written by Kate Danvers
SPOILER WARNINGS ARE IN EFFECT
Hell and family dinners. Whoops, tautology.
Constantine pops into Hell to have a chat with Astra about the evil souls she’s releasing. She’s doing it to accrue wealth and power in Hell. She taunts him, saying if he kills her she’ll just end up where she already is. The spell ends and Constantine returns to the Waverider. He calls a meeting to inform the other Legends. Behrad is off to his dad’s birthday party and he’s bringing Nate along to pose as one of his professors, since his family still doesn’t know he’s a time-traveling superhero.
At the party, we’re reintroduced to Zari! She’s now a…social media influencer? Is that what they call them? She has no memory of Nate and thinks her brother’s professor is creeping on her.
The other Legends detect a timequake in 1947 Los Angeles. Ava is put on “babysit Mick on the ship” duty – I mean she’s “quarterbacking the mission” while Sara, Ray, and Constantine investigate. Wait, is Charlie still out joyriding? Did no one follow up on that? The ground team finds a human-sized pile of ash in an office belonging to Webb & Moore, Private Investigators. Just as Constantine figures out the deceased was killed by hellfire, Jeanie Hill enters and points a gun at them, demanding to know where Webb is. Constantine poses as Johnny Webb and takes Jeanie’s case. She needs protection from her boyfriend, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, who’s supposed to be dead.
And Jeanie’s supposed to be in Paris because it’s believed she was tipped off about the hit ahead of time and got out of town. The Legends version claims she was there when it happened, but Bugsy showed up the next day to take her to the club like nothing happened. Now he’s more ambitious and murderous. Ray gives her money to get out of town and she leaves.
They don’t wear superhero costumes much anymore, but the time period-appropriate attire makes the Legends the best dressed heroes on the CW.
All of the Legends head to Bugsy’s club, the Blue Iguana, where they see Jeanie at Bugsy’s side. Sara and Constantine catch her outside the powder room. Jeanie tells them Bugsy is amassing power through blackmail photos that she helped him with by getting people in power in compromising positions. Jeanie is after those photos. Sara lures Bugsy outside, but he’s attacked by rival gangsters carrying tommy guns. Since he can’t be killed, Bugsy fires back with a gun shooting hellfire bullets that dust the gangsters. Ray, posing as a cop, tries to “arrest” Bugsy, but the real and bribed cops arrive and escort Bugsy to safety.
I’d like to pause for a moment to say that I watch a Twitch streamer who has made playing Bubsy games part of his brand. My brain has its own autocomplete, even for awful mascot platformers. So I want all of you to know the amount of effort I’m putting into typing “Bugsy” and not “Bubsy.” Also, apologies to my editor for all of the ones I miss.
Meanwhile, the family dinner is going well. Nate keeps sneaking peeks at Zari Kardashian across the table, and Zari gets suspicious of her brother when he talks about the theft of their family heirloom, the Air Totem. Also, in the new timeline, Zari became famous after the Heyworld incident and built a multi-million-dollar empire. Basically she’s built a reputation out of being famous for being famous, but I think I summed that up well with “Kardashian.”
Constantine finds the location of Bugsy’s blackmail stash on a book of matches he found in Webb’s office because it’s a 1940s crime drama – there’s gotta be a book of matches. He offers the location to Jeanie in exchange for her help getting Bugsy’s gun. Then they have sex in Webb’s office because Constantine is Constantine.
Ava’s so depressed by losing her job at the Time Bureau that she’s drinking at Bugsy’s club with Mick. She misses the responsibility and being needed. When Sara calls asking for a diversion, Ava takes the stage and starts singing as Bugsy makes his way back to the club.
I may need to update my Legends crush list.
The real musical number doesn’t go nearly as well as it does in Ava’s imagination, and the clubgoers leave when her drunken performance becomes a bit too much. Bugsy arrives to put a stop to it, but Sara and Mick take him out.
Constantine takes Jeanie to a cemetery, where they find the blackmail. Jeanie holds the hellfire gun on him to get the stash. She takes the stash and gives him the gun, which has five bullets left. Ray arrives separately with a dirty cop who’s out to destroy both the blackmail and Jeanie. Ray and Constantine try to stop Jeanie from leaving, but a bomb goes off when she starts her car, killing her.
That’s nineteen years before her actual death and probably something that would have caused big problems in earlier seasons of this show, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Legends of Tomorrow takes place in an alternate reality where all of these historical aberrations mean jack shit.
Constantine takes Bugsy back to Hell and storms Astra’s club, shooting guards because the hellfire gun can kill things from Hell permanently. He saves one bullet for Astra, but backs down at the last moment because he still hasn’t given up on her. He uses the last bullet to kill Bugsy “for Jeanie.” When he returns to the Waverider, he lies to the others about what happened, claiming he couldn’t get close to Astra, but Ray sees through the lie. Ray is glad there are still good guys willing to rehabilitate the bad guys.
Zari finally recognizes Nate! Yay! From Heyworld. Oh no! She also points out Behrad in the video and demands to know how they could both be there. When they stonewall her, she tries to walk off to tell her parents, but Behrad opens a time portal in her path and brings her to the Waverider.
She’s taking it well.
First off, either Zari is going to have to regain her old personality or this new Zari is going to have to grow on me, and that may honestly take a while. Maybe it’s because I have a personal bias against the YouTube and Instagram personality type. The term “influencer” makes my skin crawl and I wallowed in the schadenfreude of the Fyre Festival incident, so seeing a character I love downgraded to that awful stereotype is profoundly disappointing. I have faith in these writers and in Tala Ashe’s acting ability, so I’m holding out hope that there’s more to new Zari than what we’ve seen so far.
As for the main plot of the episode, I really liked it. Next to the Old West, this is probably my favorite setting. I’m a sucker for cheesy film noir crime dramas, even when they’re filled with superheroes and an undead mobster wielding a hellfire gun. It will be interesting to see whether Constantine sticks to trying to redeem Astra or if she’s killed off at the end of the season.
Next time: the Legends infiltrate a prom to stop a serial killer even though they’re all in their thirties and forties and couldn’t possibly pass as teenagers. Wow, this really is a CW show.
Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays on the CW at 9 ET/8 CT. Kate can be reached on Twitter @WearyKatie.