Previously on Legends of Tomorrow, magical being were set loose across time, including a shapeshifter named Charlie who is now stuck with Amaya’s face and is now traveling with the Legends. Also traveling with the Legends is Constantine, tortured British sorcerer. And the newest addition to the Time Bureau is Mona, a caterer turned creature keeper, who is also the reason for Nora and Ava bonding last week.

We open in a flashback of Constantine’s, where he’s falling for a hot bartender, then getting hot and heavy with him. But then Charlie wakes him up and snaps him back to present-day.

“Did you just say hello?” “No, I said ‘allo’, but that’s close enough!”

She wanted to show him that she figured out she can sort of still shapeshift. Really mostly right now it’s bulging her eye out like one of those creepy squeezy stress toys but she knows this means that whatever he did to her is reversible after all. He waves her off but Charlie says someday he’ll need her help, and favors are kind of her thing, so she’ll be ready.

We learn that the Waverider had one extra person on board last night when Sara thanks her for staying over instead of Sara going to her. Ava doesn’t mind except the whole sharing-a-bathroom thing, when as if to prove her point, Mick’s three-bosomed lady strolls by. Ava realizes this means Mick is using Brigid’s Diary but Sara knows; it keeps him happy and therefore out of trouble.

Ava wants to discuss this further but when they get to the kitchen, they’re distracted by Ray’s mustache.

“Someone has discovered the wonders of Wynonna Earp.”

He’s reading the back of his cereal box, which is a serial killer quiz, and we learn that Ava is a true crime enthusiast. I joked that she was a murderino, but now that I think about it, probably only in the strictest definition, not in the way that means a fan of My Favorite Murder. I can definitely see Ava sprouting an improbable grey hair every time Karen or Georgia says something factually inaccurate or about how they don’t care how factually accurate they are.

Anyway, Ava insists that one of the cereal serial killers is wrong, so Sara asks Gideon to check on it. Sure enough, it’s an anachronism; a string of murders in New Orleans apparently done by someone who could walk through walls appeared suddenly in the timeline, so they’re off to fix it.

I like that “plot a course” is her new catchphrase. It’s like “wheel’s up” on Criminal Minds.

Everyone gathers around the computer, already in their New Orleans best, including Mick who is pissed that Ava took Brigid’s Diary back. They read the news and discover that the murders that Ava insisted fit the MO of Mike the Spike (blonde rich women being killed in their locked bedrooms) were being pinned on Marie Laveau, a voodoo priestess, aka a powerful woman of color. Zari declares this typical, and I agree.

Can we talk about how good she looks in red, though.

They also name-check Angela Bassett’s portrayal of Marie in AHS: Coven which was kind of hilarious.

So Sara splits the party: Constantine is going to find Marie, and Charlie wants to go with. Zari predicts she’ll be in charge of those two, and grumbles about being on the B-Team, to which Sara calls after her that there’s no such thing the way a parent tells her children she loves them all equally.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Zari! It’s that I don’t trust THEM.”

When The B-Team (which is a pretty Badass Team if you ask me) take to the streets of New Orleans, which is giving Constantine flashbacks (flash forwards?) because this is where he met the man in his dream.

The team gets separated by a funeral marching by, and a man with purple dust knocks Constantine out and kidnaps him. He wakes up in a coffin and finds Marie Laveau standing over him. She points out Constantine’s medallion and says it’s hers, but he promises it was given to him. She decides she’ll be the judge of that and takes a peek at the memories in his brain her own self.

The memories contain more snippets of the man we saw before, Constantine making him breakfast, Constantine trying to warn him that it’s not safe for him, the man giving Constantine the medallion for protection. Marie realizes it’s her great-great grandson and says that to give up this medallion, he must have loved Constantine, and wants to know if Constantine loved him back.

Meanwhile, at a fancy party on Bourbon street (lol jk I don’t know where the party is, that’s just the only street I remember off the top of my head), Sara is playing maid while doing recon.

Mick and Ava snipe at each other over the comms and Sara tells him to be nicer, but Ava isn’t helping. Before they can get into it though, Sara spots a creepy man with a creepy mustache so Ray starts to track him.

Once Zari and Charlie realize they lost Constantine, they ask Gideon for help. Constantine refuses to wear his comms, but luckily Sara sewed trackers into all his underwear, so they’re able to locate him fairly quickly.

Sometimes I like to imagine what they must look like to other people, talking out loud but not to each other.

Marie is telling Constantine – nay, ordering him – to save her kin when the girls bust in. Constantine insists he’s fine so instead of fighting, they ask Marie if she’s sensed any other powers appearing besides them, and Marie says she senses a dybbuk nearby, which Charlie explains is the trapped spirit of a really bad person. (And which the internet tells me is from Jewish mythology. Happy Hanukkah!)

Charlie the Close Talker strikes again!

When Ray is trying to find his fellow mustachioed man, instead he finds a little girl crying and holding a doll. Instead of running or calling for backup, this sweet puppy of a soul goes in and asks if she’s okay. The girl says the doll is going to murder her mother so Ray starts trying to give it shaking dolly syndrome, but he has the wrong doll. The real doll, looking like someone drunk made him, calls Ray a dick and knocks him out cold.

When Sara arrives, she finds Ray unconscious and a scared little girl.

“Hi there! You seem evil. Are you evil?”

But when Sara asks her what happens, the doll mimes for her not to say, so she runs out of the room instead. Sara realizes that the dybbuk is in the doll and then fights it and, my friends, it’s really fucking funny. It’s not unlike the episode of Buffy in Season 1 where Buffy has to fight a dummy. You can’t help but laugh.

Sara’s backup arrives and Mick burns it to a crisp. Before they totally destroy it, Ava says she wants to question it, but when the doll just offers up more sass, Mick burns it but good.

Meanwhile, Constantine is growing desperate, so he decides to cash in on that favor idea with Charlie. He needs her to go with him on the jump ship to New Orleans 2018 and stop him from meeting the man in his dreams, Des.

So Charlie puts on her best Amaya accent and charms Constantine out of the bar he’s in and off somewhere else to chat. So when Des arrives to deliver food (that I hope was already paid for), there’s no handsome Brit for him to lock eyes with.

It’s weird because I don’t see Amaya anymore. And when I go back and watch a clip of Amaya, it’s not Charlie.

Back at the Time Bureau, poor Mona is having a bad day. First some creep hits her with his car door and then bullies her into thinking it was her fault, and then Gary makes fun of her new limp while getting really close to her face while talking in pirate and scolding her for being late. Nate pulls Gary aside after seeing this and asks what the heck he was doing, and Gary claims it was flirting. Nate tells him to never do that again and just ask her out, but Gary wants Nate to do it for him. Nate compromises by saying he’ll ask her if she’s seeing anyone.

Mona goes into her buddy’s cell and has a conversation of sorts with him. It’s kind of sweet. And she notices a mysterious injury on him and feels a bond between them. When she leaves his cell, Nate starts to ask her if she’s seeing anyone, but they start to have the same conversation about two separate things, and Nate leaves the conversation thinking he’s paved the way for Gary to ask her out, and Mona thinks she just got the go-ahead to skip to the end of her reverse Beauty and the Beast story.

On the Waverider, Sara and Ava are chaining down the charred doll, because unlike everyone in horror movies, Sara has actually seen a horror movie, and she knows that the bad guy never stays dead the first time. Sara wants to celebrate their win, but Ava is still feeling a little grumpy about the whole Mick thing.

The hair tuck is queer culture.

Sara stands up for him, saying that he’s a little rough around the edges but that he’s her friend, and not nearly as bad as he seems, and asks her oh so sweetly to stay for dinner. Ava suggests maybe a shower instead, in a way that for them was so casual and relaxed and coupley, but for me was a surprise and a delight.

:has vivid flashbacks to the Mistresses shower scene:

And I feel like I say this a lot but I love how Sara and Ava’s relationship is so…mature. They don’t agree on everything, but they’re not always fighting. They casually mention showering together or sleeping over, but they’re not tearing each other’s clothes off at every turn. (Though they are occasionally removing clothing. #trenchgate2018) They’re just two grown women in a loving relationship with each other who happen to work in the business of time travel. And it’s a beautiful thing.

Okay back to Constantine, who takes Charlie back in the jumpship, explaining how sometimes it takes a while for time to catch up and timelines to change but they should feel the effects soon. The good news is, he was right, and time did catch up. The bad news is, Constantine still ended up meeting Des a few nights later, so the overall timeline didn’t change. They’re about to go back to try again when Zari hijacks the jumpship. As much as she hates the gig, it’s her job to make sure these two DON’T fuck up the entire timeline so they have to get back to the Waverider right this minute.

Once back on the ship, the girls listen as Constantine regales them with his tale of woe.

Would buy this punk album.

He thought he was too tough for romance until he met Des, who liked him for him. But then a demon named Neron wanted to bring him to hell to torment him. He begged Des to run so Neron couldn’t use him to hurt Constantine, but he didn’t listen and Des got burned up right before his very eyes.

Charlie asks why her keeping them from meeting didn’t change all this, and Zari explains that some points in history are fixed and can’t (or shouldn’t) be changed. Zari promises she’ll try to find a loophole that won’t break all of time for him, though.

While she’s researching, the dybbuk flies out of the doll’s body right past her.

Do you think she was listening to The Smell?

She feels it but can’t see anything, so she gets back to work. The dybbuk floats and flies into the storage dock and slips into a box.

In the galley, Ava comes in and is delighted to find Sara cooking. She’s less delighted, however, when she sees Mick is here too. Sara implores them both to stay; she wants the love of her life and this family she’s built to learn how to get along. I had visions of trying to get a future girlfriend to get along with my grumpy brother and I don’t envy Sara this task.

“Whiskey, meet wine. Wine, meet whiskey.”

Sara tries to find topics they might agree on, but despite her best attempts, they still find ways to get under each other’s skin.

“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”

In fact, Mick is so hurt, that his lashes cut deep, even calling Ava a clone and asking Sara why she can have a “fake girlfriend” but he can’t. It’s a low blow and Sara tells him so.

I’ve given given my brother this look so many times it proves the “your face will get stuck like that” theory totally false.

But he storms out before she can diffuse the situation.

While Sara is distracted, a felt hand sneaks up and steals a knife off the table.

Zari goes to find Constantine to tell him, regretfully, that she doesn’t think there’s a way to save Des without ruining, well, everything. She starts to give him the same speech she gave Ray, about knowing what it’s like to have the ability to save someone you love, but being unable to when you know the cost. But something isn’t right. Constantine isn’t interrupting or throwing crude insults or…moving at all. Zari moves closer to inspect but turns out it’s Charlie desperately holding her form into Constantine’s. But as soon as she starts to move she has to let it go and she’s back to Charlie.

She confesses that Constantine went back to try to save Des again, this time without tracking undies, so Zari grabs her and drags her to help her find him. Zari is furious and asks Charlie why she would even be helping Constantine do this in the first place, and Charlie admits that it’s because when she was a shapeshifter, every new form helped her maintain immortality, but not being able to shift has stunted that rejuvenation and she’s…aging. Zari is PISSED that Charlie is risking the FATE OF THE WORLD because she’s afraid of getting old so she uses it against her, saying that if things go loopy, Zari is going to make sure Charlie spends the rest of her aging, mortal life locked up in a cell.

“I kind of thought my options were being free and immortal or being prisoner but with you, I’m not loving this third isolation option.”

In the aftermath of the unsuccessful family dinner, Sara apologizes to Ava for everything Mick said. Especially the clone stuff. Because Sara loves her just the way she is.

This year has given my belief in love a beating but these two are keeping it afloat.

Ava tries to shake it off, saying she wishes she could just learn to loosen up like the rest of the Legends. Sara notices some flour is knocked over and honestly for one second I thought she was going to start a flour fight with Ava to try to lighten the mood but I forgot there was a killer ghost who liked to possess creepy dolls on the loose, so that one’s on me. Sara sees the tiny footprints in the flour and knows that the dybbuk is alive.

“These tiny footprints look…professorial.”

Sara, once again pulling on those horror movie skills, says that they shouldn’t split up, but Ava reminds her that they’re not helpless teens a horror movie but trained for this very occasion, so they decide to split up after all. Ava is fucking THRILLED about catching a serial killer and Sara smirks at how nerdy her girlfriend can be. They start to go their separate ways, then they both pause, turn back, smirk at each other, and rush into each other’s arms for a dramatic kiss.

April Mullen, ladies and gentlehumans.

What made it so perfect was that the drama was fake but the passion was real. They were playing the part of the hero couple saying what could be their final goodbyes at the height of the action in a horror movie, but without any of the stakes. Sure, they had a murderer to catch, but they both were confident enough in the other’s skills that they knew this wasn’t goodbye. So this kiss was just for fun, and you can see that twinkle in their eye right before.

In New Orleans, Zari calls Constantine to try to get him to stop trying to interfere with the past.

I love that it looks like Zari put Charlie in a time-out.

Not having to look anyone in the eye, he finally admits that he had a more active role in Des’s death. He knew Neron would use Des against him, and so he bound Des and Neron’s souls together, so that when Neron killed Des to hurt Constantine, he ended up destroying himself, too. Pretty fucked, if you ask me. Clever, but fucked.

Zari still offers to help, but Constantine is nothing if not stubborn, and he’s determined to do this alone.

On the Waverider, Ava goes to inspect the charred body of the doll, but there’s no sign of the dybbuk. She asks aloud if there’s any more dolls on the ship, but instead of an answer she gets a knife to the back of the leg, taking her down. She turns over and finds herself confronted with the puppet of one Professor Stein. Gotta love a throwback.

Mick helps Ava get away from ol’ Slappy, and they realize that it’s who Ava thought it was all along: Mike the Spike. And don’t think I didn’t notice that, Mick Rory. These two might not have much in common, and they might take some easy swings at each other, but when it comes down to it, they have one fundamental thing in common: They both love Sara. So they’re bonded, and they will always instinctively watch out for each other, even if they continue to hate each other.

You can love and protect family without particularly liking them.

At the Time Bureau, Mona goes back to the beast we now know is called Konane and is speaking to him using a Hawaiian dictionary, but he soon warns her to run and hide. From her hiding place, she sees men come and take Konane, presumably as part of Project Hades? Mona follows the men until she realizes they’re going to put Konane in a van, then she tries to stop them. Well, chaos breaks out and Konane ends up murdering all the men and accidentally scratching Mona. When he sees he hurt her, Konane books it, leaving Mona to bleed her way to get help.

On the Waverider, Ava and Mick find Sara fixing the lights, and they tell her that they found where the dybbuk is now, and it’s worse than the New Orleans doll. Sara can’t believe that’s possible but she’s ready for anything, always.

Still a few months back, Des walks out and finds Constantine in the kitchen. When he sees him, Constantine softens a little, and for one half second I don’t think he’s going to be able to do it. But then he steels himself and breaks up with him, saying that he used a love spell on Des to get him into bed, that this is all a lie and that he should leave. Des disagrees, insisting that what they had was real, but leaves anyway. And the medallion in Constantine’s hand disappears.

As soon as it does, there is a crack in the universe. A fizzling, frazzling fissure starts to spread across space and time, hitting the injured Mona just before she pulls the fire alarm and sending her floating into the air, freezing Ray, Sara, Ava and Mick mid-air and they leap up to kick the Stein puppet in the face.

Actual superhero Caity Lotz.

The jumpship gets hit too, so Charlie is able to shapeshift again, but when she goes to show Zari, all she sees it a pretty little kitty with an air totem collar.

:do not make a pussy joke, do not make a pussy joke:

Time is broken, and it’ll be up to the Legends to fix it. Next week looks absofuckinlutely bananas and I, for one, can’t wait.

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