Hello and welcome back to Legends of Tomorrow, one of the happiest, most magical places on television. This show continues to be a blissful escape from the horrors of reality for a sweet, sweet hour every week. The introduction of magical creatures set loose across time and space (“fugitives”) is bringing us back to the monster-of-the-week format this show does so well, while the dangers that lurk around Constantine brew underneath. It’s all the best things about the first season of the show, but now with Sara in her rightful place at the helm. I’m so happy.

This week, Sara takes Constantine’s knuckle-bones (well, not HIS knuckl—you know what I mean!) and adapts the Waverider to help them detect magical fugitives wherever they may lurk. The team contemplates what kinds of horrors might await them next, like vampires or aswangs, not imagining what really lurks for them.

Much intense. Very fight.

Sara is about to tell the gang that Constantine declined her invitation when he shows up, suitcases in tow. He claims it’s because he decided the Legends were simply doomed without him, and that he’s here just as a consultant. Reluctant hero it is. The bone meter jangles and it’s time for their next fugitive; this time they’re heading to Salem, MA during the witch trials.

Sara, probably jazzed based on the last time she was there, makes a really bad pun and does really cute fingerguns and I would follow her into the flames of hell if she asked me to.

This is also hearkens back to when they picked her up from Salem after she “corrupted” all the ladies in town.

Constantine is a little confused. Why would a magical creature willingly go to a time and place that hates magic so much? But he’s not about to find out, because there’s no way he’s putting on a puritan costume and joining. Mick, seeing opting out as a choice here, decides to stay behind too.

Nate is off having an awkward dinner with his dad, and Ava is doing paperwork at the Bureau, so it’s just Sara, Zari, and Ray in Salem this go-round. They hear people chanting about someone being a witch, hear her accused of dancing naked in the woods (which she doesn’t TECHNICALLY deny) but she swears she hasn’t lain with the devil (“or with any man” since her husband died). Sara and the team watch as just then, crows swoop down and start pecking the hecklers’ eyes out.

Unfortunately this does nothing to dissuade the mob that Goodie Hawthorne is a witch, so they haul her away anyhow, leaving her teenage daughter distraught and calling after her.

When they report back to Constantine and Mick (who frankly nearly murdered each other being alone for like an hour), Constantine isn’t convinced Jane Hawthorne is the witch since she was bound and gagged, and spells tend to be verbal. And even though he’s being quite condescending, Sara’s just happy he’s participating.

It’s a delicate situation, when the scared foster dog starts to trust.

Meanwhile, back in the Time Bureau’s main office, Ava is burning the midnight oil, when she hears a strange noise.

“Wait what show am I on? Is this Stalker?”

The music ups its creep factor and for a minute I thought she was In Danger, but fear not, it was only Nate, who is in his bathrobe and crashing at the office because his dinner with his dad didn’t go well and he’s broke and needs a place to stay until the team comes back.

Ava is… unamused.

But looking GREAT in the button-up without the blazer .

Nate asks why she’s working so late anyway, and she says she’s working on the budget for the upcoming year. Nate offers to help and she looks at this over-excited dork in a bathrobe and a shower cap with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth and doesn’t see how he could possibly help her.

Back in Salem, Prudence is walking through the woods and singing beautifully while the Legends creep up behind her. These strangers leap out of the woods and start chanting magic words to try to trap her in a sigil while Sara reassures her that they’re here to help.

“I know a strange angry man is shouting latin words at you but everything is fine.”

Assuming the magical creature in question was possessing Prudence, Constantine demands it to reveal itself, but instead of anything coming out of the girl, a beautiful Fairy Godmother appears, fancy accent and all.

Sara is surprised to say the least.

“Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?”

At first the Fairy Godmother seems innocuous, if not sickly sweet, as she smiles and sings at them. Unfazed, Constantine tells her she has to go to hell now, but the Fairy Godmother tells the Legends that her and Prudence are linked now. If she goes to hell, the kid does, too.

She turns to Prudence and asks if she wants her to make the strangers ago away, and when she says yes, the Fairy Godmother begins to sing, and vines and birds start attacking the Legends.

Zari, a quick thinker, shouts out that they’re here to save Prudence’s mother. At that, the teen calls her Fairy Godmother off, and the team takes Prudence on the ship to protect her while they figure out how to help.

Back at the Time Bureau, Nate is leading Ava and Gary into a meeting when he sees his father there. He knows they’ll never get the budget approved if he sees Nate there, but Ava is too nervous to do this without him. She’s a little… slower to warm up to people than he is, and she knows instant charm is what they need right now.

“Listen, I don’t want to need your help any more than you do.”

Constantine says they have to make Prudence release the Fairy Godmother from her service, but which Zari is sure she’ll do if they just save her mother, but Sara says they can’t do that, because Jane died in the original version of the timeline; that’s something they can’t change.

Zari, remembering her own mother who she goes to the park to watch but not warn about her dire future, gets really upset at this. They said they would help Prudence, and now they’re not going to.

Well, not if Zari has anything to do with it. She sneaks off and uses the magic totem I totally forgot she had, making the air blow open Jane Hawthorne’s cell. But the thing is, she doesn’t want to be saved. She wants to forgive her enemies and let God’s will run its course.

“Have you been bonked on the head too many times or?”

Zari tries to reason with her, does that thing where she projects her own feelings onto Prudence. But Mama isn’t worried. Her daughter is strong, she’ll get through this. Mama locks herself back in her cell but Zari doesn’t look like she’s about to give up her mission.

Pop, six, squish, uh-uh, Cicero, Lipschitz.

Back in the Waverider, the Fairy Godmother appears to Constantine, her mean streak really coming through. She’s salty about glass slippers and royal balls, and is mad at humans for locking her away in a hell dimension for years and years. He accuses her of using Prudence for her own vendetta against humans and frankly, she doesn’t deny it.

In the budget pitch, Ava is trying to show off how much they accomplished, but Nate’s dad sees it as a job well done… and completed.

“I will move hell and high water before you put my girlfriend out of a job.”

But then Gary starts rattling off about magic and when he meets protests and wants proof, Gary whips his nipple out and Ava knows they’ve lost control of this meeting. Mr. Nate storms off, ordering the Time Bureau be closed down immediately.

Zari slinks in the shadows as the men drag Jane to a witch trial, and as she watches a man poke a birthmark to prove she’s a witch, Zari suddenly can’t stand by anymore. She uses her wind power, scaring the pants off these witch-obsessed villagers. She tries to get them on her side, tries to point out that the only evil here is in these men, but said men just call her a witch and try to grab her. Her anger takes over and she starts sucking the wind out of all of them, a terrifying but handy skill I don’t think she even knew she had.

“Man I really shouldn’t have watched so much Lost Girl right before bed.”

But she sees the women looking at her with fear in their eyes and realizes she’s becoming what they feared she was in the first place, and lets the men live.

On the Waverider, Prudence is getting anxious, worried that the Legends haven’t saved her mother yet. The Fairy Godmother fuels these doubts, showing Prudence a crystal ball recording of Sara saying they can’t save Jane because it was already part of the timeline. So Prudence is back on Team Fairy Godmother and runs off with her to wreak havoc.

Meanwhile, Ava goes back to Nate to beg him for help with his dad, but he thinks he’ll just screw it up. So Ava sits him down and gives him a pep talk, saying, “I know it’s hard doing good when it seems like no one notices.”

The good they do is /literally forgotten/ by everyone, which is kind of devastating.

She calls him a hero, and honestly even I felt inspired.

Nate pops back to the Waverider to get some proof of magic, because apparently turning into metal wouldn’t have been enough, and when he gets there he finds little piglets. Oh did I forget to mention that on the way out, the Fairy Godmother turned Ray and Mick into piglets? Well she did and in a hilarious turn of events, Nate can understand Pig Ray, who assures him the team will turn him back shortly, so Nate scoops him up and they head back to the Time Bureau.

In Salem, Zari and Jane are tied to a stake and are about the light the pyre when Sara shows up with a motherfucking crossbow.

Look at those two women in the background, they just realized how gay they are.

She’s not afraid of these angry men and does some fancy flips to prove it.

I’m pretty convinced Caity Lotz is an actual superhero.

Prudence shows up and has her Fairy Godmother freeze time and rescue Zari and Jane from the pyre, and has her put the evil man on there instead. Zari tries to talk her down and the Fairy Godmother baits her; she knows the future, she came from there, she knows these exact same witch hunts are going on for all eternity, taking slightly different forms. So she asks Zari if she can, in good conscience, tell Prudence that people get better. But of course Zari can’t do that. But what she can do is give Prudence advice that she’s only just now learning herself. I’m going to put her quote here in totality because I can’t possibly say it better than she did:

“People always fear what they don’t understand. And that fear turns them into monsters, but we can’t let it turn us into monsters, too. We have to be better than them.”

If Zari could take at least a one-episode break from making me cry, that’d be swell.

I am moved, we’re all moved, and Prudence especially is moved, so she releases the Fairy Godmother. She doesn’t need her anymore.

As soon as she’s released, her magic is broken, and Piglet Ray turns in to Regular Ray, naked as the day he was born. In response to the weight change, Nate turns metal, and it’s truly unclear which thing shocks Ray’s dad more. Either way, it was enough, and the Time Bureau is granted a $4.2 billion budget. Which is hilarious and definitely a way for them to wave their hands at any “but how do they afford…” questions because this show is better when you don’t overthink it.

The rest of the Legends tie up the Fairy Godmother and after getting the nod of approval from her Captain, Zari tells Prudence and Jane that, though they’ll have to relocate, they’re free now.

“Have you ever heard of Glendale? It’s just south of Riverdale. I think you’d like it there.”

Also, a thing of note, Zari’s totem had melted in the pyre fire and is now not a necklace but a hard stone forged in fire. It seemed to still work in stone form but it’s unclear if the fire changed it at all.

Constantine takes the Fairy Godmother out into the woods and she assumes he’s sending her to hell but instead he offers to be her new host. She scoffs at him and says she’d rather go to hell, because she knows what’s coming for him and she doesn’t want to contend with them.

And so he grants her wish and sends her to hell. Bippity boppity bye.

On the Waverider, Zari comes to apologize to Sara for going off on her about wanting to save Jane Hawthorne, but Sara understands. She has so much patience for Zari’s rage, because she was just a feral cat of rage for so long. But she also knows that talking about your pain helps keep it from turning into rage, so she’s here for Zari if she needs her.

CAPTAIN SARA LANCE, HERO AND FRIEND

Zari confesses that she found her mom back in 2018, but promises she didn’t save her, even though she wants to. Sara also understands this, as someone who lost her only sister, and who was called back to Arrow just to watch her father die. She understands wanting to save them, she understands the anger that bubbles up from not being able to, but she also knows that bottling it up makes it worse. Sara doesn’t have an easy answer for Zari, but she wants to work it out, together.

It was a beautiful moment and it reminded me of the Groundhog Day episode, where Zari finally understood that Sara did have their best interests at heart. Sara is a great leader, and she’s becoming a great friend to Zari. Which is also great, because on an ensemble show about mischief, mayhem, and mythteries, it’s not every day you get to explore the non-romantic bond between any two of the Legends.

It’s just… I really love friendship. Like, a lot. So this made me immeasurably happy.

After Nate and his dad patch things up, Ava and Nate share a high five and listen, Nate has always been my least favorite Legend. I didn’t actively dislike him, but he was occasionally annoying and often uninteresting to me. But pairing him up with Ava? This was genius. Because the “I don’t need your money” daddy issues wasn’t going to do it for me, but Nate and Ava as buds could be exactly the situation that could make me love him.

And it seems like this could be exactly where they’re going, because Ava offers Nate a job in the Time Bureau offices.

“We can exchange hair tips and talk about how awesome Sara is all day long.”

Next week, we’re going to PUNK ROCK LONDON. And I don’t know what kind of fugitive creatures could be lurking there, but I DO know that the outfits themselves will be pure magic.

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