written by Kate Danvers
SPOILER WARNINGS ARE IN EFFECT
We’re sorry for the late reviews. Please be patient with the site staff who did write reviews this week. Thanks to giant vampire wife, nobody wants to work anymore.
-Management
Picking up where the last episode left off, aliens are falling through time! Well, some of them. One splats against the Waverider’s window like a bug on a windshield. Mick turns on the wipers to get rid of it. Gideon has their first time-displaced alien in San Bernardino, California, October 10, 1955. The anomaly started at a diner called Big Bang Burger and led to the whole town being massacred twenty-four hours later.
Spooner doesn’t want to cooperate, especially once she learns that Gideon couldn’t find any alien tech in her head to remove. Ava insists that she come along to talk to the alien, then she can go home or wherever else she wants to go. The Legends go to the diner and start to mingle.
Meanwhile, Sara and Gary’s ship crash lands on an alien planet. Gary explains that they were on course for a planet called Pliny X19, the home of an alien warlord to whom Gary and Kayla were supposed to deliver the universe’s most dangerous creatures. Now they’re out of fuel and stranded there. Good news, though: There’s a dog outside, so that means the air is breathable. Also, I had to remind myself that Cosmo is Marvel, not DC.
Totally sweet and innocent doggo and not at all ominous. I know I said that about the last doggo, but…
While enjoying the food at Big Bang Burger, Zari tells Behrad she wants to start using the totem, but he’s not ready to give it up. After Spooner thinks she detects an alien nearby and nearly attacks a waitress, Mick steals a cop car and lets the others know that the reports he heard over the radio were all in meat-related locations. Behrad, Nate, and Zari get jobs at Big Bang Burger to keep an eye on the place.
Ava, Mick, Constantine and Spooner check out the butcher shop. Among the slabs of beef, they find the Big Bang Burger mascot ravenously chowing down. Spooner knocks him out and they take him back to the ship.
The dog leads Sara and Gary to a shack where a woman exits and threatens them with a spear. Sara is surprised that she’s human, and Gary recognizes her – it’s Amelia Earhart. She invites them into her shack. The last thing Amelia remembers is hitting some turbulence, getting knocked out, and waking up on this planet. She’s excited to learn that Gary and Sara have a ship, but reluctant to leave just yet.
Behrad isn’t new to flipping burgers – he worked at a burger joint in the future and found a lot of meaning in it. It was where he was first treated as “Behrad” and not “Dragon Girl’s brother.” He tells Zari that her negative vibes are ruining the burgers and that the totem will also sense those negative vibes. She thinks he’s just looking for an excuse not to share.
On the Waverider, Gideon’s scan confirms the alien mascot guy is human. Did she do a scan like that for Gary at any point? Constantine uses magic to extract whatever alien influence might be inside the guy, and the dude suddenly projectile vomits special sauce onto the ceiling. Then, because that isn’t gross enough, it falls back down on him. Spooner is able to detect that the sauce is the alien, hence why she was getting false signals all over town.
Of course I screencapped this. Why wouldn’t I?
Ava tells the burger team to stop serving the alien burgers and to bring the sauce back to the ship. Bert, the owner, catches the three in the act and accuses them of being spies for the McDonald brothers. They (or rather, a rampaging waitress) convince Bert that the sauce is making people act strange, so he tells them it’s his wife’s recipe. As they gather up the rest of the sauce, the dinner rush hits, with dozens of people trying to get into Big Bang Burger for meat.
Meanwhile, Ava goes to Bert’s house to attempt to get the secret of the sauce out of Bert’s wife, Rhonda. She gets nowhere with Rhonda, but when the sauce starts leaking from a vent, she checks the attic. She finds an alien cocoon leaking the “sauce,” but she’s knocked out from behind by Rhonda. Spooner and Constantine find the alien’s pod in the shed and Spooner is able to read the pod’s display: “Giant Air Feeder.”
Rhonda ties Ava up and tells her the whole insidious plot! One night, some goo dripped from the ceiling onto Bert’s salisbury steak, he liked it, so she found the thing in the attic and started bottling the goo for Bert to use in his failing burger joint. You know, it’s been so long since last season that I actually forgot what a Legends of Tomorrow plot was like.
Ava warns Rhonda that the cocoon is growing and that the alien inside could destroy the whole town. Rhonda just sees that as a franchise opportunity because Capitalism. Spooner sneaks in and knocks Rhonda out, then she figures out the reason for the sauce: When the alien hatches from its cocoon, it’s going to be hungry, and the sauce just made a bunch of people fatten themselves up.
But like…that’s still dependent on someone being dumb enough to eat alien goo and/or feeding it to others. Maybe its natural prey is really really dumb. Or human. Anyway, Rhonda wakes up just in time to be devoured by the alien as it hatches. The alien flies through the roof of the attic and heads for Big Bang Burger.
It looks like a giant moth, it roars kind of like Godzilla, and it eats people like the bug from Men in Black. We’re just taking inspiration from everything this season.
Zari comes up with a plan to stop the hungry horde: using one of her herbal supplements to calm them down. Behrad cooks the burgers, Zari uses the Air Totem to cool them and get them on plates to sprinkle the stuff on, and Nate serves them up. It works and the mob begins to fall asleep. They get them all inside just as the alien attacks.
Bert tries to shoo the alien away with a flyswatter (see also: “fucking around”) and gets launched into the air and eaten whole for his troubles (see also: “finding out”). Ava abandons all hope of taking this alien alive to interrogate it and allows Spooner to shoot it. A combination of Spooner’s laser pistol and an impact with the live Big Bang Burger sign cooks the alien like a bug zapper.
On the ship, Ava apologizes to Spooner for ignoring her feelings about dealing with the aliens. Spooner understands, at least, and says Sara is lucky to have Ava. Ava asks about Spooner’s abduction, and Spooner reveals that her mother was also taken. She’s given up looking for her, but was preparing for the day when she would get to shoot an alien dead. Killing the moth alien didn’t help, though. Ava extends an invitation to join the Legends, which Spooner accepts. She wants to help find Sara and kill even more aliens! Please don’t tell Kara, Clark, Brainy, J’onn, etc. etc…
Behrad and Zari catch a news report from 1955. With Bert dead, the waitress from the diner is taking it over and rebranding it as Big Belly Burger. Behrad wants to share the totem now, but Zari doesn’t want to take it away. The two start arguing again. Inside the totem, Zari 1.0 just wants to read in peace, so to shut her other self and her brother up, she splits the totem in two. Oh cool, siblings controlling wind powers. Like some kind of Tornado Twins…oh, is that one taken? Never mind.
Sara asks Amelia how she managed to survive so long on the alien planet, but Amelia starts retelling the story she told them earlier about her abduction. Something is wrong. Sara and Gary go to leave, but Amelia – now revealed to be an alien – attacks and bites Sara. Gary and Sara escape, but as Sara begins to black out, they see glowing lights in the distance.
Still better than that episode of Star Trek: Voyager.
It’s goofy, it’s silly, it’s Legends. I’ve been thinking about it, and I actually prefer these “monster of the week” episodes with bits of the season-long arc in there as filler. It feels more natural than every single episode being part of an endless season-long arc and little villain-of-the-week subplots. It’s a big part of why Season One wasn’t as good, and one of the reasons I can’t really get into The Flash or Supergirl anymore. Sometimes you just need fast food zombies and Mothra.
The Air Totem splitting in two is interesting. I wonder if they both have equal power as the original or if their power is halved? Either way, would Zari and Behrad combining their efforts be more powerful? It’s also great to see Zari 2.0 finding her place on the team and trying to be a hero.
Next time: The long-awaited return of DJ S’more Money.
Legends of Tomorrow airs Sundays on the CW at 8 ET/7 CT. Kate’s favorite fast food urban legend was that the burgers were made from kangaroo meat because that’s the one that didn’t sound too bad to her. We’re not sure why you would want to, but you can reach her on Twitter @WearyKatie