While Zari is teaching a grown man who looks an awful lot like her alternate timeline self’s ex-boyfriend how to express his feelings, Sara and Spooner are off hunting with makeshift weapons on an adorable little bonding mission.

I’m going to tell my children this was the Hunger Games.

On the other side of the forest, another sibling is distracting another parent by way of weaponry. That is to say, Astra is watching proudly while Ava lets out her frustration verbally while also whaling on trees with an axe. And suddenly she’s starting to feel better!

This is only sort of related but I’ve always wanted to go to one of those smash rooms.

Human Gideon and Gary get distracted on their foraging mission talking about things that are neat about being a human, and things they still want to try, like swimming in the ocean. Human Gideon suggests they try sex, and Gary is down because he’s a lot of things but he’s not a COMPLETE idiot.

WHO WOULD SAY NO TO THIS

Doing quite the opposite is Wrong Gideon, who instead of getting a man high on endorphins, is drugging a man (Bishop, specifically) so she can clean up the timeline her own way.

Down on Earth, Davies tells Zari all about his time in the war, about the message he was meant to deliver that didn’t make it in time, about the man he was traveling with who he saw die right in front of him. He thought some god spared him to go back in time and save his unit, but all his failures are now starting to make him think otherwise. He calls himself a coward, but Zari doesn’t agree.

I wish I could have a sit-down with Flannel Zari. I feel like I could use her gentleness.

She points out that just sharing this truth and this pain with her was braver than most people ever get. Before Zari can continue her impromptu therapy session, however, they are set upon by soldiers who kidnap them. Luckily, Behrad saw them get taken away so he’s ready to save the day.

On the Evil Waverider, Wrong Gideon tells Bishop that she solved their latest problem with both a Hoover AND an Edison bot, but now that Bishop isn’t having fun anymore. He wants to go home, so he tries to call for help, and is surprised when he hears his own voice on the other end of the line, and not in a weird echo way, more like in a Discover commercial.

And that’s how Bishop learns that Wrong Gideon made a Bishop Bot to keep the timeline on track. Bishop sneaks a peak at BishopBot’s programming and sees that he’s destined to turn evil and have the Legends stop him from destroying the world. He understands now why the Legends took him and messed with his memory, and he’s not so sure if he continues on this plan to destroy the Legends that he’ll be on the right side of history.

In the forest, Sara and Spooner come back with a dinner of squirrels around the same time Astra and Ava come back with enough wood to build a log cabin, and the wives greet each other with a warm embrace. They just needed a little bit of a break from responsibilities so they didn’t become an echo chamber of stress.

“But we’ll just put that axe down so we don’t end up with an accidental Lizzie Borden situation.”

As soon as the soldiers deposit Zari and Davies in an office for safekeeping, Davies starts to panic again so Zari squeezes him like a weighted blanket. Realizing Davies talks about one man more than the rest, she asks Davies to tell her about him, and as she watches him physically relax as he talks about him, Zari realizes that Davies loved this man. When she asks this, and sees the fear on his face, her face softens even more and she reassures him that it’s okay in one of the most comforting voices.

Davies says yes, maybe saying it out loud for the first time, and it opens wounds old and new. Zari understands and explains about how she lost her whole family once too, until she ran into the Legends and they helped her fix it.

“They also made me live in a totem half the time but it’s fiiiine.”

Davies is surprised this band of weirdos helped her but she promises that even though sometimes they look like a bunch of preschoolers trying to perform the Nutcracker ballet, he’s actually in good hands.

Behrad sneakily follows the soldiers, and when he finds Zari and Davies, he tells them that on the way to save his sister he found a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is a pile of parts they need to fix the time machine. The bad thing is the date: the day of the Chernobyl disaster.

“What do you MEAN Dickinson is on its third and FINAL season?!”

They briefly explain Chernobyl to Davies and he thinks maybe THIS is his purpose, to save people from this disaster. Zari can practically hear Ava’s eye twitch about the timeline, but ultimately they decide to give one (1) warning over the loudspeaker and hope it doesn’t have TOO much of a catastrophic effect on the future.

Speaking of catastrophic effects, Bishop has gone into a full meltdown about there being a RoboBishop living his life for him. And I’m having a similar problem with Bishop that I did with Lex Luthor on Supergirl (on a much smaller scale) which is that I found him a fun villain when he was first introduced, but he has long overstayed his welcome. So during this scene my inner mean girl was like, “Aww, is someone not a special boy anymore?” in the most condescending, mocking tone you can imagine. I’m sorry but it’s very hard to feel bad about a man who cloned Sara against her will getting replaced by a robot against his will!

Anyway, on a much more pleasant note, Sara and Ava are snuggled up by the fire, looking at their team, and realizing that they maybe don’t have to stress about controlling every minute of their adventures. They have to trust that they’ve raised their kids right and that the team only needs a little guidance, not micromanagement.

The kids are alright.

Just then, the team hears a noise in the jungle that doesn’t sound much like a dinosaur, and are surprised to see a car rocketing toward them. And it struck me how very jarring that must be, to have zero idea WHEN you are. Like when you wake up from an unexpected nap and have no idea if it’s day or night, or when you’re lost in the West Village and all of a sudden you’re at Stonewall and finally realize where you are. (Okay that last one might be really niche but Manhattan is a neat, numbered grid until you hit 6th ave and then it’s a pop culture corn maze from Cornelia Street to Waverly Place and it can be very disorienting!)

Turns out the car is the Tarazis and Davies, who jump out of the car and warn the team and let them know they’re in danger.

“I think I’ve seen this film before. And I didn’t like the ending.”

Adding to their stress is a looming Evil Waverider threatening to eliminate them from the timeline before Chernobyl does, so Team Science gets right to work on the time machine, what with the impending nuclear explosion and all.

Nate decides takes this time to talk to Zari about moving in with her because even though Nate has been relatively inoffensive this whole season, of course OF COURSE he has to make this moment all about him, because he is a straight white rich cis man after all.

With time running out, ironically enough, the Legends pile into the Davies Gazebo of Time™.

I usually try to focus on ladies only in my screenshots but I really liked this shot and couldn’t resist including it.

Wrong Gideon, piloting the Evil Waverider as close as she can to the Legends in the jungle, tries one last time to get Bishop to vaporize the Legends, but he understands now that they were actually much more forgiving with him than they needed to be; they were just trying to help him. So instead of listening to Wrong Gideon, he runs to the single bathroom on the Waverider and we finally learn what the red button does: a great toilet escape!

The Legends, from the time machine, see the man on a toilet rocketing toward them, and know that someone pressed the red button, but also know that they don’t have time to wait for him to land to find out who it is. So they activate the machine and disappear, scooping at least some of Bishop up along with them in their beam as they go.

Next week, the mid-season finale, which is giving off some Bomb Girls vibes! See you then.

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