Hello and welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow season 7, episode 9, “Lowest Common Demoninator” aka the one where the real Legends get TOO real.

Previously on Legends of Tomorrow, Evil Gideon created a group of androids in the Legends’ image to destroy them, so the real Legends kidnapped the father of time travel and used his very first time machine to quantum leap to safety.

We open this week in said safe space, and it’s the pocket dimension version of the mansion. The problem is, since they didn’t get in with the key, it’s not linked to a time or place on the material plane, so they are trapped in the hell dimension. They’re mad that Gideon brought them here when they said “home” instead of back to 2022, but they can’t have her fix it right now because her human body has a human fever. They all storm off to come up with a plan to stop Evil Gideon and the RoboLegends (band name, called it), leaving Gideon to wring her hands about doing a bad job.

With everyone distracted, no one explains to Davies where exactly they are, so when he follows familiar voices and opens the front door, he is quite alarmed to find that they are, quite literally, in hell.

Captain Ava Sharpe immediately marches to the kitchen to make a new murder board to figure out what to do next.

I would watch a reality show that was just live footage of the Legends cast behind the scenes.

Sara asks the team to start brainstorming ideas, because for the first time in a long time, there’s no clear path forward, and they don’t have their supercomputer AI to help them.

Speaking of their AI, Gary goes to check on Gideon, who is confused as to why everyone is so upset. She thought she was doing the right thing. Gary comforts her and Gideon decides that one thing that will make her feel better is if they use their human bodies in a way that humans do, so they head on upstairs.

You’re adorable and I’m gonna let you finish, but Natalie Dormer did the best apple bite of all time.

Behrad comes to Nate and Fancy Zari and says that he has stopped being high and has a sense of clarity and realizes that he really likes Astra and wants to ask her out. They tell him to be his normal chill self and that it will go well, and when he leaves they’re really proud of themselves like an aunt and uncle who managed to not kill a kid on their first babysitting gig. Nate calls Zari a “time bro-ette” and she basically says “thanks I hate it” because Zaris in any form continue to be THE best.

By the time the Legends finally realize that Davies is decidedly Not Okay about the concept of being in a hell dimension, it’s too late, the door has been open. All the lights go out and Astra knows something hellish is afoot.

I’d watch Ghost Adventures again if these three took over.

Sara is annoyed because now they have a side quest no one asked for, and Ava is pretty sure they can’t fight Evil Gideon if they are possessed by some kind of devil spawn so they get to work trying to figure out what might have happened and how to stop it.

Too bad this didn’t turn into Naked & Afraid.

Nate and Fancy Zari are sweeping for signs of ghouls together when paint falls on them and they have to take their shirts off, causing a spark of sexual tension because Nate replaces his shirt with Constantine’s and Fancy Zari looks a lot like Flannel Zari without a shirt on. The camera starts to move around like it’s strapped to a Jersey man’s shoulder and it’s clear that something hinky is going on.

Ava keeps prodding at Sara to help her come up with a plan, but Sara is, in a word, exhausted. Between the alien invasion, getting stuck in the 20s, surviving Chernobyl, watching Bishop die, and now whatever is going on now all while being chased by an evil version of the only constant she’s had in her life since she got on this Beebo-forsaken ship…she’s at capacity.

And Ava gets it but she’s tired too and they have a job to do and grown children to herd so they have to just keep going. And unfortunately they keep going right into Gary and Gideon’s room, where they scream upon realizing all three of Gary’s nipples are exposed.

“Oh god are we on Fear Factor?!”

The rest of the team runs in to see what all the screaming is about, and in turn all scream upon seeing Gary’s ex-evil extra appendage, and Astra is ready to murder Gary and asks questions later until Gideon reassures her that not only was this whole thing consensual, but it was her idea. Sara and Ava blame Gideon’s recent misfires on this relationship and storm out.

When they realize all this tension and chaos feels a bit familiar to those of them who are familiar with the Bravo network, Astra realizes exactly what’s going on. She uses magic to show the Legends that they’re being haunted by a cursed crew; they sold their souls to make a good show so now they’re cursed to do ghosty mayhem, forced to film until they capture something real, something authentic.

And just like real producers and crew members on real reality shows (or at least, my understanding of them based on the show Unreal which is the closest I’ve come to watching a reality show since 2011), they are able to nudge and manipulate people and emotions to amplify any budding conflict. Astra knows exactly who is behind this, so she storms off to talk to a man named Harris, demanding everyone else stay put and not turn on each other.

Fancy Zari is sure she can handle this, since she grew up on Keeping Up with the Terazis aka KUWT (appropriately pronounced “cute”) in which Behrad was eventually recast like a teen boy getting his head swapped on an ABC Family show.

“What? It worked for New Face Jason on Pretty Little Liars. It’s not like I made him to get an Extreme Makeover.”

Davies pulls Spooner aside and asks what exactly TV is and how “reality TV’ is different, and the only experience Spooner has with it is Survivor so she immediately starts forming alliances and thinking strategy.

Ava still wants to come up with a plan, but as Sara absent-mindedly puts on some earrings that have magically appeared, she starts to whine about how she’d rather go on vacation.

I’ll be honest, I don’t even think I could watch a Real Housewives if it was all queer couples. (No shade though; I’m happy it brings so many people joy.)

She tries to entice Ava with the promise of personal chefs and hers & hers massages, but Ava is really trying to stay on task here.

Meanwhile, Fancy Zari and Nate make a pact to never fight and IMMEDIATELY break that pact, because Nate took it too far.

“So what’s the answer, do you want a Wife Swap or not??”

Davies goes to find Sara, annoyed that she hasn’t kept up her end of the bargain yet, and Sara is too busy changing all of the sticky notes on Ava’s murderboard into notes of fancy things she wants to worry about him, so she uses one of the post-its as a “get-one-soul-out-of-the-timeline free” card and gives it to Davies. As her hand position and flippant aire gets a little bit Alexis Rose, I can’t help but wonder if this is the Sara Lance that would have come to be if the Queen’s Gambit never crashed that fateful night.

Davies find Spooner again and she has taken her Survivor strategy to the next level and she is…completely naked. To psych out her competition.

Consider me psyched.

Astra dresses up in her Queen-of-Hell finest and struts to talk to Harris, who I’ve decided is named after Xander because he, too, is a terrible manbaby.

Where’s my handbasket? On my way!

Harris sucks a lot and has the audacity to tell Astra she looks BAD, which isn’t even good negging because it’s just categorically false. He tells her he’s enjoying the Legends’ reality show, even though they sort of lost the plot right out the gate, but Astra snarls that those are her souls and he should back the fuck off. He has a lot of respect for the work she did here in hell and is going to give in to her, but Behrad didn’t listen to Astra when she told him to stand down, and he got caught by guards.

Behrad starts to “defend” Astra by calling her good and caring despite Astra hissing at him to stop “helping” and Harris realizes that she’s gone soft and threatens Behrad. When Harris searches Behrad and realizes he really is a good guy down to his core, he decides that’s boring and lets them go, but he’s keeping the show going, now with the added twist of Astra and Behrad being trapped in a room together in the LCD studios.

Once they’re alone, Astra asks him what the actual hell he was thinking, considering a) this is her old stomping grounds she knows the way things work here better than him b) she knows literal magic and can quite literally take care of herself c) she EXPLICITLY told him not to follow her and now he’s gone and made things worse. He says that he knew she didn’t need his protection but he did want to make sure she wasn’t going to relapse into doing evil things, and the sheer lack of trust deeply offends her. And rightly so.

I blame Nate for teaching Behrad this toxic masculinity.

Back at the mansion, Gideon finds herself in a sort of Confessional situation, and with Harris’s guidance, she admits that she is worried the Legends are right and that her feelings for Gary are why she’s messing up. She wishes she could turn off her human emotions, especially all this pesky self-doubt, and so turn off her emotions she does.

Then, like a Mystic Falls vampire who flipped their humanity switch, Gideon dresses like a hot Bond villain and and immediately dumps Gary.

“You ARE the weakest link. Goodbye.”

Gideon’s next stop is Fancy Zari, who is still fuming about her conversation with Nate. Gideon lets her talk at her for a little while until Fancy Zari talks herself into the idea that Nate doesn’t want to move into the totem with Flannel Zari and she wants to protect her nerdy alter ego. Gideon smiles a little wickedly; she is UP to something.

Gideon Ex Machina

Gideon’s path of destruction leads her to Nate, who is turning into a bonafide, GTL, cabs-ah-heeyah situation, and she tells him what Fancy Zari said, causing him to storm off in a roid-inspired rage.

Gideon then goes to stir the pot with Davies, putting it in his head that he should think bigger than just his ex-boyfriend when it comes to using his IOU from Sara. For example…he could save ALL his friends if the soul he chooses to save is Archduke Franz Ferdinand, thus stopping World War I from ever happening.

In their own private escape room, Behrad asks why Astra wants out so badly, especially since hell is the source of her trauma. She said she survived by pushing through and fighting, not by hiding away. When Behrad says his whole deal is that he’s the chill guy with no trauma, Astra rolls her eyes at his weird flex, magics herself out of the room, and tells the confessional camera that men are cowards.

Once I met a man who used to be on Real World and after knowing him for all of five minutes he started talking like he was in the Confessional so I guess it’s a bit habit-forming.

At the mansion, Gary watches in horror as Gideon names all the stars the same name just to cause terrible confusion. One by one all the Legends turn into extreme versions of their own reality shows. Spooner is still in Survivor mode, literally. Nate is so Jersey Shore he’s practically a walking Wawa, Fancy Zari is living a Kardashian-Bachelorette nightmare, Sara has gone so Real Housewives she is making margaritas and planning a trip to Cabo.

“I’m not like a regular captain, I’m a fun captain!”

Ava is either Sorority Life or MTV’s Boiling Point, or maybe just also Real Housewives as she yells at everyone and realizes she’s turning into the implanted memories of her mother. (A very funny, perfectly delivered line.)

Jes Macallan hair care routine when

Gideon is pleased with herself until Astra comes home and realizes that literally NO ONE listened to her advice and they all got sucked into the chaos of the poltergeists. The chaos only ensues over dinner, and it’s like the worst crossover in history, and everyone is fighting. Davies reveals his plan to save an important life and Sara feels used and goes full housewife.

I cannot come up with a caption that is funnier than this image is. The pose, the hair, the lipstick, the expression. Just. Perfection.

At one point in the madness, Fancy Zari even calls out Flannel Zari for backup and while she resists long enough to be aware that she’s being sucked into the drama, she does eventually get sucked in and throws drinks at Fancy Zari and Nate.

A Shot At Love with Zari Terazi

Astra yells that they have to get the hell out of the house and goes to grab the time machine’s colander for Gideon, but Gary doesn’t trust that she won’t teleport them into a tornado in her current state, so he alien-gobbles it and runs around the house as the rest of the Legends chase him with various weapons.

The pure CHAOS of this episode, and especially this scene. I bet it would have Bravo shaking in their Vanderpumps.

After resisting the temptation of more gummies from Harris, Behrad makes his way back to his friends and breaks the bowl of candies to get their attention. His chill vibe is partly an act. He’s a laid back guy, but it’s all by design. See, when he was little and Keeping Up with the Tarazis was on, the more he reacted, the more he was featured and ridiculed on national television. The more he failed, the more attention was brought to him. So he decided to retreat. He shut down, used weed to chill out, and did everything he could to avoid being too reactionary so he wouldn’t be on the show. But the truth is, that was a trauma response. Because things do still get to him, he just trained himself not to react or acknowledge it when it does happen. Hell, he literally died and he hasn’t so much had a heart-to-heart with Sara about it, the most dyingest person among them.

True Life: I Died But I’m Fine Now

He doesn’t want people to hate him for being real, but he also is tired of pretending he’s a one dimensional kind of dude. And also he wants to ask Astra out, and to do that he has to stop being afraid of failing.

“I mean traditionally one is offered a rose, but I guess a big speech will suffice.”

The fact that this was a genuine moment not technically directly manipulated by the ghost crew, their curse is lifted and they’re set free; and the Legends, too, are set free from the forces that were practically driving them mad.

Immediately, Gideon apologizes to the team for going rogue. Sara apologizes to Ava, saying she lets Ava take on too much.

“You left me alone in Hell’s Kitchen.”

She’s not the mom, she’s the co-captain, and Sara should start treating her as such. Plus she’s pretty, and smart, and has shiny hair…

Davies interrupts the love-fest to apologize, too, for taking advantage of the kindness Sara offered, realizing he can’t just stop the war with no consequences.

“Wow, that apology? Nailed it.”

Ava still doesn’t love this promise idea, but Sara promises they will restore one (1) insignificant soul to the timeline as cleanly as possible and Ava doesn’t push it.

Nate and Fancy Zari apologize to Flannel Zari and she tells them to get along dammit before going back into the totem. They sort of do but I think there will always be a bit of a sibling vibe between them since they’re almost in-laws and that’s just fine with me.

Astra finds Behrad and tells him that she has a crush on him too and they almost kiss but he wants to take some time after this little breakthrough moment and learn who he is before entering into a relationship. And she’s okay with taking it slow.

I love Astra’s smile but I hate this pairing. I want Behrad to take his feelings and shove them back below deck.

And almost like a manifestation of my distaste for this pairing, Spooner struts in, still naked. Astra covers Behrad’s eyes but doesn’t look away, implying to me that this is not the first time she’s seen her gal pal in her birthday suit. Just saying.

Gary gets the team together and demands they apologize for acting so weird about them getting together, and Gideon, a little kinder now that she has her humanity flipped back on but with one last dose of reality to deal out, points out that it’s a little hypocritical of them to tell her that she can’t do her job well if she’s in a relationship, considering their captains are married, Behrad just professed his love for Astra who clearly has feelings for Spooner, Nate’s girlfriend is in a totem they use to fight bad guys, and Fancy Zari’s ex-boyfriend almost got them all killed. They realize she’s right and apologize to her; they’re still learning how to incorporate her into the team as a human instead of just their GPS and they promise to start treating her better.

Putting her money where her mouth is, Sara asks Gideon where she thinks they should go next. And Gideon says what at first they think is a joke but actually is her real suggestion: she says they should go save Archduke Franz Ferdinand, thus stopping World War I from ever happening.

“Listen I just think it’s the only way to ensure that The Apprentice never happens.”

And now, I’m hoping this is to lure out Evil Gideon and the RoboLegends by disrupting the timeline, and not that Gideon is broken, but we’ll see! Next week! When we go to a place called the Fixed Point which looks like the kind of nifty space bar you’d find in Killjoys, and I, for one, can’t wait.

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