DC's Legends of Tomorrow S04E15 Review: #1 App on Google Store

DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Season 4, Episode 15: Terms of Service

The penultimate episode of Legends of Tomorrow's fourth season is pretty... interesting. Obviously I'm the most enamoured with the whole Constantine storyline, but they managed to wrap up the Gary storyline in a somewhat interesting manner, show off Neron's plan which isn't entirely ridiculous but also pretty fun, and we even get a couple of B-plots going on with Nora, Charlie and Tabitha. Pretty jam-packed episode, and one that I actually enjoyed a fair bit. Not that the previous episode hasn't been enjoyable, but I like this a fair bit more than the previous ones. 

I'm not sure I care about the whole weird Zari subplot where they sort of tangentially encounter young Zari and accidentally leave the silly golden dragon egg behind in her house (which is something that I genuinely don't care about and felt shoehorned into an already busy episode) but the primary Nero plot is definitely interesting. Taking over the Time Bureau and making use of his possession of Ray Palmer to basically return to the public eye of 2019 and spread fear and distrust of magical creatures with an application... which, as Zari finds out, has the whole "sell your soul to Neron" among the Terms and Conditions. And no one reads Terms and Conditions! It's this sort of ridiculousness that actually ends up being both tongue-in-cheek and also make a fair amount of sense, and if Hellblazer was written in the 2010's instead of the 1990's, wouldn't feel particularly out there as a plot point. 

That said, it is kind of bizarre that Neron seems to be kind of a weak demon all things considered considering just how little he actually reacts or acts, doing almost his entire plan via proxies or just by collecting souls and whatnot. He mostly just leaves dealing with the Legends to the brainwashed Gary Green (now with three nipples) and Tabitha trying to get Gary to wish for something catastrophic with the Legends. I guess Neron is still bound by Ray's deal that he not harm his friends, but that isn't made clear, really. 

Tabitha the fairy godmother trying to trick Gary into wishing away the Legends is... it's interesting, and leads to some visual gags, and of course Gary wishes Ava and Sara to be put into skimpy cheerleader outfits and have them dance. That's one of his final neurotic wishes, though, with previous wishes being a bit more... psychosis-borne-out-of-loneliness, with Gary basically forcing the Legends team being placed in a position where they sort of have to praise him. Eventually common sense sort of won out, and the Legends apologize to Gary and acknowledge him as one of them. Okay, then? The Gary stuff's honestly not the best writing in this show, but it's... it's all right. 

Mona and Nora, meanwhile, get themselves captured by Tabitha, with Mona being used as a guinea pig by Neron in his demonstration, while Nora ends up seemingly making a friend in Tabitha, who recognizes her as a "fellow witch" and initially seems to have a soft spot for her, wanting her to take up her curse and power. Eventually, in a way that parallels Nern's m.o. without being too blatant, Tabitha ends up manipulating Nora into taking on the curse of the fairy godmother. Tabitha swaps into a black outfit, while Nora ends up being bound to Gary and only able to grant Gary's wishes, and silly old Gary ends up fucking up once more and ends up throwing Nora to hell to "get Constantine out."

Honestly, that whole scene with a reformed Gary summoning the Fairy Godmother and Nora's completely "well, this is my life now" expression as she shows up, and then her fist-shaking as she screams "GARY YOU DICK" when she gets wished off to hell is pretty dang hilarious. 

Zari gets to give this whole speech about how being oppressed and hunted down just because you're different is something she experienced in the dark ARGUS-dominated future, comparing how the magical creatures are being hunted down being very similar to how metahumans (and Muslims, apparently) are ostracized and similarly hounded in the future. This ends up motivating Charlie, who end up breaking out every single magical creature in the Time Bureau's cells, including the wounded Mona... at the cost of Neron and Tabitha capturing her.

Insert your own "time travel would be so useful at any point in this episode" nitpick, by the way. Honestly, at this point, especially with the demons and whatnot, it's pretty clear that the writers don't particularly care about the time travel aspect as much. 

Also very interesting, again, is the B-plot with John Constantine going around hell. Hell's apparently just a bunch of dark alleys and back-alley clubs and Gothic houses, as Constantine goes through a bunch of random colourful demon people that he apparently met and sent to hell before, before being set up to stand in front of the Triumvirate, a trio of demon overlords ruling hell. Constantine mostly deals with Satan, Lord of the Fallen, and initially it seems to go the classic Hellblazer way, with Constantine sweet-talking the three and noting just how much they stand to lose if they allow Neron to come to power, and some "my soul goes to him, don't you want my soul?" shenanigans. 

The stern performances by the three demon overlords are sort of expected, but I do like it a fair bit. The Triumvirate aren't just content to essentially sponsor Constantine's crusade against Neron, and gives Constantine a choice of their own -- pick either Ray Palmer or little Astra to bring back to the real world. Constantine ends up picking Astra, which... Matt Ryan does an amazing job showing the sheer conflict he's feeling as he looks from the two souls that he wants to save. The twist here, of course, that instead of a scared little girl, Astra has been twisted by her time in hell into a catty, angry torturer in hell, and ends up throwing Constantine into a cell of his own. Honestly, the whole hell sequence feels so neat that as much as I do like the juxtaposition between the darker Constantine scenes and the sheer absurdity of the rest of this show, I really would like to see a version of Legends of Tomorrow where the Hellblazer subplot takes center stage. 

So while Gary's finally a member of the Legends and Nora's got a bit of a power boost, we've got Constantine trapped in hell, Charlie captured and going to be manipulated by Neron to attack Washington, the most evil application in the history of mankind, and also a random dragon egg. Lots of stuff for the next episode to wrap up! 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Calibraxis is a minor demon that menaced John Constantine in the "Royal Blood" arc of the original Hellblazer run, a murder demon that claims to be responsible for Jack the Ripper and is involved in a plan to fuck with the royal family. 
• The Triumvirate of Hell is a trio of demons that ruled hell in DC comics, particularly spotlighted in the Hellblazer and Sandman comics, established as coming into power when Lucifer buggered off to star in his own spin-off series and abandon hell after a talk with Dream, the Sandman. The members of the Triumvirate has alternated between various mythological and DC-original demon lords, with the most prominent in the DC/Vertigo ones including a Triumvirate consisting of the First of the Fallen, Second of the Fallen and Third of the Fallen (prominently featured in Hellblazer as primary antagonists) and the one featured in Sandman comics featuring Lucifer, Azazel and Beelzebub. 
• Satan, the First of the Fallen, is John Constantine's primary antagonist, being a being that fell from heaven before Lucifer (or something along those lines... he's a big bad demon, in any case). "Satan" is apparently a title that's held by various rulers of hell in different DC continuities. 
• Belial is a brief member of the Triumvirate, but mostly is the enemy of Etrigan the demon, another DC comics superhero. Belial is noted to be the father of Etrigan the demon, creating the powerful demon child after going to war and eventually coupling with another demon, Ran Va Daath.
• Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies is one of the more often recurring members of the Hell Triumvirate, but never really had any major roles. I love that he is often shown as a giant fly in the comics. 
• John weasels out his way from being killed by the Triumvirate by noting that his soul will go to Neron instead of them and that would be a grave insult to the three head-honcho demons. This is a nod to John Constantine's famous death during the original Hellblazer run, where Constantine made a deal and offered his soul to each member of the Triumvirate, and when he committed suicide, the three demons were forced to revive Constantine back to life because none of them will relinquish Constantine's soul, but do not want to go to war against each other lest it fracture Hell itself. 
• Scenes from the NBC Constantine show briefly flash in John's eyes when he touches the hell-door.