But quite frankly, if they're meant to be lovers throughout the ages, does it really matter whether he remembers all of their past? My impression was that the brainwashing effect already disappeared (as you said), it's a bit of a paradox if that effect vanishes with Savage close by, but doesn't when Savage is dead?
What I was thinking -- again, perhaps incorrectly -- was that it wasn't about brainwashing. The various incarnations of Khufu/Carter and Chay'ara/Kendra are born and grow up with no knowledge of their past lives, and then at some point they're "activated," gaining their memories and superpowers. Generally, it's proximity to the other Hawk-person that triggers the activation. What I'm thinking is that, since the Hawks and Savage are all linked, then maybe if Savage was killed before new-Carter's memories and Hawk powers were activated, then that would break the mystical/Thanagarian-science cycle and prevent Carter from ever regaining his connection to his past lives. And I had the impression that meant not only that
this Carter would never regain that connection, but that the past-life link would be permanently broken and Carter would never be reincarnated again.
But since Savage's death was delayed until after Carter's memories were triggered by proximity to Kendra, that means the danger was past, because the cycle had been renewed by that point. Khufu/Carter's past-life memories and powers were now "anchored" to new-Carter and so were not in danger of being lost.
I also didn't quite get why Savage alone was affected by that last coup, shouldn't Kendra and Carter who after all got their powers through those alien comets, too, be affected too? Maybe lose their powers, or their being reborn?
The cometary radiation merely weakened Savage enough to make him temporarily mortal, allowing him to be killed by other means. And it had that effect because Savage was experiencing it at three different points in his lifespan (the '50s, the '70s, and 2021). Kendra and Carter were only in 2021, so they weren't weakened as much.
But in that battle-situation with Kendra on the verge of killing Savage - which was up to then their mission -, and then Carter comes along, and just because of an unclear threat of Carter's not being able to recover his memories, she desists? That's just stupid.
No, it's human. You can't be an armchair quarterback about something like this, can't just glibly assume you'd be perfectly callous and dispassionate about sacrificing the person you loved most in all the world. You have no right to judge when you've never been forced to make an unbearable choice like that, and it just makes you sound obnoxious and petty for calling people "stupid" because they're capable of feeling love.
But who says that now that the Oculus has been destroyed? The way I understood that it meant that the future wasn't predetermined anymore - so who knows what would have happened. (It would have at least explained that badly handled death-scene of Laurel's in Arrow.)
The future, in general, was never predetermined. The Time Masters were using the Oculus to manipulate the futures of
Rip's team specifically in order to ensure Savage's rise. It's not like they were controlling the fall of every leaf -- there weren't nearly enough Time Masters to micromanage history to that degree.
But even without manipulation, the future would still be hard to change. See my comments about the subject in
post #1105 of this thread. The overall flow of events would be hard to divert, and even at those points where you could alter things significantly, the outcome wouldn't necessarily be what you wanted or expected. So the loss of the Oculus doesn't mean that any time traveler would be capable of easily changing things to get any desired outcome. That's just the wish-fulfillment fantasy of time travel, the desire for an easy answer to all your problems. Even if time travel were real, even if changing history were possible, it would be naive to think it would be that simple to get your way with it.
Besides, looking at it in real-world terms, what else could you expect the show's writers to have done? Laurel's death was a decision made by the producers of
Arrow. And that's still a different show, despite the interconnections. The producers of LoT couldn't change Laurel's death; all they could do was react to it. So of course it was never going to be possible for Sara to go back and save Laurel. That wasn't on the table. So it doesn't really matter what excuse the writers came up with for it -- one way or another, it simply wasn't going to happen.