Saturday, September 24, 2022

'Legends of Tomorrow' Season 4, Episode 15: 'Terms of Service'

 





The season reaches its penultimate episode and Neron begins to make his power play.  Interestingly, it isn't Earth so much that he's interested in.  No, he plans to take over hell.  Admittedly, he does this by taking human souls, so its splitting hairs, but still.

He intends to do so by revealing the existence of magical creatures to create fear and prompt people to download an app where surrendering their soul is included in the fine print of the terms of service. I do have to wonder how effective this would be in the Arrowverse.  First of all, the skepticism seemed arbitrary given what this world has already seen, and wouldn't the array of heroes be a factor in keeping people safe? 

Also, the plan loses points for being the same one Morgaine LeFaye used on "Runaways".  Heck, even the "no one reads the terms of service" joke was already done elsewhere. 

To the episode's credit though, that does become something of a theme as characters end up taking bargains that end up biting them due to technicalities.

John Constantine, of all people, falls victim to this when he makes a deal with the lords of Hell to retrieve Ray's soul.  They manage to turn the tables on him not once, but twice.  It does help make up for the fact that, as much was made about how so many demons would be gunning for John's head, we only see a couple make any sort of attempt to exact revenge.  Hell (ba dum tish,) one of the demons actually seems to be on friendly terms with John.

More impressive, though, is the fairy godmother's manipulation of Nora.  While Tabitha does still swear loyalty to Neron, she does go out of her way to help Nora on several occasions.  She says it is because she feels a kinship.  The two do have some similarities in background.  It appeared to give the godmother a bit more layers.  You'd think that the reveal that the whole thing was a con would be a disappointing step backwards, but it was brilliantly done.

Gary was an interesting wild card.  He is in better spirits, but he still longs to be accepted by the group.  Thus, he uses the fairy godmother to cast wishes that would help enable that goal.  Tabitha, of course, wants him to be more vengeful, but that just isn't Gary.  He even lets the heroes know this outright. He does still repeatedly screw things up for the team, but in his defense, there's no way he could have known about certain goings on so a lot of it comes off as more accidental.   In some instances, he even legitimately means well.  Him sending Nora to hell is met with her calling him a dick, but he did explicitly say that his intent was for her to help John retrieve Ray.  

While the Legends' initial attempts to placate him come off as forced, they do seem to make the effort to be nicer to him.  I did find it odd that nobody tried to play the inspirational hero speech card during the whole ordeal, though.  Sara kinda does it late in the episode, but I'd think that trying to play that sooner might have gotten some results.  It might not have, but you'd think they would have tried.

Overall, this episode was OK.  It had some good gags and there was decent character progression on more than a few fronts as well as a few twists here and there.  It should make for an interesting season finale.








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