Welcome back to another season of Legends of Tomorrow recaps. The time-traveling misfits are back for their seventh season. Only this time, they’re less ‘time-traveling’ and more ‘time-stuck’ misfits.
Last season ended with the Waverider being blown to bits, with the Legends left staring at the smoldering wreckage. Picking up right where we left off, the team is still reeling from what just happened, but they’re not going to lie down and let their ship be destroyed. Arming themselves, they prepare to portal onto the other ship just before it blew up the Waverider, only Nate forgot to charge his time courier and no one else has theirs.
Realizing they’re stuck in 1925, the Legends begin to panic but their captains maintain the peace. For now, their focus needs to be maintaining a low profile, which they immediately fail at when the town pastor comes knocking to check on Gloria after the events from the previous night. He and several other townsfolk witnessed lights and sounds from the previous night’s alien invasion and now there’s growing suspicion. This would be the perfect time to use the mind flasher but that too is out of battery.
Nate laments that John left just when his powers would come in handy. Astra, as his apprentice, wants to steps up and take his place, but Zari points out she doesn’t have the same mastery of magic. Gary wishes they had a Bureau-issued lockbox, which reminds Ava she had one installed on the Waverider while it was being held by the Bureau. The lockbox is a safe installed on timeships with an emergency time courier and mind flasher. Now they just need to find it. The team splits up to search the blast area.
In classic Legends style, the buddy system comes into play to allow a moment to check in with some of the team. Behrad checks in with Zari, worried about her after John left. Zari is putting on her best indifferent face. She’s not broken up about their breakup, or so she says. But she is annoyed the only thing he left her with was an old-looking key.
Meanwhile, Ava’s not thrilled about the start of their honeymoon and she definitely doesn’t like being out of her comfort zone. Sara reassures her that whereas Ava’s fortes are plans and order, Sara’s strengths are going off the cuff, and that’s why they make a great team.
Spooner’s also out of her comfort zone, but in her case, it means she has no way to track a metal box. Astra tries a tracking spell which leads them to the sheriff’s office. They regroup with the Legends, who are starting to get worried about the attention they’re attracting, ‘they’ being mostly Ava and Spooner. Ava because the potential ramifications to the timeline are stressing her out. Spooner because of the potential backlash to her mother.
Just then Ava remembers rule 44, a Time Bureau rule that states time travelers create a distraction to cover up any anomalies they create. The specific distraction suggested: a circus. They don’t actually need to put on a show, just pretend to be part of a circus to convince people the weirdness they witnessed was part of an act. Zari jumps on the chance for makeovers. On the other end of the spectrum, Astra gives a hard nope to dressing up, which suits Spooner just fine because she needs someone to help repair the damage to her mom’s house.
While the rest of the Legends prepare for a circus, Sara has another task for Nate, one that uses his unique superpower, being a white man in the 1920’s. With Ava as backup, he’ll go to the Sheriff’s office and find some way to get the lockbox.
Without Gideon, the Legends have to strip Gloria’s house for materials for their outfits. Their head out in their circus couture best to woo the people of Odessa, Texas into believing the events from the previous night were all part of their rehearsal. The dinosaur creatures? Komodo dragons. The strange lights? Gary practicing his magic act, (that he uses his very real magic to perform, and yet the public is still fooled). But when a little girl asks him when they’re performing, he panics and says that night.
Meanwhile, Nate marches into the Sheriff’s office with a gruff attitude and a gruffer accent, introducing himself as J. Edgar Hoover and Ava as his sectary. Pretending to be the head Fed himself, Nate talks the Sheriff into giving them the safe. The Sheriff is a little skeptical, between Nate’s appearance and Ava mixing up which President is in office at the time, but they convince him nevertheless.
Back at Gloria’s, the others learn about Gary committing them to a show which no one is happy about. Just then, Nate and Ava return triumphant with the lockbox in hand. Once they have the time courier and mind flasher in hand, all their problems will be solved. Only, the only thing in the box is a note from Mick about borrowing the courier and Time Bureau handbook. Sara tries to keep everyone’s spirits up. Their cover story is working. For now. But that may not last long when the Sheriff sees an article in the papers about the real J. Edgar Hoover, with accompanying picture.
The Legends are coming to grips with the fact they’re living in 1925 for a while. Behrad thinks they should get to a large city and make the most of their time in this period. Ava is staunchly against this because the Time Bureau manual says not to.
Gloria returns, wondering why there is talk about a circus. Spooner pulls her aside to fill her in. While the other Legends work on a circus act, Astra slips away. When Spooner explains their plan to her mother, Gloria is worried about the kind of backlash that will come her way. It was already hard enough for the town to accept her as a healer from a foreign country. Being associated with all this could only ostracise her more, but she’s willing to do that if it will help Spooner. That’s when Spooner realizes she can’t do that to her mother. She heads outside to ask the Legends to not put on the show.
Sara hears and understands. She promises they’ll find another way, without drawing more attention to Gloria. That’s when Spooner notes Astra is missing. She wasn’t the first one to notice either. Gary is the first one to find her, among the wreckage of the Waverider, performing a spell. Gary recognizes the spell as a resurrection spell, meant for people not for timeships.
The rest of the team joins as she’s pulling the pieces together, looking on with awe, until they notice the blood running from her nose. Gary and Spooner beg her to stop, but she’s determined to do this because it’s what John would do. But before she completes the spell, she collapses into Spooner’s arms. Unfortunately, at the same time, the real J. Edgar Hoover arrived at the Sheriff’s office and hears the crash when Astra’s spell failed.
When Astra wakes she’s in a bed, with Spooner at her side. Spooner’s pissed. She says it’s because this drew more attention to Gloria’s home but there’s obviously something more to it. Outside, Hoover is pulling up. The Legends, sans Spooner and Astra, hide but all fail miserably to find a convincing hiding spot. There’s a closet that’s locked and Behrad encourages Zari to try the key Constantine gave her. She rolls her eyes like she expects it to not work but to her surprise, the key fits in the lock, the door opening to a long hallway.
With Hoover in the next room, the Legends don’t have time to be cautious about this discovery. Sara pushes everyone in, closing the door behind them. The team find themselves in the mansion. Or at least what looks like the mansion. Gary explains this is a pocket dimension John created to be his home away from home. A pocket dimension that happens to be in hell. The good news is they have a place to hide while waiting out Hoover.
Speaking off Hoover, he’s convinced the reports are linked to the Midland Gang, a group of bank robbers he’s been hunting down. He goes to inspect the rest of the property for signs of the gang.
Zari questions why Constantine would leave her this. Behrad thinks it’s because he wanted to leave with a place she could be alone, but Zari scoffs at that idea. She’s the last person who’d want alone time. She thrives in the spotlight. She sounds like she believes herself too, right up until she catches sight of herself in the mirror.
Ava, meanwhile, is spiraling and she’s clinging to the Bureau handbook because it’s the last remnant of control she has left. Sara doesn’t think they’re going to find answers in the book, but she understands it’s Ava’s own way of coping so she leaves her with a kiss.
When they hear Hoover leave, the Legends hop out of their pocket dimension. Although Zari stays behind to try some of that alone time her brother mentioned. The Legends know they have limited time until Hoover returns so they need to make a plan quickly. As it turns out, the Bureau handbook had some useful information after all. One of the key researchers in time travel was alive in 1925, in New York City. There is still the issue of Hoover. Sara figures if he’s looking for bank robbers that’s what they’ll do to throw him off the real scent.
Ava pulls Sara aside, emphatic that they can’t change history. Sara promises they’ll keep their presence to a minimum and wins her over with the promise of making a list to fix all of this once they have access to time travel again. It’s a pinkie promise.
Spooner wants to stay with her mom and Astra is still too weak to move so they’ll be staying behind. To cover their involvement, they tie Gloria and Spooner up, the rest of the Legends making a show of stealing Hoover’s car.
After getting some very dapper threads, the team heads to a bank. Sara and Ava go inside, distracting the security with some smiles and stealing their guns in the process. Outside, Nate and Behrad are preventing any foot traffic some going inside. A woman realizes this is a robbery and apparently she’s a fan of gangs. When Nate claims their the Midland Gang, she calls their bluff seeing Ava and Sara because there aren’t women in the Midland Gang. She suggests they get their own name, shooting down Legends of Tomorrow. Behrad comes up with ‘The Bullet Blondes’ and everyone agrees it’s catchy.
Things are going their way until they run into a roadblock set up by J. Edgar Hoover. Sara tells Nate to get behind the wheel since he’s the bulletproof one and tells them to gun it. But in running through the roadblock, Hoover hitches a ride on their roof. Until Nate slams the breaks and sends him crashing off. For a moment they think they’ve killed Hoover, but all breathe a sigh of relief when he moves.
Unfortunately, the first move Hoover makes is to shoot Nate, only for the bullet to bounce off his metal face and hit Hoover. Ava’s blown right past panic attack at this point and gives up, just laying on the road. Sara tries to calm her wife down, trying to get her to focus on when this will be over and they’re on their honeymoon, listening to stabcast. At the mention of her podcast, something shifts in Ava. It’s time for all her true crime knowledge to come in handy. She has Gary eat Hoover’s body to hide the evidence.
Back at Gloria’s home, Astra is trying her hand at gardening since she failed at magic. When she mentions how disappointed John would be in her failure, Gloria sits down to talk with her. She shares a story about her own mother being a healer, but Gloria could never do things her way. It was only when she tried things her own way that she became a healer. She encourages Astra to not follow in John’s teaching but to find her own way.
Astra goes looking for Spooner, who’s burying the pieces of the Waverider. Astra apologizes for bringing more attention to Gloria’s home. When she admits she tried the spell because she wanted to prove she could replace John, Spooner points out they don’t need another Constantine. They need Astra. Spooner admits she was really upset that Astra got hurt. She didn’t want to lose her best friend. Astra’s taken back at the words ‘best friend’. She’s never had anyone called her their best friend before, but Spooner is definitely her best friend too.
They sit on a half-buried piece of the Waverider and Astra is still a little upset she couldn’t finish her spell. She only had one more word to say. A word she says now as she and Spooner wish Gideon was still around to make them something. As they’re talking a bit a magic thread appears and forms into a person. Someone Astra and Spooner don’t immediately recognize, but someone they know well.
Gideon. In the Flesh.
Review
It’s been fun to watch Legends reinvent its own formula every season. But not since a unicorn appeared at Woodstock have I been this excited for the new status quo. Robbing the Legends of their home and the tools they’ve come to rely on sets compelling stakes for the season. Forcing them out of their comfort zone could create new dynamics, like Ava slipping into a true crime persona. That specifically is a delightful reinvention of a running gag. It makes sense that Ava when pushed so far out of her comfort zone would lean into the things she knew best. At first, it was the Bureau rules, but when those failed her she defaulted to her knowledge of serial killers.
After being so used to bouncing around the timeline, having the team stay in one time period is a big shake-up. Being stranded in 1925 could set this season apart aesthetically from previous ones, both in terms of the complications that can arise from this period, as well the styles they can pull from for sets and costuming. The fashion from this era already has some stands out and I’m looking forward to more of it.
And speaking off big shakes up, the biggest for the season has to be Gideon getting a body. She’s been a not so silent observe since the beginning of Legends but has only had the chance to be an active part of the plot a few times over the previous six seasons. It’s exciting to see how her role and dynamic on the team changes going forward.
Only Legends Could
- Rule 44 is close enough to Rule 34 that I have to believe the Legends writers knew what they were doing.
- “Your other superpower. Being a straight white man in 1925.”
- I am here for the 1920’s aesthetic. More of the dapper outfits.
- “How are you teeth so white?” “Fluoride.”
- Those were some very tasteful lens flares.
Images courtesy of the CW
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