Picking up right where we left it last week, the Legends, after their bowling alley adventure, are ready to head home. There’s one issue. Constantine’s magical teleport damaged the ship’s jumpdrive so they’re traveling home the old fashion way, one light-year at a time. By Gideon’s calculations, it will take them three weeks to get to Earth.
Gary suggests a game to pass the time, but the team passes on it. The Legends hunkers down to their own devices to pass the time. Sara and Ava try to get wedding planning done but keep arguing about the guest list. They discover using too much energy slows their progress so the captains ban screen time and food fabricator privileges.
Meanwhile, Constantine’s started to feel some negative side-effects from the magical potion. But being Constantine he solves his problems by doubling down, taking more of the magical concoction. Behrad is feeling left out of his sister’s life because of Constantine, especially with how he’s been acting recently. After an argument breaks out Sara decides a distraction will help them all pass the time and calls upon Gary and his game.
The game, Beast Slayers, is a Mafia-esqu game where one person is the beast hunting the other characters. The goal is to figure out who the beast is before the beast can kill everyone. Everyone gets characters that are oddly on the nose for everyone’s personality. As Gary begins to narrate the first round Constantine decides cards and a board aren’t enough of an adventure for him. Using his magic he takes them into the game.
The game sets the rules for the world, but Constantine’s imagination fills in the gaps, which is why the spooky manor the game is set in looks like his house. Everyone is decked out as their character and they’re getting into the swing of things. Things are still tense between Behrad and Constantine, especially after Constantine convinces Zari to try some wine with the argument that nothing is real here.
In the real world, an alarm sounds on the Waverider. Gary and Mick, as the only ones outside of the game, respond to it. Gideon picked up a distress signal from a nearby ship. Mick recognizes it as Bishop’s. The ship docks with them and Mick is ready to melt whoever boards them, until he sees Kayla step through the doors.
Back to the Beast Slayers, the first claims its first victim. Ava is dead, which here means gets a card with ‘dead’ pinned costume to her and she can no longer talk. But when they vote Nate out, the dagger in his back is very real and he is very dead.
The spell has made the game world real. Their characters begin to feel less like characters and more like their real personalities. Constantine, who has the role of consumptive doctor, even begins to cough up blood. Between that and finding Ava’s dead body, Sara is ready to call an end to everything. It looks like she’s about to announce she’s the beast when the lights flicker out. When they turn back on, Sara has joined the dead team (again). The remaining Legends reveal their cards, all blank. When they check Sara’s hers says ‘You’re all going to die here.’
On the Waverider, Kayla reveals she’s been looking for her ship. She tracked the part they were using to track down the alien pods which led her to the Waverider instead. Seeing she’s injured, Mick takes her to the medbay, printing a new tentacle for her. Gary and Mick admit her ship is on Earth and they’re willing to let her stay with them while they travel.
She offers to fix the jumpdrive to make their time together shorter. Mick’s about to tell her he’s pregnant when Gary stops him, worried Kayla might kill him if she finds him an unfit parent. While they’re distracted, neither notice Kayla placing a device on the mainframe.
In the magical murder game, Constantine tries to end the spell but his efforts are rejected. Thinking the only way out is to win, the Legends switch tactics. Astra, who’s the soothsayer, uses her magic to connect with the beast. Through her, the beast speaks an ominous message about hunting down everyone. Spooner and Astra split off from the group, hoping to find another way out but the magic keeps leading them into the same rooms.
Behrad gets worried about them, going to look for them. Before he does, he warns Zari to keep an eye on John, giving her a fire poker to defend herself. Unfortunately, by the time Behrad does find Spooner and Astra it’s too late. They’re both dead. Zari finds him moments after he found their bodies. He and Constantine accuse each other, and Zari refusing to be pulled into the middle of their fight. Constantine finally decides to lock himself in the attic to prove he isn’t the beast.
Back on the Waverider, Gary finds a suspicious slime trail that leads him to the med bay and Kayla’s severed tentacle. The tentacle is using the med bay to print something, or it would be more accurate to say someone. It attacks Gary when it tries to stop it.
Gideon informs Mick about the attack, which is when Kayla turns on him, grabbing his heat gun before he can. She says she’s doing this because she owes ‘him’. Mick reveals he’s pregnant to stop Kayla from frying him alive. She doesn’t kill him but does knock him out.
The Tarazi siblings are wondering what their next moves should be. Behrad thinks this whole experience is glaring proof of Constantine’s strange behavior since he ‘drank from the fountain’. Zari, however, can’t go against him because she loves him. Behrad is surprised to hear her say that. She admits she can be herself around him. Behrad consoles her, letting her know he likes Constantine, just not how he’s been acting recently.
Upstairs, Constantine is confronted by the beast, who turns out to be himself. Or at least the worst version of himself. The version that’s all of his darkest choices and thoughts personified. John gets into a fight with himself. Zari and Behrad hear the fighting, rushing to help, Zari grabbing the fire poker on the way.
In the attic, they run in just in time to stop the beast from hurting Constantine, Zari stabbing him in the back. She and Behrad however, never see the beast’s face, so they don’t know it’s another version of John. With the beast defeated, the Legends are returned to the Waverider.
Sara notices they’re on Earth, making them wonder how long they were in the game. They also see the tentacle, with no Gary or Mick insight. Gideon is offline and will be until they reboot the ship. John, feeling the worst of the effects of the potions, heads to his house to rest. Zari promises to meet him there, and to Behrad she admits she’s going to tell John she loves him.
In a truly gut-wrenching moment, Constantine tries to get rid of the potion, but can’t bring himself to. When Zari checks on him, he’s asleep. She starts to confess but then notices a mark on the same spot she stabbed the evil Constantine in the game.
Meanwhile, on the ship, Sara and Ava find Gary without his glasses and unable to communicate. The others find Mick knocked out. Sara hears a certain song that draws her away from the others. The episode ends with her finding something that leaves her horrified.
Although it’s not said, it’s clear that she finds Bishop.
Review
‘Bored on Board Onboard’ is a pretty tight bottle episode. The murder mystery game was a clever way to let the team leave the ship without actually leaving the ship. They may not have gotten very long to ham it up as their characters’ caricatures, but that plus the costuming certainly left an impression. It’s always been one of the fun elements of the Legends formula, letting the characters lean into some quirky roleplay.
While it’s not the best bottle episode Legends has produced (that honor goes to ‘Here I Go Again’), it certainly was a fun episode leading into the final episodes of the season. Or, at least, as fun as an episode can be when depicting an addition. It found a balance between lighter humor in the first half before pivoting to dig into Constantine’s demons and reintroduce the antagonists in Kayla and Bishop.
If wasn’t clear already, this episode is a sucker punch for how far John’s fallen in such a short time. Constantine as a character has always been someone who has been haunted — literally and metaphorically — by his past, present and future. Even the usually optimistic Legends tone couldn’t save John from himself forever.
Kayla and Bishop’s return is not a surprising development but Sara’s expression at the end the sold everything you’d need to know about the rest of the season. She may have defeated him once before, but he left her irrefutably changed. I’m looking forward to how the rest of the Legends engage with him, especially Ava. She’s come a long way in accepting her humanity and personhood since finding out she was a clone, but coming face to face with the man who created the AVA clones will surely bring those things to the surface again.
Only Legends Could
- Flannel Zari dubbed her alternate timeline version Fancy Zari.
- Ava has a point about Barry and Iris. Invite too many heroes from other shows and the wedding is destined to turn into a crossover lead in.
- But if she gets her fake parents, Sara should get to invite her formerly evil sister from an alternate world.
- Another tally for the times Sara Lance has died.
- Mick is the latest victim of the CW wig curse.
Images courtesy of the CW.
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