Spoiler Warning for ‘Marooned’
We got quite a bit more back story on Rip this week, and I think this has easily been Arthur Darvill’s strongest episode to date. It begins with him looking at a hologram message from his wife and child, in what appears to be some form of future voicemail. It’s made apparent he has just been watching that over and over in what clearly is some form of self-inflicted torture over his failure to stop Vandal Savage. He is interrupted by Martin Stein who offers to help, but Rip says without a “software update” from The Vanishing Point, he can’t figure out where Savage is at in time.
Conveniently a distress call is received from Eve Baxter, Captain of another time ship called the Acheron. While not without risk, since they are fugitives from the time masters, Rip wants to help her. Yes, he just wants to help someone in need, primarily he just wants to get the updated intel that the Acheron is sure to have. Leaving Ray in charge of the ship (and humorously, Kendra in charge of Ray) Rip prepares to go to the distressed vessel. With him, Jax, Martin and Mick go to the Acheron as well. Martin mainly wants to live out his childhood fantasies of being a Space Ranger, and Mick claims he wants a change of scenery but really is just trying to put some distance between him and Leonard. Though they mention it’s been a week since they were in the year 2046, Mick still has not forgiven Leonard for taking him from his version of a Utopia.
When they get aboard the Acheron, Martin stays behind as they realize something is wrong. The others are quickly overtaken by a group of time-pirates (lead by Captain John Valor), whom were attempting to take the time ship when Captain Baxter disabled its time traveling capabilities. While captive, Rip gets a message to Gideon to fire upon the Ancheron, but when the pirates retaliate the Waverider’s hull is breached, resulting in the bulk head doors sealing off the area, and trapping Leonard and Sara. Though Leonard was able to mostly seal the breach with his cold gun, it’s unknown how long that will last and they are already running out of oxygen. If lack of oxygen doesn’t kill them, they most likely will freeze to death instead. I thought it was really well done the way the episode displayed how closer and closer they were getting to that point of freezing. Slowly you could see more and more of their breath as they talked, it began to get harder and harder for them to draw breath to speak, and they started physically getting closer to aid warmth. These scenes were spread out through the bulk of the episode, and I really enjoyed them.
Since they can’t get to the hull breach from the inside, Ray suits up and takes the Atom suit on a test run in space. Turns out it holds up fairly well. He was able to seal the breach from the outside, but the drain on his suit ultimately proved to be too much and he nearly didn’t make it back aboard the Waverider.
While in an incarceration cell, Mick and Rip have it out over their current predicament, leading Mick to betray the team. At first, I thought he was really helping them, and we were going to be shown a scene where Mick used his head to save everyone, but in reality he was cutting a deal with Valor. He would give up the Waverider (and with it the ability to travel through time) in return for being dropped off back in his home time. Valor agrees, and Mick once again is on a mission to another ship, but this time he is leading a group of pirates to overthrow the Waverider itself.
While all of this was happening, Martin had left his jump ship in search of the others. Clearly living out his boyhood fantasy, it was a pleasure to see him work his way to Rip and the others. I especially enjoyed his encounter with one of the pirates. But, once he found Rip and Jax (Mick having defected by this point), I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t merge with Jax to create Firestorm. I can only come up with two answers (that don’t include just bad storytelling).
- In story, they fear that Firestorm’s powers are too volatile in close quarters. That makes sense but I fee like they should state it.
- Real life, the effects of Firestorm’s powers really stretch the budget of the show and they are being very conservative with when they use them. This also makes sense.
The truth may be a combination of the two. Regardless, I would have to double check but I think every episode has had a moment or two where I thought Firestorm, or Ray in the Atom suit, would have made far more sense than acting as civilians. It continues to be a fault with the show that I really hope is addressed at some point (but I doubt it will be.)
Back on the Waverider, Mick gave the others the ultimatum to join him and go home, or go down with the ship. For a second, Leonard was definitely debating it but chose to side with the team, putting the final nail in the coffin of their partnership.
There was a great fight scene with Mick vs Sara, but I couldn’t help but be surprised at how hard a time she had with him. It was a powerful moment though when Leonard saved her from him. The team on the Acheron were working to over throw Valor and his remaining crew. Eventually they were able to open an air lock, effectively “throwing” the pirates out into the void of space. I was a little surprised to see Stein directly hit one sending him out. To my knowledge, this is the first time we have seen Stein kill an opponent directly.
Having saved the Acheron, Captain Baxter gave Rip the information he needed to find Vandal, and more importantly, chose to ignore her orders to arrest him on sight. Volunteering to “deal” with Mick, Leonard takes him to a remote location and appears to have executed him. I am hoping that this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Mick, but I doubt we see him again anytime soon. With time travel, they can always reverse that choice if they want.
Interwoven throughout the episode we got a number of flashbacks to Rip’s early days with the time masters and the beginning days with his wife. These flashbacks were very reminiscent of the first couple seasons of ‘Arrow’ when the flashbacks were thematically relevant and often featured the hero learning some type of maneuver he would use in the present day. In this case, Rip’s wife gave him the idea of sending the overwhelming forces out via the airlocks. I really enjoyed these flashbacks. It’s not something I think they should do every episode but it was a great change of pace.
Random Thoughts
- Despite Kendra stopping Ray’s advances last episode, here she does the opposite, and I could see this creating some tension with Jax and disrupting the already shaky team dynamic.
- I find myself wondering how much time has passed since the first episode. They mention it’s been a week since Star City 2046, but I’m curious how long they have been gone in relation to all the characters back in 2016.
