It should come as no surprise that Ray's boundless optimism and goodness clashes with the Darhk's perspective. It allows for some "buddy comedy" elements to come into play when he and Nora are dispatched to retrieve a scientist who has cracked cold fusion so that said information can be used towards reassembling the fire totem.
It also allows for some solid character development. Even though Nora is still a villain. We see that she does have layers. Her time with Ray does start to change her a bit (something even Damien admits he should have seen coming) and her relationship with her father gets both examined and developed over the course of the episode.
Speaking of Nora's father. Damien was in rare form this episode. His hammy comedy worked, his menace remained intact, and we actually got some genuine pathos from his devotion and commitment to his daughter. This was what made him such a solid villain before and it felt like it had been lacking as of late. We see that there is still some fuel to the Darhk fire and it's refreshing to say the least.
There's not much for the rest of the team to do, but we do get some plot advancements there as well. Amaya learns that the Darhk's possession of the totems is corrupting the spirit plane. Rip also alludes to some dark secret of Ava's that could threaten her relationship with Sara.
That last part seemed a little shoehorned in for forced drama, but we'll see what the secret is and how its inevitable reveal plays out.
Wally joins the team in earnest. He doesn't get a whole lot of screen time, which is a bit sad seeing as not being utilized was one of the major criticisms for his character on "The Flash". He does get to save the day, though. He and Sara also have some nice exchanges peppered throughout.
It was also nice to see Rip start to get accepted back into the group. He isn't exactly welcomed with open arms, but it does seem like the wounds are starting to heal. His genuine remorse and determination to fix things probably had a lot to do with that as well.
While Mallus himself doesn't appear, his arc does get advanced on several fronts. We know how the anachronisms tie into his end goal and he appears to take over Nora at the episode's end. Oddly enough, Darhk seemed unfazed by this. Yeah, her voice didn't change and her eyes didn't go red, but those big black veins around her forehead seemed like a dead giveaway. I guess we'll see how that develops later.
Overall, this was a very strong episode. The script was solid, the cast all did great, and we saw some pretty big developments for the season's story as a whole. It was also nice to see the heroes come away with a win. It seems like it's been a while for them. True, they didn't get Amaya's totem back yet, and Nora now seems to be attuned to it, but Wally did snag the fire totem and Ray still has the formula for cold fusion, which I figure has to be a game changer for the future of the Arrowverse's Earth. There's only a handful of episodes left, so it should be interesting to see how things play out from here.
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