Well hello there! I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 2022* and ready to jump right back on the Waverider with Legends of Tomorrow season 7 episode 8, “Paranoid Android.”
*ready to practice some extreme escapism
Previously on Legends of Tomorrow, Robo-Legends crashed the real Legends’ party, programmed to believe they were the real and righteous Legends and that the Legends WE know and love are time terrorists out to destroy everything in their path. This whole episode, including but not limited to this “previously on” section AND the opening credits, was from the perspective of these RoboLegends, which was absolutely brilliant. No notes!
What’s better than these RoboLegends thinking they’re the real Legends is that they think the real Legends are RoboLegends! What’s less great is they’re on a mission to destroy them. And when they find the real Legends having a party in the WWII airplane hanger, they are furious. How could these time bandits have the audacity to have fun??
I lost track of which number version of Zari we’re up to but I love all iterations.
They attack and we see the fight from the mid-season finale, but this time from the other side. The RoboLegends take RoboZari and RoboAstra’s deaths fairly matter-of-factly, though they do swear to avenge their fallen friends. Specifically, Behrad wants to avenge Zari and Spooner wants to avenge Astra, because whoever programmed them knows exactly (okay, mostly) what they’re about.
Once the team is back on the RoboWaverider, the fake Sara and Ava growl at each other, like whoever created them knew that if these robots were in love, that would make them happy, and happy people just don’t kill their doppelgängers. They just don’t.
“If we had more time this could have made a great enemies-to-lovers AU.”
RoboSara reviews their last mission, trying to see where they went wrong, and she can’t help but notice a pattern. Giving factory workers job security, saving random 20s lounge singers from their boyfriends…these Fake Legends she’s been warned about don’t seem all that bad after all…
That feeling when you realize actually your parents can be and often are wrong about things.
Gideon tries to keep her on mission, which right now is to go to Ukraine 1986 to put Chernobyl back on the menu, but when Zari and Astra stroll in, she can’t help but be a little suspicious. She sends the team off with big weapons Ava calls Destiny Restorers but she hangs back to ask Dr. Sharpe about these miraculous recoveries. Gideon interrupts them, though, so Sara joins her team, and as soon as she’s gone, Dr. Sharpe incinerates RoboZari’s old body. Dun dun dun!
:starts scream-singing Burn from Hamilton:
Zari and Astra run QB from the Waverider while the rest of the team heads down to “fix” history. Zari uses one hand to work a stress ball and the other to hack and finds the target of their anomaly lickity split; Astra compliments her on it and oops I ship them.
On Instagram Olivia Swann said she called this alter ego Micki Ninaj and I love that for her.
RoboZari says she’s feeling extra smart since she woke up from surgery, and her one-handed speed typing proves helpful…until Gideon tells her she hit a wall. Because time is like cement. She simply can’t know more information about the mission.
The RoboLegends fight some Soviets and capture their General and while Sara is interrogating him, She tries to explain to the General about how they’re the good guys. She also thinks the General is the only one they’re going to kill until Zari pops into her comm and says the “Destiny Restorer” weapons actually just blast the men with the amount of radiation they would have gotten in the blast, which seems a little aggressive to RoboSara.
As they realize more people are fleeing the city, Nate says, “If we don’t stop this, all these people are going to live,” and Sara looks like she’s starting to have her doubts.
But her team keeps pushing her forward, including RoboZari and RoboAstra setting up plans for a new broadcast that will get people to go back home so they can get radiation like they were supposed to.
ALL I’M SAYING is that if Legends wants to hang out with Batwoman on Wednesdays it really has to up its gay game.
They use the General’s children to blackmail him into making the video, but before Spooner and Behrad run off to grab the kiddos, Sara pulls them aside and makes sure they’re all bluffing. When she realizes she’s the only one bluffing, she hesitates about this plan, but stupid Gary causes a it of a commotion and Sara ends up getting shot. She says she’s fine to go on and figure out a plan that does not involve killing children, but Dr. Sharpe pulls her back to the Waverider.
Since she got shot in the kerfuffle, Dr. Sharpe insists Sara get surgery for her injury, but before she puts her under, Dr. Sharpe interrogates Sara about why she hesitated in the field, but RoboSara lies her way into convincing her not to pull out the weird computer chip with her name on it that she promised were just medical records. RoboSara pulls her IV out and stays awake during her surgery, and is horrified to see that Dr. Sharpe pulls a metal part out of her shoulder and puts a new one back in.
Dr. Sharpe also managed to magically clean the blood off Sara’s White Canary outfit so that was nice of her.
When Dr. Sharpe leaves, the White Canary rises and breaks into the cabinet to steal the weird chips, immediately bringing them to RoboZari.
The braids alone in this episode made me gayer.
Luckily, after explaining, RoboZari not only believes RoboSara, but she takes it one step further; she thinks Dr. Sharpe is tinkering with their bodies AND their minds, based on how she feels post-surgery. She also is starting to be on Sara’s side re: doubting their mission; she did think Gideon’s mantra of “history is like cement” seemed a little illogical. Maybe Dr. Sharpe is controlling her, too…
It’s time to do their next mission, to stop a scientist from sharing nuclear secrets, and Gideon convinces the RoboCaptain she has to do this mission alone. And when Zari protests and offers to upgrade Gideon, she assures the hacker that Dr. Sharpe already did so, which is suspicious to the robots who have wandered too close to the mouth of the allegorical cave.
“Isn’t it nice to know a lot? And a little bit not.”
Before she leaves for this ill-advised solo mission, Zari finds Sara and expresses her concern, but Sara tells her to Act Normal, Bitch.
They rolled low on deception but luckily Dr. Sharpe rolled lower on perception.
So they play along as Dr. Sharpe comes in and says she’s going to keep an eye on Sara in a way that is less of a promise and more of a threat.
Everyone’s evil alter ego was cute and fun but Dr. Sharpe was so dry and overly calm and it made me miss our wacky high-strung co-captain so much.
While Sara is stalling on the mission, Zari convinces the rest of the RoboLegends to get off comms and researches both more details about their target and about the Sara chip from Dr. Sharpe’s lab. When Zari learns the truth, a realization dawns on her: THEY are the androids, not the Legends they’ve been hunting through time.
“It took me SIX tries to get the Wordle?!”
RoboZari tells RoboSara she was programmed to prioritize the timeline over human life, and Sara feels very, “not today, Satan” about that particular directive, so she quickly asks her target what exactly her nuclear secrets are, and turns out they are plans to reduce radiation damage, not increase it. Not wanting to be on the wrong side of history, but also not wanting to tip off Dr. Sharpe too soon, Sara uses a dead zone to fake the murder, though a miss with her throwing star has Dr. Sharpe feeling a little suspicious.
RoboSara promises to find the woman again to give her back the plans she has to steal to save her life, and heads back to her team, pretending she killed the target as planned. When they’re clear, Zari pulls Sara aside and shows her Gideon’s secret firewall, and the records of the real Sara Lance, the real Legends. They are definitely androids, and they are loosely modeled after real people, but with some cold-hearted tweaks. At first they think Dr. Sharpe is behind all this, until they find a video of an Ava with Bishop and they realize she’s an android too and that actually Gideon has been behind this the whole time.
“Wait, WHO is the Antler Queen?!”
Sara and Zari know they have to convince the other RoboLegends, so Sara holds Dr. Sharpe hostage and forces her to tell the rest of the team the truth, about the fact that they’re the real androids, and that Gideon has been pulling the strings.
Ooh, another entry for the knifeplay list.
The RoboLegends think this is all a hilarious joke at first, but when Dr. Sharpe, notoriously not a joker, insists, they start to believe it. RoboSara decides she doesn’t want to kill people anymore, especially not innocent people. She wants to be like the real Legends and follow her heart, not her CPU.
And I love that Sara was the one whose humanity pushed through the programming, for a lot of reasons, but mainly because it’s proof of Sara Lance’s epic character arc over the course of her existence in the Beeboverse. There was a period of time where Assassin Sara Lance, the Black Canary, the Totem of Death wielder, and even the White Canary saw herself as a killer, a monster, a bad person, not worthy of redemption, not worthy of being a hero let alone a Legend. Until time and time again she proved to everyone, including herself, that it wasn’t a question of worth; she IS a hero, no doubt about it. She’s a Legend, she’s the Paragon of Destiny…she’s Captain Sara Lance for fuck’s sake! And even a bit of tweaking from a rogue AI can’t keep the hero in her quiet for long.
Villains are the heroes of their own story and all that.
RoboZari wants to shut Gideon down, and she’s the only one who could do it, and even gives her a little, “Goodbye, Gidget,” proof Gideon put both of OUR Zaris into this shiny new tattooed Zari.
Listen I know they already stuck one Zari in a bottle to avoid having too many Zaris at once but I wouldn’t be mad at at least ONE scene with all three of them. Tala Ashe can handle it!!
But then Gideon whispers sweet nothings into RoboZari’s ear, offering to make her smarter, faster…better. RoboZari agrees and gets a bigger brain and a god complex, offering everyone else upgrades so they can be unstoppable like her.
Sara tries to convince the RoboLegends that they’re the bad guys, but no one else agrees. It’s much easier to feign ignorance than take responsibility for the harm you’ve caused.
Sara gets them to think for themselves, but Gideon chimes in and says that Sara has gone rogue, encouraging them to take her down so she can…fix her.
Once her pesky conscience is taken care of, RoboSara is sent back on her mission, and this time she kills the target dead without hesitation.
Now all she needs is a RoboNyssa…
Looks like RoboSara has had a factory reset back to her assassin roots.
And that’s all, folks! Next week…a reality show?? Whether it’s with the real Legends, the RoboLegends, or a whole new pack of time-traveling weirdos is anyone’s guess. In any case, it’s good to be back. See you next week!
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This is basically an AU, and you know what we do with AUs.
…open a Bed and Breakfast that often gets snowed in and only has rooms with one bed?
surprised Robo!Sara’s assassination of the science lady didn’t involve seducing her first.
RoboSpooner’s queer af haircut and bandana-around-the-neck!