So the Legends of Tomorrow "broke time" when they landed in Los Angeles, and it was populated by dinosaurs. Which is weird, and would be fun to play with if the writers so chose. But alas, that was not meant to be. Not one minute into the encounter with the prehistoric creatures, and mere seconds from having their own Jurassic Park moment, the dinosaurs and other things that don't belong in the present start all but disappearing.

 

 

That was courtesy of the Time Bureau, a new agency that Rip Hunter somehow spent five years building and creating as a replacement for the Time Masters and the Time Lords. I mean, I get the need for something like the Time Bureau given the constant chaos the Legends created time after time (no pun intended) last season, chasing time aberrations and fighting the Legion of Doom (sometimes, doing both simultaneously). Essentially, since the agents of the Time Bureau are doing their job from last season with a minimum of fuss (they have a "flashy thingy" along with their neatly tailored suits that make them look like the Men in Black, only they deal with time, not aliens), the Legends are now obsolete.

 

Since Rip and the Time Bureau take over their job and fix every time "anachronism" now, the Legends disperse through different time periods and locations. Captain Sara Lance somehow gets a job in retail at a place called Sink, Shower, and Stuff (again, this show has never been about subtlety), and, well, isn't handling things all that well. She fantasizes about slitting the throat of her horrible boss and throws knives at everything. Ray works at the headquarters of a dating app, for an equally detestable boss who's a millennial that doesn't appreciate Ray's unique talents at miniaturization technology. Nate lives in Central City, and is apparently fighting crime with Kid Flash (What does the rest of the team over on The Flash think about this development, or do they not know about the side gig?), though his heart isn't really in any of it because he misses Amaya so much. Jax went to school, but then dropped out because his heart wasn't into that, and he missed his superhero days. Martin is the most well-adjusted of the group, living at home with his wife and pregnant daughter.

 

 

Mick takes an extended vacation in Aruba, where he somehow runs into Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar, which then kicks off the plot of the episode. As the show is now fully committed to being a light, fun sort of diversion, it's hard to really take everything all that seriously. That certainly makes the show different from the rest of its DCW brethren, but it robs the series of any sort of stakes. Of course, the show learned long ago that it was just getting so bogged down in bringing all the stakes and seriousness (the end of the world will often do that to many television series) to the overall plot, it made for a hard sell to audiences still trying to get their heads around bringing together a team of C and D-list superheroes at best. They were more like rogues, and the second season saw a pretty good retooling of the series around that fact that continues to this premiere.

 

The changes aren't too wholesale that we can't recognize the core of the show: Captain Sara Lance is still the best part of the show, and Rip remains a stubborn blockhead, even when his memory has been restored and he created an agency to maintain the continuity of time. The Legends now recognize that they're the constant screw-ups, which is totally obvious in the face of the more trained and buttoned-up Time Bureau. They think so little of Mick that the first instinct when he tells them he's captured Caesar is that he's lying. To be fair, Mick did betray and hunt the Legends way back when.

 

 

Still, the Legends really screw up their "correction" of this time aberration by sending Caesar back to the correct time period, but then Nate allows him to steal a book on Roman history while he's busy taking a selfie with the ancient ruler. The possibilities could have been endless here: First, Caesar would be able to avoid his own death, kill Brutus and Cassius, then use his army to take over the rest of the world. Instead, he lays a trap for the Legends to get captured as they try to recover Nate's book and fix their mistakes. The Time Bureau attempts to interfere in all of this, and proves to not quite be as prepared for any contingencies or whenever mission plans go awry.

 

The Legends do have their weaknesses, but they also have strengths, one of them being that they have a smart, diligent leader, and they've worked as a team longer than the Bureau's agents. The Bureau has certain tools that could be of use to the Legends. Seeing them in action together, beating up a bunch of Roman Centurions (well, really, the literal kicker was seeing Sara take out some while swinging on a chain held by Agent Ava Sharpe), they could come to some sort of arrangement, though I'm sure Rip would have some issues with it as the season progresses. So the episode ends with Rip allowing the Legends to continue amble their way recklessly through time, though it's likely they'll keep running into the arrogant agents of the Time Bureau. It looks like it'll be a lot of fun.