DC’s Legends of Tomorrow – Tender is the Nate

By: Maggie Stankiewicz

Ava Sharpe (Jes Macallan) gives Mona (Ramona Young) a little bit of tough love on her first official day as a Time Bureau creature handler. The devoted feeder extraordinaire is startled by the sterile environment in which the creatures are being placed – especially within the cell of Nora Darhk (Courtney Ford). Mona wishes to provide the prisoners with creature comforts such as belly rubs and proper substrate, but the Time Bureau doesn’t have an interest in making prisoners feel at home.  Ava leaves Mona with one final lesson – don’t fraternize with the prisoners. She then takes to her office for some peace and quiet. When she hears a gentle knocking on her office door, Ava is met by none other than Sara Lance (Caity Lotz), who saunters into Ava’s office wearing some lingerie as a precursor to Ava’s birthday gift. As things start to heat up, Hank (Thomas F. Wilson) barges into the room. Sara manages to hide and evade the eldest Heywood before they are found out, making for a hilariously uncomfortable exchange between the two executives. As soon as Hank reams Ava on the superfluous spending of the Legends, Sara emerges from the depths and agrees to talk to her team about expenses. But before they have time to confer, Nate (Nick Zano) and Hank make their way onto the Waverider to audit the ship.

The Legends are not at all prepared for visitors. Charlie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) is still stuck with Amaya’s face, Sara is nowhere to be found, Ray (Brandon Routh) is hung up on Nora and Constantine (Matt Ryan) is practicing some yoga…in the nude. The Legends scramble to hide Charlie from Nate and his father – but their attempts to evade the men are futile. The Legends are good at creating chaos, but they’ve never been good at keeping it a secret. The second Nate (Nick Zano) lays eyes on Charlie he believes that Amaya has come back for him. He wraps the shapeshifter in his arms and is promptly met by a mean right hook. The gig is up, and Nate is not happy. Thankfully, Hank is out of earshot when the Legends decide to continue the ruse for Hank only in order to maintain funding. Adding insult to injury, the Legends opt to bring Hank on a mission to Paris to capture yet another mythical fugitive. Sara, Mick (Dominic Purcell), Nate, and Hank take the streets while Zari (Tala Ashe), Ray, Charlie, and John stay on the ship to discuss their plight as the second-string Legends.

In the Paris of the past, Hank meets up with his hero, Ernest Hemingway (Andrew Lees), and divulges the details of their mission. The room is full of history’s elite artists Salvador Dali (Sergio Osuna), F. Scott Fitzgerald (Jason McKinnon) and those who helped build the foundation of every American High School reading list. Hopped up on scotch and machismo, Hank, Hemingway and Mick all resolve to hunt the creature themselves. The Legends descend into the infamous catacombs where the men belittle Sara, unaware of her physical prowess. Nevertheless, she must endure in order to preserve the Legends’ funding. Nate heads back to town and bumps into Charlie, who then meet up with a pairing known as the famous Fitzgeralds. During their conversation, Charlie identifies the monster as a Minotaur and shares the truths and lies of its origin myth. Nate leaves to research a Minotaur’s vulnerabilities while Sara and her male companions fight the beast. The Minotaur is too strong and well-armed for the gang. Hank suffers an injury during the fight, and they retreat to the Waverider.

Back at the Bureau, Mona helps Ray get a love letter to Nora Darkh, who has succumbed the reading trashy romance novels in her seclusion. Unfortunately for Ray, Nora declines the letter and accidentally activates an alarm within her cell. Ava runs into the room and finds the letter. As she moves to open it up, Nora’s powers manifest and she throws Ava into the wall – shutting down the cell’s security system locking them all in together. Mona attempts to diffuse the tension between the prisoner and her warden and fails miserably. Mona’s efforts in appealing to Ava are just a little too on the nose. Even so, the conversation quickly evolves into the women discussing their unique, but strangely similar pasts.

Mona’s parents want her to be a lawyer, while both Ava and Nora missed out of some of the most formidable human experiences. Mona whips out a bottle of wine and the woman have their own not-so-happy-hour. Through their tipsy conversations, the women discover their mutual affinity for power and self-pity. Mona declares that both Nora and Ava are cooler than Gillian Anderson, who everyone knows is among the coolest women on the planet. Ava eventually caves and returns the letter to Nora. When they open it out of curiosity – they find…Ray. He has miniaturized himself and packed himself within the envelope. Ray’s antic sobers Ava up quickly and she makes him use the Atom suite to break them out of the cell.

The more enraged Ava gets, the closer the Legends become to defeating the Minotaur. The beast is now tracking Hemingway, but Nate and Constantine have each discovered tools to help capture him – more specifically, the manufactured musk of a female Minotaur and an instrument that could be used to emulate his mother’s lullaby. Hank doesn’t see victory in his son’s future, despite this information, and tries to convince Sara to turn against the historian, but she stands behind the youngest Heywood holding the utmost faith in her team. Gideon provides the team with the information needed to locate the Minotaur and the Legends make their way to Hemingway’s drinking hole to stop the destruction. Hemingway, deluded by his own elevated testosterone levels, attempts to strike Sara – but she renders him unconscious to continue capturing the beast without misogynistic intervention.

The Minotaur picks the Legends off one by one, leaving just Nate and his father standing long enough for the men to share a moment of mutual respect. Before the beast can kill Nate, Hank grabs an instrument and begins serenading him with James Taylor. The melody is enough to soothe the beast into a peaceful slumber. Crises averted as things are returning back to as normal as they can be at the Time Bureau. Mona pays a visit to Nora, who asks her to send a letter to Ray for her. Mona agrees, but is caught off guard by Ava, who compliments Mona’s humanity and decides to loosen the reigns on both her employees and prisoners. Hank seems to have finally seen the value of the Legends, and Nate decides that he belongs behind the desk…after a post-mission pizza party.