*Spoiler warning for Legends of Tomorrow, season 4, episode 2.
Sara and Zari in Salem in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Photo courtesy of the CW, screenshot by Linda Maleh.
In an appropriately themed Legends of Tomorrow episode for the week of Halloween, the Legends go back to the Salem witch trials to stop a … fairy godmother. Since an innocent woman, Jane Hawthorne, is being accused of witchcraft, by a man angry that she won’t sleep with him (what else is new?), her daughter, Prudence, is actually getting help from her fairy godmother to get back at the townspeople. The fairy godmother is, of course, one of those demons who escaped from hell last season, but she’s not exactly the Disney version. She sings, and wears a sparkly blue gown with a wand and a tiara, sure, but she’s also grisly.
She has no problem sending murderous birds to attack the townsfolk or the Legends for that matter. It’s a good thing the Legends have Constantine to help them now, though he’s not there for selfless reasons; something terrible is coming after him, but he’s not exactly chatting about what it is. He’s running for his life though, that part, at least, is clear. He tries to send the fairy godmother back to hell, but her life is tied Prudence’s, and he can’t send her back without sending Prudence back as well. The only way to send her back is of Prudence releases her.
The Legends manage to convince Prudence that they’re on her side by telling her that they’re there to save her mom, but Sara reveals later that they can’t do that, since in the original timeline, Jane died. Zari, outraged about all this, decides to go rogue and try to save Jane, but winds up getting captured herself. When the fairy godmother reveals to Prudence that the Legends were never really going to help her, Prudence has the fairy turn Ray and Mick into pigs, and escapes the time ship.
Constantine and Sara on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Photo courtesy of the CW, screenshot by Linda Maleh
Over in 2018, where Nate stayed to have a very tense dinner with his father, Ava is trying to come up with a plan to convince the government to keep funding the Time Bureau. She enlists Nate and Gary to help her, but things go sideways when it turns out Nate’s dad is on the government review committee. He rejects their plea for funding when they tell him that there are now magical creatures scattered across the timeline, mostly because he doesn’t believe them. To convince him, Nate goes to the time ship and picks up the pig-turned Ray to bring back to his dad, hoping that when his dad sees the pig turn into a person, he’ll believe.
In Salem, Sara, Prudence, and the fairy godmother stops the townspeople from burning Zari and Jane. Prudence wants the fairy godmother to kill the man who wanted to burn her mother, but Zari convinces her that even though men can do evil things, that doesn’t mean we should sink to their level. Prudence decides to release the fairy godmother from her service, and Constantine casts a spell to trap her.
Constantine walks her into the woods, but instead of sending her straight to hell, he asks her to help him defeat the demon coming after him in return for getting to stay on Earth. The fairy declines, telling him that the demon hunting him is much scarier to her than hell. When Constantine sends her back to hell, all of her spells come undone, and Ray and Mick turn back into humans. When Nate’s father sees the pig in Nate’s arms turn into a human right before his very eyes, he becomes convinced that the Time Bureau needs to continue to be funded. Now that he knows that Nate is a time traveler and a superhero (Nate shows him his steel powers), he tells Nate for the first time that he’s proud of him. Ava then offers Nate a job at the Time Bureau headquarters in 2018, and it looks like Nate’s considering taking it. This begs the question: are the Legends about to lose another member?
While the cruel things men do to women has never been more relevant, it’s unfortunate that it was a woman who was the true evil of this episode. This was a major missed opportunity to have the evil demon of the week be a manifestation of the patriarchy that the team has to take down. The element of the fairy godmother was also a little jarring, and outside of the tone that the setting of the Salem witch trials evokes. Legends took a big swing this episode, but to me, it feels like a miss.
