Spoilers DC's Legends of Tomorrow Season 5

They need an episode where they return Steve Trevor to his timeline and help Charlie Day with his laundry.

 

They'll do that later.

 

Fun episode tonight. Loved all the hard-boiled noir trappings. Sarah, in particular, seemed quite at home in 1940s Hollywood.

 

Oh, god, yes. Caity Lotz was born to play a '40s vamp. Her face, voice, and attitude are perfect for it. She's never been sexier.

Meanwhile, when Ava was doing her big production number, I was thinking to myself how contrived it was that TV characters always turned out to be fantastic, professional-grade singers... and then reality set in. Heh. Anyway, Ava must've been really drunk, because the former head of the Time Bureau was introducing an anachronism into the past. Apparently her song ("Poison" by the band Bell Biv DeVoe) dates from 1990 and is in an R&B/hip-hop/swing fusion style called "new jack swing." I thought it sounded too modern for the period.

 

Yeah, that bothered me before they revealed what was really going on. My main issue was how the band and her back up singers all knew a modern song.
The episode was a lot of fun.
That was definitely not what I expected for the new version of Zari. I wonder if we're going to end up with the original version back and her brother erased or if the new version will just end up sticking around?
The '40s stuff was all a lot of fun, and they even threw some pretty good twists and turns into it.
Love the new opening sequence.

 

"This is a blues riff in B, watch me for the changes, and try to keep up, okay?" -- Marty McFly

Hmm, I guess J'onn restoring her memories wouldn't work, since her history was changed by the Legends' actions at Heyworld, not by the Crisis.

Judging from Charlie, the producers don't seem to have a problem with keeping a cast member around as a different character. And TV writers love to throw obstacles into lovers' paths to keep their story arcs from petering out, so requiring them to get acquainted and fall in love all over again (or not) is an effective way to do that.

 

Yeah, usually I would assume that they'd revert her back to the pre-Heyworld version, but after Charlie and some of the other game changers they've tossed at us I've learned not to make assumptions when it comes to Legends.

 

So it seems not all the Encores are known historical villains after all; some are invented for the show, like this week's riff on '80s slasher films. And they aren't coy about their influences, are they? A (suspected) serial killer named Freddy Myers, with an unhealthily doting mother? And they went gorier than usual for this show, to fit the slasher-film aesthetic -- though since this is LoT, they incongruously paired it with a sparkly fairy godmother. Interesting way to integrate Nora's F.G. gig into a Legends mission, and to make use of her troubled past in a positive way.

Having the reunion be of Mick's own class was quite a coincidence, although I guess they're casting about for something to do with him now that he's ditched the romance-novelist arc. You'd think that Heat Wave would be the most notorious killer to come out of that class, but since the reunion was in 2004, I suppose Mick's criminal career hadn't become well-known yet. Odd that his old girlfriend didn't notice that he looked more than 15 years older than he should.

The bit about Astra's mother being a member of Constantine's Newcastle Crew is a bit of a retcon, since in the TV continuity, Astra was American (though she was British and white in the comics). The NBC show at least implicitly set Astra's failed exorcism in the US, and both the child actress there and the actress playing the adult Astra here have American accents. I suppose she could still have had a British mother, or that one of the Newcastle Crew could've been an American. We'll see. Normally I'd say Crisis could've rewritten the history, but presumably Constantine is one of those who had his pre-Crisis memories restored, and he was speaking about it as part of his own past.

 

"Gideon, save royalties to Chicago. Now play "Gimme Shelter" by The Rolling Stones. < cut to commercial >"

 

There was one thing in this episode that really bothered me.
You have two characters stuck outside the building. One can shrink and come in through any opening in the wall, windows or doors. The other can literally turn into steel and come through just about anywhere he wants. Yet they couldn't get in because the doors were telepathically sealed.
Very bad writing.

 

It was supernatural telekinesis, not just a locked door. It probably served as a mystical ward against any entry. (We never actually saw if Mick's "sneak out the vent" plan would've worked.) Although it would've been nice to get a line or two establishing that.

 

Ava fan girling over the murders was pretty fun, and they actually got me with the mother twist, I did not see that coming. The reunion just happening to be a Mick's school was a hell of a coincidence, but it was a nice way to give him a bit more development.
Charlie crashing at Constantine's old house, disguised as him was nice way to bring her back into the story after she took off. Definitely very curious to see what happens with Astra's mother.

 

Mick has a girlfriend in 2004, that doesn't mind that he looks like an old man from 2020, who is going to be happy that he's not going to age a day for the next 16 years.

I wonder if Mick has kids now?

I was Almost certain that teen Sarah and teen mick back in season 1 were going to breed.

I suppose since that teen Mick is now 4 years older since 4 years ago, they didn't want to muddy the water with a new teen Mick actor.

 

I thought it was blatantly telegraphed the moment we saw how possessive she was of him when he said he was going to the prom. But then, I've seen Psycho enough times to know what to expect when a horror story depicted an unusually close mother-son relationship.

No surprise he has a residence in England, but when I read the preview description about Charlie crashing in his old place, I briefly hoped it would tie into his Atlanta base of operations from the NBC show. Of course, there's no way they'd be able to rebuild that set even if they were cleared to use the idea. And it wasn't really his place to begin with, but belonged to a fellow Newcastle Crew member, Jasper Winters. But I keep regretting that LoT has never managed to pick up any of the dangling threads from the show, aside from the Astra stuff. I'd particularly love it if they brought back Angelica Celaya as Zed, because she's gorgeous, but I'd also be curious to see followup on Manny and the "Rising Darkness," maybe the return of Papa Midnite, and oh, yeah, some exploration of just what the Helm of Nabu was doing in Constantine's possession.

By the way, looking at the Arrow Wiki, I see that Constantine made a couple of mentions of a Newcastle Crew member named Judith, last name unknown, who had some magical ability. It'd be a nice bit of continuity if Astra's mother, the witch that Constantine went to see here, turned out to be Judith. (The character was slated to appear in an unproduced Constantine episode called -- get this -- "Final Girl.")

Incidentally, the Wiki also reminds me that one of John's old mates from the Newcastle Crew, now deceased, was named... Gary. Maybe that's why he puts up with Gary Green -- a bit of sentimentalism.

 

So, turn to steel and run through the wall.
Shrink and fly in through a drain pipe.
If you're not going to have them actually use their powers, come up with a good reason. Otherwise why have them in the episode at all?

 

As I specifically said already, it might have been a mystical ward against any entry, i.e. like an impenetrable force field around the entire building.

So they could go back to 1989 and enact Ray's plan to reform Freddy before his murders, of course. That's the whole reason they were locked out of the building in the first place, scriptwise -- so that they'd be free to attempt that option.

 

Are there any kind rights issues that would prevent them from following up on specific elements of the NBC series? One of my biggest disappointments with Constantine's addition to Legends has been the lack of explicit follow ups to stuff from the NBC series.

 

I can only assume there are, since they've so carefully tiptoed around any explicit tie-ins. And I gather it took them a fair amount of negotiation to get permission to use Constantine at all. I presume they can use the Astra backstory because it's from the comics, though they brought back Astra's original portrayer for a voiceover once and have cast her adult form in accordance with the NBC version (African-American rather than white and English). Although that makes me wonder why they can't use other comics-derived characters like Zed, Chas, and Papa Midnite (or Mark Margolis's Felix Faust).

 

I found this a little odd too.

And what happens when she runs into 2004 Mick and Lenny holding up a Circle K a month later?

 

Suddenly I'm hearing the line "Strange things are afoot" in Wentworth Miller's voice, and it works incredibly well.