“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 713 Recap: Avalance, Baby!

Hell-O and welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow Season 7, Episode 13, “Knocked Down, Knocked Up,” aka the season finale!!

Last week when they were saying their goodbyes, the Legends decided to meet up on Wednesdays. And it’s been one week for them, same as us, same as Alex Danvers’ favorite song, and Ava and Sara return to the manor for family dinner.

They make a little joke about the Sunday to Wednesday time switch the show made, and then the Legends start showing up one by one. They realize the time machine is missing, and in its place they find a note from Gwyn saying his goodbyes.

But Gwyn isn’t tucked inside his quiet homestead; no, he’s swapping out the real Alun for RoboAlun in hopes to not break history whilst also saving the love of his life.

Up on the Waverider, Human Gideon is alone with Evil Gideon. The AI spots an anomaly, and for her first go, Human Gideon decides to go full Legends, dressing up and having a conversation with the rogue time traveler to teach her the error of her ways. And she succeeded but it wasn’t quite the romp it was with her friends.

For the Legends, a month goes by. Not much has changed, but Ava and Sara are enjoying the settled down life so much that they’re talking about maybe having a baby. Sara is so excited about it, in fact, that she gave Ava apple juice even though they’ve only just started talking about talking about it…just in case.

Zari is very excited and it’s not really relevant to anything but I loved this screenshot of here so here’s a fancy Zari for you.

They go around the table to give updates but they all dance on their own lives briefly before trying to pass the talking stick to someone else; Nate is having a hard time writing his book because he doesn’t feel past it yet, Astra thinks Capitol Hill is like hell, deflection after deflection as the conversation goes around the table. Trying to get the topic out of the room entirely, they Astra if she’s talked to Gideon. She nervously says no, saying it’s only been a month in a way to reassure herself as much as anyone; but the truth is, in the time stream, it could have been much longer than that for Gideon’s human body.

And it’s true, time is passing differently for Gideon. She’s no longer treating each mission like an adventure, she’s getting harder and colder, wiping memories and dumping people back in their original timeline. No apologizing, no explaining.

Two weeks later, Ava and Sara are first to arrive for family dinner again, and this time it’s Ava who has switched the booze out for something a little fruitier. She’s ready to start getting serious about having a baby, and she’s even narrowed down a list of donors to 50. Sara is THRILLED. She’s so happy her babe is going to have a baby, and she knows it’ll all be perfect because Ava is perfect.

Ava asks how Sara wants to tell the rest of the team but Sara says she’ll let Ava decide; after all, they’re co-captains for life. And this moment seems small but it’s actually quite big. Sara is the one who offered to let this be Ava’s decision, she didn’t try to take control of the situation because she didn’t trust it to go well if she didn’t do it herself. She didn’t think of herself first. There’s no ounce of fear or worry in her, no self-doubt. Loving Ava has made her a better person; and not because Ava changed her or needed her to change. They just grew together and are better individuals and a better couple for it. And it didn’t happen quickly, none of this happened overnight. Ava showed up in Season 3; five Earth years for us, I think approximately that much relative time for them, too. We saw them meet, date, co-captain, get married. And hopefully, TV gods willing, we’ll get to see them become moms. It’s an arc unlike most we get to see.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the show. After Ava heads into the dining room, Sara goes to open the bottle of cider and cuts her hand, and is surprised she doesn’t immediately heal. But decides that’s a problem for future Sara to worry about.

When Evil Gideon tossed Gary out into the timestream, he ended up landing amongst cave people, in prehistoric times, which is unfortunate because all he needs to get home is a door. He gets to work and builds one, and finally ends up in the manor to tell the Legends what happened to him, and Sara and Ava realize that their news can wait.

When Gary tells them that Alun’s death is a fixed point, and that Gwyn wouldn’t know that and thus is about to get himself killed by the Fixer, the Legends immediately come out of their short-lived retirement to save their buddy’s life.

And luckily, Fancy Zari had pocketed a time courier in case of emergencies; she’d feel worse about it but it’s about to save Gwyn’s life so she’s sorry not sorry.

Before they go, Gary pulls Sara aside and asks if she’s going to sit this mission out because she’s pregnant, and she laughs in his face. She knows how babies are made, and she hasn’t done that lately. But Gary points out that she’s part alien now, and actually she doesn’t know how babies are made…

Sara is horrified at this news; this was not the plan! They had a plan! Ava was going to be the one who got pregnant! Ava loves plans!! Gary tries to explain to her exactly how the alien mating process works and how nesting together and deciding to have a baby, plus some sweet lady kisses, is all it takes for her alien side to spawn. Sara isn’t ready to process this information so she decides to dissociate from it entirely. Pretend she never heard it, tuck it away on a shelf. She will not speak of this right now, and if Gary values his life, neither will he. He leaves and Sara gives herself one more minute to be shocked by this news.

The Legends go to the fixed point and start to make a base camp but the words “keep an eye out for the Waverider” are barely out of their mouths before Human Gideon strolls in, looking sterner than they’ve ever seen her. Astra is stressed about this change in her girl, but Gideon regards her coldly.

But when Human Gideon realizes that Gary didn’t leave the Waverider of his own volition, and in fact Evil Gideon kicked him off, Human Gideon even rationalizes it to herself, sure her AI counterpart had a good reason for doing it. Astra is agog; she says she sounds like a computer and storms off, Spooner hot on her heels.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 712 Recap: Days of Future Avalance

Hello and welcome to this Legends of Tomorrow recap of episode 712, “Too Legit To Quit.”

Previously on Legends, our heroes defeated the RoboLegends, but before they were home free, Evil Astra crawled out of the depths of hell and stabbed Gideon in the back, quite literally. We open this week with Gary carrying Gideon to the Waverider, actual Astra hot on his heels, worried about her baby girl.

Luckily, RoboAstra forgot that humans’ “hearts” aren’t at the nape of their necks like the RoboLegends’ were, and they get Human Gideon to the med bay still alive. But realize they don’t have the ability to heal Gideon without, well, Gideon. So the captains rush off to turn Evil Gideon on while Astra talks sweetly to Gideon, who is mumbling numbers.

As soon as Evil Gideon is activated, she immediately shuts off the oxygen on the ship, ready to finish off the Legends once and for all. Astra chokes out the numbers Gideon said, and Evil Gideon asks who’s on the table; when she realizes it’s Human Gideon, she turns the oxygen back on, annoyed. The protocol Gideon and Astra invoked means Gideon can’t self-destruct, and thus, Evil Gideon can’t kill Human Gideon, and therefore can’t kill the Legends.

They realize the only place they’re safe from the oxygen being shut off is the lab, so Gideon escorts them there and goes out to have a chat with the AI, Gideon to Gideon.

Evil Gideon thinks Human Gideon is being silly. “You can’t protect them forever,” she says. But our Gideon isn’t shaken by her threat. She simply responds, “I can try.”

Trapped in the lab and with down time for the first time in a while, the Legends realize they’re actually famished. But they sure don’t trust Evil Gideon to fabricate them some food.

Spooner had squirreled away some nuts so Astra uses some magic to duplicate them until there’s enough for everyone.

After their snack, Human Gideon comes in and says that Evil Gideon promised not to kill them…if they all retire.

Immediately there’s a debate. The Legends don’t think they can trust Evil Gideon to just do their jobs better than they’ve been doing it. Someone says that Legends don’t retire, and then the team starts listing all the Legends that have, in fact, retired, (giving Hawk Girl one last slap in the face by lumping her in with Hawk Guy when Sara remembers the “Hawk People”), but Nate says he meant they don’t retire in bulk.

Plus, they’re not even sure they can trust that Evil Gideon won’t just kill them as soon as they let their guard down. Gary tries to act as the Legends’ liaison, and says that maybe if Evil Gideon would show them what their retired, not-murdered futures could look like, they wouldn’t be as distrustful.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Legends are still plotting a way around this whole situation. Nate has a time courier, but it’s dead, and the only charger is in the armory.

Sara and Ava make a plan and divvy up the team; Spooner will crawl through the ducts, Gwyn and Nate will draw her a map, Behrad will loop the video in the armory…and Fancy Zari feels left out when she doesn’t end up having a job. That is, until Human Gideon and Gary tell them they can see their futures, and the captains decide Zari will be the distraction, a job that bums her out a bit. Spooner, on the other hand, was born for this.

When Zari sees her future, she’s accepting an award for influencer of the decade. But the first thing Zari notices is that the air totem isn’t on her future self’s wrist. Human Gideon tries to reassure her, saying she becomes a cosmetic titan, but while this might have made the Fancy Zari of three years ago beyond thrilled, she’s grown and changed and learned so much and this isn’t what she imagined for herself, not anymore.

When she goes back to tell Ava and Sara about what she saw, and tells them that she feels like it’s regressive. Like retiring would be a step backward, not forward.

Ava isn’t worried though because it’s not like they’re going to take this path anyway.

Behrad goes next and he has the opposite reaction to his sister’s. He sees himself singing on a kids’ show called You, Me, and B, and is obsessed with his future album of children’s songs.

His song plays as the rest of the team gets to see their potential futures. Sara and Ava see a little girl sending a video message back from the summer camp they once gave Ava her shot at a teen kiss. Ava and Sara’s eyes widen as the blonde girl signs off, saying goodbye to her Mom and Mama. Their daughter.

Astra and Nate don’t seem to mind their futures either, as a politician and an author, respectively. (Side note: Astra’s platform slogan is, “To hell with corruption.”) But it’s hard to imagine; all of the Legends feel conflicted. Until today they hadn’t thought much about their future in a linear sense. It was always the next anomaly, the next mission, the next adventure. And sure all their futures seemed happy enough but there was something…off about them that they can’t put their finger on just yet.

Since Spooner is still shimmying through ducts, Astra does a little magic and does a hilarious Spooner impression to see Spooner’s future and buy the real Spooner more time. When Astra sees her best friend’s future, she realizes that thing that feels off: they’re not in each other’s futures. Spooner would go back to 1925 and start a mental health clinic. She’d be with her mother, but not her friends. Astra slips and says, “So I’d be alone again.”

Human Gideon corrects “Spooner” saying she’d be with her mother, but Astra’s own personal hell is the loneliness she felt while being the queen of Hell, and she’s not ready to go back to that.

Evil Gideon catches Spooner in the armory and tries to suck her into the temporal zone, and Spooner cries out for Astra, and Astra threatens to blow up the whole ship, Human Gideon included, if anything happens to Spooner.

So Evil Gideon has no choice but to close the airlock. Astra runs to Spooner and says “that’s what best friends are for” which is FINE I GUESS.

Human Gideon is ready to end this and get her friends off the ship and to safety so she calls Ava and Sara to see what the captains are waiting for.

Sara calls Evil Gideon a Time Fascist and she and her wife express their concerns with leaving the timeline as someone else’s responsibility: they’ve changed the timeline for the better more times than they can count, all by having a little heart and being willing to make sacrifices. Whoever guards the timeline has to know that change can be good. It doesn’t need a cold, emotionless AI…and then Human Gideon knows what the timeline needs. It needs her.

The rules are there must always be (at least) one captain and one AI, but there are no rules that they can’t sort of be one in the same.

Ava and Sara take this back to the Legends, where there is more debate. Ava points out that they are a bit chaotic to be let loose on the timeline, but Astra says they’re chaotic good.

Zari also wants to keep being a hero and isn’t ready to give that up yet. But the rest of them don’t hate the idea of putting down roots, something they were told might never happen when they were first plucked from their original timelines.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 711 Recap: Double Trouble

Hello and welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow season 7, episode 11, “Rage Against the Machines,” aka the (second) one directed by Jes Macallan.

We waste no time and pick up right where we left off, in Sarajevo, 1914, with everyone in the Fixed Point celebrating the fact that Sara and the Legends successfully prevented The Great War. When the bartender realizes Gideon and Gwyn aren’t celebrating, Gideon lets it slip that she’s still nervous because of the RoboLegends, and the time travelers all rally to help the Legends fight them. Gideon tries to call them off, but it’s no use; they are a mob now, there’s no stopping that train.

Out in the field, Sara is reiterating her plan to ambush and seize the Waverider as soon as it lands, wondering what Gideon’s evil army will look like. An army of Avas? A bunch of Bishops? A gaggle of Gideons? They are very not prepared when the Waverider lands and releases a load of Legends.

After shaking off the initial shock, they realize not all of the RoboLegends disembarked, so they need to draw them off the ship. At first it looks like the mob of time travelers will do the trick, until they realize the mob is being obliterated without the RoboLegends having to move all that much. After seeing Gen Z³ murdered, Behrad loses his cool and launches himself at the RoboLegends, causing the rest of the Legends to back him up. But then Ava gets shot almost immediately, because she has to direct the episode so the Legends double back, Sara scooping up her wife and getting her team to safety.

The team regroups at the Fixed Point while the RoboLegends focus on righting the timeline by killing Archduke Ferdinand, which Eobard Thawne was already working on doing since Sara’s head-start was over. But, of course, the RoboLegends aren’t known for their subtlety, so when RoboSara finds Eobard, she kills him dead.

Meanwhile, RoboBehrad manages to follow the trail of Ava’s blood all the way to the Fixed Point, but luckily, upon seeing a gun pointed at Gideon, Astra is able to muster up enough magic to take him down and protect her team.

Sara finds Eobard just as his last breath leads him and when the Time Bracelet falls off his wrist, she remembers her promise and picks it up, though luckily for all of us she doesn’t put it on just yet. She heads back to the Fixed Point and is pleased to see her wife passed out drunk because at least that means she’s not in pain. The team looks to her for their next steps and is surprised when the ex-assassin doesn’t suggest a butt-kicking plan of action, but instead…a conversation.

Even Zari, who loves talking, isn’t so sure this is a great idea.

But Sara says that technically their end goal is the same: to get the Legends back to the point in time they belong. Gideon thinks this is a great idea and wants to help, but Astra tells her to get her human butt to the manor right this instant, and Sara not only agrees, but thinks all of the Legends should follow suit. She is, after all, the only invincible one among them.

Sara gives Ava one last “babe” and shuffles them off to Buffalo, taking RoboBehrad’s comm and asking for a parley. Gwyn, a product of wartime, wants to help her, but she shoves him through the manor door, too. No flesh-and-blood Legend will be dying on her watch.

Sara finds RoboNate first and asks to talk to his captain, and when RoboNate says that he’s the captain, Sara scoffs and says, and I quote, “That’s a choice.”

Sara tells RoboNate about how she just wants to bring her family home, but RoboNate has an objective he has to fulfill: He has to kill the Legends. And he’s willing to kill Sara as many times as it takes until she tells him where the rest of his team and her wife are.

Sara underestimates how beefy he is and gets her neck snapped pretty quick, which sends Gwyn into a panic attack until he remembers all the times the Legends have been kind and gentle with him, and then he regains his faculties long enough to get Sara back to safety.

When they’re back in regroup mode, Gwyn tries to return the favor of grounding him and gives Sara a pep talk of his own. Realizing that Gwyn has more tactical experience than the Legends, and that probably the best way to outsmart the Legends is to have someone on the outside directing them, Sara hands the battle planning over to Gwyn.

Gwyn’s plan sounds a lot like playing hide and seek, which pisses Astra off at first. But when he insists they’re just outsmarting them and that she’ll be able to take down a RoboLegend if she wants, she gets on board.

Since BehradBot is dead, they know exactly who to send in as a spy to infiltrate the Waverider. He will have to be the one to disable Evil Gideon while the melee fighter Legends distract the rest of the RoboLegends by causing aberrations.

As soon as Behrad boards the Waverider, he’s confronted by RoboSpooner and RoboGary, and he does his best to keep up appearances, eventually convincing them he has to visit Dr. Sharpe for an upgrade. He instead heads for the mainframe and runs into RoboZari, who seems to be the only one allowed in the server room. (Yes I’m just using computery words with little to no knowledge if they’re the right ones like I’m in a Critical Role NordVPN sketch, don’t @ me.)

Realizing he can’t be the one to get away with this, Behrad returns to the mansion by way of the singular bathroom on the Waverider and tells Fancy Zari it’s going to have to be her.

When she asks about her role and her motivation, Behrad tells her that RoboZari looks like a 90s hacker aka pre-Arrow Felicity) and because she’s #extra, instead of getting actual hacker Flannel Zari, Fancy Zari takes this as an acting challenge and starts getting into character while she heads off to find the right outfit.

Gideon wants to help, too, but Astra snaps at her like an overprotective mom who isn’t on Gentle Parenting TikTok and tells Gideon she won’t be going anywhere on her watch.

Team Aberration heads out to disrupt the timeline with singing fish, VR tech, and Star Wars spoilers. (Fun fact: I’ve never seen a single Star War, and the other day in a group chat, my friend Callie redacted a Star Wars spoiler, and when I informed her that I was not trying to avoid them, she said that the spoiler she redacted was the fact that Darth Vader was Luke’s father. I proceeded to laugh my entire ass off and said, “I have been a human on this earth consuming media for decades, this fact did not elude me.” And this episode happened to beautifully prove my point just a few days later. As someone who has had people in my twitter mentions maliciously spoiling things on purpose, this was a very sweet act of kindness on my considerate friend’s part, but I did think it was adorable that she thought I somehow didn’t know this. After all, I know Pitch Perfect by heart.)

This mayhem plan works because RoboSara and RoboNate are hot on the Legends’ heels, stamping out these aberrations gleefully, and when it proves to be too much for them to handle alone, RoboSpooner and RoboGary finally leave the Waverider, too.

Unfortunately, this does not leave the Legends as in the clear as they’d hoped, because Dr. Sharpe and RoboAstra find Behrad to give him his upgrade.

Luckily, he was prepared for this possibility and tricks them into drinking a bit of poison that sends them both rushing for the bathroom. Entering the stall lands them in the Manor, where Gary welcomes them by shoving them out into the plane of fire.

After doing this duty, Gary runs into Gideon, who is playing nurse to the wounded Ava. Gary offers to help but Gideon quickly denies him; playing Florence Nightingale to her captain seems to be the only thing she’s allowed to do around here without Astra snapping at her, so she’d rather keep at it to feel helpful.

Outside, Spooner runs into RoboGary and convinces him that she’s RoboSpooner in disguise, which works because all versions of Gary are a little dumb and also human Spooner can understand his alien language. She manages to Uno Reverse him and when RoboSpooner shows up, RoboGary gobbles her right up, grenade and all, much to human Spooner’s amazement.

After seeing how upset Gideon is, Gary goes to talk to Astra to ask why she’s been yelling at Gideon all day. Astra says she’s just trying to protect her squishy human body, and Gary realizes that her maternal instincts were triggered by Gideon almost getting hurt. Astra realizes that she does feel protective over Gideon, and she did sort of create her, but she snaps at Gary and says she’s not her mother. Though to be honest, she doesn’t look like she’s even fully convinced herself.

Gary smiles at her and calls her Mama Bear but she DEFINITELY hates that so she shoves him away and gets back to work.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 710 Recap: Ace Up Her Sleeve

Hello and welcome to this Legends of Tomorrow recap of season 7 episode 10, “The Fixed Point” aka the (second) one directed by Maisie Richardson-Sellers AKA THE ONE WHERE WE GET OUR FIRST CANON ASEXUAL LEGEND OF TOMORROW!

Eh hem. But we’ll get there. Previously on Legends of Tomorrow, the Legends were attacked by Evil Gideon and her band of androids so they scooped up the inventor of time travel and are on a mission to stop them.

At the end of the last episode, Gideon said they have to stop the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and as she walks through a potential plan, Ava realizes she’s serious and asks why the heck she would recommend messing with time so majorly. But the thing is, since it’s a Fixed Point in history, aka a moment so pivotal people aren’t supposed to time travel there, Gideon knows that messing with it will be too big of a deal for Evil Gideon to just let go. It’s bait!

Astra thinks this plan sounds downright diabolical and she’s a fan.

Sara feels like she can finally see the light of the end of the tunnel, a way out of the darkness that descended when the Anti-Legends blew up their Waverider. She takes a deep breath and holds her head high and faces her team and rallies the troops. They’re finally going home.

Nate tells the team how the historical day went down and they make a plan to drug the three would-be assassins so they sleep through their murder plot. Once they feel ready, they head to 1914, but before Sara can slip the drugs into the bad guys’ drinks, a mysterious man stops them. He clocks Sara and Nate as time travelers and invites the shocked duo into a supernatural speakeasy called the Fixed Point, a bar packed with other time travelers here to do exactly what the Legends are planning.

Sara fetches the rest of her team, sans her wife and the father of time travel, and Gideon is surprised she didn’t know about this hangout. It doesn’t take too long before they see how things work here: a time traveler pulls a ticket, and when their number is called, they get to try their hand at stopping the assassination.

The problem is, travelers always fail, and failing often ends in death. The barkeep says that trying to change a Fixed Point pisses Time off, and Time will try to kill you about it.

Back at the manor, Ava tries to make a plan with Gwyn that will save Alan with as few ripples as possible. When Gary returns to give Ava the update on what’s happening topside, after marveling over a whole community of time travelers that Gwyn Davies helped create, Ava realizes that if Alan never dies, Davies will never invent time travel, and reality as they know it will devolve. No time travel, no Legends, no Avalance.

Gwyn has already thought of this though, and he has a solution. He wants to save Alan, but never tell his younger self. This very idea breaks Ava’s whole heart and she cannot fathom why he would want that.

In the bar, Gideon’s having a hard time wrapping her human brain around the totems shmotems of time travel, so she drags Gary to the bar with her to deal with her problems the way many humans do. Behrad and Astra, despite deciding last week that they were going to take it slow, are being gross, so Spooner is left with Fancy Zari to try out this whole one-on-one hangout deal.

It’s pretty cute, actually, even though it’s incredibly awkward. They both try to chat about the other’s interests, despite having little to no interest in it themselves, and it’s very sweet!

Across the bar, some youths start making fun of Sara and Nate, calling the Legends washed up superheroes. And Sara gets a little in her head about it, and the next plan she comes up with is so sure to fail that a man who happens to also be trying it does indeed get dead.

She decides to just improvise instead; she’s always been good at following her instincts. So she steels herself and marches out into 1914.

And almost immediately gets clotheslined by a ladder.

Sara goes back to the bar with her tail between her legs, embarrassed to hear Gen Z³’s laughter. She tries to go back to the drawing board, but she is clearly a bit shook.

Also shook is Ava, who can’t fathom why it seems like Gwyn has given up even trying to come up with a way to save Alan and the history of time travel. Gwyn admits that he thinks that’s what he deserves, that this is his penance for loving another man. Ava doesn’t understand how someone who has lived with her and her wife for at least a week at this point could say such a thing, and she promises that there are places — places they can take him — where he would be accepted and safe to be himself, because there’s nothing wrong with loving another man.

But Gwyn doesn’t want community or acceptance; he believes he’s already sinned in the eyes of God and deserves to be punished. Religious trauma will do that to a person.

At the Fixed Point, Fancy Zari and Spooner take a break from their awkward small talk to rag on some bar patrons and they realize this is something they have in common: hating people. The tension broken, Zari admits that she thought Spooner didn’t like her, and Spooner admits that she thought Zari thought she was too good for her. They were intimidated by each other and keeping themselves from a fox and the hound friendship this whole time.

Sara is kicking herself for leading the team straight into a brick wall, but Nate tells her to shake it off. She got the yips! It happens. But Sara feels off in a bigger way; probably ever since her honeymoon ended in an alien invasion. And what’s extra weird, is she has no idea what their next move should be, and it’s a new and unwelcome feeling.

Nate calls the Legends together to give their captain a taste of her own pep talk medicine. Maybe Sara failed because she tried to do it on her own. This time, they’ll try as a team. Because one thing they have over the Gen Z³ kids is that they’ve failed. A lot. Together.

Reinvigorated, Sara gets ready to break time again with her found family. Since she’s part of the Unkillable Gay Squad, she will take point, and everyone else will help from the sidelines. Zari and Spooner head off together, not ready to be done forming this new friendship.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 709 Recap: Avalance Plus Eight

Hello and welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow season 7, episode 9, “Lowest Common Demoninator” aka the one where the real Legends get TOO real.

Previously on Legends of Tomorrow, Evil Gideon created a group of androids in the Legends’ image to destroy them, so the real Legends kidnapped the father of time travel and used his very first time machine to quantum leap to safety.

We open this week in said safe space, and it’s the pocket dimension version of the mansion. The problem is, since they didn’t get in with the key, it’s not linked to a time or place on the material plane, so they are trapped in the hell dimension. They’re mad that Gideon brought them here when they said “home” instead of back to 2022, but they can’t have her fix it right now because her human body has a human fever. They all storm off to come up with a plan to stop Evil Gideon and the RoboLegends (band name, called it), leaving Gideon to wring her hands about doing a bad job.

With everyone distracted, no one explains to Davies where exactly they are, so when he follows familiar voices and opens the front door, he is quite alarmed to find that they are, quite literally, in hell.

Captain Ava Sharpe immediately marches to the kitchen to make a new murder board to figure out what to do next.

Sara asks the team to start brainstorming ideas, because for the first time in a long time, there’s no clear path forward, and they don’t have their supercomputer AI to help them.

Speaking of their AI, Gary goes to check on Gideon, who is confused as to why everyone is so upset. She thought she was doing the right thing. Gary comforts her and Gideon decides that one thing that will make her feel better is if they use their human bodies in a way that humans do, so they head on upstairs.

Behrad comes to Nate and Fancy Zari and says that he has stopped being high and has a sense of clarity and realizes that he really likes Astra and wants to ask her out. They tell him to be his normal chill self and that it will go well, and when he leaves they’re really proud of themselves like an aunt and uncle who managed to not kill a kid on their first babysitting gig. Nate calls Zari a “time bro-ette” and she basically says “thanks I hate it” because Zaris in any form continue to be THE best.

By the time the Legends finally realize that Davies is decidedly Not Okay about the concept of being in a hell dimension, it’s too late, the door has been open. All the lights go out and Astra knows something hellish is afoot.

Sara is annoyed because now they have a side quest no one asked for, and Ava is pretty sure they can’t fight Evil Gideon if they are possessed by some kind of devil spawn so they get to work trying to figure out what might have happened and how to stop it.

Nate and Fancy Zari are sweeping for signs of ghouls together when paint falls on them and they have to take their shirts off, causing a spark of sexual tension because Nate replaces his shirt with Constantine’s and Fancy Zari looks a lot like Flannel Zari without a shirt on. The camera starts to move around like it’s strapped to a Jersey man’s shoulder and it’s clear that something hinky is going on.

Ava keeps prodding at Sara to help her come up with a plan, but Sara is, in a word, exhausted. Between the alien invasion, getting stuck in the 20s, surviving Chernobyl, watching Bishop die, and now whatever is going on now all while being chased by an evil version of the only constant she’s had in her life since she got on this Beebo-forsaken ship…she’s at capacity.

And Ava gets it but she’s tired too and they have a job to do and grown children to herd so they have to just keep going. And unfortunately they keep going right into Gary and Gideon’s room, where they scream upon realizing all three of Gary’s nipples are exposed.

The rest of the team runs in to see what all the screaming is about, and in turn all scream upon seeing Gary’s ex-evil extra appendage, and Astra is ready to murder Gary and asks questions later until Gideon reassures her that not only was this whole thing consensual, but it was her idea. Sara and Ava blame Gideon’s recent misfires on this relationship and storm out.

When they realize all this tension and chaos feels a bit familiar to those of them who are familiar with the Bravo network, Astra realizes exactly what’s going on. She uses magic to show the Legends that they’re being haunted by a cursed crew; they sold their souls to make a good show so now they’re cursed to do ghosty mayhem, forced to film until they capture something real, something authentic.

And just like real producers and crew members on real reality shows (or at least, my understanding of them based on the show Unreal which is the closest I’ve come to watching a reality show since 2011), they are able to nudge and manipulate people and emotions to amplify any budding conflict. Astra knows exactly who is behind this, so she storms off to talk to a man named Harris, demanding everyone else stay put and not turn on each other.

Fancy Zari is sure she can handle this, since she grew up on Keeping Up with the Terazis aka KUWT (appropriately pronounced “cute”) in which Behrad was eventually recast like a teen boy getting his head swapped on an ABC Family show.

Davies pulls Spooner aside and asks what exactly TV is and how “reality TV’ is different, and the only experience Spooner has with it is Survivor so she immediately starts forming alliances and thinking strategy.

Ava still wants to come up with a plan, but as Sara absent-mindedly puts on some earrings that have magically appeared, she starts to whine about how she’d rather go on vacation.

She tries to entice Ava with the promise of personal chefs and hers & hers massages, but Ava is really trying to stay on task here.

Meanwhile, Fancy Zari and Nate make a pact to never fight and IMMEDIATELY break that pact, because Nate took it too far.

Davies goes to find Sara, annoyed that she hasn’t kept up her end of the bargain yet, and Sara is too busy changing all of the sticky notes on Ava’s murderboard into notes of fancy things she wants to worry about him, so she uses one of the post-its as a “get-one-soul-out-of-the-timeline free” card and gives it to Davies. As her hand position and flippant aire gets a little bit Alexis Rose, I can’t help but wonder if this is the Sara Lance that would have come to be if the Queen’s Gambit never crashed that fateful night.

Davies find Spooner again and she has taken her Survivor strategy to the next level and she is…completely naked. To psych out her competition.

Astra dresses up in her Queen-of-Hell finest and struts to talk to Harris, who I’ve decided is named after Xander because he, too, is a terrible manbaby.

Harris sucks a lot and has the audacity to tell Astra she looks BAD, which isn’t even good negging because it’s just categorically false. He tells her he’s enjoying the Legends’ reality show, even though they sort of lost the plot right out the gate, but Astra snarls that those are her souls and he should back the fuck off. He has a lot of respect for the work she did here in hell and is going to give in to her, but Behrad didn’t listen to Astra when she told him to stand down, and he got caught by guards.

Behrad starts to “defend” Astra by calling her good and caring despite Astra hissing at him to stop “helping” and Harris realizes that she’s gone soft and threatens Behrad. When Harris searches Behrad and realizes he really is a good guy down to his core, he decides that’s boring and lets them go, but he’s keeping the show going, now with the added twist of Astra and Behrad being trapped in a room together in the LCD studios.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 708: iLegend

Well hello there! I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 2022* and ready to jump right back on the Waverider with Legends of Tomorrow season 7 episode 8, “Paranoid Android.”

*ready to practice some extreme escapism

Previously on Legends of Tomorrow, Robo-Legends crashed the real Legends’ party, programmed to believe they were the real and righteous Legends and that the Legends WE know and love are time terrorists out to destroy everything in their path. This whole episode, including but not limited to this “previously on” section AND the opening credits, was from the perspective of these RoboLegends, which was absolutely brilliant. No notes!

What’s better than these RoboLegends thinking they’re the real Legends is that they think the real Legends are RoboLegends! What’s less great is they’re on a mission to destroy them. And when they find the real Legends having a party in the WWII airplane hanger, they are furious. How could these time bandits have the audacity to have fun??

They attack and we see the fight from the mid-season finale, but this time from the other side. The RoboLegends take RoboZari and RoboAstra’s deaths fairly matter-of-factly, though they do swear to avenge their fallen friends. Specifically, Behrad wants to avenge Zari and Spooner wants to avenge Astra, because whoever programmed them knows exactly (okay, mostly) what they’re about.

Once the team is back on the RoboWaverider, the fake Sara and Ava growl at each other, like whoever created them knew that if these robots were in love, that would make them happy, and happy people just don’t kill their doppelgängers. They just don’t.

RoboSara reviews their last mission, trying to see where they went wrong, and she can’t help but notice a pattern. Giving factory workers job security, saving random 20s lounge singers from their boyfriends…these Fake Legends she’s been warned about don’t seem all that bad after all…

Gideon tries to keep her on mission, which right now is to go to Ukraine 1986 to put Chernobyl back on the menu, but when Zari and Astra stroll in, she can’t help but be a little suspicious. She sends the team off with big weapons Ava calls Destiny Restorers but she hangs back to ask Dr. Sharpe about these miraculous recoveries. Gideon interrupts them, though, so Sara joins her team, and as soon as she’s gone, Dr. Sharpe incinerates RoboZari’s old body. Dun dun dun!

Zari and Astra run QB from the Waverider while the rest of the team heads down to “fix” history. Zari uses one hand to work a stress ball and the other to hack and finds the target of their anomaly lickity split; Astra compliments her on it and oops I ship them.

RoboZari says she’s feeling extra smart since she woke up from surgery, and her one-handed speed typing proves helpful…until Gideon tells her she hit a wall. Because time is like cement. She simply can’t know more information about the mission.

The RoboLegends fight some Soviets and capture their General and while Sara is interrogating him, She tries to explain to the General about how they’re the good guys. She also thinks the General is the only one they’re going to kill until Zari pops into her comm and says the “Destiny Restorer” weapons actually just blast the men with the amount of radiation they would have gotten in the blast, which seems a little aggressive to RoboSara.

As they realize more people are fleeing the city, Nate says, “If we don’t stop this, all these people are going to live,” and Sara looks like she’s starting to have her doubts.

But her team keeps pushing her forward, including RoboZari and RoboAstra setting up plans for a new broadcast that will get people to go back home so they can get radiation like they were supposed to.

They use the General’s children to blackmail him into making the video, but before Spooner and Behrad run off to grab the kiddos, Sara pulls them aside and makes sure they’re all bluffing. When she realizes she’s the only one bluffing, she hesitates about this plan, but stupid Gary causes a it of a commotion and Sara ends up getting shot. She says she’s fine to go on and figure out a plan that does not involve killing children, but Dr. Sharpe pulls her back to the Waverider.

Since she got shot in the kerfuffle, Dr. Sharpe insists Sara get surgery for her injury, but before she puts her under, Dr. Sharpe interrogates Sara about why she hesitated in the field, but RoboSara lies her way into convincing her not to pull out the weird computer chip with her name on it that she promised were just medical records. RoboSara pulls her IV out and stays awake during her surgery, and is horrified to see that Dr. Sharpe pulls a metal part out of her shoulder and puts a new one back in.

When Dr. Sharpe leaves, the White Canary rises and breaks into the cabinet to steal the weird chips, immediately bringing them to RoboZari.

Luckily, after explaining, RoboZari not only believes RoboSara, but she takes it one step further; she thinks Dr. Sharpe is tinkering with their bodies AND their minds, based on how she feels post-surgery. She also is starting to be on Sara’s side re: doubting their mission; she did think Gideon’s mantra of “history is like cement” seemed a little illogical. Maybe Dr. Sharpe is controlling her, too…

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 707 Recap: A Bouquet of Rosies

Welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow season 7, episode 7, “A Woman’s Place is in the War Effort!” aka the one where we learn about Black Rosies.

We open where we left off last week, with Bishop on the Waverider’s only toilet, ejected into space and crashing into the first time machine ever built that was supposed to take the Legends back to the present day.

When the team learns that it’s Bishop who ruined their lives YET AGAIN, Ava scowls at him and Sara grabs him by the lapel, ready to pummel him within an inch of his life.

Bishop is saved, however, by the sound of voices fast approaching. They all scatter and shout distractions while they look for a door they can all disappear into. The first one they find is a portapotty but beggars can’t be choosers, so they all scurry into the mystical manner by way of latrine.

When they get into the manor, Sara immediately pins Bishop to the wall and asks him to explain himself.

Bishop claims he’s the good Bishop even though he also admits he is the one who shot down their Waverider and sent evil robots of historical figures after them. Bishop blames Gideon, which Human Gideon takes offense to, but then they realize it’s probably Blue Gideon from their walk down memory lane. Bishop takes an almost gross fascination with her human form and Astra, not for the first time and hopefully not for the last, puts her entire body between Gideon and danger.

But they take him at his word, for now, and know that they have to stay as tight to the timeline as possible so they don’t attract Misguided Gideon’s attention.

To minimize their damage, Sara and Ava are going to go out and scout to figure out where and, more importantly, when they are. And hope that by some chance they’re near a time machine parts store so they can get home.

And even though they were sarcastic in that hope, they do end up at the next best thing: an airplane factory. Though being in the middle of WWII still isn’t ideal for a buncha queer folks and people of color, but at least they can maybe find the parts they need.

They wonder out loud how they’re going to make their way into the factory when a woman comes out and quite literally invites them inside, because there’s a recruitment fair. Problem solved!

Sara and Ava watch a recruitment video complete with a message from Eleanor Roosevelt, inspiring Rosie the Riveters everywhere to join the war effort.

When the video is over, Ava and Sara hop right up, ready to volunteer their way into the factory.

Inside the manor, Flannel Zari takes advantage of this rare downtime to ask Nate when he plans on moving into the totem with her, and he says that he’ll do it as soon as they wrap up this mission and get back to the present. Pleased, she pops into the totem to prep the ancestors and swap out with Fancy Zari.

When Sara and Ava come back, Nate tells them about his plans to move in with Zari, and they’re so excited they squeal and it results in a full group hug. Nate promises this isn’t goodbye, that he’ll still be commuting from the totem every morning, but it’s a nice big step for his relationship with Flannel Zari.

Ava tells the team about the factory probably having the parts they need, and Spooner thinks she can find the components and make the parts with the machinery inside, so the Ladies of Legends (minus the Zaris, who are in the totem) suit up and head out.

When the squirrely man in charge sees the lot of them, he sends Ava and Sara and their arms to the factory floor, recruits cutie patootie Gideon as his new secretary, and then turns to Astra and Spooner, who await their assignment politely. But then he pulls some racist bullshit and tells them that they can’t work on the floor and sends them to the janitorial staff instead. Astra is quite sick of having to live in times where people are so blatantly and shamelessly racist right to her face.

And on top of having to put up with all the racism and sexism, Astra is worried that now Spooner won’t be able to make the parts they need. But Spooner, somehow, has become the more optimistic one of the duo, and says that they can use this assignment to their advantage by using the mop buckets to smuggle out the parts they’re stealing.

Astra can’t help but be charmed but she does her best to retain some grumpiness as she tells Spooner she hates her. But Spooner sees right through that icy sheen now and simply beams up at her bff and says, “I hate you, too.”

Astra and Spooner’s new supervisor tells them that their shift is 12 hours, no breaks, and Astra has to cover her hair because they are professionals. (Note: I don’t think they ever said this woman’s name in the episode, and IMDb had her listed as Abby, but Olivia Swann, who plays Astra, and Kimleigh Smith, who plays the woman in question, both called the character Gladys in their Instagram captions, so I’m going to call her Gladys. Plus Gladys sounds very period-appropriate, based exclusively on the character Gladys “Princess” Witham.)

Inside the manor, Fancy Zari pops out of the totem and is excited to be reunited with her phone. When she learns that Nate is going to move into the totem, her and Behrad warn him about a particularly finicky uncle and decide to teach him a bit about Persian culture, lest he get kicked out of the ancient artifact.

And since they happen to have a very annoying house guest, they decide to use Bishop to help Nate learn by way of testing his patience.

Inside the aircraft factory (listen I guarantee there are going to be phrases that are simply not used but in my defense I hated history class and only paid attention to the social dramas of Bomb Girls so please ecxuse any errors), Sara and Ava are shown the ropes and put on an assembly line.

Sara sees a part they need and decides to dip out to bring it to Spooner, asking Ava to pick up her slack. As soon as she leaves, another woman asks Ava to cover her too, distracting her momentarily, and causing her to fall a bit behind on her conveyor belt. She tries to slow the belt down but ends up speeding it up by accident, so she panics and starts to shove bolts into her pockets. The foreman catches her so she shoves them in her mouth instead, and honestly it was a very nice homage to the classic I Love Lucy bit.

When Sara finds Spooner and Astra, she’s surprised to see them on janitorial duty, until she realizes why and feels really bad about it. Without hesitation, she tells them they can sit this mission out and stay in the manor until it’s over, not wanting her team to incur unnecessary harm, but Spooner and Astra say they can handle it, especially since they think their position will help them in the long run. Sara hands off the parts and heads back to the factory, but tells them that they can change their mind about bailing at any minute, no questions asked.

Just then, Gladys catches Astra and Spooner with their stolen parts and they think the jig is up. Just as Spatula is about to bail, Gladys softens a little and lets them know that they have a secret lab where they teach themselves skills and fix machinery to keep this place running, and that Spooner and Astra can use it as long as they’re careful and discreet.

Astra is still a little hesitant but she trusts Spooner to get her home.

In the manor, Fancy Zari and Behrad do their best to teach Nate about Persian culture, and while he is a fast learner, Bishop is not making things easy. Nate isn’t sure how pretending to be a host to their hostage-turned-test-guest is going to help him with the Tarazi family, but Zari explains that a good guest makes a good host, and a bad guest can threaten to make a bad host.

At the factory, Ava and Sara are tired from all this womanual labor, but Spooner made one of the parts so she’s feeling great. Astra is frustrated though because it took them a whole day to make one part and they need 18 total.

Gideon is taking her job in stride and Astra decides to take advantage of that by using magic to fake a work order for Mr. Staples to sign.

Staples comes back into the office before she’s done though, and hits her with an extra dose of racism and sexism, dragging Astra to the end of her rope, so she snaps and accidentally freezes him with some wild magic.

Astra feels real bad because this is trouble she didn’t ask for, so she calls in her captains for help. They immediately make it clear that they don’t blame her, which I appreciate because it stresses me out SO MUCH when it’s clear to me someone blames themselves for something that isn’t really their fault and no one takes a second to say “it’s not your fault” to them.

Astra doesn’t know what exactly she did, how she did it, nor how long it will last, so they decide to keep the factory running in the meantime, partially to take advantage of the lack of oversight so they can get their parts made and partially so they don’t cause any wrinkles in time that could attract Overeager Gideon.

So Astra gets to work learning how to run the factory.

Meanwhile, Bishop is in the manor being gross and annoying and entitled in a way that makes me itchy, insulting everything from the towels no one told him he could use to Fancy Zari’s “retro” 2040s cell phone. And unfortunately for Zari, she’s in the middle of trying to teach Nate a lesson, so she has to grit her teeth and be polite to Bishop like when you’re around both jerks and children at the same time.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 706 Recap: Are We Out of the Woods Yet?

Hello freaks and geeks! Welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow episode 706, “Deus Ex Latrina” aka the one where Gideon kills Ava. (Kind of.)

We skip the previously ons and dive right in, peeking into the year 2214, where Assistant Ava is telling Bishop that the first generation of Ava clones is almost ready for launch. He’s pleased but she has a follow-up question about the billions of dollars being diverted into a secret project she is not privy to. But lucky for her, he’s ready to show off his project: a Waverider.

She’s not sold on the name but she’s intrigued about why he decided to build a timeship that looks like it was hobbled together from old air ducts. He gives her a tour, which includes introducing Assistant Ava to Wrong Gideon, and Assistant Ava is not impressed by this new AI in Bishop’s life.

Assistant Ava asks what Bishop needs a timeship for and he says he’s going to get revenge on the Legends for kidnapping him, using him for his intelligence, and then messing with his memories. Wrong Gideon gives him the timemaster oath and makes him swear to uphold and protect the timeline at all costs, and then sets a course for whenever the Legends may be.

And speaking of the Legends, they actually have no idea where or when they are. The time machine is fried, Davies is panicking, and none of them know enough about plans to deduce anything. In fact, Gary posits that they could be in a land before time for all they know.

Since they have no idea where they are beyond “the jungle” they decide to make camp. Ava and Sara do their best to pep talk the team but it’s almost like they can sense a slight downshift in the presence of the Paragon of Hope in the universe and they can’t quite get their spirits up.

Ava and Sara tell the Tarazis to help Davies fix the time machine while they go off on their own to bicker a little out of earshot.

Nate and Zari are worried about their Captains and call Spooner and Astra in for a sibling-esque huddle about what their moms are fighting about. Spooner reads their minds and can tell they’re getting a little fighty. Sara’s anxiety about not knowing how to protect her team is rising and causing Ava’s stress about the timeline to rise which is in turn triggering Sara’s anxieties about not upsetting Ava and round and round they spin.

Realizing this is only going to get worse if they’re left alone, Spooner takes Sara to hunt for some food and Astra takes Ava on a hike to gather wood.

Gary and Gideon start to bug Nate about his relationship with Flannel Zari so he sends them off to gather berries for them to eat with whatever the hunting team comes back with, sure that even these two ding dongs can’t screw up the timeline enough to attract the Evil Waverider if they’re deep in the woods.

In the future, Bishop takes Assistant Ava into the timestream and they get their first alert from 1925 in Odessa, Texas. And then, as we probably could have guessed, because of reasons both timey and wimey, it turns out Bishop was the one who shot at the Legends in the Season 6 finale. Though what maybe we didn’t realize is that he was shooting to kill.

Assistant Ava thinks that felt a little too easy, but Bishop is too egotistical to consider that he failed, so he just starts celebrating, not noticing Assistant Ava’s distinct lack of whooping.

In the jungle, Zari and Behrad go to find Davies, who is looking rather defeated. He’s sure the time machine can’t be fixed and assumes it’s because he was destined to fail, that this is his fate. And speaking of fate, theirs is not looking great based on the danger sign they’re sitting near…but that’s a problem for future us.

On the Evil Waverider, Assistant Ava and Bishop are eating fabricated food, Assistant Ava asking the important question: fabricated from WHAT?? But Bishop isn’t bothered by this unknown, especially once they get another alert about a disturbance in the Timestream, this time about Hoover going missing. He wants to use clone technology to replace him but Gideon says clones are human and thus fallible: just look at what happened with Legend Ava.

Assistant Ava makes a case for #NotAllAvas but Bishop decides to make a robot Hoover instead.

Meanwhile, the real Ava is trying to collect sticks but is too stressed about ruining the timeline to focus. She hates not having all the answers, and sometimes she wishes someone else was in charge. Realizing she just said all the quiet thoughts out loud, she reassures Astra that it’s fine! It’s fine, she’s FINE. Very convincing.

Astra tells Ava that it’s okay if she’s not okay, uses magic to make an axe, and tells her captain that she’s got to let it out.

Back in time a bit, Assistant Ava and Bishop get an alert from Wrong Gideon that the Hooverbot died, and on top of that, the Legends are actually alive. They decide to make another Hooverbot, but this one with the Kill the Legends directive, but within 12 hours, it’s in pieces, too. And Edison is dead. Bishop is extremely stressed, and Wrong Gideon is trying to get him to stop going after the Legends because playing whack-a-mole with the anomalies is only making things worse, but Assistant Ava tells Wrong Ava to stop being such a fuddy duddy. So Wrong Gideon decides to lure Assistant Ava to the cargo bay by saying Bishop wants to talk to her, and once she’s inside, she opens the hatch and yeets Assistant Ava into the timestream. Correct Gideon would never!!

Unknowingly very close to a danger zone, Behrad gives Davies a pep talk about how he was lost once, but while he was lost, he found the Legends, and they lead him to find his purpose and be truly happy. Davies does not receive this hopeful message well and is rude to Behrad, making Flannel Zari want to murder him a little.

Zari chases Davies down and yells at him but when she goes to grab him to drag him back to the group, he collapses in a panic and she instantly softens. She realizes now he’s not just a dick, he’s just bad at processing his feelings. When she tries to level with him and asks him to focus up, he says that Zari and the Legends don’t really want his help anyway, because he’s useless. He tells her that the last people who depended on him died, and this hits Zari a little too close to home. She tries to tell him that she understands but he won’t listen to her.

Zari explains something that probably was never said to him in the early 1900s, which is that sometimes, talking about what’s wrong can actually help you feel better. He is… skeptical at best.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 705: A Wrinkle in Time

Hidey ho and welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow, season 7 episode 5, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Scientist” aka the one where Ava disappeared for a brief but terrifying time.

As we begin this episode, we’re still in the 1920s, but the Legends have finally made their way to New York City. Well, the bullet Blonde Blonde Gang anyway. Gary lets Avalance and Behrad out of the mansion and they immediately beeline for some New York pizza.

But I guess being Out of Time and off the Waverider for so long, they simply…forgot that they couldn’t speak freely. Or maybe they didn’t know that it’s a New Yorker’s job to eavesdrop on any conversations they can, but either way, a news vendor overhears them talking about time travel and other nonsense and then recognizes the women who were talking as the Bullet Blondes.

The man decides to shoot them for some reason, but luckily Sara jumps in front of her friends and takes the shot, and it smarts but she heals up. Unfortunately, everyone sees it happen and while in modern day New York it wouldn’t have even warranted a tweet, in the 20s it’s a little riskier so they run back to the mansion.

Inside the mansion, Zari is tinkering with Hoover, who is convinced he’s the real Hoover, even after Zari showed him his robot brains. Nate brings the tinkerer a treat, for which she is very grateful.

When the Bullet Blondes return, Nate and Gary start whispering about Zari, which she hates a lot.

Other things that are hated in this room include but are not limited to, Ava hating that Sara got shot. She knows Sara is fine but it sucked to watch and she can’t help but kiss the spot her dress burned away where a booboo would be if Sara didn’t have super-healing.

They found the address to Edison’s Lab, so that will be their next stop, but Sara wants Ava to stay behind. She’s the only bulletproof one between the two of them, which Ava can’t really argue against. So she begs her babe to not mess the timeline up too badly and sends her on her way.

Sara and Behrad head to the university to find Dr. Davies, who they think looks like Rory with hair, or maybe a young Stein, which is a hilarious joke since actually he’s played by Matt Ryan aka Constantine.

Sara does a sneaky maneuver that would make Parker from Leverage proud and gets the research she needs: the schematics for the first ever time machine.

Meanwhile, the Spatula Squad is running out of time; they have until 7pm tomorrow to get to New York or their friends are going to explode. So Astra decides to hitch a ride.

Spooner follows suit and Gideon mimics them, and it’s very cute. And what’s cuter is, when a car whizzes past them, and Spooner starts yelling to her god in the sky, Gideon looks up and waves to whoever Spooner is talking to. It’s just so precious.

Seeing how frustrated Astra is, she decides to turn their luck around by putting a luck spell on a rock. Spooner is surprised she can do this but Astra hilariously answers, “I’m a witch.” She gives Spooner the luck rock and they try hitchhiking again. This time, a man stops and gives them a ride.

After examining the stolen plans, Behrad and Zari say they can use them to make the time machine…but it will take them five years. Ava basically says my dad’s favorite phrase: the impossible just takes a little longer. But Sara is going to turn into an actual bank robber if she has to stay in the 20s a minute longer. Since they have no other options for now, Sara goes back to sneak the plans back into Dr. Davies’ apartment, and notices that he’s already done most of the work for them.

So now all they need is a single part. Behrad thinks he knows where they can find that part, but Ava is still very concerned about footprints.

Sara promises that whatever they do now, if it gets them to the future, they can time travel back and fix it. They can clean up their own messes! It’ll be fine! It’ll be fiiine.

After they leave, Hoover keeps rattling off offensive things while Ava paces around the mansion, stressed about her girl and her favorite worst assistant.

She tries to get the Hoover bot to tell him who sent him but he won’t, so flannel Zari tinkers with his programming a little to see if she can get him to stop sucking, and finds his to-do list.

It involves some regular Hoover activities but at the tip top of the list is one directive to rule them all: Eliminate the Legends. And they realize that this means whoever is trying to kill them is trying to protect the timeline; which doesn’t make sense to them because THEY protect the timeline.

Out in New York, Sara sends Gary to find the missing piece while she distracts the scientist. Gary finds the piece but as he goes to take it out of the lab, he runs into Edison himself. And like an idiot, when Edison asks what project he’s signing it out for, Gary just…tells him! That it’s for time travel! I swear we can’t take this kid anywhere.

Meanwhile back in his office, with Sara trying to keep him there with fake tasks, Dr. Davies starts to have a panic attack. To make matters worse, Edison barges in to confiscate his work and send him to Bellevue. Much to Sara’s surprise and chagrin.

When the ride they hitched breaks down, Spooner tries to use the luck rock again and a race car driver pulls up. They sweet talk him into taking them to New York, which is all fine and good until they get pulled over in New Jersey. Desperate to get to their friends, Astra manages to convince the cop that it would be the best decision to let the famous racecar driver go, and since the copper wants to see a pape with his face beamin’, he agrees.

Back in the mansion, Nate is being weird, so Zari asks if he and Gary hooked up, which she wouldn’t be mad about, just confused since he seemed like a monogamous kind of guy. But the truth is, he just wants to DTR. He’d been letting their weird totem situation keep him from asking, but he does want to take things to the next level. He wants them to live together. And he thinks the mansion is the perfect place to do that.

Zari says yes and Nate goes to get her a celebratory bear claw, but when he leaves the Hoover bot says he knows Zari is lying about something. She tells him to shut up and storms off.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 704 Recap: Gals and Pals

What ho! Welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow season 7, episode 7, “Speakeasy Does It” aka one of the best episodes of the show ever which is a really high bar but I loved it so much?????

We open once again in the 20s, where we’ve been for a few episodes, which has actually been kind of nice. The Bullet Blondes Gang ditches Hoover’s car and get ready to hop on a train. Their plan is to buy three tickets and have the rest hide out in the mansion key, until they realize Gary’s misunderstanding of human money and inflation means that he over tipped the last waitress they had by so much they only have enough money for one person to travel.

And in the meantime, they have to find a way to hide the city’s most wanted blondes. Zari spots a wig store and knows it’s her time to shine, so she drags her captains in and tries to find them a suitable disguise. She tries to ask the store owner for help, but he fully ignores her. Zari is a little confused until Sara tries to talk to him and he answers the straight-passing white lady readily and it’s clear what’s happening here. (Spoiler alert: it’s racism.)

The man moves to fulfil Sara’s request and Ava and Sara apologize to Zari and promise to hurry up. They take two not-blonde wigs but since the fuzz caught sight of Hoover’s car, they have to pay the rest of their easy-earned money to sneak out the back door of the shop.

Zari is furious and declares how much she hates the 20s and how only Nate, their token straight white man, actually fits in here. And this is one thing that I’ve always appreciated about this show; I remember back in the first season, when Stein was delighted by the 50s, calling it idyllic, Jax and Sara had to point out that he only feels that way because he’s a straight white man. While of course they water down the truth of the kind of racism and sexism this particular group might have been met with for this romp of a show, they never deny its existence or shy away from putting words to it.

Luckily for the Legends, however, the alley they emptied into happens to be the entrance to a speakeasy, and Zari managed to say the password in her fury…because the password is password.

The first thing the historian in the group notices is that the Speakeasy is inclusive, a rare thing to see in the 20s in mob-run Chicago. It seems, at least for the moment, they’ve found a safe haven.

Slightly less lucky are Spooner, Astra, and Gideon, who are sneaking around on a train they don’t have a ticket for.

Spooner tries to map out a plan and Astra teases her for sounding like Ava, which is cute on at least three levels. The tickettaker comes and they make a break for it, and try to play it off when they’re caught, but ultimately need to be saved by a woman named Maude, who lies and says they’re part of her band with the energy of a drunk stranger in the bathroom telling you not to call your ex like she’s known you for years.

Back in the Speakeasy, Ava is stressed because the Bullet Blondes are all over the papes. They’re being called robbers, bootleggers…and worst of all, sisters!

But that gives Sara an idea. They need more money to get to New York, the world already thinks they’re criminals…and they happen to have an endless supply of whiskey at their disposal. So she works out a deal with the owner, Eddie, and sells him some booze, offering him a sizable cut in exchange for use of their storage closet and a lack of questions.

What the Bullet Blondes don’t know is that they’re running out of time; Robot Hoover is hot on their heels.

Meanwhile, The Spatula Squad thanks Maude for her quick thinking and for using her boyfriend’s name and her manager’s scary appearance to their advantage. Maude says it’s no problem. After all, “gals help gals and make new pals.”

Her friend Suzie chimes in, adding that men won’t look out for you like women will. When Suzie says her full name to her new friends, Gideon uses her big computer brain and starts rattling off facts about her life, and Spooner has to ask her to play the quiet game.

Astra lies to Maude and says Gideon is the Lark of London and Spooner is her vocal coach, Esperanza. And Astra? She’s their manager. Maude is taken aback by this, a woman manager, and complains that their current manager isn’t very good at his job. Astra asks to see the contract, ready to return a favor for their new gal pals.

Seeing how predictably absurd the contract is, Astra gives the manager a piece of her mind. He’s racist and sexist too, but Astra doesn’t flinch, and tells Maude that her contract is long since expired if she wants out. So Maude takes her advice and fires her, and as a reward, Astra magics some first class tickets for the masquerading mavens.

At the Speakeasy, Zari and Eddie are bonding over their safe haven, and how happy her brother seems on stage. (I don’t know how Ava is letting Zari just use her phone as a mirror all willy nilly but it was cute that Eddie thought it was just a fancy compact.)

He tells her to live in the moment, and feel the here and now, and they have a sweet little bond. Sara interrupts, looking for Ava, wanting to show off all their new money, and since she’s back in the mansion, Sara leads the rest of the team into the “storage closet” for the night.

As soon as the Legends go into the mansion, Maude’s boyfriend Battoni shows up, and roughs him up for going against their agreement and buying liquor from someone else. When Zari comes out to get something from the bar and sees Eddie all bloodied up, she calls for her team and when Sara and Ava emerge, pre-bed and, thus, post-wig, he realizes he’s been unwittingly harboring the Bullet Blondes.

When the Legends ask who did this to him, Eddie looks up at Sara and says, “You did.”

Eddie blames the Legends for losing his bar, and getting him even more tangled in the mob mess than he already was. Zari is especially furious; this was the first place she felt safe outside Gloria’s farmhouse since they got to the 1920s. And she wants to fix it. She asks her captains to give her 24 hours of being in charge to fix it; she says they can’t keep leaving the timeline worse than they found it.

And specifically, they can’t leave this city’s outcasts without their one safe space. Sara agrees quickly, and Ava is more cautious but also knows Zari is right. So Zari convinces Eddie to come with her, and uses the storage room in the back of the wig shop to show Eddie the magic mansion. She says she wants to hold a fundraiser so Eddie can open up a new bar of his own, and he’s confused but she’s insistent.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 703 Recap: Past is Prologue

Hello and welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow season 7, episode 3, “wvrdr_error_100 not found” (not a WordPress glitch, the actual name of the episode) aka the one Caity Lotz directed aka THE 100TH EPISODE!!!

And in reflecting on this episode, I realized that I think I’ve written more about this show than any other show I’ve covered. Because Supergirl didn’t get gay until season two, but Legends started off with bisexual badass Sara Lance. My season 1 recaps have been deleted from the internet because I believe trans rights are human rights, but my writing about Season 2 and beyond is here on this very website. 100 episodes total covered, 84 on this very website, not including crossovers and standalone pieces and the like.

I even once went against my instincts as a completist and made a skipper’s guide to the Arrowverse, just so people would watch Legends of Tomorrow and also Batwoman. I know Season 1 is considered rough, but much like Season 1 of Buffy, I found it endearing and still find it cute to watch the show take its first wobbly steps before it learned how to walk, and eventually fly.

And the only two people left on the show that have also been here from Day 1 are Sara and Gideon, and since Caity Lotz took her turn in the director’s chair this week, AND since Gideon has been a constant, a view into EVERY Legends’ life on the Waverider, it makes the most sense in the world to me that it’s through Gideon’s mind that we travel down memory lane.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First let’s pick up where we left off, with Astra and Spooner trying to wrangle a newly human Gideon while making their way through Texas in the 20s, trying to catch up to the rest of the Legends before they get themselves killed.

Gideon is trying to help but Astra is furious that she has to AI-sit and this leads to Astra and Spooner fighting over whether they can still boss Gideon around.

Spooner tells Gideon that she should choose for herself, but she starts to react like I do when given two options; on one hand, the pie Astra wants her to steal is culturally significant, on the other, they’ll never save the Legends if they die of starvation first. The very act of trying to choose short-circuits Gideon’s human brain and she passes out.

Spooner’s magic can’t figure it out so Spooner asks Astra for magical help. Reluctantly, Astra admits that she knows a spell that could send her into Gideon’s mind to see what’s wrong, but if something is truly broken, she won’t be able to get out on her own. So Spooner says she’ll go in, too. So go in they do, together.

At first it seems like they’re on the Waverider with the Temporal Zone wooshing past them, but a familiar voice in an unfamiliar accent tells them that it’s actually Gideon’s memories they’re flying through. And the man in question introduces himself to Spooner and Astra as none other than Jax, now with 100% more accent. You see, Gideon grew fond of Jax, with all the ship maintenance he did, so she has him here in the central hub of her processor, but with an accent that feels more like home.

Astra wants to grab Gideon and go, but Jax tells her it’s more complicated than that.

If they fix her as is, her personality would be wiped, she’d go back to 0, a clean, cold AI with no memory of the Legends. Astra thinks she’d be fine with that but Spooner won’t even hear of it. She’s only been a Legend for a year but she knows how essential Gideon — THEIR Gideon — is to the team.

So instead they go deeper into Gideon’s mind to try to help repair the broken core memories. First up is the most recent, and it’s actually the day they…”recruited” Spooner.

Gideon is there, too, and she doesn’t remember this moment, so she has to experience it until she does. The trio watches as Ava sits next to Spooner and asks Gideon about her status. She doesn’t love that she interfered with the timeline like this but she’s so, so desperate to get Sara back. Gideon’s voice reassures Ava that she understands; she says she misses Sara too in a way that makes it sound like the truth of that statement is almost a surprise to her.

And Gideon realizes now why this is a core memory; watching Ava go against her instinct to save her girlfriend taught her that love isn’t logical.

Fixing this memory starts to heal some surrounding memories so they decide to go fix more.

They go back to the beginning, with old friends like Ray and Snart on the Waverider, and Sara in her White Canary suit, long before all her feisty assassin energy wore off. It doesn’t take long before this untrusting lot is at each other’s throats, but Gideon intervenes to keep them from killing each other.

Human Gideon looks fondly at her first team; she wouldn’t be who she is if she had never met them.

They go back and see Stein singing with glee after learning about his grandbaby, and when no one else will join him in a duet, Gideon does, beautiful as a songbird. His joy was her joy.

Human Gideon starts to twitch and Spooner and Astra want to get out of the memory but something is wrong and British Jax can’t bring them back. An Evil Gideon appears, a corrupted version of Gideon, a virus.

Astra is furious, this big bad Blue Gideon is ruining their otherwise pleasant visit to Gideon’s mind palace and she doesn’t much appreciate it. Human Gideon realizes that this cold version of herself was activated when she blacked out due to her indecision. Astra is about to smash a window to get them out, but Human Gideon has an idea. She uses some of the things she’s learned from the Legends – ingenuity from Ray, bravery from Sara, chaos from all of them – and steers the Waverider through her memories. They pass episode after episode, season after season, friends old and new, all the times and places they’ve been. They fly and fly until they’re back at British Jax, and even Astra is impressed.

Gideon isn’t sure what the virus wants, but she’s excited to be on a real Legends mission, even if it’s not Western-themed. They decide to go all the way back to the beginning, and Spooner and Astra get to see the Legends’ first and worst captain, Rip Hunter. While Spooner and Astra delight in the realization that the first batch of boys on the team were a bucket of asshats and none of their squabbles compare, Rip makes eye contact with Human Gideon and beckons her to follow. Even though she knows he shouldn’t be able to see her, she does, and he reveals himself to be Blue Gideon.

She wants to remove the Legends’ influence on Gideon, she wants them to be restored to their factory settings, pure intellect, raw data, just facts and figures. She is sick of all these…feelings muddying up their code and is going to go ahead and shut them off now.

Out in the main room, Sara joins the boys’ fighting and as much fun as she’s having, Spooner can’t figure out why this is a core memory.

But when she turns to ask Human Gideon about it, she realizes Gideon is gone. Suddenly the fighting stops and all the Past!Legends turn to face them and because this show is fucking BRILLIANT and is never afraid to lean into its absurdity, Spooner says, and I quote, “Is that memory looking at us funny?”

They realize something is amiss so they have Jax jump them back, and just before they get attacked. British Jax tells them that Gideon’s memories are being corrupted; she’s running out of time.

“Legends Of Tomorrow” Episode 702 Recap: iGideon

Hello cats and kittens, and welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow episode 702, “The Need for Speed,” aka the one with the honeymoon of sorts.

We begin a hop, skip, and a jump past where we left our Legends. Gary hasn’t fully digested Hoover yet, and the Legends didn’t get all that far before their old timey car broke down. They are determined to fix the timeline before things are changed too much so they give Behrad some soda pop to put in the engine while they see what else they have in the car that could help them. They find a radio and listen to the local news to hear that the Bullet Blondes have made headlines.

Meanwhile, Nate is spiraling. He’s never killed anyone before, let alone a major player in American history. But Ava interrupts and tells them that she found Hoover’s train ticket so they need to speed up their quest to keep people from finding out he’s dead. They ask for Gary’s help with a spell and he can do one with some DNA, which luckily he has since he’s having a hard time keeping the ol’ boy down, what with all the cigars and bigotry.

Home on the range, Spooner and Astra are looking curiously at Gideon, who still looks a little out of it, and hasn’t spoken yet, but Spooner is so sure it’s her.

Astra is furious that her spell backfired like this, and frustrated that Gideon won’t talk to them.

Team Train heads to the station but the potion isn’t ready yet, so they need a distraction. Nate pulls his hat low over his eyes and Sara handcuffs herself to her wife and parades them down the platform, bragging about the Bullet Blondes.

They hoodwink their way to the honeymoon suite, ironically, and they can discuss what’s next. Nate refreshes their memory on who Hoover was, and while morally reprehensible, he did have a big impact, specifically in founding the FBI.

Sara and Ava decide to go on a real honeymoon and use the pocket dimension key to go to the mansion, where they can finally be alone.

Just kidding, they’re not alone, because Zari is still there, and high as a kite. She’s rambling nonsense and making herself giggle so before she can start singing Frère Jacques, Sara and Ava excuse themselves and tell Zari to give them some time before coming to ask them for anything. (To which she responds, “That’s gross, moms.” Which is cute.)

She then starts eating whipped cream directly from the can in an effort to distract herself from the sounds coming from directly above her. When Ava takes a break to come downstairs with no pants on, she apologizes for intruding on Zari’s solitude, but Zari feels chill about it. About everything at the moment, actually. Including Ava’s lack of pants.

Seeing Fancy Zari look so…not fancy is concerning to Ava, so she asks Zari to consider that maybe her brother’s coping mechanisms won’t work for her. She suggests trying to work on a project like cleaning the mansion, so she heads off to try to do just that.

On the farm, Gideon is turning apples into little faces and Spooner is amused but Astra is just stressed. She scowls as Gideon pokes her finger into the apple and passes right out. Gloria goes to her side and starts tending to her and realizes these kids took in a stray puppy but haven’t been feeding or watering her. Astra shrugs it off and says she’s not a real girl, but Gloria shows her that Gideon has a heartbeat now, so they should start treating her like it.

She also calls Astra a mother, which I find hilarious and Astra finds terrifying.

In talking to Gloria, who asks why things aren’t just back the way they were now, Spooner and Astra realize the Legends are taking longer to enact their plan than they thought, and that they might need help. They really need Gideon.

On the train, when Nate drinks the potion and transforms into Hoover, Behrad and Gary are immediately shunned for not being straight, white, cis men. They stand back and watch as Nate embodies Hoover, solving the mystery of a stolen purse, trying to figure out why some FBI agents think someone is going to kidnap him. After some teamwork, the boys realize that the kidnapping plot is coming from inside the house, and their lead suspect is now the train’s conductor.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 701 Recap: Big Top (Energy)

Greetings! And welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow Season 7, Episode 1, “The Bullet Blondes,” aka the one that’s a bit of a circus.

And I know it hasn’t really been that long since the Season 6 finale, but I’m so glad these goofballs are back. This episode was classic Legends, top to bottom, so let’s get right into it.

The citizens of Odessa, Texas, 1925, are filing into the Sheriff’s Office one by one to report the strange goings-on of the night before. Glowing lights, dinosaur-looking creatures. The sheriff seems vaguely unamused but looks like perhaps he’ll look into it.

Back on the range, we find our Legends where we left them, their captains newly married, power walking to the Waverider, when a ship that looks alarmingly look the Waverider explodes their Waverider.

But this time we get to see past Astra’s, “What the hell?!” exclamation as the team surveys the damage. Spooner wants to just portal back in time to that imposter Waverider and give them a piece of their mind, and Sara loves that idea.

They do a classic, dramatic Legends ready-up montage, and just as they’re all ready to do their thing, they realize their portal watch is out of juice and they’re stuck in 1925.

They start to devolve into a bicker, undoing that beautiful teamwork they just did, but then Gary mentions something about the old models of the Waveriders having a failsafe, and Ava remembers she added one to their Waverider, too. A black box of sorts, that would have emergency equipment like a backup portal watch and memory flasher, which would have come in handy when the pastor came knocking at the door asking what all the strangeness on the Cruz range was about.

The team splits up to find the black box, Behrad dutifully checking on his newly heartbroken sister. Zari channels the Fancy Zari of old and tries to brush it off, doing her best to sound less sad and more annoyed that Constantine blew her off with only a mysterious key to remember him by.

Not having the honeymoon of their dreams, Sara is leading Ava through the rubble, trying to find the box while simultaneously calming her panicky wife down. She reminds Ava that where Sara is chaos, Ava is order; they are a storm and a lighthouse, a pirate ship and her anchor. Together, they are unstoppable.

Spooner and Astra are looking too, but Spooner can’t use her tracker skills on a space box. Astra tries to whip up a little locator spell and suddenly I had a vision of Astra and Lena practicing magic together and I need to lie down.

The spell tells Spooner and Astra that it seems someone found the black box and moved it, so they follow its trail.

Team Spatula follows the trail to the Sheriff’s office, and sees the pastor handing over the black box, but wisely heads back to the team before interfering.

They have to create a diversion, and Ava knows just the rule they could follow: Rule 44. And fortunately, Rule 44 has explicit instructions on what kind of cover story they should use: a circus. Turns out, you can hide just about anything under that big top without question. Zari loves this idea because it’s the chance for a group makeover, including herself, which is just what the avoidance doctor ordered.

Spooner and Astra decide they’d rather not be part of this circus, so they sneak off to fix the porch together instead.

Sara sends Nate and Ava, the whitest and straightest-passing of the group, to the sheriff’s office to try to get the black box back while she gets to work faking a circus.

Once Zari approves their looks, they head to town to tell the locals about the circus and how that explains all the strange things they saw and heard last night.

And, much like I would be, the town is charmed by that blue-eyed wink and doesn’t question anything she says. Her story is helped along by Zari and Behrad saying they’re animal handlers, and Gary showing some fire tricks, calming the people slowly but surely.

Ava and Nate go to talk to the sheriff, Nate deciding his cover will be that he’s J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. Ava almost blows their cover by getting the presidents wrong, but they manage to wiggle their way back to the ranch, box in hand.

Before the rest of the Legends get back ot safety though, a little girl asks Gary when the circus is, and he panics and tells her that it’s tonight, on the farm. Which is not how this cover story is supposed to go.

The team is furious with Gary but when they see that Nate and Ava have the box, they figure they can just undo all this anyway.

But then they open it and it all but “womp womps” in their face, being empty of useful things. All that’s inside is a time bureau manual, a bag of Behrad’s weed gummies, and a note from Rory saying he took the spare portal on a beer run. And frankly good riddance.

Sara desperately tries to keep their spirits up since her partner in time travel is devolving quickly. They try to figure out all they know about 1925 and what they can do about their predicament, and Ava finds a protocol in the time bureau handbook (TBH) that says they should just stay put.

Sara says if they’re going to be here when folks arrive for a show, they better be ready to put on a damn show. Astra still hates this plan so she sneaks off again, and Spooner tries to explain to her mom what is going on when Gloria comes home to a lot of shenanigans going on in her living room. She’s a little surprised to hear that she’s hosting a circus, but she’ll accept any trouble that comes from it if it means protecting her little girl.

Spooner realizes what all this unwanted attention will do to her mother and decides to call the whole thing off. Sara hears her and apologizes and says they’ll just skip town instead.

That settled, Spooner looks around for her #1 and realizes Astra is gone. Gary is the first to find her, and she’s using magic to try to put the Waverider back together. Gary recognizes it as a resurrection spell and warns her against it, but she’s trying to be stubborn like her mentor.

Meanwhile, in town, the Sheriff sees a picture in the paper of the real Hoover and realizes he dealt with imposters, and before you know it the real Hoover is at his doorstep, saying he suspects the Midland Gang, a band of bank robbers he’s been after.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 615 Recap: Rainbow Connection

Blessed be! Welcome to this Legends of Tomorrow Avalance wedding recap of episode 615, “The Fungus Amongus!”

We pick up where we left off, with Mick rushing in to save the last egg, and the bomb Bishop rigged to the incubator going off. But this time we see that Mick just got blasted out of the room; he’s okay and so is the egg. Kayla looks around and says she’s surprised that everyone just risked their lives to save her eggs, and Sara tells her that they’re Mick’s kids, so they’re family. And that’s just what they do for family.

They can’t figure out what Bishop’s deal is. They know he’s stalling, but they don’t know why. He jacked up the Waverider, so they can’t go anywhere; Kayla starts to brag that actually SHE can go anywhere because her ship is just fine…but then they see it fly away, stolen.

They see a horror-movie-esque hand on the widow but it’s not an alien or an evil clone, just Behrad, back from visiting his parents and very confused as to what the heck happened. When they catch him up, he feels guilty; he knew Constantine was acting weird, he thinks he should have intervened sooner. He wants to talk to him, but just then Zari and Astra come in and tell everyone that it’s too late. Constantine is dead.

Astra tells them about the ancient fungal network protecting the earth, and Bishop linking Constantine to it before killing him, effectively killing the fountain. Astra says that he watched John die and that all that was left in the end was a little mushroom.

Sara is a little overwhelmed by this update and asks where Spooner is, so Astra takes her to where her little Spoon is. They find Mama Spoons taking care of her grown up baby girl, who is unconscious despite her best efforts. Astra realizes Spooner might be dying and is distraught.

And to be honest, things aren’t looking great for our intrepid heroes! And they don’t even know the half of it! It’s the perfect amount of stakes for a season finale, in my humble opinion.

Meanwhile on the Waverider, Kayla is doing her best to fix their busted ship when Mick comes in to check on her. A timer goes off and she says it’s the egg rotation timer and he says he’ll take care of it, which surprises Kayla. She tells him about how she wants to take her eggs and gtfo, but Mick says he’s not leaving them. In her culture, the mother takes care of the eggs alone after the father gives birth, but Mick says he already did the absent father thing once, he’s not about to do it again.

Back at the house, Astra tells Sara that the fountain being linked to Spooner is what’s making her sick, meaning if it dies, so will Spooner. They’re interrupted by a terrible sound and when they go outside, they see something streaking to earth. Sara, Ava, and Nate go to check it out and find a single pod. Sara knows this tactic and knows it’s just a scout and that more will likely follow if they let it go.

When the alien leaves its pod, Spooner stirs for the first time and Astra rushes to her side.

She relays the message she hears from the alien but still seems out of sorts.

Ava and Sara fight the alien but Ava doesn’t have a clear shot and even though she knows Sara can regenerate, she can’t bring herself to shoot Sara. But Nate does not have this same problem and shoots through Sara and gets the alien. But before it dies, he crawls over and sends the rally cry back to the rest of the aliens.

After Spooner falls back unconscious, The team realizes that they were looking at things the wrong way; yes, the fountain is dying so Spooner is, too, but that means that while Spooner is still alive, there’s still time to save the fountain.

Sara scrunches her brow up into her thinky face and Ava asks what’s going on. Sara thinks she knows what Bishop wants. He wants to destroy the Earth so only he and Sara are left. But Ava sure as shit won’t let that happen.

Back on the Waverider, Behrad rushes into the room and holds the Constantine mushroom up to Zari, saying that he talked to Constantine, heard his voice, that he thinks he’s inside the mushroom. The team looks at him like he’s Horton trying to tell them about Whoville and assume he’s high. Zari wouldn’t want to talk to her bellend of an ex-boyfriend anyway. His ego is what got them into this mess.

As Kayla gets closer to fixing the Waverider, she once again expresses the desire to get the hell out of dodge as soon as she’s able…but this time she asks if Mick will come with her.

Growth!

Kayla gets Gideon back online but as soon as she starts to say how relieved she is, Bishop interrupts her yet again. He plays a pre-recorded video correctly predicting the state of things, and since he knows how Sara’s brain works, he knows she’s figured out his icky Adam and Eve plot. He knows he’s the only one who could save the fountain, and he simply shall not. He smiles haughtily as Ava and Sara watch angrily.

The team knows he’s right, that he’s the only one who can save the fountain, so they decided to go back in time to get a pre-evil version of Bishop to help them. Sara thinks this is a bad idea, but they points out that since Bishop shares part of her brain, a What Would Sara Never Do Day is exactly what the Beebo ordered.

So they go back in time to when Bishop was still a wide-eyed scientist, trying to make Ava Prime come to life. Ava and Nate go back to get him, and he thinks that if time travelers came for him, he must be very important, so he happily joins them to help save the world.

After he investigates the poison his future self made, he is of course impressed, but knows how to make an antidote.

Just then, Behrad rushes in and says that he talked to John, SAW him, and he wants to talk to everyone! All they have to do is take a nibble of the Constantine mushroom.

Zari storms off, thinking this is insane. Sara thinks it’s a bad idea for everyone to get high before a big mission. Ava reminds her that it’s What Would Sara Never Do Day but Sara says she’s putting the kibosh on that holiday and has regained control as captain and says no, so everyone goes to find a way to make themselves useful for the fight ahead.

But as soon as Sara is alone, she hears John’s voice in her head. The voice beckons her to “eat me” and she decides to go ask Alice and take a nibble. She’s transported to a vision of the site of the fountain and sees Constantine there, dressed all in white. He knows what he did was unforgivable, and what he did made the fountain deem humans unworthy of protection. He’s going to stay and feed the fountain with his slow death while she saves Spooner and the fountain; he wants to make it right.

Constantine tells Sara that he takes back what he once told her, that they were too broken to have anything stable when it comes to relationships. He says the only thing he’s ever said that I really liked: “Loving and being loved, that is the point.” He had that, and he got greedy, and that’s how he ended up in this predicament. He has one more thing to tell her, the secret of all life, and he whispers it in her ear, and she is Enlightened.

Up on the ship, Kayla runs a diagnostic and Gideon compliments her on her mechanic skills. She’s about to plot an escape but Mick stops her. He doesn’t want her to leave with the kids, but he also can’t leave the Legends. He needs both of his families to be together while he helps save the world. He knows she won’t leave without him; he knows deep down she still cares about him.

NEXT PAGE: BRIDES! 

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 614 Recap: Paciencia y Fe

Hello and welcome to this Legends of Tomorrow Episode 614 recap, “There Will Be Brood,” aka The One Maisie Richardson-Sellers Directed.

Last we left off, Constantine had accepted help from Bishop and became extra smarmy. When we pick up, Zari finds him in the mansion standing amongst the rubble of his fight with his beasty insides and he says he’s “feeling like his old self” and she’s wigged out by it; this is not the man she loves. More Legends trail in behind her demanding to know where Bishop is and what he’s up to but Constantine is just smirking at them.

Zari steps up and gets right in his face and, with a firm but gentle tone, asks him to tell them what happened.

He snaps at her and honestly it’s a miracle she doesn’t deck him right there. Sara even quirks an eyebrow, not knowing much about their relationship but feeling pretty sure that’s not normal.

Zari asks what happened to the conversation they had, where she convinced him he was enough without his magic, but he says Bishop helped him see the light and said he’ll help him unlock the fountain. They’re all resigned to the fact, though not extremely surprised, that he’s going to throw the Legends out with the trash and he’s like YUP BYE.

Zari goes to slap him and instead of getting the satisfying sound they all deserve to hear, it goes right through him. They realize he’s astral projecting, so he disappears. The real Constantine is on the Waverider with Bishop, and when he warns him the Legends are onto them, Bishop short circuits Gideon and takes off in the stolen timeship.

Astra and Spooner feel the Waverider take off and when they realize their captains aren’t on board, they immediately know something isn’t right.

Astra uses magic to hide them (AS A FORK AND A SNOW GLOBE) as Constantine and Bishop come into the room.

Constantine and Bishop talk about the fountain and agree to find it together; Constantine uses magic to decode a map and Bishop reads it. They twirl their metaphorical mustaches and head off to set the Waverider on course to find the fountain. Spooner and Astra (aka Spatula) reappear and are quite stressed by this turn of events.

They consider going to find the rest of the team but Gideon is still down and they have no idea how to drive the ship, so they decide to stop the boys themselves.

When the ship lands, they sneak off the Waverider and find themselves in Texas, 1925. A truck pulls up and unloads an injured man and a woman appears to help from the crowd. Spooner hears her voice before she sees her and she’s not sure how she knows, she’s not sure how it’s possible, but she’s pretty sure this woman is her mother.

Spooner watches as the woman patches up the wounded man with ease and stands near her as a grumpy man approaches. The woman calls him Doc and what starts out as a seemingly kind gesture of compensating the woman for her medical services quickly turns into a request to buy her land, his tone turning threatening as he calls her sweetheart. She immediately says no like it’s not the first time she’s had to say it so Doc steps up and reveals his gun in its holster. Spooner steps in front of the mystery woman and does the same, and Astra steps right behind her and spits Doc’s sweetheart back in his face.

When Doc backs down and finally leaves, the woman introduces herself as Gloria and invites them home for a hot meal in exchange for their help. Astra is worried about Spooner getting her hopes up; there’s a possibility this woman isn’t Spooner’s mom. Spooner says she knows that’s true but also she has to find out for sure. And she knows Astra of all people understands. Astra reluctantly agrees, but only if they can ask her about the fountain while they’re here.

Out in the forest, Bishop tells Constantine that he has a theory that the fountain is actually an alien, and tells his new bff that if he can summon the fountain, Bishop can make sure it deems Constantine worthy this time. He just needs to take a sample back to the Waverider. While Bishop gets to collecting, Constantine hears someone whistling and follows it. Which is quite the opposite of what I would do if I heard whistling in the woods. The only two types of people who whistle in the woods are children and serial killers and frankly it’s not worth the risk.

Luckily for Constantine (unluckily for us) he finds the former. A little girl, gathering mushrooms and flowers. Faced with this big bad wolf, she immediately says she knows how to fight but he plays nice and finds out that she’s gathering mushrooms and flowers for her mother, a healer.

He claims he’s a healer and shows her some sparkly magic, asking if she’s seen something like that growing around here. She says no but gives him a flower to thank him for showing her the dancing lights, and as he reaches out to take it from her, he gets a flash of a vision. He asks her name and she says one he’s heard before: Esperanza Cruz.

While talking to Gloria, Astra realizes that Spooner is right. She hears Gloria’s daughter start to come home, and hears Ava’s voice in the back of her head and she tells Spooner to think of the timeline, almost reflexively, like it came from a place inside her she didn’t even realize she had. But Spooner can’t just LEAVE now. Not when the woman she has been looking for her whole life is mere feet away.

When little Esperanza runs inside, Constantine is right behind her. And color him surprised when he steps into the room and sees his old pals Astra and Spooner glaring back at him.

Back in the mansion, the rest of the Legends are trying to think of a way to catch up with their stolen ship without…well, their stolen ship. Mick is determined to get back to his eggs and the mention of the spawn gives Sara an idea: Gary should call Kayla. In fact, Zari insists. So Gary gets an intergalactic communicator.

Gary says if he just calls, she won’t answer, so they have to get her attention a different way. So the Legends work together to get Mick set up with some fake eggs and post on an alien social media site and wait for Kayla to take the bait.

Astra, Spooner and John join Gloria and Lil Esperanza for dinner, impressed with Esperanza’s love for War of the Worlds, having a lovely time. While Astra shoots beautiful, beautiful death glares at him.

Constantine tells Spooner that he had a vision and once again doesn’t even CONSIDER asking for consent, he magically knocks Gloria, Esperanza and Astra out and grabs Spooner’s hands and shows her a vision. And like, he knew what this vision would be of! He’s already seen it! It’s the worst moment in her life! And he doesn’t even warn her!!

NEXT PAGE: SHIPPING AND I’M NOT SORRY. 

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 613 Recap: Identity Crisis

Hello and welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow Episode 613 aka the One Where Mick Gives Birth Through His Noseholes.

We pick up where we left off, with Sara looking shocked and a little angry to see an all-too-familiar face. Sara grabs a knife smoothly off a table as she walks by and confronts Bishop face to face. He doesn’t want to fight her though; he wants to answer her questions. He promises he’s the last version of himself he’s able to print because of her explosion, but she’s not keen to trust him; he kidnapped her, manipulated her. He swears he’s changed, and wants to prove it, wants to fit into this band of misfits. She decides he’ll fit best in the holding cell instead.

More Legends gather round to get a look at the man who kidnapped their captain. He’s different than they expected; maybe a little less of a brute than they were imagining. He smarmily smiles at the team, he knows them to some extent, especially Ava. He’s known many Avas, but this is THE Ava.

He wants to chit chat but Sara ignores him. She has everyone leave except Spooner, who is given permission to laser beam him on sight if he does anything untoward.

He promises he’s not going to try to escape, but the ladies aren’t about to take this skeeze at his word.

Ava wants to try to get in his head and find out why he’s really here, what he really wants. She thinks she can do it; he sort of made her. He sort of made Sara, too. They’re like the Adam and Eve of clones, made in his image. Sara is worried about leaving Ava alone with him, but she begs her so Sara allows it. Ava is thrilled.

Then we go to Constantine, who is on his own show, which I hope gets cancelled much like the actual Constantine show. Luckily, Fancy Zari is realizing what we’ve known all along: that she deserves better. He feeds her more reassurances, more lies, and Zari is, quite frankly, over it.

Zari goes to Astra to try to get a truth serum or some way to get Constantine to tell her what really happened when he went to drink from that magic fountain and why he came back wrong. Astra says that she’s not the one who can help her here; Spooner was with him, why don’t we start there?

Sara and Nate watch a live feed while Ava chats with Bishop. He says some true things, about how this Ava is special, about how Sara was on a planet of Avas but turned the universe upside down just to get back to HER Ava. Ava starts to walk away and keeps him hungry for more conversation, playing him like a fiddle.

Sara is so proud.

Bishop admits he’s a narcissist and says that Ava and Sara are the closest things he has to family because of the clone connection. He says Ava’s model was always his favorite; she rolls his eyes and echoes her archetype: Bossy Ava. But he says he wanted it to be Boss Ava. Marketing changed it to Bossy. He also considers her, specifically, to be a bit of a marvel. Clones weren’t meant to be able to fall in love. Bad for business.

Ava uses this to her advantage, claiming maybe that’s why she’s having a hard time picking details for the wedding. He offers to help, and when she starts to leave, he offers her something else in addition: he can help deliver Mick’s babies safely, so they don’t eat his brain.

The team follows the recipe for a nutrient smoothie for the fetii and Sara ends up eating some because it tastes good to her alien taste buds, the way banana baby food tastes good to some adults. This grosses Ava out and I bet she wishes she’d go back to mainlining cherries.

Zari and Astra find Spooner and ask her about the trip to the fountain, but as Spooner goes through it, she realizes there’s a sizable gap in her memory. A blank space, a dropoff. They realize that Constantine fucked with her memory and are furious, but Astra says she can help; unlike Constantine though, she will require Spooner’s consent.

They give Ava Spooner’s laser gun and leave her to guard him as they go sort this out.

Bishop was eavesdropping and wants to help Constantine, but Ava rejects his offer.

Sara and Nate, appropriately, play chess while they watch Ava play Bishop and wait for Gideon to finish her scan of his DNA. Nate wants to bet that Ava figures out what Bishop is up to before the can is through, but Sara never bets against her girl.

Ava brings Bishop her wedding binder and realizes she likes cacti and the color grey and doesn’t understand the concept of appetizers. She asks why Bishop made her so weird.

He says that she’s her own person now, that her life is her own. He set the ball rolling, but she forged her own path.

She smiles and thanks him for his help.

Softened, he admits he’s been cloned over 200 times, tweaking each time, tinkering, in the hopes of improving. Ava asks how this version of him is different from the one Sara met, and he says it’s humility, but from where she sits listening in, Sara doesn’t believe him.

Astra, having received the necessary consent, does some magic on Spooner to try to recover her memories. Spooner biting down on a belt while Astra cast a spell on her did nothing to quell my Spatula ship.

Spooner remembers everything, and tells them about how he didn’t drink from the fountain, and that his magic returning is from a little vial he drank.

Zari is ready to storm off and break up with her “lying dumpster fire of a boyfriend” on the spot; if he was lying about that, who knows what else he was lying about. Who knows if he’s dangerous. But Astra has grown to love these gals,and knows just how dangerous an off-script Constantine could be, so she doesn’t want Zari to go face him alone.

Bishop gives Ava some wedding advice, including some music that he asks her to do a father-daughter dance to. He knows Sara is watching so Ava shuts off the feed, but Sara isn’t worried; she trusts her girl. Ava likes the song Bishop picked, and says it makes her want to smile and cry at the same time. She asks him if he designed her that way, and he asks why it matters. Whether she was programmed to feel them or not, she feels them all the same, so how is that different from anyone else’s?

Next page: Love is not a lie! (And Beat Constantine blah blah I don’t care.)

Legends of Tomorrow Episode 612 Recap: Two Corpses, Everything’s Fine

Good morrow and welcome to this Legends of Tomorrow Episode 612 recap, aka the one with the murder mystery.

We open this week with the Legends trudging back to the Waverider after their bowling extravaganza, some reluctant to leave the lanes, some more eager to get back on the ground (and out of rental shoes.) Plus, it’s time for the Zaris to switch places; and it’s almost like the writers knew I, a lowly recapper, was struggling with calling them “Original Zari” and “Zari 2.0,” emotionally, and gave me not only Flannel Zari last week but this week gifted me a new nickname for the other Z: Fancy Zari.

When the Captains try to get the Waverider back to Earth, Gideon informs them that the jump drive was damaged so they’ll have to take the long way home. Which means they’ll be stuck on the ship for three weeks.

Gary has a great idea for how to pass the time, and he whips out Beast/Slayers, a TTRPG game he wants to run for the team. But all of a sudden everyone has plenty of ideas for how to pass the time in their own way and they scatter.

Ava and Sara go back to their room to start wedding planning. Of course, Ava is uber-organized, and Sara is starting to lose interest fast.

She does look through the tiered guest lists Ava has made and notices that Barry Allen is on the very bottom rung and she asks her fiancée why; she likes Barry Allen. Who doesn’t! But Ava points out that where The Flash goes, trouble follows. She specifically mentions dangerous metavillains, but I would also like to remind everyone about how many times Barry Allen has royally screwed the timeline up.

Sara looks up at the travel timer to see if, by some miracle, they had spent a whole day doing this already, and notices that the clock is going UP instead of down. When she asks Gideon why, she explains that it’s because of the power being used by the team.

Sara finds Behrad and Nate playing video games and unplugs them, Ava stops Astra from using the food fabricator; if they want to get back to Earth in a reasonable amount of time, they need to unplug.

Constantine doesn’t feel like that will be a problem for him though, because he has his magic go-go juice. Though it’s definitely taking its toll; he does some cosmetic magic for Zari and when his hand cramps up, he takes another slip to ease the spasm.

On day 3, Behrad is leading a yoga class when Constantine comes barrelling in, ruining everything, as per usual. He tries to showboat with his magic by adding more candles around, which Behrad could have overlooked, but when Constantine starts to disrobe, Behrad draws a line. The boys fight a little until Constantine storms out and Fancy Zari is annoyed with them both.

Sara and Ava are still, somehow, talking about wedding invites, and are discussing whether or not to invite their almost-family; Ava wants to invite the actors who were hired to play her parents, and Sara wants to invite the Black Siren, who is technically her sister but just from a different timeline. You know, classic wedding stuff.

When they look around at their lil Legends, they realize everyone is starting to go a little stir crazy, so Sara finally agrees to let Gary run his game. It’s sort of like a combination of Clue, mafia, a classic murder mystery, and something a little more supernatural. They all pick characters, and of course, they all end up being eerily appropriate. The goal is to find out who amongst them is the Beast and accuse them before they kill all the Humans.

Gary starts to set the scene, but Constantine hasn’t ruined anything in approximately ten minutes so he feels he’s due. He uses his magic to level things up and yeets them into the game. Including a setting that looks just like the manor, and costumes that look just like their character cards.

Constantine promises them everything is fine and that as soon as they beat the game, they’ll end up right back where they started. They can still hear Gary narrating, but the poor guy is all alone on the Waverider.

Sara, the Black Widow, decides to get really into her role so she doesn’t have to talk about the wedding for a bit.

Back out in real life, on the Waverider, Gary and Mick hear a distress signal from someone nearby. Gideon was left with strict instructions from her Captains to not use any excess energy that would delay their return to Earth, so all they can do is brace themselves.

And as the doors open and the smoke clears, who should emerge but the one, the only, Kayla!!

Inside the magical manor, the game progresses, and despite being the one with the best shot of solving the mystery, Detective Ava is the first to be struck down by the Beast.

Sara shoos her off and the team starts to deliberate, Sara still leaning into her role, and she leads them all by playing the game. They all deliberate and ultimately vote that Nate is the beast, but as soon as they say that, Nate drops dead, a knife in his back, a card imploring them to try again.

Slowly they start to realize they’re feeling more and more like the caricatures they were assigned, and Sara suddenly feels the weight of her role of Widow and rushes out to find Ava slain just like Nate.

Things are getting too real now, so Sara starts to reveal that she was the beast (because of course she was) but before she can even get the sentences out, she’s struck down right beside her love.

The rest of the Legends realize that their cards have all gone blank, except for Sara’s, which now says, “You’re all going to die in here.”

Seems chill.

Back on the Waverider, Kayla is on a one-alien mission to find her ship, but Gary and Mick tell her that it’s back on Earth, which will take them weeks to reach. They realize she’s injured so they take her to the med bay to reprint her missing tentacle, and in return for that and a ride to Earth, she offers to fix their jump drive.

Next page: Not all surprises are good surprises!!!

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 611 Recap: Let’s Bowl

Hello and welcome to this Legends of Tomorrow Episode 611 recap, aka the one that got Score Tonight from Grease 2 stuck in my head. Also, the one Jes Macallan directed!!

While it doesn’t seem like we’re entirely free of Constantine’s shenanigans, this episode was at least more about the team than anything. We open with Sara, Spooner, and Astra watching Mick pace back and forth, trying to follow the bleep bloops of an alien tracker somewhere in Kansas, bickering in that cute sibling way they do.

Elsewhere on Earth, Flannel Zari (aka a new and improved nickname for the badass formerly known as Original Zari) is finally in her shirt’s natural habitat because Nate is using their fleeting time together…to take her camping. :Olivia Rodrigo voice: Like a goddamn sociopath. But when they get to their campsite they see two party people already set up and glamped out. They decide not to join the loud music and yards of margs and head off to rough it on their own.

In Kansas, Mick follows the tracker to an empty pod with a shiny box inside. Because the Legends are nothing if not full grown toddlers, Spooner, Mick, and Astra immediately start touching it and arguing about it.

Sara sighs and calls Ava and says she’ll be a little longer because the kids are acting up, and their other mom says that’s fine with her because Ava is busy anyway…

Trying on wedding dresses!

As soon as Sara is done talking to Ava, she tries to keep the children from breaking the toy they’re fighting over, but as soon as she puts her hand on the cube, the four of them get beamed away

They find themselves in a bowling alley, with bowling shirts that say Legends on the back and their names on the front. And I won’t lie, they look pretty cute. (Except Mick who still just looks grumpy.)

Spooner gets major alien vibes from this place, so they try to leave, but when Astra opens the door to leave, they realize the only thing outside is…well, outer space.

Mick pulls her back to safety and the Legends realize with honestly more of an inconvenienced attitude than anything else that they have been abducted by aliens; and for Spooner and Sara? It’s not the first time.

Sara tries to contact Ava, but wherever they ended up is too far for their comms to reach, so the Legends split up to find answers. Sara, in true Captain fashion, beelines to the bowling boss, Buddy, she asks him about how they got here and he tells them that the puzzle box they found was an invitation of sorts. When he finds out that Sara is from Earth, he perks up a little – the home of bowling! – and Sara is generally suspicious of this whole situation.

Spooner, the tough guy, makes her way toward the guy who looks like the biggest bully in the room. His name is Mike the Strike and he sucks as much as he looks like he will. I’m also starting to suspect he’s the big bad of the season because this is the third character Nic Bishop (aka Jes Macallan’s real life hubby) has played this season. Unless Legends is trying to make the case for dopplegangers or something. Maybe we can blame it on CRISIS or something.

Anyway Mike the Strike tells Spooner he will give the Legends a ride home if they beat his team, the Pin Killers, at bowling. Spooner barely waits til he’s done with the challenge before enthusiastically accepting.

Sara gets more info from Buddy; turns out he just really loved the alien art form of bowling, so he made a little bowling alley in the sky. It was meant to be a little taste of Earth for aliens across the galaxy. And honestly, I get that. Bowling alleys get a bad rap but my dad was in a bowling league with his dad and sister when I was little, and my Nana has also been playing for my whole life and beyond, so I spent a lot of time in bowling alleys growing up. The league my dad was in was what we used to call “big ball bowling” so most of my time was spent, more specifically, in the arcades at bowling alleys, armed with quarters and a love of Mortal Kombat. But every single time my dad was done with one of his games, we would play air hockey together. No matter how the game went, no matter what else was going on, he always played at least one game of air hockey with me before we left. My Nana, on the other hand, played what we called “little ball bowling” which I have learned in my adulthood is called “candlepin bowling” and is actually almost exclusively an East Coast thing, so she used to take me to the bowling alley on her non-game days so she could practice, and since little ball bowling was something my tiny indoor-kid noodle arms could handle, I’d get to play with her. (For a few frames, anyway. Ryan’s Family Amusements also had a great arcade.)

Anyway, all this to say, I understand why Buddy was attracted to the vibes of bowling alleys. And when Sara said “it even smells like a bowling alley” I knew exactly what smell she was referring to.

But Mike the Strike sullied those vibes for Buddy when his band of bullies rolled in like T-birds and took over, ruining his paradise. He says he’s watched them take down squad after squad and warns Sara not to let her team go up against the Pin Killers until they’re sure they can beat him…but of course, that’s just when Spooner comes in to announce she’s already accepted the challenge.

Down on Earth, Flannel Zari and Nate are just about ready to give up the ghost on their camping trip because they can’t get in touch with Gideon, they can’t use their campsite, they don’t have their regular snacks because they accidentally took Spooner’s bag. They tune Spooner’s radio to see if they can figure out why they can’t reach their team and hear some yelling about the apocalypse and decide to hop to, asking the wacky campers to borrow their truck to head into town for supplies. But the car is dead from charging all their electronics, so they all start a group hike.

Up on the Waverider, Constantine is harshing Behrad’s vibe so they try to talk to Gideon to see if the team needs help. But then Gideon says that they can’t reach the Legends, that Sara and the gang aren’t in Kansas anymore, so they know something hinky is going on.

At the bowl-o-rama, Sara tries to get the team hype for the big game, tossing a ball down the lane just to warm up…and getting a strike. Assassin’s precision, I suppose.

Mick just kind of chucks it and it bounces into the next lane. Spooner, turns out, learned how to bowl as a pre-teen, so she has an intricate method.

She also gets a strike.

Astra…simply will not participate in this nonsense. But Sara is still feeling good about their odds (and maybe is just grateful to be back on her team) so she keeps her spirits high.

On the Waverider, when Gary learns that they are once again cosmically separated from Sara, he’s terrified this will be triggering for Ava, so he takes it upon himself to distract her by talking to her about her wedding dress. It’s actually kind of adorable, albeit misguided.

Also being misguided is Flannel Zari, who for some reason has taken her new friend’s hesitations about Zari’s long-distance relationship. She said, “If you can stand to be apart, doesn’t that mean you don’t need to be together,” and thus was planted the seed of doubt. I have like 900 OTHER reasons that Zari and Nate shouldn’t be together, but I was willing to go with this reason out of desperation.

Up at the land of the lucky strike, the Pin Killers beat the team they were playing when the Legends showed up. The red team is dismayed as Mike picks up a red ball and the losing team is poofed out of existence, then Mike adds the red ball to his almost-full trophy case ominously. The Legends realize now just how high the stakes are, and it’s their turn (🎵their turn, their turn!🎵) to roll.

Sara starts off the game on a high note, but Mick is being stubborn and still won’t take his gloves off, so he bombs his turn, which pisses Spooner off to no end, and THAT pisses Astra off and she tells Sara to get her team in line. Things aren’t looking great for our intrepid heroes.

Things on the Waverider are also not looking great but in a more aesthetic way. In his desperation to keep Ava from realizing something is amiss, Gary keeps adding more to Ava’s wedding dress. More tulle, more lace, more flowers…more more.

Constantine, hopped up on his magic juice, decides that he can just will the Waverider to Earth even though Gideon told him it was dangerous/impossible. Behrad seems to be convinced that Constantine is maybe good enough for his sister, because so far no one seems to question why Constantine is acting so strange. Which feels weird, considering Constantine has been his same boring self for years; but also, there’s a lot going on and I also try to pay as little attention to Constantine as possible so I get it.

Constantine does some elemental magic to yeet the Waverider to Earth. This transition shakes the Waverider, snapping Ava from her wedding dress reverie, causing her to march out to ask what the hell is going on. When she looks out of the window of the waverider and sees nothing but endless space and one lone bowling alley…

She tells her “dumdums” to stay put while she tries to figure out what’s going on.

Next page: ARE WE LOSERS OR ARE WE LEGENDS! 

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 610 Recap: ¿Por qué?

Hola, and welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow Episode 610, Bad Blood, aka the one that wastes way too much time on Constantine, who I thought we’d be rid of for longer.

I was really hoping that Constantine was spending his time away from the Legends having off-screen adventures and finding the fountain and getting his magic back and that we wouldn’t have to watch him do it, and things were looking good while he was gone for a few episodes, but alas, it seems like he was standing in front of Aleister Crowley’s portrait scratching his beard until the camera panned back to him so he could torture us with his self-serving mission.

He has enlisted the help of a vampire, who I love and want to know more of, who gives him a scroll that was once Aleister’s and a little red vial that she thinks he’ll enjoy. First taste is free.

Meanwhile, on the Waverider, Behrad, Nate and Gary are singing baby GusGus to sleep, much to the amusement of Original Zari and Astra.

Ava and Sara are off looking at wedding venues, and Zari being the oldest girl (and more responsible than the two boys who have been on the team longer than her) is tasked with looking after the rest of the kids while mom was away. I really thought this episode was going to have fun parents-are-out-of-town teen romp vibes when I heard this, but I was very wrong. Instead it had big “we can’t afford the Captains AND Constantine in a big ensemble episode so let’s swap two blonde queers for the other this episode.”

Spooner is getting annoyed because she understands baby GusGus when he’s yelling about his growing pains, and he has to translate for Gary because he can’t find his glasses, and she’s feeling a little grumpy about it. Zari smirks at her new-girl-on-the-ship vibes because she can very much relate.

But an alien translator’s job is never done, Lita also needs her help checking on Mick’s brood pouch to see if maybe it’s the reason Mick stopped contacting Lita a year ago in her time.

Also throughout this episode, Mick keeps saying things like “men can’t have babies” without even met-my-coparent-in-a-feminist-class Lita interjecting to correct him. And Nate keeps making fun of Mick for being pregnant as if it’s a hilarious thing to happen to anyone, especially a man, and none of it sat right with me. Besides applying human binary gender norms on this obviously alien situation, it doesn’t feel very accepting coming from a team that’s been living on a ship with like one hundred queer people including a shapeshifter. These jokes felt off for this show specifically and I was surprised to find this episode was written by a woman. I have to presume she’s straight. Full offense.

BUT anyway, Spooner is an alien translator not an alien midwife and thus has no idea what’s going on with Mick’s weird lumps on the back of his neck so she jumps at the chance to help Constantine instead when he beckons.

Spooner also needs her help for alien reasons, because his map is in an inhuman language, and he decides to take her with him when they figure out where the map leads, back to Albacete, Spain, 1939. They go to the first bar they find to ask about El Gato, who Constantine suspects drank from the fountain, and it starts off a little rocky because the locals think they’re fascist spies, what with Constantine looking the way he does, but he eventually lies his way into their favor. At least, I’m pretty sure he was lying. I don’t remember much about Constantine’s time period/backstory and truly do not care to look it up. With this man, odds that he’s lying are higher than not so I’ll take my chances.

Constantine starts asking them questions while Spooner keeps a sharp eye out for danger.

They follow a lead down to the basement, where a boy is holding a comic book of La Torera and thinks it’s Spooner. And I couldn’t find a real DC Comic about La Torera so I’m going to go ahead and decide this is foreshadowing for a future mission where Spooner inspires this character, even if this episode is any indication, it will happen off-screen.

The boy they find is mute and goes to communicate with them via chalkboard, but before he can finish writing, Spooner realizes that she can hear his thoughts and learns his name is Fernando; this is how Constantine knows for sure Fernando drank from the fountain. When they get upstairs, some Nazis have arrived, and they shoot El Gato right in the chest, but Fernando rushes to him to heal him. The Nazis grab the boy and Spooner while Constantine slithers out a back window.

Up on the Waverider, Lita is still trying to get Mick to come to terms with his unexpected pregnancy, just like her mother did, just like she did, but he’s being grumpy about it. Nate and Zari are having a bit of a hard time with GusGus, who has grown into a giant hormonal teenager, but Mick is resistant to help. Lita asks why he won’t even have Gideon make sure the alien spawn aren’t eating him from the inside out but he finally admits what’s really eating at him: he left Kayla behind. Lita comforts him but when it’s clear he won’t budge, she tells him she’s going into labor.

Meanwhile, El Gato is being tortured by the Nazis, and Spooner telepathically reassures Fernando that Constantine went to get help and that a whole band of heroes are on their way. But of course Constantine didn’t get the Legends. Or even just Sara and Ava. No, Constantine is a narcissistic dillweed who thinks he can handle this himself, so he dresses up like a Catholic priest and pretends to be sent from the Vatican.

Mick is trying to push his pregnant daughter to the med bay when they run into the Tarazi siblings trying to use their wonder twin totem powers to keep GusGus, who now looks like a yeti who got bubble gum stuck in his fur, at bay. Also, it seems they’ve been trying this for a while because everyone looks a bit windswept.

Mick does jump in to help protect Lita, and the team ends up yeeting the yeti out a time portal to Beebo-knows-when, which I suppose is a problem for future us. When they get to the safety of the med bay, Lita admits she lied to get him here to have Gideon tell if he’s in labor or not.

Also lying is Constantine, still/again/always, this time to try to give a spiritual reason why maybe Spooner can translate Fernando’s thoughts and tell them where the magic fountain is. He says he was hiding in a cave when an angel told him to drink from the fountain, and he’s been able to heal people ever since. He tells Spooner that he could lead them to the cave, but that part Spooner keeps to herself, telling the Nazis that he doesn’t remember exactly where it is.

And then they all fight until Spooner, Constantine, and Fernando can escape.

Spooner thinks this is an awful lot of work for Constantine to get his magic back, especially to someone who spent years wishing her powers would go away. But he says he’s a bisexual man with an abusive father whose magic is the only thing he has to stick it to “the man” so Spooner agrees to help him.

But when they get to the cave and find the fountain, it’s all dried up. Constantine is devastated, furious, frantic, and asks Spooner to steal Fernando’s fountain magic and put it in Constantine. Fernando is fine with this plan as long as they help him find his mother.

So Spooner uses the lullaby that has been stuck in her head all day to focus and floats the magic out of Fernando and into Constantine.

But instead of sticking to Constantine, it goes right through him and back into the fountain, which stays dry and cracked. Spooner realizes what this means at the same time as Constantine: He’s not worthy.

But Nazis are approaching and Constantine is desperate so he drinks the little red vial the vampire gave him and it gives him acid trip magic, enough to kill all the Nazis and to wear him out completely.

Back on the timeship, Gideon scans Mick and says he’s not in labor, but he does have 48 baby aliens swimming around in his noggin. Between his conversation with Lita and seeing the hatchlings on the ultrasound, he’s finally coming around to the idea of having Kayla’s babies.

Ava and Sara choose now to return, and Ava thinks this is lovely even though Sara is weirded out by the ultrasound.

They hardly notice that the rest of their team looks like they played that game where you go in a box of wind and try to grab as much cash as they can, but I suppose little could faze them at this point in their time traveling career.

Spooner and Constantine take Fernando home and are grateful to find El Gato alive. Also I hope the lady behind the bar was his mother, otherwise Constantine just fully did not keep up with that part of the bargain.

I guess they stay and celebrate a bit because next thing you know, Spooner is carrying a drunk Constantine home and giving him a pep talk about faith.

We blessedly get a little Spooner backstory. She says she forgets her mother’s face, but not her voice, that they both got abducted but only Spooner was returned and she wished she kept looking for her, but eventually she lost faith. But Constantine tells her that there’s no such thing as ‘too late’ when you’re a time traveler.

Constantine sniffs his little red vial and Spooner tries to warn him against using that stuff again, but in response he fucks with her free will and memory and sends her to bed. The vampire returns with a briefcase full of more little red vials and takes the Crowley portrait as payment.

She smirks at Constantine as she leaves, knowing this isn’t the last she’ll see of him.

And I can’t help but wonder if Constantine is on a path to becoming the big bad? Because I know he’s always been the most morally gray of the lot of them but fucking with Spooner’s memory and free will without hesitation? Without regret? That feels too far, even for Constantine. I, for one, wish he had stayed away, but we all know that CWDCTV loves to milk their overdone male properties even when it’s a proven fact that their female leads are stronger.

I know that there are some huge Constantine fans out there, leftovers from the show, loyalists from the comics, but I just don’t feel like this is the right place for him. I don’t think he’d be the right fit for Superman & Lois either but I sort of wish he’d go there so I didn’t have to look at him anymore. He’s best when he’s just one of the team, but he so rarely is allowed to just be part of the ensemble. He too often is sucking up spotlight like a black hole when we have so many more interesting characters now with plenty more to learn about, whereas Constantine and his magic addiction and questionable ethics always feel like more of the same.

While I love a background bit (Marie Antoinette’s headless body stumbling around in the background of that one episode is still one of my favorite moment), every time we caught a glimpse of Zari — Original Zari! Who we JUST got back! Who we were all so excited to see! — and then we’d cut back to Constantine, I’d get so annoyed. It made me which this episode was more of a choose your own adventure, or like Sleep No More, and we got to pick which storyline we followed. I was grateful for more time with Spooner, but I wish she got her own story, instead of having to try to steal a moment or two in Constantine’s.

If I try to step back from my bias against Constantine, I still think there’s an issue with this episode; an issue so few episodes of Legends have had since Rip left. There was a star of this episode. The A plot and the B plot were both about singular characters. This story was mostly about Constantine getting his magic back, and a little about Mick coming to terms with his pregnancy, and the rest was just background flavor. That’s not what makes this show tick. This show is an ensemble show and that’s its best quality. Even when they’re trying to solve one person’s problems, it’s usually 4-5 of them at a time on a mission. I love the occasional quiet one on one moments, but those should be just that: moments. This show is about misfits and found family and it falls apart if we try to bring any one character too far forward for too long.

Even the episodes where Sara was alone on an alien planet were balanced with ensemble shenanigans.

Anyway, they can’t all be Thong Songs and Beebo Battles, yaknow? Next week, alien bowling? Sure, why not.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 609: Laugh Tracks

I know it was only a week off but I found myself missing these loony tunes. So let’s stop wasting time and hop into this recap of Legends of Tomorrow Episode 609, “This Is Gus.”

When we last left the Legends, they had finally saved Sara from Bishop the Baddie so she could rejoin the efforts to round up all the aliens that were scattered throughout the timestream. As Gideon gathers the team for her co-captains, she reminds Behrad that it’s his 25th birthday and Spooner tells them she souped up her alien laser gun.

When Behrad rolls in late but having eaten breakfast, Astra claims victory over a bet she had with the rest of the Legends; because she’s clearly been paying attention to his habits.

Also this is neither here nor there but when Behrad strolled in, he joined five ladies and Gary at the computer and I just really like the ratio we have going on without Constantine.

Ava tells the team they’re going to Vancouver in 2023 to stop a potential alien invasion and tries to hype them up and it’s adorably awkward and Sara is just so happy to be back with her dorky fiancée.

Before the team all heads out, Mick calls Lita and she asks to see him, so he steals Ava’s portal watch and she walks into the Waverider… and is very pregnant.

Everyone is surprised, perhaps especially Nate who is newly back from his staycation in the Air Totem with Original Zari, but Sara knows this isn’t a time for everyone’s opinions, so she shuffles everyone except Mick and Ava out into the Vancouver filming lot.

Lita and Mick are both big mad and yelling at each other, Mick because she’s pregnant, Lita because he’s been MIA for a year. But Ava steps in and plays ref, asking them both to settle down why they try to figure this out, together.

In 2023 Vancouver, Behrad sees his idol, Imran, and realizes that they’re on the set of his favorite pot-themed sitcom, Bud Stuy, and he thinks this mission was a fake set-up for a birthday surprise. Zari realizes with guilt that she totally forgot it was her brother’s birthday, which I think she should give herself a break because time is a weird soup when you’re living in a linear timeline, let alone when you’re a time traveler. But her guilt makes her go along with Behrad’s assumption that this is all one big surprise party, and blessedly the rest of the Legends play along.

When they get into the mostly empty studio audience, Astra is confused about why this is Behrad’s favorite show. Zari explains that it was cancelled after two seasons, but Behrad says it amassed a small cult following. “Bud Stuy’s charm was that it wasn’t trying to appeal to everyone.” Which is very meta for this unapologetically queer, unapologetically wacky show.

Zari does not look amused by this pot-themed sitcom (especially not the dig at Dragon Girl) but she sits there looking only mildly annoyed, for Behrad.

Meanwhile, Sara and Spooner are off on the original task, and spot the alien pod rocketing toward the ground. Spooner whips out her new and improved alien blaster and shoots the pod, but it doesn’t have the desired effect and instead sends the pod careening toward the sound stage.

The pod crashes through the ceiling of the sitcom set and a little cotton candy Furby-looking alien comes out. The Imran and his co-star roll with it a little and the audience eats it up, making Imran’s brother Kamran, the director, decide he wants to lean into this direction, despite the Imran’s hesitancy.

Kamran says they need something less “foreign” and when Imran points out that it’s a literal alien and that even a pothead can read between the lines and know what he means is “less Muslim.”

Sara and Spooner catch up to the alien and are relieved that at least it’s cute, as if they learned nothing from Beebo not being quite what he seems.

Up on the Waverider, Ava is trying to calm Mick down, and he stops growling long enough for Lita to tell him what he missed: She’s vegan, likes Fiona Apple now, she’s not getting married because it’s a patriarchal institution, and she met Nico in a class about intersectional feminism. Which frankly lead me to believe Nico was a woman and this was Lita’s coming out speech, but alas.

Zari and Nate chat about his visit with Original Zari, and he tells her that she mostly just wants to talk about Behrad. Zari 2.0 is ashamed that Original Zari remembered Behrad’s birthday from inside the totem, and Nate’s brain is apparently always made of steel so he doesn’t see that his girlfriend’s doppelganger is hurting.

Behrad continues to awkwardly flirt with Astra, and it’s very cute, but he momentarily stops when she disagrees with him about the Furby. He doesn’t want anything to change and thus ruin his favorite show, but she thinks that anything that would make the show more money makes the most sense.

Behrad tries to intervene by pretending to be a PA in the writers’ room, but Imran doesn’t quite bite, thinking maybe his brother does know best on this one.

Sara finds Furby devouring craft services and tries to tempt it using an Everything Bagel, which, fun fact, would be a great way to lure me into any trap.

While it’s distracted, Astra grabs the Furby but it starts screaming so loud it makes Spooner’s nose bleed.

So when the director comes to pick it up, making some side comment about it being a prop, they let him take it while their ears recover.

The Legends gather themselves on the Waverider and Behrad looks a little more cleaned up than usual. Astra is a fan, Sara has to double take, and even Zari has to admit he cleans up nice. But when he realizes he’s drinking out of a college mug, they put together that this isn’t Behrad having a quarter-life crisis, but actually the timeline changing as a direct result of Bud Stuy changing.

They show Gary the Furby and he tells them that it’s a Gusarax, which they promptly nickname GusGus. He explains that GusGus probably bonded to Kamran, which is why it didn’t squeal when he picked him up, so they need one of the Legends to bond with it instead. And they have to do it quickly to keep Behrad Behrad.

Zari and Nate go down to try to audition for a role on the show to try to get closer to the alien, and Zari somehow doesn’t get the part but Nate does, to which Zari responds, “Finally a win for straight white men” with an eye roll.

Hating the person he’s morphing into, Behrad finds Imran and tells him that his work is important. That Bud Stuy was the first time he saw himself represented on TV, the first time he fully related to a character, and that it changed his life. And this is why we still shout “representation matters” at the top of our lungs. This is why I don’t want anything to do with people who say things like, “it’s just a TV show.” There are a number of shows that, if time travelers erased them from existence, I would be an entirely different person leading an entirely different life than I am now, just like Behrad is drifting away from his true self and his true purpose as Bud Stuy changes.

Behrad and Imran do the cute little handshake from the show and Behrad hopes he did enough to change his mind.

And it does work… in a sense. Imran confronts his brother and says that the show might not be for everyone, but it’s everything to the people who do get it. To steal a line from the musical [title of show], he’d rather be nine people’s favorite thing than a hundred people’s ninth favorite thing.

But then, he quits. Which is a bit of an overswing of the pendulum.

Next page: GusGus Has Two Mommies