"Hey, World!" – DC's Legends of Tomorrow S04E16 Review

That's a season finale!

And... "Hey, World!" is weird. Granted, most episodes of DC's Legends of Tomorrow are weird. But "Hey, World!" was weirder than usual. We got the weird dichotomy of John Constantine (Matt Ryan) running around Hell with a woman in a Fairy Godmother dress. We got Mick and an ogre having a drinking contest. We got "special appearances" by Supergirl, Arrow, and Flash. We got Casper Crump returning as Vandal Savage. We got a James Taylor musical number. We got Jane Carr being eaten by a dragon. We got metahumor, with the actual Supergirl, Arrow, and Flash giving the Legends' plan a "hard pass". And Charlie warning Mike the Spike not to curse too much because of Standards & Practices.

And yet, as it's almost always the case, the creative team manages to pull it all together. Mainly by not taking anything too seriously, even the death of one character and the erasing from the timeline of another. It's an approach that would be overdone if any of the other CW shows went the same way. Say, if The Flash went for all-out humor instead of occasional barbs and cultural references. But they don't, so let's enjoy what we got: four+ superhero shows on one network that can take different approaches and give us a variety of options to choose from. If you think that the humor of DC's Legends is overdone, go with The Flash or Supergirl. If you don't want any humor besides the occasional joke, go with Arrow or Black Lightning. Or maybe Batwoman next fall. it's hard to imagine Batwoman will be even as lighthearted as Arrow. But who knows?

Onto "Hey, World!" We get a lot of stuff thrown at us. The magical creatures are making themselves at home on Waverider. Which gives us a scene of Mick trying to outdrink an ogre (John DeSantis). Whose real name is Frederic and just wants to sing.

Nate and Zari are looking for Wicksty the dragon, and find a Young Zari showing it off to the kids in school. Mean ole guys in black outfits show up and capture it when a passing mother spots it and reports it on Neron's Eyes app.

Fairy Godmother/Tabitha (Jane Carr) and "Ne-Ray" (Neron in the body of Ray/Brandon Routh) use Charlie in a gambit to turn the public against monsters by forcing her to shapeshift into Tagumo, the octopoid monster from "Tagumo Attacks!" Mick and Sara show up and rescue Charlie. Although a little earlier Tabitha implies that Charlie has far more potential than just shapeshifting. Maybe we'll get that next season.

The Legends decide that the way to beat Ne-Ray is to make Heyworld a reality using Bridget's Diary (also from "Tagumo Attacks!") and Nate's imagination. Then they'll have the magical creatures put on a musical number to demonstrate that they're not so bad. As noted, Supergirl, Arrow, and Flash refuse to participate in the marketing ad, so Sara, Nate, and Gary dress up as them respectively.

Once an audience gathers at Heyworld's main tent, Sara and Nate put on a show and bring out three of the monsters to sing. The audience doesn't like it, and Tabitha arrives with a magically-grown version of Wicksty to spread more fear. Because Ne-Ray plans to use fear to open a portal to Hell. The Legends fight back, and as was mentioned earlier, Constantine magically disguises himself as Nate and vice versa. Ne-Ray kills "Constantine", and when Nate dies that breaks Ne-Ray's promise to let Nate live and all of the souls that he has captive escapes. This expels Neron from Ray's body, and Constantine presumably kills the demon for good.

Constantine? For most of the episode he's traipsing around Hell. Nora (Courtney Ford) finds and rescues him per Gary's wish. They then find Ray, who is playing Giant Jenga with Vandal Savage. Vandal turns out to be a big softy, and appears to have lost a few pounds in Hell. Ray and Vandal are now best buds, and Vandal cheerfully waves to them as they depart. Or rather, Constantine and Nora depart with Ray's soul token, because even Nora's new magical powers aren't powerful enough to release Ray from Hell as long as Neron holds his soul.

Also, we get more timey-wimey stuff as Gideon (Amy Pemberton) tells Nate and Zari that if they alter Zari's personal history, they will alter her timeline and she'll never join the Legends. Unless she stays in the temporal zone in Waverider. Zari is initially good with that, but when Nate dies, she insists on coming to try to resurrect him.

Resurrect him? Yep, when Nate dies he ascends to the rafters where his father Hank (Thomas F. Wilson) is waiting for him. After a brief father-son chat, Hank starts singing his song "Sweet Baby Jane" and shoves Nate back into his body. The Legends, the monsters, and the audience join in. This generates the magic of "love", which is enough to bring Nate back to life. Zari disappears, no one remembers her because in the new timeline she was never a Legend, and her brother Behrad (Shayan Siobhan) is the new totem-wielder. And maybe Nate's lover. Because it's 2019 and The CW.

And during all of this, Wicksty eats Tabitha. And the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) stands in the back of the audience, watches, and eats popcorn.

Also, Constantine turned to Astra (Olivia Swann) for help getting Ray's soul token. She collects the totems of other Hell occupants, including Joseph Stalin and Caligula. After the adventure is over, we see her collecting their souls and releasing them. So we have a story arc for Season 5, since DC's Legends has been renewed along with all the other CW superhero shows.

And so after 16 episodes we come to the end of season 4. There was some padding along the way, and the four-month gap between Episodes 8 and 9 didn't help. But overall, 16 episodes works a lot better than 22. What did we get? A lot of John Constantine, hopefully as a prelude to getting his own series.

Gary and Mona leave with the rest of the Legends at the end of the episode. And Sara mentions that Gary is a full-fledged Legend. So they're presumably still a thing on the show. Maybe Adam Tsekhman (Gary) will be promoted to series regular next year. He was in 13 out of 16 episodes this year. I can't see Mona (Ramona Young) doing much on the show. But that hasn't stopped the creative team this year from putting her up front and center even if she hasn't really done much.

Zari is erased from the timeline, and we have Bedhan. Who knows if that's temporary or permanent? We don't see enough of Bedhan to tell what kind of impact he'll have on the show.

The Legends have already dealt with historical figures scattered throughout history. So if they continue with the whole "evilest villains released from Hell" storyline that they set up here, it doesn't seem like much. It's an odd merging of Season 3 (time-lost threats) and Season 4 (magical threats). It also doesn't beg for a Big Bad of the likes of Mallus or Neron. I could think up of all kinds of DC Comics Big Bads laying around that the creative team could draw on. We'll see if the creative team uses any of them.

The core team of Legends remains pretty much unchanged. We still apparently have Sara, Mick, Ray, Nate, Constantine, and Gideon, with Nora, Ava, Charlie, and Mona (and maybe Gary and Bedhan) along. Hopefully we'll see Charlie get more to do: Maisie Richardson-Sellers' audience-stand-in performance this season has been leagues beyond her Vixen role earlier. But she hasn't contributed that much to the team, and that's 95% of her personality. Ditto for Mona, who comes across as more a character swept up in the Legends' adventures than a full-fledged member of the team.

And the creative team could always decide to shake things up. Maybe Constantine leaves: while Matt Ryan is always fun to watch, his presence on the team is often more as a snarky sidelines commentator than as an actual member. And his magical contributions have made sense and could still make sense when fighting escaped evil human souls. But his magical powers have varied and the show has moved away from superhero-style battles and flashy powers.

Gary could remain at "guest star" levels of participation, although that doesn't necessarily mean much. He was a guest star level character this year and still did more than Charlie or Mona, who are show stars.

Overall, it's hard to say how the current cast will shake out. What matters is that the creative team and the cast seem to be having fun with a "lighter side of the CW/comics" show. And as long as they're having fun, we're having fun. Right?

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

-----

And with the season finale of my last regularly-reviewed show, that brings to an end much of my reviewing in May since the American regular season wraps up. There's still plenty to do: Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing, Krypton, and whatever else catches my fancy. But otherwise we'll see you in the fall!