This is easily the episode I have the least to say about so far 😅 I feel like most of what I could say would just be explaining characters' backstories from Arrow, and while I'll definitely provide any information that's relevant to the Legends episode I'm discussing, that's not what I want this series to be. That being said, I do still have a few things to say about this episode and its obvious ties to Arrow. Starting with the fact that this is the first appearance of Connor Hawke in the Arrowverse, airing nearly three years before his Arrow debut on February 4th, 2019. He is also revealed to be John Diggle's son (originally named John Diggle Jr.) in this episode, a detail that is later retconned when he becomes a main character in seasons 7 and 8 of Arrow. He is instead the son of Sandra Hawke and Ben Turner and the adoptive son of John Diggle and Lyla Michaels. John Diggle Jr. is a separate character and his adoptive brother. Now, I don't remember the details of how his story plays out in Arrow very well, but I think this change makes a lot more sense. This way, he still keeps the name of his birth mother, with whom he was close, but he also sees John Diggle as his father and would carry the weight of responsibility for his death when he takes up the mantle of Green Arrow in this potential future.
We also get to see an older version of Oliver Queen, the original Green Arrow, in this potential future. His look in this episode, with his gray goatee and cybernetic arm, is a reference to Frank Miller's 1986 comic series, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. His cybernetic arm features the S.T.A.R. Labs logo in this episode, suggesting that it was a gift from his good friend Barry Allen.
This is also the first episode where we get to see a bit of Gideon's playful side, as she attempts to expose Ray and Jax's attempts at flirting with Kendra to the whole team. This information was neither needed nor asked for, so she chose to divulge it on her own because she knew it would be funny to embarrass them. Thankfully, for their sakes, Martin cuts her off before she can finish what she was going to say, but I'm very glad we still got to see this little glimpse of Gideon's personality.
And finally, we have a new time and place to add to our list! As you can guess from the title, they spend this entire episode in:
Star City, 2046
And now, for a few things I noticed that relate to later episodes of the show! If you're only on this episode, please be warned that there are spoilers under the cut!
Okay, I have to address the elephant in the room. Or should I say, the wormhole in the room? In Crisis on Infinite Earths: Hour One, the Supergirl episode of the final Arrowverse crossover, they end up having to travel to Star City, 2046, on Earth-16, and for some idiotic reason, they decided to claim that that's really where they went in this episode, too. I think this might genuinely be the most infuriating thing that ever happened in the Arrowverse for me, because it's completely unnecessary and turned this entire episode into a plothole for literally no reason. I truly cannot fathom why they decided to do this. If they wanted to make the reference to this episode so obvious, they could've just as easily had Ray mention that they'd been to that time and place before... on their earth. The insinuation that Star City, 2046, only exists on Earth-16 and therefore could not exist on Earth-1 is quite possibly the stupidest thing any of these shows' writers ever came up with. In this episode, there is obviously no indication that they're on another earth. Their crash landing there looks like any other time jump crash, no wormholes in sight. The idea that they wouldn't notice that they went through a wormhole is absolutely ludicrous, to say nothing about the complete lack of explanation as to how they supposedly made it back to their earth without even knowing they were on another earth to begin with. And once you get to the part of Crisis that bears any resemblance to this episode, the scenes in the Arrowcave with old Oliver Queen, it's very blatantly clear that they are not the same person. In this episode, Oliver claims that Sara and Ray left with Rip in 2016 and never came back, while the Oliver in Crisis claims that she died on the Queen's Gambit. They are very obviously two different Olivers from two different earths. And if you needed any more evidence, I'm pretty sure he still has both his arms in Crisis. At the very least, it's a completely different cybernetic arm, because it is a completely different Earth. I usually prefer to try my best to make everything in canon make sense when it comes to shows and series like this, but I refuse to accept the pointless, idiotic retconning of this episode. The Supergirl writers fucked it up during Crisis for absolutely no reason, but if we simply ignore the lines about how they "apparently traveled to a parallel earth," that they forced Ray and Sara to say, then it all makes sense again. They did not secretly travel to Earth-16 in this episode, just a good, old-fashioned, apocalyptic future.
And finally, on a much lighter note, one of the reasons that Mick cites when he's explaining to Leonard why he doesn't want to leave is that he has a chalice. In Season Five, Episode Eleven, Freaks and Greeks, Mick is the one who steals the much more important Chalice of Dionysus, also known as the Chug Cup. This obviously wasn't foreshadowing, and it barely counts as a parallel, but the word chalice stuck out to me, so I thought it would be fun to mention.
And that's it for this episode's rewatch! Join me next Tuesday for Season One Episode Seven, Marooned! 🩵💜🩵
I've been thinking about Mick and mental illness lately. Do you think that this might have been part of the reason for his desire to stay in 2046 in s1 of Legends? Having 'socially undesirable' manifestations of illness - pyromania, antisocial behaviours, impulsivity, manic tendencies, etc - must be quite othering for Mick. Especially because he seems very emotionally / interpersonally intelligent and would be well aware these are undesired and so is he. And they/he wouldn't be shunned in 2046.
I hadn’t thought about it as such but you’re probably right.
I’m sure he didn’t think about it consciously in that way, but Mick was immediately attracted to 2046 once he found some of the people from that era, and that can’t be just because he liked the #aesthetic.
He was brutish and violent in his first encounter and instead of people shying away, they looked at him with stars in their eyes. That can’t have happened to him all that often, that reaction for that reason, and it’s something he wanted to bask in, a little. A place where his behavior was desirable instead of othering, where his “illness” wasn’t a problem but a solution.
He knows he “doesn’t have any people” and is an outsider. He, at times, prides himself on it. But especially having surrounded himself with a team of heroes and the dissonance there, knowing he especially doesn’t fit with these people, must’ve made the pull of 2046 just that much stronger.
