Previously on Legends of Tomorrow, Zari found a dragon egg while on an Indiana Jones mission, Ray got possessed by Constantine’s demon-nemesis Neron, Gary was given back the nipple that got bitten off by the killer unicorn except it’s an evil nipple now, and Ava invited Nora to become an official agent of the Time Bureau. I dare you to read this sentence to an unsuspecting coworker.

We open in the Ice Age, in the Donner Pass, where Neron-in-Ray’s-body leads Constantine into the icy nothingness. Neron wants Constantine to open a portal so that Tabitha can come through without needing a new vessel, but Constantine isn’t interested in helping Neron do anything.

Back in 2019, it’s Nora’s first official day as a Time Agent, and boi oh boi is she nervous.

“No, I don’t want to read ANOTHER Sarah Waters novel for book club, Ava.”

Her ID photo comes out bad, and Ava dumps a huge stack of paperwork in front of her. Nora is stressed about not helping Ray, but there’s not much they can do right now anyway. Before she leaves her to her filing, Ava tells Nora that she’s proud of her, and officially welcomes her to the Bureau.

And I’M so proud of Ava for getting past her whole black-and-white good-vs-bad ideology.

When Ava gets back to her office, Gary is in her chair, his awkward nervousness gone, his fear-based admiration for Director Sharpe is, too. He tells her to shut the door, and he’s so serious that frankly it’s unsettling.

On the Waverider, Sara says that probably Constantine is fine, because Neron took him instead of killing him. They have no leads right now, so all they can do is sit tight until the path forward becomes clear.

“If my arms look extra buff it’s because I’ve been listening to the audiobooks of some WWII novel Ava wanted me to read.”

When Ava gets back from her meeting with Gary, she’s acting a little… strange. She tells everyone that they’re going to do performance reviews, and that Gary is going to conduct them. Everyone is a little unsettled by this turn of events, and I’m unsettled that Ava is acting like one of the clean-slate Clones from the Ava-filled future we once visited.

When Gary gets up to announce that he’s looking forward to talking to his peers, and he’s suddenly more charming and suave than usual, Mona pulls Ava aside and says she feels like something is off. But Ava assures Mona that everything is fine. After all, “Gary Green is all the man we need.”

I knew we said we should all be nicer to Gary but this is taking it a bit too far.

And just like that I’m having flashbacks to the episode of Buffy when Jonathan changed reality so that he was the most important character.

In the icy wasteland, Neron is tired of trying to freeze Constantine out, and instead starts to threaten to kill Ray’s body. When Neron drags a knife across Ray’s neck, Constantine turns it into a feather, then wonders why Neron looks so smug; it’s not like he opened his bloody vortex for him. But it turns out that’s not what Neron wanted, not in this moment. He just needed him to use his magic.

On the Waverider, Zari goes to talk to Nate, who is obviously missing his Time Bro, and focusing his attention on their dragon egg instead. Gideon tells Sara when she picks up on Constantine’s magic signal, and the Legends head right into Neron’s trap. They face off, the team in the Waverider, Neron and a nearly-frozen Constantine on the ground. Constantine wants them to shoot; Ray’s already in hell, and Constantine is ready to die for this cause.

So Sara readies the blasters, though she can’t quite give the orders just yet.

“But he’s like a PUPPY.”

Mick isn’t feeling so torn though and tells Gideon to fire, and as soon as the blast goes off, Neron bamfs out with Constantine, and the Waverider is buried in an avalanche. (A word I am now incapable of spelling on the first try because of Avalance.)

They trip to zip zap out, but Gideon tells them they’re too buried. Sara tries to call the Bureau for help, but this version of Ava wandering around HQ ignores her call.

Not sure how anything stays frozen in the presence of this much hotness. :ba dum kssh:

Nate blames Mick for shooting from the hip, but Mick has no regrets. He says that their Ray is gone and he’s not going to stand around and watch Neron win. Sara is pissed and says now Mick is going to help her figure out how to get out of this mess. As everyone storms off, Charlie kind of shrugs to herself and says she always assumed she’d die alone anyway.

When Mona finds Nora to tell her about her weird encounter with Ava, Nora is wrestling with her paperwork. Mona thinks maybe their Ava was replaced with a clone, but Nora is too nervous about losing her brand new job to start questioning Ava’s authority.

Me when someone tries to get me to break a rule ten seconds before I am successfully peer pressured into breaking said rule.

But then another Agent pops his head in and repeats the mantra, “Gary Green is the only man we need,” so Nora agrees to help Mona look into it. Nora is going to go talk to Ava, and she sends Mona to call Sara and the Legends.

I don’t know how much help they’d be though, because Sara and Mick are hacking away at some ice and also at the tension between them. Sara is mad that Mick spoke out of turn and made a call that wasn’t his to make, and when he tries to justify his actions, she sasses him about usually not caring about the mission in the first place. While they fight, Charlie plays the part of me, and tries to get Sara and Mick to stop fighting by cracking jokes and trying to get them to bury the hatchet (and not literally in each other).

I hope we get a Charlie-centric episode soon. She has so many layers. And I’m not talking about the jacket.

Noticing Charlie, Sara turns on her too, saying maybe Ray would never have been possessed if Mick and Charlie hadn’t gone to RomantiCon, and Mick points out that practically every day is RomantiCon what with Sara disappearing to be with Ava all the time. Sara is fed up with this and says that if he thinks she’s such a bad captain, he can be in charge of getting them the hell out of this pickle.

What if Sara Lance just always had a hatchet hanging from her belt? Just an idea.

Neron takes Constantine to meet his doppleganger ancestor, King Constantine (pronounced differently) in 55 BCE at Stonehenge. Neron knows Constantine doesn’t quite have the power yet but wants him to learn how to channel fear into magic from this King who is sending creatures to hell all willy nilly, just like Constantine does. Including a little Púca, who Constantine knows to be generally harmless, but that the King is making out to be some kind of monster.

In DC, Mona is snooping on a computer, trying unsuccessfully to connect to the Legends when she’s busted by some coworkers. So she pretends she’s already been brainwashed, saying, “Gary Green is all the man we need,” until Nora pulls her into a room.

Why does Nora always look like she’s either going to bite your neck or kiss you on the mouth?

On the Waverider, Zari and Nate are trying desperately to keep the dragon egg warm. The dragon egg Nate is trying to call Wixtable… obviously they should leave the dragon-naming to the women. :gestures nobly in Daenerys’s direction:

“Like, not even WINGStable or something?”

Zari sticks the egg up her shirt and they start making out… you know, for body heat.

Despite having turned off all unnecessary functions, Gideon tells Sara that they only have about 34 survivable hours left. Mick comes to apologize to Sara for yelling at her earlier, which takes Sara by surprise.

“Well, I guess we are here because of a hell-beast, and it IS frozen over…”

Sara starts to apologize back but is interrupted by… well, Mick. Storming in with an AND ANOTHER THING. Sara realizes Charlie was trying to trick her into working together with Mick and Mick realizes that Sara was about to apologize. So they do indeed bury the hatchets with no literal hatchet in hand. They realize they miss Ray, and decide to go see if there’s anything in his room that will inspire them.

On their way out, Sara thanks Charlie for her help. Which is a far cry from how things would have gone in her first weeks on the ship. She probably would have thrown back into the containment cell. But now, she’s part of the team.

And the Waverider is like Olive Garden. When you’re here, you’re family.

Mona and Nora are trying to come up with a plan to figure out what Gary is up to without getting whammied, but when Mona devises a genius plan to trap him in a cell, Nora immediately uses it against her. She’s brainwashed, too.

Like, seriously, she looks like she’s about to lick the door window. How is she threatening and seductive at the same time/at all times.

In Ray’s room, Sara finds a team-building card game that Ray made, because of course he did, and a photo of the original Legends gang. Sara reminisces about the day Rip told them they would all be Legends, and Mick points out that, as of right now, they’re the only two Originals left. Sara reflects on how much has changed.

“I mean, I haven’t even worn my White Canary suit in ages. Well, except for that brief stint in Star City.”

Sara concedes that she’s glad that he went to the book convention, that he has something to make him happy. And he admits he’s glad she has Ava. They’re both growing up, and they have to learn how their new selves fit together.

They do find a survival guide among Ray’s things, but it doesn’t offer any new information except the advice to enjoy each other’s company while they still can.

I’ll be honest with you, I only sort of followed the hocus pocus of the Neron/Constantine/King storyline. It was a lot of totems shmotems. I was much more interested in the Sara/Mick bonding. Basically Neron manipulates Constantine into stabilizing the vortex and stopping the king from throwing the Púca into the depths of hell. There’s a sword fight. I’ll come back to them in a bit, when the important stuff happens.

After leaving Ray’s room, Sara tells Gideon to turn power back on the ship. This isn’t how Ray would want them to go out, cold and miserable and counting down the hours. He’d want them to have hope. And have fun. So they’re going to enjoy their time together and trust that a solution will come.

Nothing quite like an End of the World party, amiright?

When Mona is in the containment cell, Wolfie contacts her by morphing just her hand and writing on the wall, and frankly I thought they pretty explicitly said that Wolfie was still Mona, but I guess maybe it’s like a multiple personality thing. We’re just gonna go with it.

Ava and Nora march Mona down the hall, past lines of brainwashed agents, so she can have her “review” with Gary Green, all the man we need.

Me trying to force my friends to accept good advice and the love they deserve.

At first Gary goes through the motions of pretending to read Mona’s file, but the actual paper just says BLAH BLAH BLAH, and as someone who literally spent her Monday making it look like she was writing down important notes but actually was doodling bagpipes, I can relate.

But then Gary’s tone turns darker, and he accuses Mona of disloyalty. He then reveals what he’s been doing to all these people: he’s been calling them into his office, locking the door with a button on his desk, and forcing them to look at a body part against their will. Pure evil. In this case, it happens to be a hell-soaked nipple eyeball, but still. Not cool.

Mona screams and calls on Wolfie to help her, startling Gary back into a state that closer resembles the Gary we know and love like well enough, and he covers his nipple in shock and awe.

On the Waverider, the Legends are playing Ray’s game, which is basically Cards Against Humanity but with special cards written using their adventures over the past four seasons. When Nate and Zari are accused of cheating, Sara finds out they’re finally officially dating, meaning maybe they’ll stop being quite so awkward. She is delighted.

“I was rooting for you and Charlie, but you get yours, girl.”

Then it’s Sara’s turn, and at first it’s all fun and infiltrating dance parties, but then she gets a card that says, “You’re more than a team, you’re a family.” They all fall silent; they can practically hear Ray say that out loud. And they know it’s true. And the best thing? It was Charlie who put the card down. Not only part of the team, but part of the family. She’s not alone, not anymore.

“Friendship is thicker than blood.”

All this bonding melted the ice god’s frozen heart (jk their power being on melted some room around the ship), and Sara springs into action, doling out orders, everyone working in sync once again.

Sara hops into her Captain’s Chair and tells Gideon to get them the heck out of there. Gideon says their odds aren’t great, and Sara says never to tell her the odds, which is apparently a Star Wars reference, which makes the weird robes Constantine and Neron were wearing during their swordfight make a lot more sense. Plus despite not having seen a single Star War, I feel pretty sure Sara’s, “It’s a trap!” from earlier in the episode was also a nod to the franchise. (Oh and also Zari literally says Star Wars during their card game. I suppose that could also be a clue that this episode is rife with Star Wars references. Feel free to let me know any I missed.)

Sara tells everyone to brace themselves, and she uses her perfectly sculpted arm muscles the power the ship and break them free.

Bless this costume department for knowing better than to cover up Caity Lotz’s arms.

And they immediately set course to save their lost brothers.

At the Time Bureau, when they hear Gary screaming for help because Wolfie is threatening him, Ava and Nora storm in to save him. But in the tussle, they all bump heads and get knocked back to reality. Gary’s gig is up.

Constantine is pretty damn close to using his newfound powers to kill Neron, but the Legends show up just in time and tell him that he can’t kill Ray.

What’s wild is even when I was looking at Ray’s face I never forgot it was Neron. Luckily Sara still believes her Ray is in there.

Constantine knows she’s right, and Neron thinks this means he’s out of moves, but he has one more trick up his trenched sleeve. He’s going to save Ray himself. So he dives into the portal. The portal TO HELL. Unbothered by this sacrifice, Neron calls forth his love, the reason for all this chaos, his mysterious Tabitha. And in a move surely no one could have possibly predicted, Tabitha is the Fairy Godmother. Or at least, in her body. They start making out and it’s… a lot to take in.

Whoa where’d they find this live footage of me when James and Lena started dating on Supergirl?

Then they head off to find new host bodies. Or at least one for Tabitha.

As Ava and Nora try to wrap their head around what’s happening, Wolfie tells them that it was the nipple’s fault. Ava says that they had been… wait for it… NIPNOTIZED. Fuck, I love this show.

NIPNOTIZED. I CAN’T WRITE A CAPTION BECAUSE NOTHING WILL EVER BE BETTER THAN NIPNOTIZED.

So, ever the problem-solver, Wolfie tries to bite Gary’s evil nipple off. Bringing us full circle and back to the Donner party where we began this episode. Before we can find out if she fully nipped the nip, Neron and Tabitha arrive, scoop Gary up and disappear for more nefarious goings-on. Ava and Nora split up, Ava heading to Sara and Nora staying with Nora. Because she’s a team player.

Ma’am. Ma’am, your hand. Other ma’am, your eyes. Ma’ams I’m going to need you to cool it before Captain Sara Lance, formerly of the League of Assassins, keeper of the Death Totem, and Ava’s very serious girlfriend gets back.

Ava heads to the Waverider to tell the Legends what happened, saying “nipnotized” like it’s a normal word and not even taking so much as a second glance at the dragon egg in the center of the console.

I guess, to be fair, she did just see a nipple with an eyeball. The egg on display is pretty tame in comparison.

It may seem like they lost this round, with Neron in the wind in Ray’s body, Tabitha out of hell, and Constantine in it, but Sara is more determined than ever. They have to keep going, keep fighting. For Ray.

And for the right to never wear sleeves again, Ice Ages be damned!

Constantine ends the episode in the exact OPPOSITE of where we began, from the frozen nothingness of the Ice Age, to the fiery depths of hell. Hell is dark and dirty and the air is full of screams and there’s a cool-looking castle in the distance. I can’t wait until Constantine finds Ray doing something adorable like teaching serial killers how to channel their rage into robotics or something.

Only two more episodes left! Hold onto your nipples!

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