DC's Legends of Tomorrow recap: When Nate met the new Zari
The season 5 premiere of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow was a riot with its mockumentary format, meta-humor, and so much more. Plus, the episode’s core emotional story focuses on Sara, and to a slightly lesser extent Nate, dealing with trauma from recent events (“Crisis” for Sara and dying/being resurrected for Nate). All in all, it was a fabulous episode. Tonight’s episode “Miss Me, Kiss Me, Love Me” is a bit of a comedown from the premiere (and the two-week gap didn’t help matters), but there are still a few fun moments that liven things up.
Zari 2.0’s introduction was hands down the highlight of the episode. Behrad heads home to Washington D.C. 2024 for his father’s birthday and brings Nate along because he needs him to pretend to be a business school professor. There, Nate meets Behrad’s sister Zari — who is definitely not the Zari we knew before. No, this version of Zari is a vain and rude social media influencer who has no patience for her brother or Nate, who can’t stop staring since he recognizes her from the message he found on the ship. Initially, I was worried Zari 2.0 would be one-note, but both Tala Ashe and the script make it clear there’s more going on beneath the extensions and vocal fry. For one, Zari easily deduces that Behrad stole the air totem and isn’t in business school, and realizes both her brother and Nate were at Heyworld all those years ago. Zari threatens to tell her parents what Behrad’s been up to, so Nate and Behrad do the reasonable thing: They kidnap her, natch. And it doesn’t look like she’ll be able to reach any of her followers from inside the temporal zone.
Meanwhile, Constantine confronts Astra in Hell and orders her to recall the damned souls she released at the end of the season 4. Obviously, she declines because her power grows with each soul the Encores corrupt and kill. When Constantine returns to the land of the living, he feels even guiltier about damning Astra to Hell. The Legends, on the other hand, are pleased that they didn’t cause the Encores like they did everything else that’s gone bump in the timeline over the past several seasons.
Speaking of Encores: Famed mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel returns in 1947 Los Angeles with a magical gun and a plan to take over the city through blackmail. Alas, Bugsy may be the weakest part of the episode because, as my colleague Darren Franich noted in his review, the show’s take on him is pretty generic. There’s nothing idiosyncratic or funny about him, which is sort of a letdown when compared to how Legends handled Rasputin in the season premiere. Look, not every villain-of-the-week needs to be wacky, but there does need to be something specific and interesting about them, and that wasn’t the case here.
When Sara, Ray, and Constantine arrive in L.A., they immediately cross paths with Bugsy’s girlfriend Virginia Hill, who cons Ray out of money. Constantine doesn’t fall for her act and she eventually reveals that she didn’t skip town because she needs to find Bugsy’s blackmail files, which implicate her in all of his schemes. Clearly driven by the guilt he feels after seeing Astra, Constantine becomes invested in helping Ginny — and he also hooks up with her.
The Legends know they can’t just kill Bugsy because Astra will just send him topside again, so they settle on capturing him. Sara, pretending to be a reporter, calls Bugsy and tells him to meet her at the Blue Iguana because she’s got some juicy blackmail for him. Constantine and Ginny pick Bugsy up and on the way there and Ginny steals the gun. Meanwhile, Sara tasks Ava and Mick with clearing out the Blue Iguana. So, Ava, who feels useless now that she’s no longer at Time Bureau and doesn’t have any responsibilities, jumps at the opportunity to do something and performs the song “Poison” on-stage. In her mind, she’s killing it with a band; in reality, though, she’s drunk and sounds awful and completely endearing, especially to Sara, who loves seeing her girlfriend let loose. When Bugsy eventually arrives at the club, Sara and Mick simply knock him unconscious while Ava continues wailing on the floor.
Meanwhile, Constantine and Ginny travel to a cemetery in Burbank (gross!) to find Bugsy’s blackmail files. Once they do, Ginny, of course, turns on Constantine and steals the files for herself because she’s tired of being powerless and wants power. (Where has Constantine seen this before?) Constantine decides to let her go, but that leads to her death because a crooked cop and rival mob gang blow up her car once she gets in. Thus, Constantine fails to save someone else.
This recent loss sends Constantine over the edge. With the magical gun in hand, he returns to Hell with Bugsy and proceeds to kill all of the demons who come his way before eventually pulling the gun on Astra. But Constantine’s been spending way too much time on the Waverider and can’t bring himself to kill her. Instead, he kills Bugsy and promises Astra that he won’t give up on her and will save her. Whether or not that’s a meaningless promise, as Astra says, remains to be seen.
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