Legends of Tomorrow: Moonshot
March 15, 2017 5:39 AM - Season 2, Episode 14 - Subscribe

 
I need someone to please explain to me how Eobard Thawne's personal timeline works now because I don't quite understand it. Here's what I think I know:

Event A: Eobard becomes a speedster and learns he's destined to be Flash's greatest enemy.

Event B: Eobard goes on a fact finding mission to the past and sees Barry, Earth-2 Wells, Cisco, and the others.

Event C: Eobard goes back in time and kills Barry's mother.

Event D: Eobard loses his speed and can't go back to the future, so he becomes Harrison Wells and spends 15 years manipulating events to create the Flash.

Event E: Eobard is erased from existence when his ancestor, Eddie, kills himself.

So Eobard's timeline follows events in order A-B-C-D-E and that should be the end of him, but when Barry goes back in time and creates Flashpoint, isn't he rewriting Eobard's timeline as well? Barry ripped Eobard out of his timeline when he kept him captive in a cage for a few months in Flashpoint, then eventually set him free after restoring history. The Eobard that speeds off after Flashpoint and goes on to be on Legends Of Tomorrow never went on to lose his speed and become Harrison Wells, right?

Event F - Eobard is caged in Flashpoint for a while, then kills Barry's mother by request and escapes

Event G - Eobard, now a time aberration, is hunted by the Black Flash

Event H - Eobard recruits the Legion of Doom to try and collect the Spear of Destiny so he can rewrite history to properly exist again

So wouldn't these post-Flashpoint events make his timeline A-B-F-G-H? So how does he have memories of enjoying working with Cisco and Caitlin as he explained to Ray Palmer in this episode if he was never Harrison Wells working at STAR Labs in this timeline?
posted by Servo5678 at 9:20 AM on March 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


This was a bunch of silly nonsense, but it was *fun* silly nonsense. Some thoughts:

* Rip Hunter is not the captain, hooray!

They just had a man cede a leadership role to a woman because she was demonstrably better at it. Without a tantrum or a contest or anything. He was sad, but he still did the right thing. I believe Rip Hunter's title and cosmic role as 'the worst' has fully transferred to Nate.

* Thawne's powers not working off of Earth was silly, but I'll give it to them.

That whole sequence reminded me of nothing so much as a 'What If?' style issue of Planetary, wherein the protagonists of that organization are actually the villains, and they're opposed by a downtrodden Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Superman gets taken off the board early on because his powers 'don't work in zero-g.' It's clearly just an excuse to get rid of him because he's so far out of their weight class, what with how he flies in space *all the time*.

This is similar nonsense: Eobard could take all the Legends at once, so he had to be depowered for this episode to work. I wish they'd picked something less dumb, but it was still a pretty good sequence.

* Regarding Thawne's timeline:

So how does he have memories of enjoying working with Cisco and Caitlin as he explained to Ray Palmer in this episode if he was never Harrison Wells working at STAR Labs in this timeline?

I guess it's important to remember that LOT isn't even trying to make sense at this point. They've just embraced old school comic book insanity instead of even a token effort toward internal consistency. I'm on board with this because they're keeping it light enough. (It reminds me of how S1 Flash felt, actually.)

The only real answer to your question is 'Thawne remembers what he remembers because that's what the audience saw.'

* Stein's distraction was hilarious.

Like, that was some Silver Age WTFery right there. Bravo, LOT.

* Nate is totally The Worst.

I know I already said that, but it felt important enough to warrant its own bullet point. I hope they ditch him at the end of the season. He's not as bad as the Hawks, but he's bad enough.

So yeah, this was all right with me, despite the final complaint there.
posted by mordax at 10:07 AM on March 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


As far as I understand it, this isn't the same Eobard that Flash captured and imprisoned to create Flashpoint. This is the remnant of Eobard right after Eddie killed himself, that somehow kept running away from his own erasure from existence (even though in that Flash episode we saw him getting erased). The changes of Flashpoint doesn't technically affect him because he himself is a fleeting existence that reality, aka black Flash, is trying to catch. So theoretically if he went back in time he could meet the Eobard from Flashpoint. Or he could also go back in time and prevent Eddie's death. But he'd have to deal with other speedsters.
posted by numaner at 10:09 AM on March 15, 2017


Also, how hard would it be for the Legends to just call stop by 2017, grab Flash, and bring him to wherever they're about fight Eobard? Like it boggles my mind the things they could do with a timeship and they don't.

Like, oh look, Apollo 13 is not where it's supposed to be, clearly the Legion is screwing with things. Why don't we just fly back a year and STOP THEM THEN?
posted by numaner at 10:10 AM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Like, oh look, Apollo 13 is not where it's supposed to be, clearly the Legion is screwing with things. Why don't we just fly back a year and STOP THEM THEN?

Doctor Who teaches us that once you're a part of events, you can't go back on your own timestream. If the reason the Legends went back in time to save Apollo 13 is because the Legends found out that Apollo 13 was in trouble in the future, Apollo 13 would not be in trouble in the future and therefore the Legends wouldn't need to go back in time to save it. Let's go to my series of complicated charts for this, all hung on a wall and connected in key points by twine and pushpins.
posted by Servo5678 at 10:17 AM on March 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


Yes, I fully agree with Doctor Who's premise, because it's been laid out plainly and explained several times why they can't just do timey-wimey things and paradoxes and such.

But those details are always thrown to the wayside on LoT. I mean even the main plot itself from season 1 is suspect. If Rip is going back in time to kill Vandal Savage because he kills Rip's family in the future... then once he succeeds his past-future self would never need to go back in time.

Unless of course they subscribe to the infinite timelines because of infinite possibilities theory, in which case they should definitely bounce back and forth as much as they want, readily accepting the consequences of their actions, which they seem to ignore when it's convenient anyway.
posted by numaner at 10:26 AM on March 15, 2017


Oh yeah, and if you had told me in late 2005 that Victor Garber aka Jack Bristow, father to bad ass Sydney Bristow, super sneaky double/triple agent, and all around scary spy guy, would one day be singing Day-O, surprisingly well I might add, in a duet with Dominic Purcell aka Lincoln Burrows, hardened prisoner trying to escape, I would have laughed in your face.

I could watch that scene many many times. And until they take this off, I can!
posted by numaner at 10:53 AM on March 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Oh yeah, and if you had told me in late 2005 that Victor Garber aka Jack Bristow, father to bad ass Sydney Bristow, super sneaky double/triple agent, and all around scary spy guy, would one day be singing Day-O, surprisingly well I might add, in a duet with Dominic Purcell aka Lincoln Burrows, hardened prisoner trying to escape, I would have laughed in your face.

You know what that reminds me of, now that I've had a chance to think about it? Stein totally pulled the Sexy Commando on NASA Mission Control.
posted by mordax at 11:56 AM on March 15, 2017


I know, I know, I shouldn't think too deeply about this show and how it treats history, but didn't the Legends totally and completely screw up the Apollo 13 narrative? They don't seem too concerned about that, or about the fate of the crewman Thawne replaced.

And I don't care how odd it was that Martin broke out into song, there is no way mission control is just going to watch him perform and totally ignore their duties. Okay, maybe for the first few seconds, but after that, it's back to business.

Poor Mick got shoved to the sidelines this episode, opening credits not withstanding.

And to give credit the the reviewers on Comics Alliance, here's one more time travel/history question: doesn't Grandpa Heywood killing himself affect future NASA missions? I mean until they went back in time, he had (presumably) continued his cover by working at NASA.

I know it didn't happen, but I kept hoping that the remaining fragment of the spear had been jettisoned into space when the cargo door blew.
posted by sardonyx at 3:14 PM on March 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Servo5678
I just wanted to say how impressed I am that you were able to sum up Thawne's history so succinctly. Even though I've been watching all of these shows since the start of Arrow, there is no way I could have pulled that tangled mess out of my memory. I'd have needed an afternoon of researching websites and going back over old episodes in order to have summarized it that well.
posted by sardonyx at 4:12 PM on March 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


If they wanted to have a calypso singalong every week over the credits instead a preview of the next episode, I would be perfectly OK with that.
posted by MrBadExample at 5:47 PM on March 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Thanks, sardonyx! It helps that I think Thawne is a more interesting character than Barry, so I tend to pay closer attention when he's doing things.
posted by Servo5678 at 8:15 AM on March 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


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