Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for Legends of Tomorrow season 6, episode 6, "Bishop's Gambit."
Legends of Tomorrow killed a major member of the series' ensemble in secret; Captain Sara Lance. Ironically introduced as "the woman who can't be killed," the assassin who survived multiple deaths and been resurrected repeatedly by magic and time travel to become the Paragon of Destiny has apparently died her final death. However, the rumors of White Canary's death may be greatly exaggerated and it may all be part of a sick game orchestrated by the chief villain of Legends of Tomorrow season 6.
Captain Lance was abducted by Bishop; an eccentric billionaire scientist from the future, who was to geneticists what Elon Musk is to astronauts. It was Bishop's plan to "improve" humanity, mixing their DNA with that of various aliens, until he created a new species capable of surviving in any environment. He had abducted Captain Lance, hoping to persuade history's most famous survivor to teach his new people how to overcome any obstacle. Unfortunately for Bishop, his plan immediately went south after Captain Lance facilitated an escape plan, crash-landed on his private planet, and got poisoned by one of his failed experiments. While it seemed that Bishop had treated Captain Lance with an antidote in "The Satanist's Apprentice," he may have saved her life in a more indirect fashion.
"Bishop's Gambit" revealed that beyond using his genetics technology to create the AVA Corporation (the company responsible for selling specialized clones of Ava Sharpe), season big-bad Bishop had also perfected a process that made him effectively immortal, downloading his memories into a new clone body whenever he died. Captain Lance discovered this after snapping Bishop's neck once, only for the billionaire scientist to return, seemingly unscathed. She played along with Bishop waiting for a better opportunity to escape, telling Bishop as she beat him senseless that her survival instinct wasn't something that could be copied and that "every scar on my body is a memory... and it's what makes me who I am." Bishop replied that he didn't see a single scar on Captain Lance, leading her to realize he was right, as she noticed a dead body under a sheet in the corner of Bishop's lab that was wearing her rings. The episode ended with Captain Lance pulling the sheet away and looking down on her own dead body, realizing that she was a clone as well.
Science fiction is full of stories that question the nature of humanity, using clones and genetically engineered humans to explore what constitutes a soul. These questions are even more complicated in the cosmology of the Arrowverse, where souls are used as currency by demons and can be passed from one body to another through magic or trapped in inanimate objects. This raises the question of whether or not the many clones created by Bishop have individual souls or if Bishop's original soul is transferred from body to body along with his memories. Beyond the metaphysical questions, it will also be interesting to see how Captain Lance responds to this revelation, having already talked her girlfriend Ava Sharpe through a similar crisis of identity when she discovered that she was a clone from the future.
It is possible, however, that Bishop truly did save Captain Lance's life with his antidote and that the apparently poisoned corpse is the true clone. Previous episodes of Legends of Tomorrow showed that Bishop is fond of games and a master manipulator. It would be completely within his twisted character to try and convince Captain Lance that she's a clone and that her ideas about the importance of individuality are wrong, given his ultimate goal of winning her over and persuading her into helping him. It would also be just as easy for him to heal Sara's scars as it would be to put her memories in a new clone body and switching her rings to a clone body could also be easily arranged. Of course, this also raises the question of why he just doesn't take her memories and alter them to create a more agreeable clone with all of her knowledge and training, if he truly is capable of changing people in the ways he claims.
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June 14, 2021 at 11:59PM
