Keeping secrets and emotions inside of yourself is one of the hardest things a person can do. Sometimes people want to let them out into the open but you end up keeping them in out of fear or worry. Others try to bring them out into the open but can never get the chance to. And then some of those feelings come out because a magical roach that forces people to tell the truth when swallowed forces them out of you. Okay, so that last one only happens on Legends of Tomorrow and boy do a lot of secrets come out into the open finally in “The Getaway.” So lets unwrap them by going through the characters that reveal a little more about themselves in this episode.
MONA and SARA
After her wolfing out during Konane’s death. Mona is a fugitive on the run with the Legends. The Legends’s mission this week: Get old’ Richard Nixon to start telling lies once again as in 1973, Tricky Dick (my only time I will use that nickname) starts telling nothing but the truth. Although telling the truth is a good thing, this leads to a lot of cataclysmic events.* The Legends are able to kidnap Nixon but have to make a getaway in a ‘’borrowed’’ RV thanks to Hank.
*No Robert Redford or Sundance Festival due to this which wounds Mick more than I expected.
Throughout the mission, Mona tries to open up to Sara about what is happening only to be shut down each time as Sara is going through some stuff herself. You have to feel for both of them as during one time or another we all have been in either situation: Mona or Sara’s.
Sara’s stuff is more on the emotional level than the werewolf-y level. She’s throwing herself into the Nixon mission to avoid feeling the pain of what happened with Ava. We’ve all been there after a break-up…where you just want to distract yourself with anything to avoid confronting the emotions boiling on the surface. It never works but it never stops us from still doing it. Most of the episode I was waiting for Sara to let it out and thanks to our magical roach, she did.
A ‘magic roach’ is the thing that is causing Nixon to speak the truth and thanks to some misguided kindness by Mona, it escapes and goes into each of the Legends. It finally reaches Sara and she boils over, all her pain and anger about missing Ava and blaming Mona for what is happening coming out. The truth hurts Mona and she retreats to a local diner to drown her sorrows in Coca-Cola and sloppy hamburgers.
The Time Bureau end up at the same diner and Mona finally snaps after hearing one of them trash Konane. Sara and Constantine arrive and in the best scene of the episode Sara is able to talk Mona back to normal. It was one of those conversations that helps both. Sara knows she was too rough on Mona and she understands that Mona is just a frightened woman who just wanted someone to help and understand her for one minute. When Sara does this, Mona is able to revert back to herself.
Where does this lead Mona and Sara? For Mona, she is now a honorary part of the team. She has people she can lean on now to help her with this new situation in her life. As for Sara, the pain is still there but to get it out in the open, to acknowledge that she misses Ava and not to hold that in, shows the growth Sara Lance has had over the years.
HANK and NATE
As for Nate and Hank, well a lot happens with their story. Hank is the new chief of the Time Bureau as Ava is on a leave of absence. (Hope we get to see Ava soon as she was not in this episode so the AvaLance reconciliation will be delayed a little longer.) Throughout “The Getaway” Nate is trying to help the Legends avoid detection from Hank as he and Zari have Gary investigate Hank. Gary being Gary, aka useless, leads to him recruiting Nora to hack into Hank’s e-mail to find out he’s been making money by time-traveling into the past for personal gain. What a great idea! *insert sarcasm here*
While trying to work on the password question for Hank’s e-mail, Nate starts to bond with his dad over childhood memories and we see the struggle that Nate is going through. What do you do when you think your dad is doing some terrible things but also..he’s your dad? I haven’t been the biggest Nate fan but Nick Zano has done a great job this year playing Nate more seriously in his struggle to figure out what to do with his dad. The expressions and the pain in Nate’s face lets us understand how hard this is becoming for Nate when Hank talks about his grand-mom and her struggle to raise him while trying to find out what illegal things he is up to.
So as Hank and Nate have the Legends caught in a police barricade, “The Truth Roach” goes into Nate and he lets out all the pain he’s going through trying to figure out why his dad is doing what he is doing. This display of love from Nate actually touches Hank and he lets the Legends go. What could have been something bad turns into something lovely – a family reconnecting with truth.
Which makes it hurt when the next two things happen: 1. Nate is told by Zari that Hank is keeping the creatures the Time Bureau captures and testing/torturing them. The look on Nate’s face as Zari tells him this is the very definition of heartbreaking. And 2. Hank goes to confront Neron and tell him that he wants their deal off as his love for his son is something he cherishes more than what they are doing. Finally Hank is doing the right thing for his son. Which makes what happens next very sad – Neron sucks Hank’s soul out of his body, killing him. Nora feels the power in her cell but is too late to stop it. However in typical TV trope fashion, Nate arrives just in time to see Nora standing over his dad and thinks she has killed him. Nora escapes and the Legends’s lives have just got a bit more rougher.
So as the season slowly gets to the end, we know the big confrontation will be between Neron and the Legends but for all the silliness and the humor, things are getting very very serious for the Legends and the people they love the most.
LEGENDARY THOUGHTS
- Nate and Zari look like it might actually become a thing. Zari didn’t mind being called “babe” by Nate and Nate admitted he wouldn’t mind a relationship during his time with the truth roach.
- “Family. The people you don’t mind being annoyed by.”
- “I’ve been kidnapped by a bunch of hippies!”
- A little running gag of the team forgetting they left Charlie behind felt flat.Is it bad that I forgot about Charlie too?
- The Magic Roach escapes the jar numerous times after Mona puts a hole in the lid so it could breath. My question is: Why didn’t they just get a new jar? Or cover up the hole with tape??
- I would love to know what Coca-Cola in the 70’s tasted like.
Legends of Tomorrow airs Mondays at 8/7c on The CW.