julius Caesar, but they see firsthand that the Waverider has been transformed to a simulator for agents in training. The show even uses the opportunity to take a stinger at Sara’s commanding skills by ridiculing one of her decisions during Season 2
Back in Aruba, we see that Mick has taken Julius hostage, tying him up to a chair in his cottage. Julius manages to engage in a fight with Mick and even besting him, setting himself free at Aruba-con where Mick, two recently transported Bureau agents, and some other guy dressed as Julius Caesar get in a fight. As they get back to the Bureau, Rip dismisses Sara and her team with harsh words. However, Nate notices that Mick has just tried using a Roman coin on a vending machine and realize they were right all along. Naturally, the Legends response is to steal the Waverider so they can fix the anachronism themselves.
Given the Waverider’s less-than-ideal condition, we shift focus to our house mechanic, Jax, who was just paying a visit to his other half, Dr. Stein — as Martin tells the audience, they meet up once a week for bonding sessions. Jax reveals he dropped out of school while Lily Stein shows up pregnant. The Legends interrupt their moment with the promise of Julius Caesar which is all it takes to convince Martin to be back.
The team makes their way to Aruba where Julius is sort of recruiting some frat bros to his cause (did no one tell Julius that fraternities are about Greek like and not Roman life?). Trying to perform their duties without a lot of damage, Ray distracts all the guys while Sara takes Julius Caesar down which is made more satisfactory after his one sexist remark.
Hologram!Rip tells the team that they should deliver Julius to the Time Bureau so that they can take care of it while some of the Legends think they should be the ones to take him back to Rome. Sara’s commanding decision is to follow Rip’s order, but in order to do that, Jax has to perform some more addition fixes to the Waverider.
Sara tries to talk to Caesar about her course of action which ends up in a conversation about how Sara should take chances and be bigger and bolder. As Jax finishes the fixes, Sara decides to go to Rome instead: more specifically, the day Julius disappeared which just happens to be the day before Julius’s famous march on Rome which is crucial for history, apparently. Before leaving, however, Julius manages to pickpocket Nate’s book on the rise of Rome which starts to show its effect right away as Gideon is unable to teleport the Waverider back to Central City because the US does not exist anymore after Julius was able to anticipate history and conquer the world.
Before Sara even have the fix the issue, the Time Bureau arrives on the ship to do their own thing. Rip Hunter sends a team (Agent Sharp and two red-shirts) to retrieve a guards-less book. Sara immediately recognizes this as a trap and lo and behold, agent Sharp is captured by Julius Caesar who destroys her teleporting device.
Rip authorizes the Legends to work their magic to retrieve Agent Sharp: Firestorm does his thing attacking the soldiers, Sara rescues Agent Sharp, while Ray and Nate are trusted to get the book back — oh, and Mick gets to have a moment of revenge on Julius for breaking his nose.
Back at the Waverider, the Legends are officially back on business (hooray!) and Mick even shows off some of the Time Bureau tech he stole which could be handy in following episodes. Talking to Agent Sharp, Rip tells her that the Legends might helpful against the threat of Mallus who is, as you may have guessed, this season’s secretive villain. Jax and Martin talk about their life decisions, choosing to stay with the gang.
Finally, we get to see 1942 Zambesi where Amaya uses her powers to take down some entitled poachers/rapists and yes, it is pretty awesome.
