DC's Legends of Tomorrow S05E03-04 Review: Constantine's Ghosts

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 5, Episode 3: Slay Anything; Episode 4: A Head of Her Time

Episode 3:

This episode's theme ends up being a parody of serial killer shows, as our titular Encore ends up not being a historical figure, but a fictional one called Freddy Myers, a bit of an amalgamation and parody of a couple different slasher movies and also Carrie. And, again, it's a fun episode! The setup is done relatively well, with the cast being split up trying to stop the revived Freddy Myers' psychic rampage in 2004 while also trying to reform him and save him from bullies in 1989. Because when psychic killers are involved you can change history for your own good. As I keep saying, Legends really doesn't give a rat's ass about time travel rules other than as a setting and a story vehicle. There are some parts of it that worked out (Ava randomly being a gigantic serial killer mega-geek is so out of nowhere, but it works) and some that didn't (Mick being in school with Freddy felt like just a vehicle for a very bland side-plot), but ultimately it was a fun experience.

Nora and Zari end up taking relative center stage this episode as Sara, Ava and Mick do a lot of the slasher movie tropes while they run around in 2004 where Myers is controlling the school and causing brutal deaths, Ray and Nate get to be goofballs, Behrad is there to shoot wind blasts but ultimately it's Zari and Nora that get the bulk of the screentime. Nora's a bit less complicated, but it's nice, I guess, to see her settling into her role as fairy godmother and how she ends up being able to befriend and rehabilitate Freddy Myers. It goes exactly where you expect it to, and, again, there isn't much in terms of huge twists or whatever, but the scenes are well-executed and we know Nora comes from a real place when she talks about her shitty upbringing not defining who she is. Also, pony jokes. 

Zari, meanwhile... eh, she ends up making a lot of influencer girl jokes, gets into a bit of an argument with Behrad, gets super prissy (wouldn't you, if you're stuck on a spaceship against your will?) and then briefly regains part of her memory from the original timeline, ends up getting trapped in the 1989 Myers scene and gets to be part of the crowd attacked by the real masked killer, Kathy Myers, Freddy's possessive mom. The twist that the real killer is Kathy Myers is actually a nice one -- it's not too on-the-nose, but there's an enough amount of foreshadowing (Ava's ranting line about psychological profiles) to make me go 'oh yeah, that makes sense'. The mom's not quite as developed as she should be, if we're being nitpicky, but it's not like I'm going to call foul for a one-off Scooby Doo twist villain. 

The Constantine plot has him return to his old house with Gary and finding that a shapeshifting Charlie is squatting in it... and I'm not going to lie, I kind of forgot Charlie sort of escaped from the team in the season premiere. It leads to a bit of a drinking scene for Constantine, a bit of an exposition and confession, before Charlie talks Constantine into actually facing his demons and talking to one of the ghosts trapped in Constantine's house -- Astra's mom. This is more setup for the next episode than anything, really.

And this episode is... by god it's dorky and cheesy as hell, from the unashamed usage of high school prom tropes and slasher movie tropes, and there are a lot of 'cringey' moment, to borrow the slang of the more hip folk -- Zari's off-brand social media jokes barely get a reaction out of me, and I'm not the biggest fan of young Freddy's '90's dance or the little photograph montage at the end, but the actors and characters are having so much fun I can't really fault the show. The episode moves quick enough for the jokes that don't quite land to be left in the dust anyway. 

Episode 4:

"A Head of Her Time" is probably the first episode in this season that actually moves the serious Constantine story forwards instead of just dancing around the same old status quo, and it's... it's an interesting beast. As I keep mentioning, Legends of Tomorrow is a show that's about wacky zany crazy fun antics first and seriousness second, so it's pretty... interesting to watch an episode that jump back and forth between the very serious (other than Charlie's sarcastic jokes) bit of John Constantine being forced to confront his past and admit that the real reason of him attempting to bring Astra's mom back is to prove to her (who also happens to be his ex) that his study of magic isn't a waste of time. And then we cut to the hilariously over-accented Marie-Antoinette using perfume to get people eat cake while literally dropping her head on the floor.

And both storylines are all right. The Constantine stuff was a bit too information-dump-y for my tastes, but was handled well. Natalie the angry poltergeist tossing around memory flashbacks and writing "LIAR" all over the walls while Charlie and Gary try and get Constantine to tell the truth is a pretty bog-standard Constantine story. Turns out that John Constantine's an emotionally vulnerable piece of shit that did shitty things, that's pretty much par the course. We learn that John used to date Natalie, who left him because of the whole magic business and was approached by her husband to bring her back to life when she got hit by a car, and John did so... only to fuck up and lose Astra to the demons of hell.

Throughout the episode Natalie just wants Constantine to admit this, because she doesn't want Constantine going into hell half-cocked, driven by ego, when he tries to rescue Astra. And apparently the whole 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' thing is going to somewhat figure out into Charlie's story, because Natalie plans to use the Loom of Fate from Greek mythology to do something with Astra. And Charlie knew all about it, because as an immortal shapeshifter, she apparently encountered it and shattered it across the (now-nonexistent) multiverse. Plot device, okay, sure. Meanwhile, Astra ends up seeking out the help of some lady in hell, exchanging favours in order for her to speed up John Constantine's predetermined death-by-lung-cancer. It's a pretty fun scene that is very much steeped in Hellblazer vibes, while still fitting into the whole "fuck fate, fuck destiny" mentality that Legends of Tomorrow irreverently has. My biggest complaint, though, is that the episode just simply doesn't commit enough. We don't quite get enough of a mystery or a sense of conflict from Constantine, and by the time we do the exposition's already over and we're just going into talking about the magic McGuffin.

The time travel plot is... eh? New!Zari is kind of still unlikable and very basic, although like Constantine of course this is because she's actually secretly emotionally vulnerable and this leads her acting like a piece of shit. Of course, Zari being a total bitch to Ava isn't quite on the same ballpark as John "oops I got a kid's soul dragged off to hell" Constantine, but there's a vague thematic connection, I suppose. Sara skips out on the majority of this episode, leaving a very panicky Ava in charge. And poor Ava, of course, tries a bit too hard and tries a bit too much to act like the Time Bureau, and Zari knows all about this since she can read people well, and, well, acts like a total ass throughout the episode. Thanks to episodic-television rules, this means that Zari and Ava are the only two people unaffected by Marie-Antoinette charm spell, and they end up being buddies and working together.

The twist that the two of them aren't affected because Marie-Antoinette uses a perfume, and Zari's brand of social-media perfume or whatever (Dragon's Smell or something like that?) apparently destroys your olfactory senses is a far better twist that makes more sense than Fake Jason Voorhes's Mom last episode, although the conclusion is... again, pretty m'eh. I do like the story of New-Zari slowly realizing how flaky social media popularity really is, as she gets a glimpse into the future to see her career crashing and burning (leading to the aforementioned magic perfume theft). It's just that I find it so, so hard to relate or care about this socialite storyline. Anyway, bottom of the line, Zari apologizes and she's buddies with Ava, because they both learn a lesson about learning how you fit in and stuff.

Oh, also, Marie-Antoinette is played by Courtney Ford for no real goddamn reason other than for us to see Courtney Ford over-ham a hammy character with le French accent (oh, phoo!) and a sequence in the episode involves Mick and Ray trying to wrestle Marie-Antoinette's headless body who somehow got her hands on Mick's heat-gun. There's also the bizarre giant s'more-wearing DJ boyfriend of Zari's which may or may not be a parody of a celebrity but ended up just utterly falling flat for me humour-wise.

Y'know, I really don't want to be too hard on the wacky-time-travel part of this episode, because it sure is enjoyable, but I guess I just don't really find myself invested in the New-Zari storyline. Tala Ashe is fine, because the script calls for this version of her character to be annoying, but this does have the side-effect of me really not caring about New-Zari all that much. We're hopefully getting into the inevitable Zari-Convergence or whatever, though, so yay for that.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Various parts of Constantine's backstory in both the comics and CW canon (via the aborted show) is mentioned -- Mucous Membrane is John Constantine's old band, and his ridiculous punk hairdo is also straight from the comics. Natalie briefly mentions a "Lester" as part of Constantine's friends, which is definitely a reference to Gary Lester, Constantine's friend that he sacrificed to trap and kill the demon Mnemoth -- which happened in the episode "A Feast of Friends" in the Constantine TV show, as well as the iconic tone-setting first issue of Hellblazer. 
• Astra's father, while still sharing the name of his comic-book counterpart Alex, seems to just be a regular dad instead of the child-abusing satanist that he was in the comics. (Comics!Alex Logue probably would be way too dark for this show, anyway) Natalie, on the other hand, is completely original -- Astra's mother never showed up in the comics, and no member of the comics' Newcastle Crew fits an equivalent role, so this is the show just doing its own story. 
• John Constantine's death from lung cancer is taken from the iconic Hellblazer mini-arc, "Dangerous Habits", written by Garth Ennis.
• Apparently, Zari's Earth-Prime family name is now "Tarazi" instead of "Tomaz", further distancing her character from her original comic-book inspiration. Which is just as well, it's not like the two have anything really in common at this point.