​ "Lucha De Apuestas" – DC's Legends of Tomorrow S04E09 Review

"Lucha De Apuestas" wrapped everything up as mildly as possible, didn't it?

The Legends find out Mona is telling the truth and Men in Black tried to abduct Koname. And Hank is behind it all. And they had a rollicking time-travel adventure. But after about four months of being on hiatus, and the hilarity of "Legends of To-Meow-Meow", it was pretty subdued. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just felt... off, like the episode was supposed to air without the four month hiatus. Which it probably was. It didn't feel like a "We've been gone for four months: let's hit you over the head as we re-introduce the show to you" semi-premiere.

But hey, it's The CW. I don't know what they're doing with all the pre-emptions and mini-hiatuses and two-week gaps and everything that's going on with their shows. Also, maybe it's the el luchador masked wrestling "craze". Which seems to be more of a craze with TV writers than with viewers. Or maybe you have to be Mexican.

But on we go with what did happen. The Time Bureau believes Mona (Ramona Young) freed Koname the Kaupe from its cell, because the security footage only shows her. She escapes from the hospital after memory-zapping the ever-incompetent Gary, easily finds Koname hiding outside the hospital, uses Gary's stolen Courier to send Koname off somewhere and somewhen at random, and then gets captured by the Legends.

Mona tells her story to the Legends, who believe her enough to check it out while trying to recapture Koname. The trail leads to Mexico City 1961, where they discover Koname is now a luchador named El Lobo. Everyone loves him except rival wrestler El Cura (Frank Gallegos), since El Lobo doesn't play by the rules and never loses, deliberately or otherwise. Constantine is a fan of El Cura, and discovers El Cura's wrestling and movie career is eliminated from the timestream because of El Lobo's rise to fame.

The team discover due to El Lobo's presence, the citizens riot against the perceived government censorship and 12 of them are killed. The Legends eventually find Koname and convince him to throw a fight against El Cura. Meanwhile, Hank (Thomas F. Wilson) is holding a fundraiser, and Nate and Zari go there to get his phone which has the evidence that will show the security footage is altered. Ava would rather side with the Time Bureau than Sara, so they're having a tiff as well.

Nate and Zari get the phone and confirm Hank altered the footage. After confronting Hank, Nate lets his father think he's going along with his plans but is secretly working against him. Sara and Ava break up. The extraction team arrive at the fight, the Legends there lead a fight against them, El Lobo and El Cura team up, and the crowd goes wild!

Thanks to some words of wisdom from Mick (??), Mona decides to stay behind while sending Koname to his own time and place in ancient Hawaii where he was a demigod. An agent finds Koname and kills him, but Mona Kaupes out (because she was scratched by him earlier) and kills the agent.

And Neron, still wearing Dez's face, shows up briefly.

"Apuestas" gives us about what we'd expect from a Legends episode. Constantine acts smug (and never gets to light a cigarette), Mick asks dumb but has a few more sympathetic moments. Ray is big on becoming the interim captain in Sara's absence. Charlie doesn't do much of anything. Gary is incompetent. Sara is all commanding when not being romantic with Ava.

As I noted earlier, I've never been big on luchadores. Or American pro wrestling, either. So how much you like the episode might depend on your fondness for the sport. It seemed a relatively mild temporal disturbance, and the episode served mostly to bring Mona on with the team and give her some superpowers. Not that the team seems to use superpowers much anyway. Ray doesn't shrink, Constantine doesn't do magic, Zari doesn't throw wind blasts, Sara doesn't use martial arts on anyone.

Everyone was in character and pretty good at it: Matt Ryan and Dominic Purcell were the MVPs, although Brandon Routh was close with his bits where he presents a petition to Sara to become interim captain and later when he tries to convince Constantine and Charlie to play Cards to Save the Timeline to learn from the team's past mistake. But nobody was bad. Gary is still Gary, and he definitely had a lot of incompetency shtick.

Overall, "Apuestas" was an okay episode. It served primarily as a set up for the second half of the season: Nate is trying to find out what's going on with Hank, Sara and Ava have broken up, Mona has lost her friend and gotten superpowers, Neron is lurking in the shadows. There wasn't anything that unique and thrilling here, but even an average Legends episode is better than most of what's out there.

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