Last time on Legends of Tomorrow, Amaya's evil granddaughter turned good and then died. This prompts Amaya to go to Zambezi and save her people. Meanwhile, Gorilla Grodd, still the absolute worst thing to ever plague the Arrowverse, goes to Occidental College to try to kill young Barack Obama,
I had assumed that there was an episode of The Flash I'd missed (because seriously, screw The Flash, I gave up on it midway through last season) where Grodd lost his mind-control powers, because there is absolutely no reason why Grodd shouldn't have used them. But he doesn't. He'll use them later on.
So Saint Obama tries to reason with him and Grodd responds by strangling him. This is an amazing critique of eight years of Obama foreign policy and its inevitable consequences. The Legends show up and shrink Grodd. Well, that was easy. There's a gag about Saint Obama's birth certificate, and they're on their way.
Meanwhile, Damien Darhk has suddenly realized that Mallus is going to kill his daughter Nora when he emerges. So he decides to help the Legends stop that from happening. This leads to a hilarious scene where he has to help Ray work out the runes for the magic prison that they want to hold him in. It also leads to an alliance between Damien and the Legends to stop Mallus from emerging. Remember that for later.
Well, first thing, they're going to need Nora. Nora only obeys Mallus. Turns out Mallus sounds exactly like Denethor, Steward of Gondor (because both are played by John Noble), so, I kid you not, Ray goes to New Zealand 1999 to get John Noble to record some new lines for "Denethor." This plan, astonishingly, goes off without a hitch. (For what it's worth, Noble has weathered the intervening 19 years without much sign of age, so the effect works, and is utterly hilarious to boot.)
Damien and They Keep Killing Sara have a surprising heart-to-heart about family and how Damien has wrecked both of theirs. Unfortunately, this conversation gives Sara brain damage, because she changes the plan from "stop Mallus from killing Nora by emerging," which is the only thing Damien cares about, to "let Mallus emerge and then beat him up with the totems, which will incidentally kill Nora," which is the thing Damien joined up with them to stop from happening. She also gives Damien the Death Totem, which is dumb. He wears it like a medal on his chest, which I find both oddly amusing and totally in character.
Oh, no, wait, it wasn't their heart-to-heart that gave Sara brain damage. She also went back to Occidental to get some brilliant advice from Saint Obama. Weirdly for anyone who's ever seen Saint Obama speak off-teleprompter, he's not a stuttering doofus, but true to form he offers her utterly awful advice. Hence, the change of plan from "save Nora" to "let Mallus kill Nora."
What will cause Mallus to emerge? Changes in the timeline. Fortunately, Amaya's hell-bent on doing just that in Zambezi, so the team arrives to help out. Oh, the team minus Ava, who points out that this is an amazingly stupid idea. Unfortunately, Ava is also suffering from "I just found out I'm a clone" disorder, so nobody (*cough* Sara) listens to her.
Oh, there's been this subplot where Nate "I am Amaya's bitch" Heywood and Wally "I am a filler character" West argue about whether or not it's a good thing to let/help Amaya change the past, but it goes nowhere because, again, Saint Obama gave Sara brain damage.
Old!Amaya's old lady makeup is terrible, by the way, and her actress doesn't do anything to try to play old except hunch her back. Old!Amaya has a daughter named Esi, who is certainly no more than 30. Not sure how old Amaya is in the "present," which to her is 1942, but let's say she's 25, which would make her 75 in 1992. She gave birth in some dirt-poor African village at 45? Plausible, I guess. But highly unlikely.
Anyway, Nate and Amaya get Amaya's daughter to save the village from the "warlords," but then Gorilla Grodd shows up. He was released by Damien - because, again, Damien does not want Mallus to get free, that is his entire motivation, Sara/Barack, you doofi - and restored to normal size... somehow. This is never explained. Grodd uses his mind-control powers to freeze Amaya's daughter in place and then swats Old!Amaya - who, again, is 75 - like a bug. Nate uses the Earth Totem to blast Grodd into orbit, and Old!Amaya dies. No, just kidding, she's totally fine. Yep, 75-year-old woman swatted ten feet by a giant gorilla, doesn't even break a hip. Plausible, I guess. But highly unlikely.
Well, the village is saved, and that means that history has been rewritten enough for Mallus to emerge, and so he does. The end/cliffhanger.
Legends has bad episodes (1.08 "Night of the Hawk," 2.04 "Abominations," 3.14 "Amazing Grace"), mediocre episodes (basically the rest of Season One), and amazing episodes (basically the rest of Seasons Two and Three), but it rarely has episodes that have such a frustrating mix of hilarious ideas (Damien teaming up with the Legends, getting the guy who voices your villain to play himself as an actor in another role he performed in real life) and utterly stupid ideas (Grodd attacking Obama without his powers, Sara thinking Damien will just let his daughter die). The closest comparison I can make is to 2.09 "Raiders of the Lost Art," which was utterly brilliant until its Clap Your Hands If You Believe ending. Wally remains horribly underused, leading me to think that the showrunners were basically forced to add him but don't really know what to do with him, while the Ava story, which has been churning for several episodes now, seems to abruptly stall out when she quits the team.
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