John Constantine (Matt Ryan)has a hangover. In an impressive extended long-take, “Bishop’s Gambit” shows the (now depleted) magician stumble around searching for a cuppa as the Legends have overrun his home, from Nate (Nick Zano)stealing his electric guitarto Behrad (Shayan Sobhian) ordering 12 pizzas. It’s the quirkiest scene in a (relatively) serious and plot-heavyLegends of Tomorrowepisode, but the movement accentuates how many characters are fighting for space in “Bishop’s Gambit,” and how pain and headaches can define our existence.
This even includes Gideon, whom Ava (Jes Macallan) has managed to install in Constantine’s old-fashioned 1970s cathode-tube TV,turning the powerful A.I.into a glitching Max Headroom facsimile. Gideon is still able to alert the Legends of a 1956 sanatorium incident, where residents were killed by an alien patient calling itself “Sara Lance.”
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But what the team finds – bypassing the Waverider with teleporting wristwatches – is the Amelia Earhart who poisoned Sara in“Meat: The Legends.”After Kayla and Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell) landedon the alien planet, Earhart stole the Waverider from under them and landed in the 1950s, disorientated and pinging between different identities. The Legends have been searching for Sara all season, but the two plots have been pretty separate so far. Earhart is therefore an actual point of connection. Although her good cop/bad coop interrogation by Behrad and Spooner (Lisseth Chavez) yields little results. Earhart’s actress Jen Oleksiuk does a fantastic job conveying Earhart’s confused human side and, when Ava gets impatient and pushes her, hergenuinely menacing alien nature.
Constantine suggestsa spell that would extract Earhart’s buried memories, enlisting Astra (Olivia Swann) to perform it since“The Satanist’s Apprentice”removed his own magical powers. Constantine keeps this secret from the rest of the Legends, however. He claims it’s for his own protection so his enemies don’t discover he’s powerless, but Constantine is also scared of confronting his new reality. As he tells Zari (Tala Ashe), “what good would John Constantine be without magic, eh?” This identity crisis of losing who you once were runs throughout “Bishop’s Gambit.”
It becomes particularly strong when Astra’s spell pushes through Earhart’s mental barriers, igniting a surprisingly brutal metamorphosis into a menacing reptilian alien. This transformation is especially queasy for Spooner, who has been maintaining a strict binary division betweenhumans and “evil invading aliens.”The Earhart hybrid, however, has thrown off Spooner’s internal “antenna” given it’san alien hiding “inside” of a human.Spooner is afraid this transmutability means that, given her ability to “talk” with aliens, she could also be transformed into a monstrous alien like Earhart was.
“Bishop’s Gambit” also splits its time upon the alien planet, which Kayla tells Mick Rory is breathable since Bishop (Raffi Barsoumian) is terraforming it into Earth’s atmosphere – another example of shifting identities, now on a planetary scale. Mick and Kayla hold a gruff comradery where the alien mercenary can outdrink Mick given her eight tentacled arms. But even if Mick agrees with Kayla about “weak” humanity, he says Sara is an exception to their species and is therefore worth saving.
Although frankly, the two don’t achieve much, with Mick being quickly captured by Bishop’sAva clone troopers, all of whom are left to die when Bishop lets in the native toxic atmosphere. Mick frees himself and gives the fleeing Kayla an oxygen mask before the two take shelter from alien scavengers, and inevitably hook up, Kayla’s tentacle hitting the glass like inJames Cameron’sTitanic.
Meanwhile, Sara (Caity Lotz) faces Bishop himself after snapping his neck at the end of the last episode. Bishop is a “clone,” although he is adamant that he is different from his Ava servants, being a unique being who is “reborn” one at a time (like inRick and Morty). Nevertheless, Bishop represents a certain “transhumanism,” his “being” not linked to specific corporeal flesh but DNA and memory patterns that can be transferred to any new vessel.
Ironically, such expansive identity is used against Bishop whenGary (Adam Tsekham)– who has already revealed to not be who he appeared this season – squelches this way through the toilet inside Sara’s cell, likean Octopus through a hole. And as Sara pretends to acquiesce to Bishop’s company – including funny moments of Caity Lotz trying to sing and riff alongside Bishop – Gary rallies his Ava clones. Already disturbed by how disposable Bishop has treated them, Gary telling them aboutLegend of Tomorrow’s Ava inspires them that they do not need to be whatever Bishop programmed them.
Lacking his bodyguards, and angered by the apparent killing of Mick, Sara smashes a glass over Bishop’s headas he sets up dinner.Sara then drags his beaten, still-conscious body around to open DNA-locked doors in a fit of strange slapstick comedy. Although Bishop remains oddly calm (given his lack of pain receptors) while Sara continues with steely determination. Sara tells Bishop that while he “restarts” both his body and the human race to “start again clean,” she carries her scars and trials inside her as “lessons learned in blood that make me who I am.” But this is fatally ironic, as Sara discovers her own corpse laid out in front of her, Bishop having “cloned” Sara from the one fatally poisoned at the start of the season.
Questions of identity have always been part ofLegends of Tomorrow. Sara has “died” several times before – albeit never into a “new body” – and has dealt with her past trauma by acknowledging it, while also refusing to let it define her. Zari has been split into two distinct “versions” through meddling with the timeline. Ava always struggled to find her place, even before discovering she was a clone. The last episode had Astra adjust to being a regular mortal on Earth (instead of a Queen of Hell), and the entire show was premised on turning those “forgotten by history” into people whoexist as “Legends” outside the timestream.
“Bishop’s Gambit” foregrounds these existential questions in big and small ways, with Behrad even telling the pizza deliveryman “names and nomenclature imply we aren’t the same organism, living and breathing as one.” Who we are is a tricky enough question, without it being further complicated by alien hybrids, lacking magical powers, or being clones. Admittedly trying to including most ofLegends of Tomorrow’s large cast leads to these storylines being spread fairly thin. Constantine’s annoyance at the Legends bunking at his home, for instance, has nice gags of themeating popcorn on his couchbut has little time to play out. Likewise, the tight plotting means the episode loses some ofLegends of Tomorrow’s anarchic, anything-goes glee.
However, “Bishop’s Gambit” still has some heft with Spooner’s confrontation with the Earhart alien, and Sara’s discovery of her own corpse. Both are encounters that twist personal feelings of self-hood, and seemingly “affirm” Sara did actually die, although the Legends don’t know that Sara has come back. “Bishop’s Gambit” is an overall effective episode then, dense but surprisingly probing on what gives people their identity.
