Legends of Tomorrow 2.17 "Aruba"

Season finale. Hrm.

Spoilers.

Look, let's just dive right in and talk about That Scene.

As soon as Doomworld!Sara pointed out that none of the Doomworld Legends would make it out alive, I knew that Laurel's scene was going to be some afterlife thing, kinda like Kevin Smith's episode of The Flash last year.

So what happens is, the Doomworld Legends have to shield the Prime Legends on their way back to the Doomworld Waverider (just roll with it - it's Legends, and thinking about it will make your brain hurt). Merlyn, Snart, and Darhk attack and kill off all of the Doomworld Legends except Doomworld!Sara. Prime!Sara beats Darhk to within an inch of his life but doesn't kill him. Doomworld!Sara knocks him out.

...yeah this doesn't surprise me. Haven't we known since "Compromised" that Sara's come to peace with the fact that her role as a guardian of Time means that she has to let Darhk live in the past because Laurel's death in 2016 is a fixed point in time? Like, I thought that was her character arc for the first half of the season.

So then Thawne attacks the group and knocks them out one-by-one, and Prime!Sara is forced to use the Spear of Destiny...

...and we get a bait-and-switch, I guess...?

Sara wakes up in her living room, watching The Wizard of Oz with Laurel. Except Sara cottons on immediately that this isn't real - is it because Laurel has a glass of wine? (The internet was Very Upset about this, because Laurel was an alcoholic and it looked like the show just papered over her struggles there.) Sara tries to get Laurel - whom she knows isn't real - to use the Spear instead because Laurel is "better" than she is. (Sara has consistently seen herself as damaged goods, and in this plotline, "unworthy" of the Spear.)

And you kinda get the sense that if Legends was a standalone show, Sara probably would have used the Spear to bring Laurel back. After all, it's not time the Spear alters, it's reality. Buuuuuut, she doesn't.

Now, the whole reason - really - that Sara couldn't bring Laurel back using time travel was, of course, behind-the-scenes stuff. But it sounds like the behind-the-scenes stuff was aligning to have Sara use the Spear to bring Laurel back, and then for Laurel to be a regular on Season 3. And under that theory, the reason why that didn't happen was because Arrow's nose-diving ratings forced the producers to drag Katie Cassidy back to that show as Black Siren.

But I feel like there's a pretty blatant flaw in that theory, namely: the producers could have dragged Katie back to Arrow as Laurel by, you know, having Sara bring Laurel back with the Spear!

Which now has me worried about the Arrow Season 6 Black Siren plotline, of course.

But I digress. Head!Laurel seems pretty chill about the whole concept of getting pointlessly murdered by Darhk, so Sara uses the Spear to... de-power the Spear and release Black Flash, who then kills Thawne, and that's it. Oooh, I know! Re-write reality so that the meeting of the Doomworld Legends and Prime Legends doesn't rip Time a new one!

I will say, I think the idea of using the Spear to de-power itself is delicious. I also think there is something very Lord of the Rings-y about Sara not trusting herself to use the Spear to do anything else.

Is it selfish of Sara not to bring back Laurel - who, let's not forget, brought Sara back from the dead? Wouldn't bringing back Laurel, regardless of the danger to Time, be the selfish thing? I thought the whole point of the Spear was that it was Just Too Dangerous to use, and if that's not the case, then why the blatant comparisons to the One Ring two weeks ago?

Maybe Sara's too afraid of the darkness inside her to do the "right" thing. Or maybe playing God would have been falling to the darkness. I'm not going to judge this one.

As for Laurel being cool with her own death - is this really Laurel? Sara thinks of Laurel as the good sister; I read this scene as Head!Laurel being a projection of Sara's own subconsciousness, telling her that she's better than she thinks she is. Sara psychologically needs to be forgiven for abandoning Laurel to a really stupid grave; she got it.

TLDR: We've known for half a season that Sara isn't going to change Laurel's fate. That Scene was done to give Sara closure about it.

All right, I'm out of things to say about That Scene. Night, all.