It's not as bad as you might think. True, the other heroes are all dead, sans the Legends. In comparison to Star City 2046, though, things were looking alright. Heck, Thawne even used his scientific prowess and STAR Labs resources to develop clean energy, bringing an end to global warming/climate change/pollution/whatever you want to call it.
The Legion are still villains through and through. Darkh even gave himself his magic back, but I thought that it certainly could have been worse all things considered.
You might be wondering why the Legends exist at all. Heck, Malcolm even calls Thawne out on this. Considering it's another instance of hubris causing problems later on down the line, he's right to bring it up, but still, you can't fault Thawne. The Legends are depowered, dispersed, and have no memory of what came before. You could see why he'd get a kick out of having his adversaries in subservient roles. Even Damien looks like he's having some fun with it.
If the episode has one problem, it's that the Legends get their memories back too quickly and too easily. I'm not sure how you avoid that. We're at the penultimate episode of the season and have only a 43 minute run time. There had to be some way to get them back in the game, but Ray's "oh I built this thing because...I dunno I felt like it" didn't really fly for me.
I did like the call back, with Nate's barging into STAR Labs asking Thawne for help mirroring his initial appearance recruiting Oliver back at the beginning of the season.
As much of a problem as I had with Nate being able to find changes to history (as it was history, thus already happened, thus that's what he should think of as the actual events) it's even more difficult to buy him detecting changes to reality itself. They try to address it, painting him as more of a kook, saying that his subconscious remembered things; and again, rule of plot dictates that the heroes get thrown some bone in order to turn the tables, but it was still hard to buy.
The new reality did put Mick in an interesting situation. He's the only team member to have his memories and, in many ways, that ends up biting him as he comes to regret his decision over the course of the episode.
I don't know if it was an intentional nod or not, but the whole heist scene, with Mick acknowledging how pointless it is to rob banks if there's no resistance or challenge, was very "Twilight Zone". Of course, that's only a fraction of what eventually leads to him trying to make amends.
I'm not sure why, but I was expecting this episode to be a one-off, with the status quo restored by episode's end. On the contrary, in keeping with the general plot hook for the episode being the bad guys winning, Thawne succeeds in destroying the spear, making it appear impossible to restore things.
It's a great, dour note to end on, though the heroes do have another plan. It also gave Thawne a chance to bask in the glory and rub his success, not to mention the futility of resistance from here on out, in everyone else's faces.
Speaking of dour notes, Amaya gets killed. Credit to the scene, it worked well enough that you felt that hit. At the same time, though, it seems a little cheap as it's pretty clear that she's coming back. For one thing, they have to put her back in her time for present day Vixen to exist, but even putting that aside, seeing as the Legends go back to WW1 in the next episode means that Amaya is still going to exist in some capacity.
That's not to say that there wasn't levity. On the contrary, the episode delivered all kinds of humorous highlights throughout. Seeing the Legion of Doom headquarters from "Superfriends" was a nice touch, as was seeing ray blasting dominators on some unnamed computer game. The character exchanges and dialogue were what really carried it, though. Who would have thought we'd see the day where Nate and Damien almost give each other a high five?
All in all, this episode was quite enjoyable. Sure, the characters' powers are gone, but they still managed to give the Legion a solid, climactic fight in the end. Besides, more often than not, the more powerful characters get sidelined anyway, so there wasn't that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.
We're down to the final episode. It'll be sad to see it go, but it'll be interesting to see how things wrap up. I do wonder if this will be like Flashpoint, where we'll see ripples that affect the other shows even after everything is seemingly restored. It might be too soon to pull that trick, though it would be a logical effect.
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