Hello and welcome to this rootin’ tootin’ recap of Legends of Tomorrow episode 608, Stressed Western aka the one guest starring and directed by David Ramsey.

We pick up the morning after the last episode, where Ava is bustling around the Waverider, nervous about Sara’s first day back. The team is making her and Mick a very elaborate breakfast while they plan their first mission in a while as a full team. They have a plan to find all the alien pods but for now they just want a good old-fashioned Legends romp to ease Sara back in so things can get back to normal.

Speaking of normal, Astra is off practicing magic while yelling at Spooner who is yelling at Gary for his alien emotions getting all up in her brain, especially when Constantine is grilling him about where the Fountain of Inspiri is. You know, regular stuff!

You know, Astra talks a lot in this episode about reclaiming her power, but has she seen the way she sits in a chair? Very powerful.

Ava brings Sara her breakfast in bed, and Sara is so, so glad to be home. Ava tells Sara that she’s here to talk about what happened to her in space whenever she’s ready, but Sara deflects by asking for the Legends goss instead. Ava tells her a little about Spooner, about the whole binder cartoon thing, about Zari’s special smoothie with passion dragon dust in it…

“I know it’s hard to hear, but Wynonna Earp might not get to make all of the seasons you saw in the future.”

But when Ava goes in for a kiss, Sara blurts out that she’s an alien human hybrid clone. Which is great because consent is sexy! Sara plops down on the bed and Ava lays down next to her so they can process like the good girlfriends they are.

If you’re ever in the mood to get blackout drunk, take a sip every time Sara or Ava calls the other “babe.”

Ava is surprised but not necessarily in a bad way, but before they can discuss further Gideon calls the team together. Before they join their friends, Sara asks Ava to keep this quiet for now, she wants one normal mission before everything changes.

When their captains enter the main room that I’m sure has a name I’ve forgotten, together again for the first time in a long time, the Legends give Sara a round of applause. She smiles a big, warm smile and waves them off and asks Gideon what their next mission is.

Gideon has a sense of humor, because the first place she sends Sara recently-reunited-with-her-fiancée Lance is Fist City. Oklahoma, 1891.

Spooner is adjusting to life with new and improved alien powers and also Alien Gary on the ship, and luckily Gary is standing next to Sara, so when she senses an alien hiding something and also wanting to jump Ava’s bones, they think it’s just Gary being…well, Gary.

Sara uses her expert Nanda Parbat trained vigilante honed distraction skills and throws up a few finger guns as she leads the team through the fabricator and out to the Wild Wild West.

Astra, for one, is excited to be back in a lawless land. She pokes fun at Spooner being a cowgirl and totally ignores Behrad’s advances. Which sets my unrealistic shipper heart a-sailing. Zari notices her brother swing and miss with Astra again, and starts nitpicking his choices, offering to be his wingwoman, and Nate snaps at them all and tells them that they’re supposed to be having a classic Legends romp of an episode and to stop fighting.

Seeing a potential for an enemies-to-lovers pipeline and knowing what trope will help get us there, he makes Astra and Spooner reluctant partners for this mission.

Enemies to lovers and reluctant partners are two of my favorite tropes. THEY’RE ALREADY A TOL AND A SMOL. I hope their next mission sends them to the frozen tundra and they have to huddle for warmth in the only bed.

The team braces themselves for a mess as they bust into the local watering hole, but instead what they get is some Teen Nick version of a saloon; no booze, no swearing, no fighting. A singing narrator sings a friendly tune and the team is rightly wigged out by it.

Caity and Jes both share this unique ability to switch from incredibly attractive to absolutely ridiculous with a single facial expression.

Up on the ship, Constantine asks Gary about the Fountain again, and confesses to losing his magic, but Gary nervously says it’s a myth and that Constantine should just give up. Which doesn’t sound much like Ol’ Johnny…

In Fist Town, the Legends are suspicious of the Mild West so they decide to investigate. Astra tries to play poker with a sexist and/or racist asshole who thinks she’s a server and she wants to win all his gold from him, but he’s just playing Go Fish since there’s no gambling allowed in this here saloon.

While she distracts this man, Spooner scans for aliens and Behrad scans for a girlfriend. He does spot a lady fair, but Zari points out that she’s probably paid to smile coyly at him, but another patron points to the sign and “no fornicating” is one of the rules, too.

The woman comes over to flirt more with Behrad, introducing herself as Irma Rose and telling them that the Sheriff is the one who implemented all these rules.

Anyone else love her in the 90210 reboot in 2008? No, just me? Great, cool.

She asks him to play her a tune, and he obliges, causing Zari to roll her eyes at her dorky little brother.

Meanwhile, Sara is pounding back cherry milkshakes like they’re tequila shots and asking the bartender what the situation is here, but he’s very “it doesn’t look like anything to me” about the whole thing.

“These not-so-violent delights have violent ends.”

Nate notices a Wanted poster on the wall with Bass Reeves on it, and finds out the Sheriff is Levi Stapleton, and he knows darn well that that’s bass ackwards. There might only be four season of Wynonna Earp in this timeline but he’s learned plenty about the first Black deputy marshal west of the Mississippi.

Just then, the doors swing open and Sheriff Stapleton himself struts in, looking smarmy as hell and asking after the strangers that just rolled into town. Sara tries to ask them questions about how he turned this town into a haven, but he just politely asks them to be on their way.

Next page: More bisexuals and lesbians in more hats! 

Ignoring this Legends standoff, Astra follows the man she was trying to play cards with outside to ask the man where he got his gold. When he tells her to “git like a good little girl” she starts to seethe and the ground starts to shake. As everyone runs out to watch this unfold, Sara notices the Sheriff is chillaxin, unfazed and unmoving, even as a giant Tremors-like worm bursts from the ground and gobbles up the guy threatening Astra. Which, frankly, is fine by me.

When we were little my cousins and I, instead of “the floor is lava” we would sometimes play Tremors.

The Sheriff walks coolly outside and blows a whistle to get the worm to go away, then he asks the newcomers once again to kindly vacate his tiny town.

I’m furious about how good Caity Lotz looks in Western garb.

When the Legends go back to the ship to regroup, they ask Gary if he’s ever heard of an alien like that, and he says it’s probably a Haverack, which can only be controlled by the whistle around the Sheriff’s neck. So they know what they have to do…square dance it off him.

One of my favorite little moments of the episode is when Nate’s short stint as interim captain gets the better of him and he tries to give Astra and Spooner orders and they just look at him blankly before plainly asking him if he even has the authority to do that. He agrees it felt weird to give orders and even though Sara gives the same exact orders to stay behind because of their tempers, they don’t flinch at her benching them. It was a nice little reminder that even though Nate is a know-it-all, Sara and Ava are in charge here.

The rest of the Legends start to square dance, and though it’s not how they imagined it, Sara and Ava realize it’s their first dance as an engaged couple….though the dance doesn’t last long as Sara needs another milkshake pronto.

Zari tries her hand at flirting the necklace off the Sheriff, but he catches on and is rude to her, which makes her angry, and makes Constantine angry, and makes ME angry, so the ground begins to shake again.

Everyone calms down and Sara decides the only way to solve this is with a good ol’ fashioned duel. Winner gets the whistle, loser leaves town for good.

Ava is incredibly stressed about this plan, but Sara knows she can stay calm enough to not wake the beast.

Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD, yaknow?

Despite being told to stay put, Astra and Spooner find themselves in the woods, Astra looking for gold and Spooner following Astra. Astra explains that she doesn’t care about the monetary value of the gold, it’s the principle; that man tried to render her powerless and she wants to take her power back. She’s had to fight for her power her entire life; her metaphorical power in hell and her literal magic powers now. She’s not going to just roll over and let some jamoke from a town called Fist City get the better of her.

Spooner can relate to feeling powerless because she lost her mom when she was little and got bounced around the foster care system since no one wanted a little girl with alien voices in her head. Realizing they both lost their moms young, Astra warms to Spooner like this is Batman vs Superman and they decide to work together.

If their moms have the same name I’m going to riot.

While Sara is polishing her pistol for the fight, she notices Ava is acting a little squirrely. She tells Ava to trust her, and Ava does, but that doesn’t mean she’s not going to worry about the love of her life entering a shoot-out in a town with a monster underneath it.

“Just because I know you’ll probably be fine doesn’t mean I want to watch you do this dangerous thing” is also the basis of my D&D character’s relationship with her fictional girlfriend.

Sara is calm, cool and collected while she walks out to her duel. (Wouldn’t you be, if you had cheated death as often as she has?) Sara and the Sheriff start to walk their ten paces, but around pace 6, Stapleton pulls a Clanton and turns around to shoot Sara in the back.

‘Tis just a flesh wound.

Though he doesn’t hit her in the back, he hits her square in the head, a through and through to the noggin, but just as Sara knew (or at least strongly hoped) would happen, her alien half stitches her right up lickity split.

Stapleton calls her a monster and says it’s not normal to heal like that, and while she concedes it’s not normal she knows one thing to be true, a thing that it’s taken her seasons to learn, a truth universally acknowledged: She is not a monster.

I think Evan Rachel Wood Bisexual would have been proud of this unaffected strut.

He shoots her a bunch as she calmly walks toward him like some kind of Dolores Abernathy and she eventually shoots his whistle off from around his neck. This agitates him enough that he swiftly becomes worm food, and Sara pilfers his hat while Irma scoops up the whistle.

Meanwhile in the woods, the Grumpy Gals follow the gold to the alien’s nest and realize that the worm creature is pooping out the gold, which explains why Stapleton is so keen on keeping it calm. Just then Bass Reeves comes out of the woods, and he is Diggle-shaped. He swears he’s not the villain Stapleton made him out to be and offers to help Astra and Spooner.

Back in town, Irma gets immediately drunk on the power of holding the whistle and starts threatening the Legends, who run inside to avoid being shot. They all look to Sara, who they all knew was good at not dying, but have never seen do THAT before. She throws up her hands and admits that perhaps everything isn’t as back to normal as she and Ava had been pretending.

Cooped up in a stressful situation, the Legends start to bicker a little. Ava and Sara about Sara taking such a risk right in front of Ava’s eyes, Zari and Behrad about sibling meddling, Constantine and Gary about the magic fountain that Gary concedes is real but too dangerous to get to. Nate tries and fails to keep them all calm.

The monster senses this delicious bantering and heads toward the town, Astra, Spooner and Reeves hot on its…well, not heels. Butt? Gold skid marks? They follow it.

Sara and Ava continue to have a little tiff, momentarily forgetting they are in charge here. Astra asks Spooner to help but Spooner says there’s nothing her powers can do. Astra disagrees and tells her to get into the alien’s head instead of the other way around, and, emboldened by this newfound friendship, Spooner tries it.

Meanwhile everyone is outside in a gunfight, and luckily Sara acknowledges that Bass Reeves looks like Diggle (and must be an ancestor, like that horrible Too Many Constantines episode) as Spooner uses her powers to control the worm. Once it’s stable, Astra jumps in for the alley oop and uses HER powers to explode the alien.

“I can’t take them as chums.”

The Legends head back to the Waverider, the singing narrator saying the only fights left are the ones between ’em. But even those are finding their resolutions. For example, Gary agrees to help Constantine get a map to the fountain and sends him off to find it, alone.

Ava brings Sara an apology milkshake and they realize their attempts to make things “normal” backfired, perhaps because things are just different now. But Ava doesn’t think that means that has to be a bad thing.

Let’s be weird. Together.

They were never normal to begin with, a vigilante assassin and the head of the Time Bureau, the bearer of the Death Totem/Paragon of Destiny and a Bossy Ava clone. Sara agrees, and jokingly blames the Passion Dragon Ash before tackling her future wife onto the bed.

Happy Pride!

Behrad and Zari make up, too, and frankly that fight was mild compared to the knock-down, drag-out fights my brother and I can have, so kudos to them for figuring it out.

Behrad borrows Zari’s totem and brings the two halves to Nate and tells him that he can use them to visit Original Zari for a little while, once in a while. It might not be traditional, but what about their lives is?

As the Legends settle down, the narrator sings a very profound line. “There might not be a normal but that might be okay.”

And then Ava comes out and tells them to put the cowboy narrator back where they found him or so help her! I love this silly show!!

Next time on Legends of Tomorrow, the Legends are going to save a sitcom, from the inside if they have to! See ya then!

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