*Spoiler warning for DC’s Legends of Tomorrow season 3, episode 1.
Zari on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Photo courtesy of the CW, screenshot by Linda Maleh.
The Legends are being honored. That’s not something that happens often on the wacky CW time travel show where our motley crew self-identify as screw-ups. After fixing the last anachronism – Paul Revere crashes the British Invasion – the timeline is intact, and the Time Bureau decides to honor the Legends for their good work. One problem: the Legends never told them about the dragon. Turns out, when they let the demon Mallus out last season so that they could vanquish him, they accidentally opened a door to hell, and now all sorts of monsters are escaping into the real world – in all different time periods too. This episode kicked off the season of monsters with a carnivorous unicorn mauling hippies at Woodstock. So I guess the Legends are still screw-ups; it’s good to know some things never change.
Sara is moving forward not just in her career this season, but in her relationship with Ava Sharp, the Director of the Time Bureau, as well. Ava asks Sara to move in with her, which Sara says yes to (awww), but the sweet moment is punctuated by a visit from Constantine, who’s there to warn Sara that after the dragon that escaped through the door at the end of last season, there are now many more monsters to come, and Sara needs to be on her guard. This prompts Sara to look into the timeline and see if there’s anything they missed, and what she finds is that somethings messing with history at Woodstock. She immediately runs off to deal with it so that no one at the Time Bureau finds out, including lover-director Ava.
Ray, coincidentally, has the same idea, as he asks Gideon to alert him of any strange activity throughout history. When he sees that something bad is happening at Woodstock, he decides to take the jump-ship to check it out. After he secretly let former villain Nora Darhk escape at the end of last season, he worries that she’s the one messing things up; he also has a little crush on her. Zari sees him leaving and decides to join her.
It’s a good thing the Legends have a new goal because they don’t exactly do well with time off. Finding himself bored at the party the Time Bureau throws them, Mick decides to go steal some stuff. Pretending to help him, Nate actually steers him towards his parent’s house – who knew Nate was loaded? – where we find out about his rocky relationship with his cold-as-ice dad. The other thing we find out about? The peace and love movement ended when all the hippies at Woodstock got massacred. After hearing that, Nate and Mick immediately run off to deal with it.
So, all of the Legends gather at Woodstock one way or another and find the unicorn. They’re enchanted until they see it maul a person. While Sara goes back to 2018 to get help from Constantine, the expert on demons, the others get hit with unicorn dust that makes them high – this is Woodstock after all. Constantine figures out a potion to expel the beast from the mortal realm, but the key ingredient is a virgin to attract the beast. Enter Gary, the Time Bureau’s most pathetic agent, and the Legend’s fanboy.
They manage to shove the unicorn back into hell, which is good because a unicorn that eats people’s hearts right out of their chests is just nasty, but the secret’s out now. Ava, it turns out, is cooler than we thought, and forgives Sara for lying to her, as well as screwing up the timeline again. This also explains how we’ll be seeing a lot more of Constantine (Matt Ryan), who has been upped as a series regular for the season. The Legends needed some fresh blood since Keiynan Lonsdale, who played Wally, chose to leave Legends and the Arrowverse behind, and Amaya (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) left the team to return to her village so she could lead and protect it. Unfortunately, this means the show replaced to people of color with a white man, but my hope is that we’ll see more diverse cast members join the team before the season is up.
Legends is as wacky and creative as ever. As Nate says in the episode, they “screwed things up for the more magical” this time.
