Legends of Tomorrow: Season 4, Episode 16 - Hey, World!

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.




Plot

With Neron's true plan revealed and peoples' paranoia of the monsters that might be around them growing, The Legends have to find a way to fight fear itself. There's no logical way to win, so illogical means win out, as the team put on a show after bring Hank Heywood's dream of a magical theme park devoted to magical creatues to life.


Influences

Peter Pan (the fairy is clearly modeled on Tinkerbell, the ending where love and audience participation is used to bring a hero back from the dead), The Hellblazer comics of Jamie Delano (rules of Hell regarding soul trading), the Constantine The Hellblazer series (Neron as the chief villain, Neron's line about "Making Earth Hell Again"), Underworld Unleashed (a con-man beats Neron by getting him to break a deal with a hero), Field of Dreams (fathers and sons bonding theme, Ava and Sara quote "If you build it, they will come.") and The Greatest Showman (general aesthetic of carnival scenes, theme of seeing "freaks" as something wonderful).


Goofs

Is Supergirl really that well known of a figure on Earth 1 that she has fans dressing up like her? (Granting that Kara has helped save Earth 1 on three separate occasions now, she hasn't been that visible doing so.)


Performances

Again, it's hard to single any one actor out. But the most subtle gag of the episode goes to Nick Zano, for his reaction when Mick Rory gives Nate Heywood the diary of Brigid and reveals what he last used it for. He subtly makes a face and tries to rub his hand clean... for all the good it does him.

Tala Ashe has the most emotional performance, with Zari Tomaz sacrificing herself so she can spend one last moment with the man she loves before she forgets him forever and he dies.

Casper Crup manages to redeem his performance as Vandal Savage in Season One with one of the best cameos ever.


Artistry

The special effects budget for the year clearly went into animating the dragons.


Trivia Of Tomorrow

11 year old Zari Tomaz names her baby dragon Mithra. In Persian mythology, Mithra was the god of light and friendship.The name Mithra translates to "friend" in Iranian.

The plot of the episode borrows heavily from Underworld Unleashed - the storyline which introduced the character of Neron. In that story, Neron attempted to take over the world by working his way to where he could acquire the purest soul on Earth - that of Captain Marvel. He was thwarted, strangely enough, by James Jesse, a.k.a. The Trickster, who convinced Captain Marvel to offer his soul up in exchange for Neron undoing every other deal he had made since being resurrected. Neron got greedy and tried to touch Captain Marvel's soul, forgetting that the rules of Hell didn't let him make bargains in exchange for wholly selfless reasons. This caused Neron to lose every sole he had taken control of.


Technobabble/Arcana

Nora is able to use her magic wand as a dousing rod to locate John Constantine in Hell.

Soul tokens are the currency of Hell. While a soul is being tortured, their token (which generally resembles a large coin) is traded around between demons. Whoever holds the token can summon the soul to them, no matter where they are in Heaven or Earth.

Demonic banks store and protect soul tokens. They generally have rules against storing living people or souls without tokens.

John knows a spell that allows him to assume the appearance and voice of another person. He uses this spell to try and trick Astra into thinking he's Neron but she doesn't fall for it. Strangely enough, Neron falls for it when John makes himself and Nate look like one another.

A soul whose body is still alive cannot manifest as anything other than a soul token on Earth so long as their body is still possessed by a demon.

A demon must remain true to their word once they have made a bargain for a soul. If they violate the terms of their deal, they lose the soul and all of the souls they currently own.


Dialogue Triumphs

(John is strapped to a rack, being tortured by Calibraxis. Nora strides into the room with far more confidence than you'd expect for a woman dressed as a fairy godmother.)

Calibraxis: Who the hell are you? 

Nora: Really? The dress doesn't sell it? 

Calibraxis: (mockingly) You didn't tell me you had a Fairy Godmother, John.

Nora: Not his. Gary's.

John: (sympathetically) Ugh. And I thought I was the one being tortured.

Neron: Denizens of Hell! For far too long, we have been forced to live like insects underneath the Earth. Soon, a door will open. Look to the sky and await my signal. With me as your king, we will make Earth Hell again!

(Gary is accompanying Mona as she feeds the magical creatures on the Waverider.)

Mona: Stay calm. They smell fear.
Gary: What if fear is my natural scent?!

Nate: My dad had a dream to build a theme park that people would come to see because of magic. That's what the world needs right now, a place for people to come and see the wonder of these creatures in person!

Zari: What about Brigid's diary? If we put it in Nate's hands, he could just dream us up a theme park.

Sara: Z, you are a genius! The... (stops and makes a face in realization) Ugh. It's in the Time Bureau!

Ava: It's okay, so we just break in, but it's not gonna be easy. Even if it isn't demon central, the vault that it's being held in is practically impenetrable.

Mick: (holding up the diary) Oh, it's penetrable.

Ava: Oh, my God!

(Ava runs over to Mick, hugs him and kisses his cheek.)

Ava: I love you, Rory.

Mick: Mm-hmm. (hands the book to Nate) Give it back when you're done. Buck and Garima's sexual odyssey is far from over.

(John and Nora bust down the door to the torture chamber where Ray is.)

Nora: Ray?!

(Ray looks up from a table where he and another man is stacking several large rectangular blocks.) 

Ray: Nora! John! We're just about to start another game of Giant Jenga. You got to meet my old friend!  Well, technically, my new friend. (grinning) We used to be mortal enemies.

(The other man stands up and turns around. It is Vandal Savage.)
Vandal: Oh, hi, guys. Well, you're just in time for the next round!
(Ray puts an arm around Vandal's shoulders and they both smile.)

(The Legends have just shot a commercial for Heyworld, with Sara as Supergirl, Nate as Green Arrow and Gary as The Flash.)

Zari: Guys, I feel like that would have worked a little bit better with the real Trinity.

Sara: Yeah, well, I asked, and they said hard pass.

Nate: (beat) We should have done the crossover.

Sara: Yeah.

Nate: I can't believe it all comes down to this. After years of anxiety of whether or not I could live up to my dad's expectations, I'm about to bring his crazy dream to life knowing what it could cost me.

Zari: Nate, I'm not going anywhere. You got this.

(The Ogre, The Minotaur and Baba Yaga enter the center ring.)

Nate: Monsters! What do you think, White Canary? Should we show 'em what we got? 

Sara: Wait! Hold on! What if, instead of showing 'em what we got, we ask them what they have?

Nate: Hmm? You mean get to know them? 

Sara: What if, getting to know them, we realize that we have nothing to fear?!

Nate: Minotaur, your passion is music. Why don't you show us what you got?
(Gary runs out with a guitar, which he hands to the Minotaur as the crowd starts booing)

Kid: They said this was a superhero show!

(The crowd begins booing. Mick, who is backstage, growls.)
Mick: These brats don't respect art!

John: (on seeing the portal to Hell open) Oh, it's gonna take more than a musical number to stop this.

(As everyone is holding hands while singing Sweet Baby James.)
Nora: Didn't they do this last year?
Ava: We're part of the circle this time.

Continuity

Nate and Zari go back to retrieve the dragon egg Zari left at her childhood home in 415.

Tabitha says that Charlie is more than just a shape-shifter, but it is never explained what she means by that.

Nora rescues John from being tortured in Hell.

Zari was bullied whens he was 11 and the other kids made fun of her clothes, saying 'Zari, Zari, why's your clothes so sorry?"

The timeline is changed as young Zari took the freshly hatched dragon to school one day and the other kids loved it. It was the first time in her life she ever felt accepted.

Young Zari taught the dragon how to do a little dance on command.

One of Zari's teachers sees Mithra and uses the Eyes app to call in the Time Bureau, who take him away.

Tabitha forces Charlie to take the form of a Senator during a Congressional hearing on the magical monster crisis and forces her to suddenly change into the giant octopus from 405.

John makes a bargain with Astra - help him get into Neron's vault and get Ray's soul token and he'll kill Neron so the Triumvirate can take over Hell again.

Charlie figures out that Tabitha and Neron aren't out to take over Hell and that the souls were just a means to another end - gathering fear energy.

The video of a young Zari and her dancing dragon goes viral, proving that most people can see magical creatures as something besides a threat.

Astra starts pocketing other soul tokens once she is in Neron's vault.

Nate uses Brigid's Diary to finish building Hey-World in a day.

Gideon tells Zari that her future-predicting program has noted a potential change in her personal timeline. Building Hey-World could help to stem people's fears of metahumans and magical creatures, stopping the Anti-Metahuman laws of 2029 from passing and helping to bring about a new era of understanding and tolerance by 2042. Zari's parents would live out the rest of their lives in Seattle in peace and her brother would never die. Of course if the timeline is altered, Zari will also never have a need to avenge her family which means she'll never meet the Legends.

Sara says that Zari can stay on the Waverider in the temporal zone until the new timeline solidifies so she'll be protected from the future changing.

Nora and John find Ray's soul token in Neron's vault but they push Astra to take them to where Ray's soul is in Hell. They find Ray in a torture chamber playing board games with Vandal Savage.

Vandal Savage was last seen in 116.

Sara, Nate and Gary film a commercial for Hey-World while dressed as Supergirl, Green Arrow and The Flash.

The Ogre's name is Fredrick and he dreams of being a singer.

The Minotaur can play guitar.

John learns the terms of Ray's deal with Neron from 413.

John tells Sara and Nate about Ray's deal and how if they could trick Neron into killing Nate, that would free Ray's body and all the souls Neron trapped.

Young Zari and her mother go to Hey-World on its opening day.

Mick writes a stage-show pitting superheroes against a group of monsters, but deciding to talk to them instead of fighting. The crowd does not like the show.

The Monitor shows up as the crowd is booing the Legends. He does not look pleased.

Tabitha arrives with a fully-grown dragon as the crowd is getting ready to leave the show.

The Monitor can be seen eating popcorn when the dragon arrives.

Sara is saved from the dragon when young Zari runs up to it and gets it to dance. When it does it's dance, it's tail knocks over Tabitha and makes her drop her staff. The dragon then eats her, which causes it to shrink back to it natural baby size.

Neron uses the staff to open the portal to Hell himself.

Nate and John trick Neron by using John's magic to trade appearances.

Neron snaps Nate's neck, thinking he is John. This causes him to vacate Ray's body, enabling John to work a spell to send him to Hell and seal the portal.

John is able to restore Ray's soul to his body.

Zari leaves the Temporal Zone to be with Nate as he is dying.

Hank Heywood's ghost greets Nate, saying he was waiting around to see Nate and his friends beat Neron before he went to "the Happy Place."

Hank possesses Mick Rory long enough to get the crowd to start singing James Taylor's Sweet Baby James, like he did in 406. This prompts John to use Tabitha's staff and the love the crowd feels to resurrect Nate.

Nora notes this is a lot like the events of 318, where the Legends joined hands and channeled the power of love to slay Mallus.

Zari is replaced by her younger brother, Behrad Tomaz, who wears a bracelet with the Air Totem of Zambesi in it like hers. She seems to share a friendship with Nate similar to the one between him and Ray and Sara addresses all three of them as The Time Bros.

The episode ends with Astra sending the evil soul tokens she was collecting to Earth, to give them a second chance. There are 16 tokens in total. The eight we can read the names on include Mary Tudor, Joseph Stalin, Caligula, Charles Manson, Genghis Khan, Lizzie Borden, John Wayne Gacy, and Rasputin.


Location

Hell - A Torture Chamber
Zari's Elementary School - Washington D.C. - 2019
Capitol Hill - Washington D.C. - 2019
Hell - A bar called The Pit
Hey-World - Somewhere Outside Washington D.C. - 2019


Untelevised Adventures

Mick Rory broke into the Time Bureau at some point to steal the Diary of Brigid.


The Bottom Line

Silly and sappy and altogether perfect. The only bad thing about this episode is we'll have to wait the better part of 7 months to see the next season.