DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow explores moral complexity with a big-hearted Zari Party

DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow Photo: The CW

After last week’s bittersweet trip down spacetime-memory lane DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow has returned to its regularly scheduled tomfoolery in the year 1925. Despite the various fan-friendly story beats that were visited during that 100-episode celebration, which spanned six rambunctious seasons of wild time-traveling hijinks, the Legends were very much still temporally trapped in ‘25, a cool, goofy sci-fi detail that tends to pop up whenever Legends is operating at peak levels—and last week was certainly a high for the show.

When Legends at its schmaltziest, however (which, to be fair, has totally been the vibe of the show for a long while now), we get installments like “Speakeasy Does It”, a saccharine loony tune which tests the Legends’ responsibilities to the timeline and shows how quickly they are ready to torpedo said responsibilities when doing the moral thing makes itself abundantly clear. (And the show does go to great pains to make these moral choices abundantly clear, my goodness.) It at once brings up the perils of interfering with the timeline—a thing we are often told is not just a no-no, but the greatest of no-nos—while also purposely altering the established course of peoples’ lives anyway. At least Zari makes darn sure they have fun as they do it. Legends!

“Speakeasy Does It” lands the Legends in Chicago, 1925, an fitting pit-stop for the crew considering their brush with Al Capone’s outfit two episodes ago, and besides, it’s a chance to gin up another totally reasonable excuse for Sara & Ava to trip the light fantastic in glamorous (semi-) period-specific outfits. King Alphonse (or “Scarface” if you prefer) doesn’t pop up this week, even though the Bullet Blondes do find themselves dabbling in the Chicago bootlegging business to scrape together enough dough to finally make it to the Big Apple. Instead we’re introduced to the comically mean-mugging, lower-rung mobster equivalent Ross Bottoni, who as the episode’s quasi-heavy becomes the impetus behind every giddy thing that happens across this week’s two converging storylines.

That’s right, the crew of The Waverider are still broken into two teams, but this time their distance away from each other is only a matter of blocks instead of states (or even states of mind). Spooner, Astra, and Gideon make really good time catching up with Sara, Ava, Nate, Zari *counts fingers* Gary, and Behrad, though their train-hopping jaunt does land them in the first of the episode’s multiple displays of racism. Their fortunes quickly shift, however, when a suspicious train attendant gets himself mollified by Maude, gangster’s moll and lead singer of a traveling band called the Masqueradies. (Which I’m guessing is a portmanteau of “masquerade” and “ladies.”) “Gals help gals make new pals, that’s how I see it,” Maude says to the group cheerfully, before a telegram from her violent beau Bottoni calls her home to perform at his newest ill-gotten speakeasy.

That speakeasy had been the property of a young man by the name of Eddie—until the Legends came blundering into his path, that is. From here things break down in standard Legends fashion, where a small problem quickly leads into a temporary solution, which then spirals into a full-on predicament: Sara and Ava’s need to disguise their luxurious (and headline-grabbing) blonde locks has them spending what remains of the crew’s travelling cash on designer wigs. (Gary spent the rest tipping a waitress 20 bucks: “20 dollars for a six-top seems fair to me.” Good for Gary! But also, dumb of Gary!)

The crew’s mad scramble for cash pulls Eddie into their orbit at just the right time; he invites them into his especially-on-the-q.t. speakeasy, one of the very few safe spaces in all of Chicago where people who stand out can hang out. (In fact, Eddie wants to make his spot so open to those who might need it that his password turns out to be “password.”) There Sara makes a deal to get an ample supply of whiskey for Eddie’s speakeasy, which seems like it’d be a great way for both parties to make some extra money… but—and Gideon would have definitely come in handy in this instance—Sara unwittingly barters with the wrong Chicago gang. Sara’s gangster gaffe brings the wrath of Bottoni down violently upon Eddie, who is left with his life but without his livelihood.

(Sidebar: wouldn’t Eddie question where the booze came from, considering he’d originally made an arrangement with Bottoni? If his hold on his own club was so tenuous, why wouldn’t he be more particular about who gave the hooch to Sara?)

Eddie’s misfortune is an interesting place to brew a bit of light melodrama. It’s a fine example of how delicate messing around in the past can be, especially when the Bullet Blondes decide on a whim to do something wildly dangerous like, say, hop into the bootlegging trade in Chicago in the year 1925. (I do often wonder if Sara Lance ever studied any history in school.) Consequences in a time travel tv show are always welcome, even if these complex issues do end up getting resolved within the span of a tidy 42 minutes.

So how do the Legends make things right? Like any misfit sports team from a 90s movie knows, the only proper way to rescue A Special Thing is to rustle up a fundraiser: within nanoseconds of getting the opportunity to help someone Zari opens her hellacious house of mystery to Eddie for use as an impromptu speakeasy pop-up. It’s a Zari Party and everybody’s invited! (Not you, Hoover-1000, with your dark scanny eyes, looking for trouble.)

As Zari works relentlessly to makes things right with Eddie, the only person in 1925 Chicago who has been decent to her (not to mention incredibly sweet), Astra and Spooner discover the root cause of Spooner’s initial wariness about the Masqueradies courtesy of Maude, who lets Astra in on her tragic backstory. When Astra suggests that she just up and leave Bottoni, a reasonable suggestion to make in 2021, maybe, but certainly not in 1925, Maude hits back: “You just don’t get it.” Her response stings, because how can it not, but Astra isn’t daunted.

This brings us to a recurring conundrum for DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow: futzing with the timeline even when it’s the moral thing to do. In the moment, it is absolutely the right thing for Zari to fix Eddie’s speakeasy problem; Eddie moving out from under Bottoni is a positive change in his life, but who’s to say how this will affect his fortunes in the years to come? Will another Bottoni show up one day and try to horn in on Eddie’s action, just because they feel entitled to it?

And then there’s the matter of Maude. Astra asks Gideon about Maude’s fate, and her answer is predictably hideous: Maude’s on a one-way track towards oblivion if she stays with her abusive gangster boyfriend. Getting Maude away from Bottoni and saving her life is for sure the right thing to do… but what happens tomorrow? Singing in clubs in 1925 Chicago isn’t going to make Maude safer—and besides, Bottoni’s got big-time Chicago connections, debilitating spider-phobia or no debilitating spider-phobia. It’s not unreasonable to think he or some lackey of his will go looking for Maude long after the episode’s reliably awesome song-and-dance number comes to a close. What happens then? Is Astra going to be keeping tabs on Maude in the future?

This week spent some time pointing out that things were bad for certain folks in 1925, an obvious thing that doesn’t exactly do anything on its own. But in the year 2021, presenting hope for those who didn’t have much to hold on to in 1925 has material value even if it is goofy. Hell, especially if it’s goofy; Legends is a goofy show, but no one can ever accuse it of having its heart in the wrong place.

So what’s to be done about Maude? Spooner brings up a solid point when Astra is faced with this decision: “If we try to rescue every woman in a bad relationship from here to New York, we’ll never get a mile out of Chicago.” It’s good reasoning (and a really good line) even if the episode does end up glossing over the murky ramifications of the team ultimately making the decision to change Maude and Eddie’s lives anyway. The timeline has an order to it, but it seems that so long as the Legends’ changes remain small the continuum won’t go into a tailspin. (Though it might have helped to double-check with Gideon in Maude’s case.)

Maude takes a powder but not without a teary goodbye, and the day is saved (plus, now the crew has a bionic G-man in tow to figure out). But! All this moral quandary does raise at least one more big question that feels like it ought to be explored more thoroughly at some point in the future: is fate… mutable, actually? Or maybe I’m barking up the wrong timeline here; in DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow fate just hasn’t seemed like that complicated a thing. Bend the time-space laws to have a bit of fun, break them if somebody’s in danger. Simple. Imagine what could happen if things suddenly got heavy.

Stray Observations

• Episode’s MVP: Spooner Cruz. Lisseth Chavez’s level-headedness and good nature has been this season’s greatest strength so far. She’s the most interesting character in this newest band of Legends, a budding leader and a low-key superhero-in-the-making. Look to the moment when Spooner let fly her rallying cry this week (“Legends… vámonos!”). It’s awesome. More Spooner!
• Bishop Watch 2021: Bupkis this week. Perhaps he’ll be spoiling the Legends’ NYC reunion with Matt Ryan next week?
• One thing that’s been gnawing at me: when the Legends finally do travel forward in time, where/when are they going?
• So we’re all gonna be polite and not point out how unconvincing 1925 Chicago looks this week, right? Yes?
• The papers think Ava and Sara are sisters, a subtle nod to how queer relationships were often completely omitted from the recorded lives of historical figures.
• Astra: “Okay, Captain Sharpe.” Gideon: “That’s Spooner Cruz.”
• Did I see a bottle of whiskey in that totally not period-correct refrigerator? Who puts whiskey in the refrigerator? Legends Recapper PSA: Don’t do that. I don’t care what your dad told you.
• Zari, to Eddie: “Pics or it didn’t happen.” Bartenders are generally socially malleable as a rule (speaking as a former bartender myself), but I think this Eddie guy was so sweet on Zari that he was actively ignoring the warning signs that Zari, Sara, and the rest were (inadvertently) leading him astray. Zari wasn’t even trying to be period incognito.
• Did anybody else catch Gideon stuffing her face with food? Was that a part of a cut scene, or something? Whatever it was, Gideon’s face was priceless.
• What are we calling Spooner’s stabs of intuition? Spooner-sense? I’m calling it Spooner-sense.
• Bittoni is a high-ranking tough-guy gangster, so can’t he afford a decent haircut?
• Hey! Behrad can play a mean guitar! Legends is closer to putting out an album than it isn’t, I’m just saying.
• In the DC Multiverse, Hell is real, and Phil Spector is renting space down there.
• Nate, to Gary: “You get off being bossed around, you little sicko.”
• Also: Gary and Nate’s doorman brouhaha against the time-robot Hoover-1000 was pure gold. Gary: ass-kicker and relationship problem-solver.
• Hoover-1000’s greatest weakness: drapes. Maybe we stopped producing titanium in the future? It’s a green hunter-robot!
• So what did you think, group? Are you stoked to see how lush Matt Ryan’s new beard actually is? Will Nate and Zari figure things out over a Hoover-1ooo autopsy? How much is a good tip in 1925, anyway? Let’s tabulate our totals together in the comments below.