“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 604 Recap: Bombs Away

Hello, ladies and gentlenerds, and welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow episode 604, Body of Squid aka The One with Aliyah O’Brien.

We open this week in 1962 Cuba, where an alien pod crash lands. And the soldiers sure are surprised when not only do they find something that doesn’t look much like a missile at all, but also that there are tentacles inside.

Meanwhile, an alarm interrupts the Legends’ morning activities: sleepy, no-make up Zari 2.0 looking too much like Original Zari for Nate’s caveman brain, Behrad having a weed gummy snooze, Spooner working out.

Spooner is in a white tank top and boxer braids and holding a glass of water.

It was like she could sense my thirst for her.

Gideon says it’s not her doing, and Mick calls everyone to the bridge for a team meeting. He’s all cleaned up and says he has a lead on the alien they think will lead them to Sara’s location.

Ava is so excited she could scream.

Legends of Tomorrow Episode 604: Ava bites her lip with glee.

It’s always nice when someone else actually contributes to the group project.

Instead, she hugs him. They land in Cuba and as Spooner looks around at everyone rushing out to a mission in their pajamas, she asks why they didn’t just go back an hour earlier, or wait to go back until everyone was changed, but Zari explains that questions like this are answered by the principle of “totems shmotems” aka the hand-waving you grant sci-fi shows, especially re: time travel. We’re not here for the metaphysics.

They realize they forgot the snoozing Behrad but decide to press on anyway. They steal some trucks and shoot some guns, much to Spooner’s delight and Zari’s chagrin.

Zari looks annoyed at Spooner.

This is me at all the men and their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns this whole episode.

When they clear the scene and open the crate to inspect the alien pod, they realize they didn’t find the pod, but a missile. They realize with horror that they are smack dab in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Ava is suddenly regretting letting Mick take point on this mission.

So the team splits up, Nate and Zari going to Washington to try to keep history on course, Ava finds Behrad and takes him to go to try to track down the alien, and Mick and Spooner sent to return the missile to the Russians they stole it from.

I feel bad that Zari became a whole new Zari and started dating a whole new man that isn’t good enough for her, and in this episode she STILL gets stuck with Nate. I especially feel bad because this week is Nate making friends with the boys’ club and even though Zari proves herself to be the most useful person in the room on more than one occasion, it was kind of a bummer she got stuck in the middle of it.

In more fun/typical shenanigans, Behrad poses as a soldier and Ava poses as a Russian doctor who specializes in aliens to get onto Fidel Castro’s base of operations.

Legends of Tomorrow Episode 604: Ava looks down her costume glasses at a soldier.

Big British Waverly energy.

She gets led right into an operating room and is asked to start cutting, and the gush of silver blood immediately makes Behrad sick and Ava panic. Behrad runs out of the room to be sick and by the time he calms down, he is swept away into Fidel Castro’s office being mistaken for Che Guevara. Knowing he couldn’t pull that fake-out off, he instead insists he’s Che’s cousin, Jay, and is welcomed by the Commandante with open arms.

Things in the Oval Office start to take a turn as the President starts to buy into the military’s call for nuclear war, mostly because of the Legends’ meddling. I’ll be honest I mostly tuned out all this DefCon stuff because I feel the same way Zari did about the whole situation, which is mostly, huh? I’m here for the aliens, not the politics!

Speaking of aliens, with her new stint as Doctor McSteamy going horribly awry, Ava decides to dose everyone with the nitrous oxide.

Ava is in scrubs doing surgery on an alien and looking mischievous.

“Doctor doctor, give me the news, I’ve got a bad case of loving you.”

Now, I’m not 100% sure why she didn’t also go down; is she immune as a clone? Was she just maintaining her breathing better since she knew it was happening? Unclear, but again, totems shmotems. Once everyone is out, she kidnaps the alien and makes a break for it.

As she wheels the gurney for dear life, Spooner can sense the alien is waking up and she can tell it is PISSED.

Spooner cringes as she senses the alien's anger.

I’m really into Spooner’s whole aesthetic. And if she’s 100% straight I’ll eat my tinfoil-lined cowboy hat.

And luckily Spooner follows those feelings to find Ava and the alien before it makes lunch of our favorite lesbian time traveling clone.

In a surprisingly more chill situation, Behrad and Fidel Castro are eating weed gummies together. Behrad sings him a song on the guitar about hopping on the peace train, but that’s pretty quickly derailed when the alien makes an appearance and Fidel Castro thinks it was sent by the Americans. He decides to launch a missile, so Behrad sends his team a message telling them that whatever their plans are, they better hop to.

Ava starts to panic and she lashes out at Mick; she put him in charge and he made a lot of mistakes and now they might have just started World War 3.

Legends of Tomorrow Episode 604: Ava looks horrified.

This is my face when I scroll through twitter half the time.

She lashes out at Mick and tells him that they have to fix history first and save Sara later. Mick asks if he’s supposed to go back to just being the grunting hot-head he was before and she gives him an exasperated yes and storms off.

Spooner and Mick go off in search of the alien, and Spooner doesn’t think Ava was right about Mick. She knows what it’s like to have a grumpy shell, she knows there’s likely a softer center underneath. But before they can get too deep, Spooner senses the alien nearby. But her alien senses are getting stronger and she can not only sense that it’s nearby, she can sense what it feels, what it wants…what she’s thinking.

Spooner looks like a bass aiming her laser gun in dramatic lighting.

I appreciate that sometimes it seems like Spooner is off in her own Alien movie.

Spooner says that this alien wants to get off this planet and is considering trying to use the missile to do it. Mick is immediately hostile, yelling at the alien that she wouldn’t be able to use that missile to do anything but die. She tentacles him and he says he has a spaceship of his own, and Spooner can tell she understands him but just doesn’t trust him. Which, frankly, same. He offers to take the alien to her spaceship in exchange for Sara’s location, and she asks what kind of fuel his ship takes because this trip is going to be a long haul.

Back in the Oval Office, the military men get word that Castro fired his missile, and they literally play football with the buttons to the nuclear codes to return the favor. Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if this really is how life or death decisions are made in Washington but honestly I was about as interested in the situation as Zari was.

Zari twirls her wind around looking a bit bored.

:Little Rascals voice: “Whoopi.”

Ultimately, they convince the president not to retaliate and they all brace for impact. But the only person who dies is the military man who ran out and tried to shoot the missile down (I swear guns use brain cells for bullets), because the missile had been disarmed before it launched. Nate joins the President and his men for a bro huddle and Zari is amused by their childlike nonsense.

Zari smiles, amused.

:thinking about the storylines I deserve that are better than being trapped in a room with frat boys and a man as interesting as a hunk of steel:

As it turns out, the reason the missile was disarmed is because Mick and the alien took the plutonium out to power the Waverider for the longer mission to find Sara and the missing spaceship. While they walk, Mick opens a portal and yeets Spooner out.

As the alien gets to work on turbocharging the ship, Mick tells Ava that since they can’t fully trust their new shipmate, he’s going on this particular rescue mission alone. At first it seems like Ava is pissed at him for not following her direct orders.

Legends of Tomorrow Episode 604: Ava Sharpe crosses her arms, looking like she's about to start scolding someone.

If I walked into the room and saw this I would start confessing immediately starting with the time in kindergarten I only pretended to be asleep when naptime ended so I didn’t have to do show & tell.

But then she admits she was wrong to not trust his instincts, so she hugs him and agrees to let him go alone.

As Zari pulls out her 60s secretary hair, she catches Nate leering at her again, and apologizes for being a reminder of what he lost, but he says that’s not why he’s leering. And I fear another love triangle.

The Legends find their way back to each other in the woods, and they decide while Mick has the Waverider, they’re going to live in Constantine’s house. Though it’s unclear as of right now what year they’re in and which version of a very annoyed Constantine they’re about to be Real World-ing it with.

As they set out on their journey, Mick grumps up to the alien we know to be Kayla and starts barking rules at her, like don’t drink my beer. Kayla starts clicking at him in her alien tongue(s?) and Mick gets angrier. So Kayla puts on her ring that transforms her into her human form and asks if he has any stronger booze.

Legends of Tomorrow Episode 604: The alien slips on a ring and takes the form of Aliyah O'Brien

I have been waiting approximately 7 years for Aliyah to appear in another show I recap so I have more excuses to take screenshots of her.

She downs the rest of Mick’s beer and Heat Wave cools down for once.

I, for one, am thrilled that Aliyah O’Brien has joined the shenanigans. I first came to love her in Rookie Blue as lesbian forensic pathologist Holly Stewart, and continue to be delighted every time she reappears on my screen. This is no exception. I will warn you, if Ava and Kayla ever go toe to toe, or even get face to face, I can’t promise my Avalance ship won’t drift a bit. I am but a weak gay.

Aliyah O'Brien as Kayla makes a smirky sexy face.

And I mean, all aliens are pan, right? Including Kryptonians? It’s only humans that invented the nonsense concept of binary sexuality?

Next week, in what miiiight be a partly animated episode (only because I know Caity Lotz is directing a Disney-themed episode and also that Caity Lotz is directing the next episode), Astra learns that the human world? It’s a mess. See you then!

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

Valerie Anne

Just a TV-loving, Twitter-addicted nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories. One part Kara Danvers, two parts Waverly Earp, a dash of Cosima and an extra helping of my own brand of weirdo.

Valerie has written 602 articles for us.

7 Comments

  1. Just popping in here to say that I thought the feature image was Elizabeth Warren for a hot second. Or a hot two seconds. Long enough for the thought, “That’s an unexpected cameo,” to flit through my mind before I realized I should maybe take a nap.

  2. – Okay, they need to stop with the Nate and Zari stuff. It’s over. Let it go.
    – Mick getting his act together.
    – Spooner working out? I’m sure that nobody wants that….nobody at all.
    – Zari speaking French.
    – Something is telling me that Spooner and Mick are going to get along famously.
    – I can normally roll with the things in this show, but all of the situations where the crew just walk into high-security situations is going beyond my ability to suspend disbelief.
    – I don’t think that Spooner’s abilities are getting stronger. I think that Kayla is her mother. It would also explain why she can read the Kayla’s language.
    – “I’ve never seen someone type with just their thumbs before.” That was hilarious.
    – A football game with the nuclear football. Only on Legends.
    – NEW THEORY! I had thought that Mick and Spooner might hook up, and Spooner would be a sort of stepmom to Lita. Now I think that Mick and Kayla are Spooner’s parents with Spooner being Lita’s half-sister.

    Question: Is Lisseth Chavez (Spooner) queer IRL?
    https://twitter.com/lissethchavez/status/966496671554154496

    • That theory… is genius!

      (Does this mean that at some point, Mick will have to challenge Gary to a duel for Kayla?)

  3. It’s heartening to see how far Ava has come since her first mission with the Legends. She doesn’t even blink at putting on a costume and getting into character anymore.

    This episode really highlights the fact that none of the men on the crew have ever really had an arc.

    First puppets, now traditional animation. I’d love to see a stop motion episode of Legends of Tomorrow. Anyone know if Laika is busy?

  4. This episode was such a mixed bag: Spooner continues to be very hot, everyone except Zari was boring in that White House storyline, the Mick/Ava moments were actually kind of endearing, and who even knows what was going on with Behrad and Castro?
    That said, when Behrad picked up his guitar, a part of me really wanted him to sing the “I’m a weed gummy” song from that one SNL skit (https://youtu.be/c5dQpHfbbrk)

Comments are closed.