Sunday, February 9, 2020

Legends of Tomorrow: Season 5, Episode 2 - Meet The Legends

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




Plot

Sara, Ray and Rory return from the Crisis to find that the Legends are now famous and a documentary is being made about their adventures. With the Time Bureau shut down after the Heyworld debacle, the Legends are the only people ready to deal with it when Rasputin returns from the dead and history is threatened. John Constantine knows why the worst people in history are escaping from Hell, but he's otherwise occupied and dealing with his own documentary crew.


Influences

This Is Spinal Tap and reality TV shows.


Performances


Caity Lotz continues to slay following Crisis on Infinite Earths, pouring her heart out in her speech about needing to talk to everyone about the weirdness she just dealt with and everything being different because of the fame and documentary.


Trivia Of Tomorrow

The episode revealed a new business card for John Constantine. Calling the number (646-396-8703) on a real phone plays a voice mail message from Gary Green encouraging people go leave a message and check out the new merch on his website, which has John Constantine t-shirts with original art by Gary Green.

Nate notes that Rasputin was a noted manipulative hornball who posed as a mystic adviser to the Russian royal family. One of the lesser reported facts about Rasputin was that he was a rampant womanizer. Indeed, he earned the name Rasputin (Russian for "the debauched one") in reference to his habit of pursuing women as a teenager.

Ray notes that Rasputin was hard to kill, having been poisoned with cyanide, shot in the chest and ultimately drowned before finally dying. This is true to the accounts of Rasputin's eventual death in the real world.

The art for the condolence card that Behrad draws for Sara regarding Oliver dying was drawn by fan-favorite artist Lord Mesa.

The method by which Rasputin is finally stopped - being exploded from within by an expanding shrinking man - was suggested by fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a way by which Ant-Man could kill Thanos. However, their suggestion was that Ant-Man could crawl up Thanos' butt rather than being swallowed by him. It is believed that The Atom's stunt in this episode was a nod to this so called "Thanus" theory.


Technobabble/Arcana


A Class-5 time-quake is especially dangerous.

Ray is able to triangulate the time-quake to track the disturbance to St. Petersburg in 1917.

Behard speculates that Gideon is suffering from phantom data. After Nate describes his own vague feelings regarding a woman he can't remember who he was in love with before he came back from the dead, he wonders if Gideon is instead trying to reconcile data from two different timelines.

Nate wonders if he has split memories or partial amnesia.

An Encore cannot truly die on Earth, so long as the chit for their soul is still in Hell.

Rasputin has actual mystic powers, including the ability to read auras, hypnotize others and create protective shields in addition to the powers afforded him as an Encore.

Rasputin is able to speak English thanks to temporal linguistic dysplasia. This is later said to be a plot hole in Kevin Harris' movie when the Legends lie and say the whole thing was faked.

Constantine has researched a new spell which allows him to travel between Earth and Hell. It requires that he consume part of the body of an Encore while standing in a magic circle, uttering a specific chant and then setting the material forming the circle on fire.

The chant Constantine uses to travel to Hell is: "Soul become my soul, flesh become my flesh. Hades, firstborn of Cronus and Rhea, I call upon you."


Dialogue Triumphs

Ava: Before you object, let me explain...

(John has discovered that the demon possessing the boy he is saving is an old contact.)
John: Yeah, well, I could murder a pint right about now. Fancy a drink?
Masher: You're buying.
John: You've got it, let's go.
Gary: Uh, excuse me, greatest of warlocks, but what about Edgar's mother?
(John nods considering this as if he just realized the problem with taking a teenage boy in his pajamas out to a bar.)
John: Good thinking, G-man. We'll take the fire escape.

Ava: (reading her self-published card) "Dear Sara, I'm sorry the vigilante you slept with when he was already dating your sister died. Some say it's better to have loved and lost, but I hope you never loved him at all."

Rasputin: It is hard coming back to life. I think, what will make me happy? So I kill the man who killed me. But am I happy? (shrugs) Eh.

(The team is fighting their way out of Rasputin's palace.)
Ava: Mission's blown! We need to retreat!
Mick: (in background) I'm not done with you, you rat!
Ray: Good thing Sara's not watching this.
(Cut to The Waverider. Thanks to the documentary crew footage streaming on their monitors, Sara IS watching it. Without a word, Behard hands her the glass full of dark liquor she was drinking earlier. She drains it in one pull.)

Ray: Look, Sara, we're really sorry. We thought we could make things easier for you by taking this off of your plate.
Sara: And risking your own necks. Look, I already have one dead friend on my plate. I'm good there. And you know, none of you self-absorbed mega stars even bothered to ask me how I was doing!
Ava: Look, Sara, I told them not to mention Oliver, okay? I thought you wouldn't want to be reminded.
Sara: Reminded? What, did you think that I could just forget that my friend died?
Ava: No, I look, I know things have been crazy around here.
Sara: Crazy around here? You still have no idea what I saw out there.
(There is a long pause. Nate finally speaks. Softly.) 
Nate: What did happen?
Sara: Countless Earths died! I became a paragon and traveled back to the big bang. We restarted the universe and now no one even remembers what we've changed!
Ava: It's a lot to process.
Sara: Yeah, I know. So you could see why I wanna talk to my friends about it. (looking to documentary crew, barely holding back the tears.) And instead I get cameras in my face.

Ava: (as John sends himself to Hell) You know, sometimes what happens on this ship really would be hard for an audience to follow.

Zari: Nate. If you're seeing this, we altered my future at Heyworld. I don't know where I'll be or who I'll be but I know that I love you. Find me.


Continuity

In the Post-Crisis timeline, the Legends are now publicly known and famous.

Nate shot a Japanese liquor commercial in his Citizen Steel costume.

Mona did a centerfold shoot on a Beebo-skin rug.

Mick Rory hands out the Oscar for Best Picture.

Documentary maker Kevin Harris is allowed to join the Legends and film them on the job.

According to Ava, The Time Bureau was shut down by the US Congress following 416. She's currently unemployed.

Ava was able to keep the Waverider from being confiscated by the US Government by agreeing to allow the documentary be made

Senator Wellington - the Senator in charge of the hearings regarding the Time Bureau - was the same one Charlie impersonated in 416.

Nate is described as a superhero/amusement park impesario/historian. He also openly admits to being raised from the dead.

Behard Tarazi is the new engineer of the Waverider. He is said to be from the year 2044, and was just born in 2020.

Behard is a recreational marijuana user.

Charlie abandons the Legends and takes the jump-ship to go party, saying it has been boring since the team became A-List superheroes.

Mona is now employed as Mick's literary agent.

Gary Green freed Nora Darhk from her obligations as his Fairy Godmother in exchange for her granting one final wish; making him John Constantine's apprentice.

Gideon is suffering from some sort of virus that is causing her use of language to become erratic.

Nora Darhk is now traveling the world granting children's wiishes as a fairy godmother. She and Ray are still dating.

The Legends discover that the anachronism which caused a time-quake is the apparent resurrection of Grigori Rasputin - the infamous Mad Monk.

Sara and Behrad work to fix Gideon while Ray, Nate and Mona work to research Rasputin to try and guess what his plan is now that he's back from the dead.

Ray, Nate and Mona debate calling the resurrected villains evil-do-overs, villain-agains and encores.

John and Gary are called to help a single mother who believes her son Edgar has been demonically possessed.

Edgar is possessed by Masher - the demon John drilled for information on the state of Hell's stock-market for souls in 415.

Behard's parents don't know that he's a time-traveling superhero. They think he's in business school.

Behard gives Sara a condolence card with a cutesy picture of her, Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance having a tea party.

Sara thinks condolence cards are super awkward.

Ava plots to kill Rasputin.Mick agrees to help her.

Mona writers a love letter from the Czarnia to Rasputin that she hopes will convince him to run off with her and forget about securing political power.

Ray and Nate hit upon the idea that Rasputin is going to get revenge on the man who tried to kill him and focus on trying to stop that from happening. That plan is almost immediately abandoned.

Ray installs an ATOM-Cam on his costume.

Nate hits on a new plan posing as a reporter with a film crew come to interview Rasputin as part of a news reel.

Mick stops Mona from giving her love letter to Rasputin. He reads it and says it isn't bad.

Rasputin claims to see Nate's aura and senses that he too has returned from the dead. He also says that Nate is not complete and there is a whole in his heart, because he loved someone and forgot them.

Masher confirms that Astra has released some of the worst human souls in history on Earth.

John contacts Sara and tells her that human souls damned to Hell are being sent back to Earth.

Nate is able to recall Zari while under hypnosis.

Rasputin has some sort of mystic ability to repel fire, bending the flames of Mick Rory's heat gun away from him.

Ava described herself as lacking delicacy and being unable to handle people well in her own performance review.

Ava is a stress cleaner.

The Legends left the production team for the documentary behind when they escaped.

Rasputin plots to kill the Russian royal family with cyanide-laced tea cakes. This was the same method that was originally used to assassinate him.

Rasputin is able to hypnotize an entire mob of Russian soldiers (including the disgusied Behard) into attacking Sara.

Rasputin is eventually stopped after Sara throws a shrunken Ray into Rasputin's mouth while he is laughing manically for the camera and Ray grows to full size once inside Rasputin's stomach.

Rasputin is placed in a series of jars in the Waverider fridge until another way can be found to contain him.

Kevin Harris' film is screened before a small crowd that loves it.

To make Sara happy, the Legends speak after the movie is screened and say the whole thing was made up. Kevin Harris says this will doom his career.

Mick solves the Legends' money problems by stealing a Faberge egg worth $50 million while in the past.

John returns to the Waverider, apparently having left Gary behind to run his office in New York.

Mick decides to retire from writing, as being Rebecca Silver is getting in the way of his stealing things.

Mona takes over writing the Rebecca Silver novels for Mick and leaves the Legends.

Mona says that Mick's last novel, Carjacked, was terrible.

The glitches regarding Gideon's memory are discovered to only go back two years. This corresponds to when Zari first joined the Legends.

Gideon finds one final glitch in her memory of the Heyworld incident. Before her memory resets, she shows an image of Zari in place of Behrad and plays a video Zari left behind for Nate before time was rewritten so she was never a legend.


Location

2020 - Washington D.C., USA.
1917 - Saint Petersburg, Russia
2020 - New York City, USA.


Untelevised Adventures

There is now an entirely new history where Behard existed in place of Zari.

The Legends all became celebrities during the past few months.


The Crisis Factor

Ava, who is used to being obeyed and running things, doesn't give orders to the rest of the Waverider crew regarding her plans to kill Rasputin, allowing three plans to be executed at once and total chaos breaking out.



The Bottom Line

An uneven episode, all things considered. As usual the best bits are the emotional bits, with Nick Zano and Caity Lotz getting the best moments as they deal with their respective traumas. Gary and Mona are quickly given an excuse to be moved off-camera and out of the main storyline, perhaps never to return again after their prominent role last season. Everything is shuffled around quickly to establish the new status quo and there's more focus on that than anything else.  Still, the charisma of the cast largely makes it work.

No comments:

Post a Comment