Hidey ho and welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow, season 7 episode 5, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Scientist” aka the one where Ava disappeared for a brief but terrifying time.

As we begin this episode, we’re still in the 1920s, but the Legends have finally made their way to New York City. Well, the bullet Blonde Blonde Gang anyway. Gary lets Avalance and Behrad out of the mansion and they immediately beeline for some New York pizza.

But I guess being Out of Time and off the Waverider for so long, they simply…forgot that they couldn’t speak freely. Or maybe they didn’t know that it’s a New Yorker’s job to eavesdrop on any conversations they can, but either way, a news vendor overhears them talking about time travel and other nonsense and then recognizes the women who were talking as the Bullet Blondes.

“Okay, who narc’d on our Speakeasy makeout session?”

The man decides to shoot them for some reason, but luckily Sara jumps in front of her friends and takes the shot, and it smarts but she heals up. Unfortunately, everyone sees it happen and while in modern day New York it wouldn’t have even warranted a tweet, in the 20s it’s a little riskier so they run back to the mansion.

Inside the mansion, Zari is tinkering with Hoover, who is convinced he’s the real Hoover, even after Zari showed him his robot brains. Nate brings the tinkerer a treat, for which she is very grateful.

When the Bullet Blondes return, Nate and Gary start whispering about Zari, which she hates a lot.

My kingdom for Flannel Zari to pass the Bechdel test this season.

Other things that are hated in this room include but are not limited to, Ava hating that Sara got shot. She knows Sara is fine but it sucked to watch and she can’t help but kiss the spot her dress burned away where a booboo would be if Sara didn’t have super-healing.

They found the address to Edison’s Lab, so that will be their next stop, but Sara wants Ava to stay behind. She’s the only bulletproof one between the two of them, which Ava can’t really argue against. So she begs her babe to not mess the timeline up too badly and sends her on her way.

*I* don’t like watching Sara die a thousand times even if she does come back, so I can only imagine how Ava feels.

Sara and Behrad head to the university to find Dr. Davies, who they think looks like Rory with hair, or maybe a young Stein, which is a hilarious joke since actually he’s played by Matt Ryan aka Constantine.

Sara does a sneaky maneuver that would make Parker from Leverage proud and gets the research she needs: the schematics for the first ever time machine.

Meanwhile, the Spatula Squad is running out of time; they have until 7pm tomorrow to get to New York or their friends are going to explode. So Astra decides to hitch a ride.

This feels like a good time to remind you that Astra was, not ALL that long ago, the Queen of Hell.

Spooner follows suit and Gideon mimics them, and it’s very cute. And what’s cuter is, when a car whizzes past them, and Spooner starts yelling to her god in the sky, Gideon looks up and waves to whoever Spooner is talking to. It’s just so precious.

Seeing how frustrated Astra is, she decides to turn their luck around by putting a luck spell on a rock. Spooner is surprised she can do this but Astra hilariously answers, “I’m a witch.” She gives Spooner the luck rock and they try hitchhiking again. This time, a man stops and gives them a ride.

After examining the stolen plans, Behrad and Zari say they can use them to make the time machine…but it will take them five years. Ava basically says my dad’s favorite phrase: the impossible just takes a little longer. But Sara is going to turn into an actual bank robber if she has to stay in the 20s a minute longer. Since they have no other options for now, Sara goes back to sneak the plans back into Dr. Davies’ apartment, and notices that he’s already done most of the work for them.

This curly bob/button down/vest situation was really working for me.

So now all they need is a single part. Behrad thinks he knows where they can find that part, but Ava is still very concerned about footprints.

“And where you see one set of footprints in the sand, that’s where I left you because you were fucking up the timeline too much.”

Sara promises that whatever they do now, if it gets them to the future, they can time travel back and fix it. They can clean up their own messes! It’ll be fine! It’ll be fiiine.

After they leave, Hoover keeps rattling off offensive things while Ava paces around the mansion, stressed about her girl and her favorite worst assistant.

Me @ homophobic men in my twitter mentions/recap comments.

She tries to get the Hoover bot to tell him who sent him but he won’t, so flannel Zari tinkers with his programming a little to see if she can get him to stop sucking, and finds his to-do list.

I have a feeling this screenshot will come in handy a lot for me, personally.

It involves some regular Hoover activities but at the tip top of the list is one directive to rule them all: Eliminate the Legends. And they realize that this means whoever is trying to kill them is trying to protect the timeline; which doesn’t make sense to them because THEY protect the timeline.

Out in New York, Sara sends Gary to find the missing piece while she distracts the scientist. Gary finds the piece but as he goes to take it out of the lab, he runs into Edison himself. And like an idiot, when Edison asks what project he’s signing it out for, Gary just…tells him! That it’s for time travel! I swear we can’t take this kid anywhere.

Meanwhile back in his office, with Sara trying to keep him there with fake tasks, Dr. Davies starts to have a panic attack. To make matters worse, Edison barges in to confiscate his work and send him to Bellevue. Much to Sara’s surprise and chagrin.

It was at this moment she knew…she fucked up.

When the ride they hitched breaks down, Spooner tries to use the luck rock again and a race car driver pulls up. They sweet talk him into taking them to New York, which is all fine and good until they get pulled over in New Jersey. Desperate to get to their friends, Astra manages to convince the cop that it would be the best decision to let the famous racecar driver go, and since the copper wants to see a pape with his face beamin’, he agrees.

“Yeah yeah you’re a regular King of New York, totally.”

Back in the mansion, Nate is being weird, so Zari asks if he and Gary hooked up, which she wouldn’t be mad about, just confused since he seemed like a monogamous kind of guy. But the truth is, he just wants to DTR. He’d been letting their weird totem situation keep him from asking, but he does want to take things to the next level. He wants them to live together. And he thinks the mansion is the perfect place to do that.

Honestly them living together will either mean more Flannel Zari or less Nate and I can stand for either option.

Zari says yes and Nate goes to get her a celebratory bear claw, but when he leaves the Hoover bot says he knows Zari is lying about something. She tells him to shut up and storms off.

In Davies’ lair, Ava finds his calendar and realizes that tonight is the night Davies was originally planning on using the time machine.

“Dammit we’re going to miss Alex and Kelly’s wedding, aren’t we.”

Ava is stressed but Behrad is finished so they get ready to go. But as soon as Behrad turns on the machine, Ava and Gary DISAPPEAR. Sara starts to panic. If time travel doesn’t shake out the way it was supposed to, that means the Time Bureau never existed, which means Sara never met Ava. An inconceivable existence.

“You put my wife back where she came from or so help me! So help me!”

Sara goes back to the team and begs them to help. They turn on the Hoover bot and Zari and Nate take him to Edison to get the time travel schematics back.

While they do that, Sara goes to Bellvue to break Dr. Davies out so he can follow his original plan and reset the timeline. He doesn’t trust her, after all she’s the reason he ended up here in the first place, but her desperation to get Ava back kickstarts her assassin instincts and she threatens him.

Hell hath no fury like a canary scorned.

A knife to his throat gives Davies a panic attack, and realizing she went too far, Sara tries to talk him down from it. She apologizes, and tries to more calmly explain that he is important to the history of time travel, and to her finding her way back to her wife. His eyes light up a little when she says this. “You married a woman?” He asks, something like awe in his eyes. She smiles and says she’s still getting used to the word “wife” but yes. She’s in love and she needs his help to get her beloved back.

I was fresh off a Supergirl cryfest so I was extra soft, but the hopeful way Davies said “You married a woman?” and the bright way Sara smiled about it made me a bit emotional.

Davies clings to a medallion with the name Thomas on it and he promises to help Sara get her person back if she helps him get his back, too. They spit shake on it and head out into the asylum.

Edison is surprised to see Hoover take an interest in some mad scientist’s schematics, but he’s willing to cooperate…that is, until Hoover short circuits and explodes. And upon witnessing that, Edison has a heart attack and drops dead. At which point I was playing the part of Ava and screaming alone in my living room about the brontosaurus-sized footprints.

While they clean up the bot bits, Zari confesses to Nate that while she does want to move in with him, she would rather live together in the Totem than the mansion. She found a community there, and it feels like home.

I would like to once again compliment on Tala Ashe having such a distinction between Fancy and Flannel Zari, no matter what they’re wearing.

For some reason this feels like a more complicated option to him than living in the mansion (I’m not sure how the pocket dimensions are different but sure) and she gives him time to think.

Just then, a spaceship light shines through the window so they take cover under a desk.

After coming to a dead-end, Davies pretends to take Sara hostage to get out of the asylum, and somehow it works even though Sara hasn’t been a damsel in distress since the day the Queen’s Gambit went down and is actually, adorably, quite bad at it.

While Zari and Nate are hiding, a new Robot Hoover and a Robot Edison come to play cleanup crew, proving the Legends’ earlier theory that whoever is behind all this does want to preserve the timeline.

On the road to New York, while on a short break, a cyclist comes by and steals Cannonball’s car, and the Cannonball, desperate to beat his record, steals the bike in return, leaving Spooner and Astra in the street, and their Gideon accidentally stolen.

I feel like we could have ramped up the concern for the kidnapped Gideon who can barely person but I get they had a lot going on.

Sara brings Davies back to his lair and introduces him to the Legends she has left, and he’s amazed to see so many time travelers. Zari and Nate update her about the new robots and the new Waverider attack, but they did get the plans they needed to finish the time machine. And then they just have to hope their disappeared friends come back.

“Almighty Beebo, I promise to never tweet about meeting racists and homophobes with love again if you just bring me my wife back.”

When Davies turns the time machine on, as he was supposed to do, Ava reappears.

That feeling when you snap out of a period of disassociation/derealization for the first time in a while.

Sara immediately starts apologizing and is so, so glad to have her wife back. Sara blames herself and apologizes, but Ava is understanding; she’s also just glad to be able to hug her wife again. And now that the part is in place, they can go back home.

Honestly it might be better if they just skipped ahead to 2023 and hope the global pandemic is finally over by then.

Stuck with New York City in view but no way to get there in time, Spooner picks up another rock and asks Astra to cast another luck spell. Astra says she can’t and when Spooner demands to know why, she confesses that there’s no such thing as a luck spell. She faked it to give Spooner hope. Spooner doesn’t understand; it had been working. But Astra says they made their own luck. And they have to make some more soon because they’re running out of time.

I know I shout about it every week but the height difference will never not delight me.

When Gideon wakes up in the back seat of the car to see only a stranger in the driver’s seat, and knowing there’s limited time left to save the Legends, she smacks the man on the head with the luck rock and steals the car back to go save the day.

Sometimes Human Gideon reminds me of my D&D character who is a moon elf twilight cleric who was raised in a cult but doesn’t know it and has no idea how weird she is.

As the time machine whirs to life, Ava tells the team that she has plans to take them all to a safe house in Tahiti until they can sort out what to do next to fix the timeline. Sara thinks this will also work as a proper honeymoon spot. And surprisingly Ava lets her count her chickens before they hatch out of the time machine.

I hear Tahiti is a magical place.

Davies turns on the time machine that only Team Spatula knows will kill them, as Gideon runs as fast as her fresh human legs will take her, and Spooner and Astra try to knock out the city’s power with a good old fashioned lightning spell.

“For the honor of Grayskull!”

The music ramps up and the stress levels are high but just as Gideon gets to the room and Astra and Spooner send NYC into a blackout…but did they do it in time?

I’ll miss tender little moments like this when they’re not siloed anymore.

As soon as the power is out, Astra and Spooner run and run to find their friends and are relieved when, instead of a pile of ashes and blonde hair, they find Gideon telling the Legends the tale of how she became human and got to New York.

The relief in this scene was PALPABLE.

Everyone is happy to finally be reunited, all of the Legends together again, and they have a nice group hug about it.

Behrad gives Astra some whiskey, which she happily accepts, and then she makes this weird flirty face at him? And frankly I had forgotten they were even being set up to be a thing, and maybe I could have gotten behind it but then they put Spooner and Astra together for weeks and gave them a robot-turned-human child so I will no longer be accepting a heterosexual option for either of them, thank you. (I also think they hinted at a possible set-up between Gary and Gideon in this episode but I really hope it was just Gary’s boss kink and not something I have to worry about.)

Sara spends some quality time with Ava, afraid that Ava could fritz out again at any moment.

“So I’m gonna love you like I’m gonna lose you. I’m gonna hold you like I’m saying goodbye. Wherever we’re standing, I won’t take you for granted, ’cause we’ll never know when, when we’ll run out of time.”

She didn’t really understand the implications of the footprints Ava was always talking about until one of them left a crater in her heart. She lost her wife and her co-captain, but she also lost her safe place. She lost the promise of a future together, of sunsets they’d never see. Ava reassures her, saying she’s here now and that’s all that matters, and kisses her to prove it’s real.

I appreciate the framing with candles, since candles are queer culture.

Finally reunited with Gideon, they ask her why Davies isn’t credited as the official father of time travel, and she explains that while his schematics were close, the energy conductor they’d need simply won’t exist for another 300 years. Except, they happen to have a 300+ year old robot head in a box, that happens to have that very technology.

And so they use it to time travel, and luckily they don’t explode (it’s only episode 5 of the season, that would have been pretty awkward) but unfortunately they don’t seem to be in Tahiti, either.

But the important thing is, they’re all together again. And as long as they can keep anyone from disappearing from time and space, they’ll be able to get out of this mess.

Next week, unfortunately the mantle of being obsessed with a sociopath they think is charming is being passed from Supergirl to Legends and Bishop is back, but I’m sure our wacky band of misfits will make it fun, anyway. See you then!

Pages: 1 2See entire article on one page

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!