Sara names Ava interim Captain and she leads the team in an operation involving the latest Encore, Marie Antoinette. Elsewhere, John and Gary take a very unplanned trip down memory lane with help from Charlie…

This episode is basically a Jes Macallan and Tala Ashe showcase and it’s glorious. Macallan has really come into her own this season and it’s nice to see the show reflecting Ava’s newfound confidence by Sara giving her a shot at the big chair. It’s equally lovely to see the Legends not so much clashing with her but with the idea of doing things a standard way. The team are the CWVerse’s greatest misfits after all. Plus it means there’s no sexism about the new boss. It’s not that Ava’s methods don’t work. It’s just that, like they say, there are hedgehogs and foxes and… well you get the idea.

Macallan’s long suffering comic timing is a perfect foil for Ashe, whose latest version of Zari gets interrogated here to tremendous effect. The show has already done good work exploring the fact this Zari is brilliant in a different way but here Ashe really takes it home. The parallels between Zari and Marie Antoinette (Courtney Ford, for absolutely no reason other than it’s funny) are intelligently drawn and the ending is basically vintage Legends. Zari causes mayhem by accidentally stealing the perfume that was Marie Antoinette’s secret power, Ray and Mick fight (and lose to) her headless corpse and the others clean up the mess. This not only leads to a nice moment of bonding between Ava and Zari but Nate’s finest hour to date. After all, who wouldn’t punch out the idiot boyfriend of their not-quite-the-same-person-but-getting-there-because-time true love if they got a chance?

Meanwhile the other plot takes a couple of hard right turns into Vertigo comics territory. I am not joking either, this is the darkest Constantine has been. Not only do we get a look at punk John (the hair is amazing) but we also get him admitting that even in the situation he finds himself in, his ego is his primary motivator.

And then, as Astra persuades a broker to accelerate his final years, we watch him apparently die of lung cancer. Hard hitting stuff that, because this is Legends, sits next to screwball comedy and works.

Verdict: Extraordinarily fun and profoundly odd, just as it should be. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart