Previously on Legends of Tomorrow, which I know was approximately 87 years ago, we learned Charlie was not only a shapeshifter but also one of the Fates and she embarked on a mission to beat her sisters to the race for the pieces of the Loom. Also, Mick had a kid, Zari altered her own timeline to gift us with the CatChat Celebrity version of herself, and Avalance remained adorable as ever.

We open this week in 1977, three nights after Charlie borrowed Amaya’s face and joined the Legends, her old punk band The Smell was meant to perform in London. But before the concert can really pop off, a mysterious figure murders the bouncer, and I won’t lie to you, I saw some red pleather and what I mistook for a stake and my first thought was VAMPIRE SLAYER but then when the petite blonde did not start slaying but instead turned into a pure light that burned a man from the inside, I knew we weren’t dealing with The Chosen One.

Just some other blonde in leather with… wait are those knives made of BONES?

Up on the Waverider, Zari wakes up in a nightmare of her own, with a Beebo staring at her and a Nate in her bed. Gideon informs her that she sleepwalked there in the night, but Zari cannot fathom why. Nate tries to reassure her that nothing happened but Zari hates literally all of this so she storms out.

“I was really hoping you were wrong and I was dating Charlie in the last timeline.”

She runs into Charlie who is loving Zari’s walk of shame look but also does not hesitate to flirt with her. One by one Zari runs into Legend after Legend, none of whom are particularly scandalized; except Zari of course, who is extremely flustered by this whole ordeal.

Charlie is ready to go out with Constantine to find another piece of the Loom, when she learns about the massacre at her old bandmates’ concert. Ava and Sara find her and try to comfort her, but she knows it’s her sister who did this, what with the man burning up from the inside, so she blames herself.

This episode was bookended with Avalance comforting a friend together and it’s just so pure and good and I wish they would co-comfort me.

Constantine sees this as a reason to speed up their search, but Charlie isn’t in the mood. She storms off and also, she blows Sara off saying she couldn’t understand, and to Sara’s credit she agrees, but also, of everyone on that timeship, Sara is the one who would be most likely to understand what Charlie is going through. She’s suffered more loss than any one person should, and also an ex-evil version of her sister is running around on Earth Prime right this very minute. But anyway, Sara sympathizes with Charlie and tells Constantine to put the hunt for the Loom on hold.

Get you a girl who can pull off a tank top and a turtleneck with equal ease.

But as soon as Sara and Ava leave the room, Constantine does some magic and transfers the ring’s locator energy into a talisman which points him in the direction of British Columbia.

At this point, the woman we now know is Atropos beebops down to hell and goes to chat with the Clockmaker about how her sister Clothos is disguised as a human named Charlie. The Clockmaker is delighted to learn this, because she knows a shapeshifter named Charlie who hangs out with one John Constantine, whomst she can track. And she’ll do this for Atropos because she’s her sister. THAT’S RIGHT, THE CLOCKMAKER IS LACHESIS and frankly I feel foolish for not realizing this before. As soon as Charlie came out as a Fate I should have put together that the person literally fiddling with how long people live was the allotter.

Anyway, Lachesis tells Atropos where to find Constantine, who is of course going against Sara’s orders and went to find the piece of the loom himself.

When the girls realize where Constantine is, they set off to find them, but on their way out, Mick storms in all out of sorts, so Ava offers to stay behind and deal with that so he doesn’t set the Waverider on fire while they’re gone. Sara gives her a lil kiss and off they pop.

I am always the Charlie of this situation.

Sara and Charlie track Constantine to a forest in Canada, where they find a notice that Supernatural is shooting there. Sara is PUMPED but my brain is broken because half the CW shows are in the same universe, but this implies that in that universe, some other CW shows are still CW shows… Anyway, Sara loves Supernatural so much that Dean is her “hall pass” so she’s all smiles. She tries to get a glimpse into what it was like when Charlie was a fate and she explains the Fates and their roles while they traipse through the woods after their rogue warlock

Me every time I see SVU is filming hoping maybe this time will be the time I finally see Mariska with my eyes.

Up on the Waverider, Zari is a little worried she’s losing her mind because she swears she just saw the prettiest little kitty wandering around the ship. Behrad tries to calm her down by playing a round of Mortal Kombat with him, but it triggers more memories for her and she says she thinks she’s being haunted by someone who dresses like a teenage boy and loves donuts.

Live footage of me when I actually win a game of Fortnite.

She grabs her brother’s arm in frustration and touches the air totem and wind powers flow out of her hands. Behrad finally realizes his sister isn’t just having a hard time adjusting to life as a time traveler; something is really going on here.

In the Vancouver woods, Sara and Charlie find Constantine amongst some Supernatural props and Sara lays into him so hard she doesn’t notice Charlie being haunted by the voices of her sisters. What DOES get her attention, though, is the jumpship exploding. Charlie looks more scared than we’ve seen her in a while and she says her sister has arrived.

Me reading Twitter lately.

Up on the Waverider, Behrad and Nate try to work out what Original Flavor Zari was like. They imagine the three of them were best friends, and that she and Behrad were like Wonder Twins sharing the air totem. The boys are amped about this imagined reality but Zari looks overwhelmed by the idea of a superhacker Legend-ary version of herself.

Meanwhile, Ava schemes with Mick about how to get his daughter to like him. They decide to have Mick pop into Lita’s life at various important events and make a scrapbook for him to give his present-day daughter. For the first ten years, she pretends to be his probation officer taking him out on a furlough excursion to explain how he’s visiting while in jail. Ava is pretty proud of her genius idea.

In the Supernatural forest, Charlie finds herself face to face with her sister. Charlie stands firm to the belief that people deserve to be free, to choose their own destiny, and lists great things humans achieved without their interference, but Atropos gestures widely to the world and points specifically to people protesting a shut-down during a pandemic, “Look how well these idiots did when you let them fend for yourself.” While she’s being scolded by her big sister, Charlie spontaneously shifts into the image of a little girl, which is literally me every time I visit my parents and get into a fight with my mother, and Charlie comes very close to giving in and going with Atropos. But Sara barrels onto the scene and literally challenges this god to fisticuffs because of course she does.

She said “pick on someone your own size” but I feel like Sara is very smol! So it should be literally anyone else!!

Constantine tries to help and holds her off while Sara and Charlie get away. Charlie is worried Constantine is dead but Sara knows we’re not that lucky.

“If we could ditch Rip Lite that easily he would have been gone before that one weird double-Constantine episode for SURE.”

After a few seconds of running, Constantine joins them, seeming to have bounced back awfully quickly, even for Constantine. We learn something the girls don’t know: this is Atropos; the real Constantine is unconscious.

Charlie starts lamenting that maybe her sister is right, and maybe this chase is putting too many people in danger and she should just go back to her toxic family so her sister stops murdering folks. Sara stops in her tracks, looks her in the eye and says one of the most powerful things she’s ever said in one of these Captain Lance speeches: “Nobody is responsible for the family they were born into.” Charlie could have kept Looming around with her sisters, but instead she chose to be her own person, to make her own choices. She decided to be brave and big-hearted. And funny and snarky. She chose to be better. She chose a new family.

We’re your family now. No take-backs.

Down on Earth Prime, Mick gives Lita her photo album of all the moments he and Ava just created, but Lita is just as upset with him as ever. Sure, she saw him at all those pivotal moments in her life, but in all of them he’s in and out in a flash, he never stuck around to make more than a picture perfect moment. He never stayed to make a memory.

Ava feels horrible it didn’t work, but in her defense, she doesn’t fully understand how humans work yet. She realizes now the advice she should have given in the beginning. He should just apologize.

“Nailed it.”

Up on the Waverider, Zari confesses to Behrad that she’s feeling a little like a mediocre reboot of Original Flavor Zari. Behrad says the cutest brother thing ever — “You’re my favorite Zari of all time” — and tells her they should take some drugs and go into the air totem for answers. Ava comes back asking after “the away team” whose comms are down, and Zari wants to help with that instead, but it’s too late, she took the drugs, so she gives in and pops into the air totem.

When she surrenders to the drugs, she finds herself in a room that reminds me of a modernized version of the inside of the genie’s bottle in I Dream of Jeannie, and realizes she’s face to face with Zari Prime. The first thing Zari wants to know is if it worked; did changing the timeline mean that her parents and brother were alive in Zari 2.0’s world? When Z2 confirms that they are, Zari is so, so relieved. They sit down over a plate of donuts so Tala Ashe can Tatiana Maslany this situation real quick.

No such thing as too many Zaris. Or donuts.

Back in Canada, Sara and Charlie find themselves attacked by the zombified bodies of the Supernatural crew, so Sara fights them off while Charlie makes her way to the piece of the Loom she hid in a tree. But as soon as she pulls out the ring she disguised the Loom pieces as, Charlie finds herself pinned to the tree and face to face with her sister.

Sara tries, once again, to face off with Fate to save someone she cares about, and Atropos starts to expose her true form to her. Sara gets struck by the pure light of the Fate before her and is knocked back.

Is SHE a Slayer? This is a bit S7 Willow.

Charlie faces her sister, this time with courage Sara helped her unearth, and she says, “I’m not a Fate. I’m a Legend.” Atropos laughs this off and says Sara is dead, because she doesn’t know what Charlie and I know, which is that Sara Lance doesn’t know how to die.

Atropos takes the ring and leaves Charlie pinned to the tree as she follows the glow of the two rings she has to the one on the Waverider.

In Totem Town, Z2 updates Zari on her life and wonders if Zari is disappointed in her. But Zari Prime is just happy her family is alive, and thinks Zari 2.0 seems pretty fun.

Zari’s epiphany of self-love is GOALS.

Back in the forest, Charlie, still pinned, is about to be attacked by a zombie, but Sara pops up and kills it in the nick of time. Charlie is surprised Sara is alive, and frankly Sara is too, but they’re the only ones. The keeper of the Death Totem, the Paragon of Destiny, the invincible bisexual. Captain Sara “Ta-er al-Sahfer” Lance.

“I think I was in heaven.”

They rush off to try to find a way back to the Waverider, and run into Nate and Ava, who have found Constantine, still alive. Which, fine, if bisexuality = invincibility, and in order to keep Sara, we have to also keep John, I’ll allow it.

On the Waverider, Atropos threatens Zari’s unconscious body, so Behrad has no choice but to let her take the Loom ring. But unfortunately, his instincts got the better of him, and at the last minute he tried to attack her. Angry, and realizing he technically has cheated fate, she pulls out his life thread and snips it right then and there.

Before she can escape, Atropos runs into Sara again and asks a very good question: “What are you?”

I’m the thing the monsters have nightmares about.

Sara doesn’t have time to contemplate her existence though, and starts to fight her. With help from Gideon and Charlie, Sara launches Atropos into the Time Stream, and while I don’t remember exactly what happens when someone goes out there, I imagine she’s stuck there for a minute. Also, they got the two Loom rings back.

Realizing how many times they both came very close to dying today, Sara and Charlie exchange a surprised and relieved glance.

The queers prevail!

Blissfully unaware of these goings-on, Z2 says goodbye to Original Zari in Totem Town. Zari tells her to come back soon with Behrad, and she promises she will. And as soon as she wakes up, she asks for him. And the Legends face the hardest mission they’ve faced in a while and have to tell Zari her baby brother is dead.

“All around me are familiar faces…”

Zari cries and she cries and she cries until her tears run out and she storms to the med bay to find Constantine, mascara streaking down her face, fury in her eyes. She blames him for this, for going off on his own, and so now he owes her. So he’s going to help her get the pieces of the Loom of Fate so she can fix this once and for all. She will do whatever it takes, in whatever timeline, in whatever way, to save her brother.

Introducing: Zari 3.0

I don’t know about you, but I missed the Legends so much, and even though they ripped my heart out, I’m so happy they’re back. It was exactly what I needed during these chaotic times and I’m so happy we still have more episodes to come. Because I really need to know what’s going on with Sara!

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