Legends of Tomorrow is such an enjoyable show that a season that has less to offer is still a step above almost every other show on the network and filled with great moments. The Season 6 finale is bulging at the seams with different storylines and character interactions, but still manages to stick the landing. Spoilers follow for Legends of Tomorrow Season 6, Episode 15, “The Fungus Amongus.”
“The Fungus Amongus”
The last episode left us hanging on a brutal note; John Constantine was dead and Mick Rory was caught in an explosion, both of which were planned by Bishop. By killing the Fountain of Imperium, which was actually a giant fungus network that protected the Earth from invasive species, Bishop opened the door for those aliens from earlier in the season–the ones that killed Sara–and it’s not long before pods start dropping.
With a broken Waverider and a dead Fountain, the team is at a sharp disadvantage, so much so that they literally give up and decide to focus on getting Sara and Ava married before the world ends. The world doesn’t end–Legends of Tomorrow has been renewed for Season 7, after all–but things get pretty hairy.
What wouldn’t Sara do?
Knowing that Bishop can think like Sara thanks to their linked DNA (even though that’s not how DNA works at all), the team agrees to fight using all the ideas that Sara would never allow, which is just as much a Legends-style solution as using power totems to turn into a giant kung-fu fighting Beebo.
One of the ideas they come up with is going to Bishop’s time to pick up Young Bishop (coming to HBO in 2022) so that they can get him to come up with a counter to the poison that current Bishop used to kill John and the Fountain. This also gives actor Raffi Barsoumian a chance to play completely against the type of character we’ve seen him in so far, making for its own funny moments.
Sara even gets in on the ‘What Wouldn’t Sara Do’ fun when Behrad comes in and tells the team that they should all eat a piece of the mushroom that was left over when John disappeared, eating a chunk that pulls her into a sort of astral communion with John and the Fountain. John is wearing all white, of course, because he’s dead.
Wedding Crashers
The whole wedding sequence is super sweet and comes off a lot more authentic than it would on a lot of shows thanks to the web of deep bonds these characters have built. There are tons of little moments between characters, and the relationship between Sara and Ava is so strong that this feels like a meaningful thing for this crew–even Spooner and Astra–to do.
The wedding is, of course, interrupted by Bishop and the aliens he sent to Earth, forcing the team to fight. At some point, they realize that Spooner has enough connection to the Fountain that she can give each person’s powers to another member of the crew. This makes for a fun fight even if it doesn’t make a lick of sense. Astra’s magic is a learned skill, not an innate power; Nate’s power is in Nate, but it got there through a chemical injection.
Choose Love
The team is about to be overwhelmed by a wave of aliens that would make the Avengers flinch, so they decide to just do what feels good–finish the wedding ceremony. It seems that the act of choosing love over violence inspired the Fountain to return and protect the planet, destroying the aliens at once. Mick and Kayla’s kids hatch and consume Bishop in a grisly (but off-screen) wave of blood and gore.
With the fight over, Mick and Kayla decide to go off and do their own thing so that Mick can avoid the mistakes he made with his first daughter, Lita. Zari goes to the place in the forest where John died, and he appears to her in physical form, apparently having negotiated his way back to life with a demon once again; he says he has to walk a different road from the Legends after everything that’s happened, which seems about right. Oh, and another Waverider shows up and destroys the team’s Waverider before portaling away.
Still Legendary
While this season was bumpier than some previous seasons, I still enjoyed much of it, from the Meat the Legends episode to the time-traveling mistakes of Back to the Finale Part II. The writers behind these episodes are creative and they’re not afraid to be silly with their characters.
At the same time, they never lose sight of who they are. Mick’s transformation from surly loner into surly parent who begrudgingly accepts that he has friends has been one of the great joys of watching the show. Sara finding Ava and the two slowly finding each other is still one of the more organic romances I’ve seen on television in quite a while. Characters that annoyed me at first like Nate and Astra now feel like strong members of the crew with their own things to contribute to every mission.
The older shows of the Arrowverse are mostly showing their age, but Legends of Tomorrow is proof that some of those original shows can still keep up with the likes of Superman and Lois and Stargirl in its own way.
