written by Kate Danvers
SPOILER WARNINGS ARE IN EFFECT
Welcome to the 69th episode of Legends of Tomorrow!
…Nice.
The Legends are famous! After making headlines for the Heyworld incident, they’re endorsing products, presenting Oscars, and a film crew is doing a documentary about them onboard the Waverider. We learn from the very first interview with Ava that the documentary is a necessity because Congress shut down the Time Bureau. In order to secure funding for the Legends, they have to show more transparency.
We see individual interviews with Legends who are still aboard the Waverider: Charlie, who takes the jump ship and skips off to an unknown point in the timeline to party; Nate, who is dealing with coming back to life after being dead for two minutes and has a strange feeling like something is missing; Mona, Rebecca Silver’s new agent; and Behrad, who thoughtfully uses the air totem to clear the room of smoke before inviting the film crew into his quarters. Hey, ain’t no law against weed in the Temporal Zone.
Gary has become Constantine’s assistant thanks to his last wish to Sweary Godmother Nora Darhk before setting her free…to be a fairy godmother to other people. Constantine drags Gary away from the film crew to pursue a case, but Gary leaves them a card.
Oh my god, that’s an actual phone number. Call it for a fun little message.
Sara is fine with the documentary. And by “fine,” I mean she doesn’t know about it. Actually, she’s kind of pissed when she, Ray, and Mick return from the crossover to find a film crew and a welcome home party. No time for that, though, because a timequake rocks the ship. And now for a full timeline report from Gideon:
GIDEON: “It appears my Jonah Hex Beebo la-la-loves you.”
Insightful! No, wait, Gideon has a virus or something. Ray finds the source of the anomaly in 1917, St. Petersburg, Russia. Before Sara can say what a horrible idea this is, the Waverider jumps to Imperial Russia with a film crew aboard. They attend the funeral of Grigori Rasputin, who crashes his own funeral by returning to life. Sara and Behrad are going to try to fix Gideon while the others research Rasputin to figure out what his next move is going to be.
Constantine makes a house call to see a possessed teenager. The demon possessing the kid is a friend of Constantine’s, so John takes him out for a drink. Uh…John? Think that one through for a second. Oh well, doesn’t matter; they get kicked out of the bar anyway. After some persuasion, the demon confirms what Constantine already suspected: Astra has released the souls of history’s greatest monsters to wreck the timeline.
We learn more about Behrad – his parents think he’s attending business school and he seems to be a pretty good artist, as he’s drawn a little comic of Oliver, Sara, and Laurel. It’s actually art by Arrowverse fan Lord Mesa!
You know it’s non-canon because it’s Arrow and everyone looks happy.
Meanwhile Ava, prompted by Mona, has made Sara a condolence card but decided against giving it once she heard Sara say that condolence cards are awkward. Ava’s wasn’t awkward, though!
AVA: “Dear Sara, I’m sorry the vigilante you slept with when he was already dating your sister died. Some say it’s better to have loved and lost, but I hope you never loved him at all.”
Oh good, Ava is as terrible as I am at that stuff! She has a plan to make it all better, though: She’s going to assassinate Rasputin! Also Ray and Nate have figured out Rasputin’s next move – he’s going to kill the Yusupov, the man who spearheaded his assassination. Also Mona is going to write a love letter from the Czarina to Rasputin so he settles down with her instead of fucking up the timeline. And none of them are collaborating!
I’ve missed these time-traveling disasters.
Ray and Nate are too late to save Yusupov, so they try to get Rasputin to calm down by having the documentary crew interview him. This leads to Rasputin hypnotizing Nate to help him regain memories of “a mysterious lost love.” Mick intercepts Mona and reads her letter. He’s impressed. Ava takes a sniper shot at Rasputin, who just spits out the bullet.
Constantine calls the Waverider to tell Sara that the newly dubbed “Encores” can’t be killed because they basically have one foot in Hell already. When the team returns to the Waverider, Sara is upset and yells at them not only for running off half-cocked like that, but for not even asking her what happened to her when she was away. She saw universes erased, went to the dawn of time, watched her friend die, restarted the universe, and she’s burdened with being one of the few who remember what happened and what changed. And she just wanted to talk to her friends about it.
Goddamnit, this show makes me go from laughing to wanting to cry in a nanosecond.
Rasputin broadcasts to the Waverider that he’s having a party and the Romanovs are invited! Hang on, January 1917? Only like a month before they were overthrown and about a year and a half before they die, so history won’t change too much. Oh, but the documentary director is still there. Shit. Sara and Behrad try to save the day on their own, but a fight breaks out when Rasputin hypnotizes the guards and Behrad.
The other Legends arrive to make more of a mess of things. Sara and Ava make up in the middle of the melee. Rasputin is defeated when Sara throws an unconscious and shrunken Ray into his mouth, then wakes him up and tells him to enlarge.
Pictured: Ray Palmer and Grigori Rasputin. Where’s Rasputin? Oh, he’s there…and there…and a little over there…
Yeah, remember that stupid meme asking why Ant-Man doesn’t just shrink, crawl up Thanos’ butt and enlarge? Legends of Tomorrow actually just did that. I love this dumb show.
To stop Rasputin from reforming, the Legends put him in a series of mason jars, which is just asking for a horrific food accident. Timeline fixed! Well, except for Felix Yusupov dying fifty years early and a bunch of people seeing Rasputin alive and well after his death.
The premiere of the documentary goes amazingly well. The director wants to do more and Sara looks like she wants none of that, so the Legends pretend that the entire documentary was fake onstage before the crowd.
RAY: “It’s obvious it’s all fake. How could Rasputin speak English?”
DIRECTOR: “You told me it was temporal linguistic dysplasia.”
This show got so meta that I can’t even make jokes about it anymore.
Sara has found a solution to their money problem, though: Mick! Oh yeah, I heard about this. Mick is going to bankroll the Legends through his writing career…nope, he’s going to steal shit throughout history, starting with a Fabergé egg worth $50 million. Okay, then.
Constantine returns to the ship and makes a circle on the floor. He’s got to pop in to Hell for a bit to put a stop to the Encores and he does it by taking a big ol’ sip of Rasputin Juice.
Let’s be real, this isn’t the most disgusting thing he’s ever drunk.
Mick is giving up writing, and he’s handing over the book gig and the Rebecca Silver identity over to Mona. She promptly leaves the Waverider since she can’t start her career there. Mick actually looks sad to see her go, and before she leaves she gives him a hug and says he was her favorite. Awww.
Behrad and Nate figure out Gideon’s glitch: She’s experiencing data from two timelines, as there was a time fracture at Heyworld. Once Behrad leaves the room, Gideon starts to purge the data, but finds a video from the event that flashes between Behrad and Zari. A holographic message from Zari plays for Nate saying she loves him and asking him to find her. Gideon’s data purge completes and the message disappears.
This show brings me so much joy. I’ve talked at length about how great it is that the show leans into some of the sillier aspects of superhero stories while staying grounded enough to have dramatic moments and deep characters, but I really can’t say it enough. It would have been easy to ignore the heavy subjects of Crisis and just stay 100% wacky throughout the season premiere, but they made it clear that Sara is not okay with everything that happened. She saw the end of all worlds and the beginning of a new one, so understandably she’s having a difficult time.
Mona leaving the Waverider wasn’t too surprising, but I’m glad they gave her an actual goodbye instead of an offscreen farewell. Although what worries me now is that Behrad is eventually going to go away because after this episode, I want him to stick around. He fits into the crew so well, being “Time Bros” with Nate and Ray, having a heart-to-heart with Sara, and being kind of a dork.
I pointed out some of the gags in the episode, but there are many more as well as some easter eggs. The opening plays footage of actual YouTube reaction channels watching the events of last season’s finale. The news ticker at the bottom of the screen during the senate hearing says that Ryan Reynolds will be starring in a live-action “Detective Beebo” film. And there’s a funny shot of a bird splatting against the side of the cloaked Waverider.
If you’re not watching this show, please do. My recaps can only convey so much, and this is seriously one of the best shows on TV.
Next time: Well, they put the season premiere one week before a required break for the finale of The Oliver Queen Manpain Hour, so see you in two weeks, nerds!
Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays on the CW at 9 ET/8 CT. Kate can be reached on Twitter @WearyKatie.