Hello and welcome to my shiny new Legends of Tomorrow recaps! Jes Macallan was upgraded to a series regular, and we graduated from Boobs on Your Tube coverage to FULL-LENGTH RECAPS! As soon as I saw this episode I knew it was time, and lucky for me Heather agreed. So here I am to shout about Sara Lance and Ava Sharpe throughout space and time.

This first episode was so much fun, and it highlighted every reason I love this show. Whip-smart humor, ridiculous sci-fi shenanigans, misfit teamwork, hilarious mishaps, period piece perfection, and ladies loving ladies.

What’s great about Legends is that each week is a romp and the through-lines don’t really matter as much as the characters — in fact, last seasons running plot about the totems is the origin of what my friend Bridget calls, “totems shmotems.” When it comes down to it, those things aren’t why we watch the show. So there’s not much that carries over for this season; all you need to remember is that they let the Big Bad out of a hell dimension to kill it (with Beebo) and other things like dragons slipped out before they closed the portal again.

So the Legends have spent the last five months cleaning up their anachronisms and keeping their eye out for more ooglies. When we rejoin them, they’re overseeing the Beatles landing in the US, talking about which member they’d bang… classic Legends.

Things are going well until Paul Revere shows up, but it’s not long before they set things right. Our little band of weirdos seems to have their act down pat.

And their lewks, too.

Later, back on the Waverider, Sara finds her team moping around. They’re on a time-traveling spaceship and they look… bored. Sara’s like, “Hey remember that one time we SAVED INDEPENDENCE AS WE KNOW IT” but they are nonplussed.

“If not even my arms have roused you, something is surely wrong.”

They want to fight dragons and other mysterious monsters. Ray makes a joke about ratings — Time Bureau ratings of course — and Sara tells them to get it together. They’re finally doing things right, they’re finally fixing more messes than they make, they’re finally HEROES.

Gideon interrupts to say that Avagram wants to talk to Sara, and Captain Lance all but skips over because she’s excited to see her girl.

“Why yes I will openly flirt with you via official Time Bureau channels.”

But the Avagram is short and curt and demands they all come to the DC office at once. As soon as she hangs up, Sara whips around and demands to know who told her about the dragons.

On the way into the office, they try to beat the truth out of Gary, asking why they’re in trouble, but he shoves them into the room and they realize it’s actually a surprise party for them. They fixed all the anachronisms, they finished their missions. And Ava is so proud.

AND SO CUTE

Ava takes Sara back to her apartment and they have a little… fun. Then Sara starts to leave to go back to her team because a pirate on furlow is trouble in the making, but Ava asks her to stay. And more than just the night. She wants her to move in with her. And yes this really happened, you didn’t actually click away from my recap and start reading fanfic!

I like this Timeline! I hope Barry doesn’t run too fast and fuck it up!

At first Sara looks like she’s balking — and at first I’m not surprised. Sara Lance has always been terrified of commitment, terrified of getting hurt, terrified of hurting. But that’s not why she paused. She was just thinking. And though she wants it to just be part time so she can still be a Legend, she’s totally on board with this whole cohabiting thing.

Also Ava makes a U-Haul/Subaru joke and it’s amazing.

Ava actually literally squees and they kiss and it’s perfect.

Ava is all of us.

Sara goes out to the kitchen to get more champagne but Constantine decides there’s too much happiness going on and he wants to throw his wet blanket on it. He grumbles about darkness and Sara is like, “Can you possibly NOT?” but he has bones that he thinks will say some mystical magical mayhem is afoot. Ava comes out to see what’s taking Sara so long and Sara promptly shows Constantine the door, hiding the bones. She sends Ava back to bed, reassuring her that Constantine is just being a pest and is not a threat to their relationship.

LE NUZZLE

But as soon as Ava is out of sight, the bones move, and Sara knows that, though his timing was bad, Constantine was right.

While the Captain is away, the Legends will play, so Nate and Mick decide to go make some trouble. They sneak into a mansion to rob it only to discover (well, we discover, and Mick discovers; Nate knew) that it was Nate’s parents’ house, and while his mother is immediately feeding them sandwiches, it’s clear Nate is not a daddy’s boy.

After seeing the spooky bones, Sara goes to the Time Bureau office and wakes up a drunk and sleeping Gary to have him help her find a place in time that might be hiding a monster.

:instinctively empties pockets at Sara’s feet:

The biggest hiccup is during Woodstock, which could be a monster everyone is too high to register as one, so Sara jacks Gary’s time carrier and bounces back to 1969.

Ray also noticed the blip and thinks, instead of a monster, it might be Nora, so he heads back to Woodstock, too, his buddy Zari hot on his heels. The first thing Ray and Zari find is a pile of rainbow goo and a corpse with its heart missing. A curious juxtaposition if we’ve ever seen one.

At the same time, Nate’s dad mentions the Woodstock Massacre, so Nate and Mick end up back in 1969 too. They do a little ’60s-style block formation and end up together, looking cute as heck. They quickly find the reason for the magic meter going off when they spot a beautiful, magical unicorn dazzling people with its happy butterflies and rainbow lights. Everything is groovy until the unicorn IMPALES a woman and EATS HER HEART OUT. Literally. Totally uncool, man.

Before taking back off into the forest, the unicorn sprays everyone with rainbow glitter goo from its horn. Well, everyone except Sara, who dove behind her team like a good captain should.

Sara wants to solve this without involving Ava, because she likes that Ava looks at her like a hero, like the woman who saved the world, and she doesn’t want to give that up.

I love Woodstock, turns out. Who knew. #sideboob

So Sara heads off to find Constantine, who warns her that her friends are all going to be useless for a little while due to the hippie acid goo.

And sure enough, back at Woodstock, everyone is hallucinating. And it seems like everyone is seeing something they feel like they lost. Nate sees his father, Mick sees his rat Axl, Ray sees Nora. Which is why it made me pretty sad that Zari just saw love.

On their way back, Sara tells Constantine about why she came to him for help instead of Ava, how she doesn’t want to screw things up, and Constantine gives her the oh-so-helpful advice that people always leave and love is a lie and she should probably just break up with Ava now to save everyone the pain of it.

And the Sara Lance we once knew — hell, even the Sara Lance of last season — would have taken this seed of doubt and held it until it grew into a tree that rooted her somewhere far away from Ava. But this Sara Lance has been through too much with Ava already. They’ve already had the conversation about danger and clones and the chaotic lives they lead. Of course she’s scared. But they chose each other, and they keep choosing each other.

“If you don’t cut down all this grumbling, I’m sending you to Star City.”

Sara won’t give up on Ava, on their relationship. Love is not a weakness, love is what makes us strong.

Constantine can go choke on his seed of doubt for all she cares.

Okay fine for all I care. Sara says working with her team might do him some good. Even Mick isn’t quite this cynical anymore. Mostly.

Though cut to her team and they’re all kind of useless, high as hippie kites. So Constantine and Sara get to work, Sara urging him on by telling him, one bisexual to another, that the Sexual Revolution depends on them getting this right.

So they visit some ’60s icons to gather ingredients for a spell to send the demon unicorn back to the hell dimension it came from but the last thing they need is the saliva of a virgin, so they go find Gary. Gary is mostly just happy to be invited even though he’s 100% bait for the murderous unicorn.

Oh also Gary implies that he and Constantine fooled around a bit (but not enough for him to lose his virginity status, at least not according to the laws of sorcery).

“Sounds like you two lit the black flame candle if you know what I mean.”

The unicorn appears and bares its horrible fangs right up in Gary’s face and Constantine starts a spell he maybe should have started prepping like 30 seconds sooner and then the beautiful white coat and rainbow essence of the unicorn is stripped away and all that remains is a rotting thestral-looking creature. Constantine sucks the demoncorn through the portal, and the Legends save Gary from going with it. Before it disappears from whence it game, the unicorn takes one last lunch out of the portal at Gary and nibbles a nipple right off.

Ray mentions the ratings again and says, “People do love the supernatural” or should I say Supernatural aka the wildly popular show also on the CW. 85% of the time when a show makes a meta joke I hate it, but with Legends it just WORKS.

And then Zari swoops in to bring things down a notch. Because Legends likes to remind you it’s 50% romp, 25% friendship and love, but also 25% heartbreak. Zari goes to talk to Ray, who is bummed they didn’t find Nora, and tries to get him to just let it go. She takes him to a park where her mother is pushing her own tiny self on a swing. She says it would be so easy to tell her to go to Canada before the country she worked so hard to get to would turn on her. She feels guilty every day that goes by that she didn’t warn her.

Zari needs a hug and I volunteer as tribute.

Zari’s eyes fill with tears as she watches her mother’s eyes light up as she laughs and lovingly plays with her daughter. “How could anyone be afraid of her?” she asks.

It hit very close to home and it’s fucking heartbreaking. But that’s what I love about this show. Mystical magical nonsense and real life issues, all in one episode.

Oh and also domestic relationships between two women.

Like how Ava has made dinner and is hanging up Sara’s Time Bureau awards because she’s so proud of her.

Two blondes in a relationship is truly groundbreaking. Dare to defy.

Seeing how proud Ava is, Sara breaks. If this is going to cave in on itself, it has to happen now. So she blurts out the truth about the portal and the magical creatures and that she kept it from Ava so that she didn’t think her girlfriend was a major screw-up. Ava just laughs and says she knows; Gary told her about the unicorn. Sara’s confused. If she knew about the unicorn, why did she make dinner instead of packing Sara’s scary slippers? Ava calls her a goober and says she loves her. No matter what. And she doesn’t think she’s a screw-up.

Sara can’t believe her damn luck, that in all the timelines in all the worlds, she found Ava Sharpe in hers. Sara says she loves Ava right back.

Sara deserves this. We deserve this.

Sara tells Ava that while she’d love nothing more than to be with her always, now with more monsters on the loose, she really has to be with her team. Ava understands — like really, truly, maturely understands — and says she wants the relationship to keep evolving, even if it doesn’t match the typical path relationships often take.

They’ll figure things out their own way.

These two are the true unicorns.

IT’S BEAUTIFUL AND IT’S PERFECT AND I LOVE IT.

Eh hem.

Anyway the episode ends with Sara inviting Constantine to the team, Constantine being a butt about it, Sara leaving, and Constantine getting attacked by an unseen force who writes cryptic messages to him on the mirror.

I don’t know about you, but I loved this episode, I loved writing a full recap for this episode, and I love that we’re going down a magical route this season. It looks like next week we’ll be dealing with a fairy godmother gone wrong, so I kind of hope we keep up the trend of traditionally “good” icons being demon nasties.

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