Facets

[beccaelizabeth]

Okay, had more sleep and more food, and surprisingly enough life looks shinier from here.

Been rewatching Legrnds of Tomorrow season one, which is part of why things feel time loopy. Been wanting to fix that ending since season one.

This time around I am putting different weight on different actions, so none of the characters are coming out of this looking good right now. They've all grown so much since then they're looking mostly dysfunction.

Len in particular is tricky. We knows how he goes out, so we know what he would do for Mick. But in memory that kind of overshadows what he does *to* Mick. Which includes knocking him out and being all 'I'm the brains, you're the brawn'.

Mick's arc makes most sense as written if it's about getting him away from a dysfunctional relationship. Len comes to represent crime and violence and the writing about their partnership makes most sense if the writers see it as escaping an abusive relationship.

But Len knocked Mick out to stop him staying in a burning city with no food in a timeline that was going to cease to exist. When Mick was the scary loose canon one, it made sense trying to hold him back, because mostly what he wanted was burning people.

Also drugs and alcohol. I'd forgotten his early episodes had him asking for and possibly getting drugs from Gideon for recreational purposes. Also asking Stein what he'd given Jax, because Mick wanted some. His later attachment to a beer bottle? Is *less* than he started with.

Still a problem.

So Len and Mick don't treat each other well. Too much hitting, not enough respect.

But Len's usually trying to keep him alive.

Arguably.

Thing is he's also holding on so tight things splinter, and that isn't just Mick's best interests.

Trying to change the Emerald risks never meeting Mick.

And exchanges like 'you're not the boss of me' 'actually I am'?
Not an equal partnership.

So whatever they had, Len lied and said it was Mick's own good. Len keeps saying he's the boss. It's not Rip who first dismisses Mick as just muscle, it's his partner of thirty years.

But they're also the people who look out for each other, risk their lives for each other, get arrested to save each other, break each other out. They look out for each other.

And that's not nothing.

So Mick's whole complicated thing after Len is dead? With the hallucination of How about we don't get killed, and the story arc of getting away from the guy that doesn't treat him right?

It was always both.

But it was never just the one way.

Mick left bruises too.

So that's A Lot.




Len dying leaves a lot of things in a bad broken up place. We and Mick want it to have resolved better.

But.

There is a lot of room for it also to go worse.



I've seen gifs of writer Mick in an alternate universe with AI Len, and he's not such a good writer.

There's a possibility that the two of them kept each other in role. Instead of supporting growth, they pull each other back to where they were comfortable together, except that comfort involves solving things with hitting.

So maybe even AI Len kept Mick from achieving his full potential, the writing career he had in the timelines the Legends supported him.

But.

Season one has a Lot of Mick objecting to Len trying to be anything other than a thief. Anything more. Len tries to think of something bigger, be better by some ways of figuring, and Mick keeps going back to 'the perfect score' and trying to steal stuff. Len keeps selling the new plan to him in ways that'll make sense from his criminal mindset. With greater or lesser success.

But in season one all Mick wants is booze, a burning city, and a gang to look up to him.


The Len that Eobard Thawne recruited just wanted Central City and all the crime he could get away with.

So then they were in step.

But Len stepped away first and they made awful messes when they weren't in sync.



I want to see Mick go back and find a Len who can respect the new him. A new Len he can respect. That's what their relationship needs.

But the TV show thinks Mick needs to move on and Len is the kind of dead they won't fix. Because Legends is about grief and regret and the things we cannot change.

Up until it's about changing them.



So we never know how much to hope and it gets weird.



I like how Mick has developed.

I want to see Len have the same chance to change.



Because if they don't change together, they pull each other into old orbits.

But there's room to mean something other than Rogues with that.

If the show wanted to.