Charlie is forced to face the consequences of helping Constantine change time.
Tropes:
- Achilles in His Tent: In the first alternate timeline, Ava responds to Sara's death-by-unicorn by adopting a goth style, holing up in her office, and listening to the Indigo Girls over and over again. The possibility of changing history to save Sara convinces her to handle her grief in a slightly more...constructive manner.
- Ambiguously Bi: Zari calls Charlie (in Amaya's shape) hot.
- Ambiguously Gay: Charlie calls Gideon's avatar "smokin'", and is really quite pleased to hear Zari call Amaya (in whose appearance Charlie is stuck) "very hot".
- Anti-Hero: The Custodians, the Sirens and even the regular Legends in the last alternate timeline act very ruthless.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
- Constantine and Charlie's first three attempts to fix the timeline result in: Sara dying and the rest of the team becoming Darker and Edgier; Nate, Ray and Mick dying; everyone becoming singing cheerful hand puppets.
- Also, Charlie-disguised-as-Fairy Godmother tells Prudence that she should start doing chores, going to church...and start eating broccoli.
- Ax-Crazy: In the first altered timeline, Nate and Ray become psychotic, trigger-happy maniacs who don't hesitate to open fire on the Time Bureau to get at Charlie. Mick is much the same, but the personality change is much less dramatic in his case.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Despite being a shapeshifter, Charlie's not a great actor; her attempts at posing as Sara and Amaya fail miserably (though admittedly, Sara being dead in that timeline didn't help matters), and her performances as the Fairy Godmother and Gary only work because Prudence doesn't know any better and Gary is gullible enough to believe that she's his future self, and while her guise as Ava is enough to fool the Legends, she still slips up more than once.
- Being Good Sucks: Charlie and Constantine desperately try to avoid him sending Desmond to Hell, but they go through dozens of attempts before they are faced with no other option than doing it. It takes Charlie a little longer, but when she realizes that no matter what time change the Legends still want to kill magical creatures, she finally relents, even if it means she loses her powers.
- BFG: After being roused from a depressed state in the first alternate timeline, Ava grabs a massive shotgun to assist Charlie.
- Bolivian Army Ending: The first alternate timeline ends with the Custodians and the Bureau engaged in an intense firefight, and Ava deciding to stay behind to buy time for Charlie and Constantine to escape.
- Butt-Monkey: Gary only manages to be runner-up for employee of the month at the Time Bureau, and is impersonated and fooled by Charlie, who briefly considers a timeline where Gary is dead (which apparently happened by way of Mt. Vesuvius) to be close enough to work.
- Call-Back: As seen at the end in the restored timeline, Mick and Ava are still trying to get along. Ava reads Mick's book and Mick tries out her snickerdoodles recipe.
- Close-Enough Timeline:
- Deconstructed to Hell and back in the final act: after several back and forths across the timeline, it appears that Charlie and Constantine managed to get history mostly back on track without outright resetting it: no-one has died, Charlie can still shapeshift, and Desmond is still alive. But Zari then reads Charlie the riot act for celebrating that "there's no plaques": not only is John still suffering majorly from the timeline alterations, but as Charlie quickly learns when trying to get the Legends to stop John from fixing everything, because she never joined the team, the Legends quickly adopted a policy of outright killing magical creatures.
- It's also briefly Played for Laughs in one timeline where the only plaque is for Gary: Charlie briefly considers leaving it there before giving in and altering the past again.
- Ultimately played straight in the end, however: when everything is said and done, the only change to the timeline that stuck was John and Desmond's first meeting being delayed a few days.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Mona, in the first alternate timeline, may not want to be turned into a cat, but if Constantine does turn her into a cat, she'd prefer a long-haired Calico.
- Continuity Nod:
- Gideon (or rather Hard Drive, as a member of the Sirens) uses Rip Hunter's old gun.
- Since the episode deals with changes to the timeline at every turn, a lot of previous encounters with magical creatures are revisited. It starts when Charlie meets up with a leprechaun, the same magical creature believed to be the problem in her debut episode, and takes a turn for the horrific when she sees that the library on the Waverider is filled with trophies of the magical creatures they've killed.
- Continuity Overlap: This episode runs parallel to the events of the Elseworlds (2018) crossover event. It explains what was happening on the Legends' end and why they blew off Barry, Olivera, and Kara's calls.
- Cool Car: The Sirens of Spacetime have one.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Zari casually blasts Charlie away when the latter tries to attack her.
- Curse Cut Short: Played with. John sees his teammates as puppets and says "What the F-" only to be interrupted by a break, but then comes back in mid-word with "-raggle Rock is going on here?"
- Cutting the Knot: Ultimately, the thing that winds up fixing the timeline is Constantine wiping Desmond's memory of their earlier fight.
- Death Seeker: Near the end, John is on the verge of dying under the weight of all the timeline changes in his head, and it becomes less for Desmond's sake than he doesn't want to live anymore without him. Zari talks him out of it by convincing him he's a badass who still has a hope of retrieving him from Hell.
- Didn't Think This Through: Charlie impersonating Sara in a timeline not known to her without checking on her status first. It nearly gets her killed.
- Dramatic Irony:
- The first alternate timeline sees Nate as a macho tough guy with a gun who refuses to take orders from anyone, the type of guy that (under other circumstances) his dad would've preferred.
- When "Ava" expresses concerns about Sara wanting to kill Constantine on sight in New Orleans 2018, she reminds Ava that this is what they do: they kill magical creatures. And why wouldn't the obvious shapeshifter be John? Constantine doesn't time travel, especially not after turned down her offer to join the crew....
- Easily Forgiven: Sara and Zari don't give Charlie or John too much grief over messing with time for their own ends, considering most of the Legends have all done it; it's a "rite of passage" at this point.
- Even the Girls Want Her: Zari assumes that Charlie's fondness for Amaya's appearance is because Amaya is "very hot".
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: The second changed timeline sees Sara being the only Legends member still alive, so she creates a new Charlie's Angels-esque crew with Ava and Gideon (in a human avatar).
- Everyone Has Standards: Charlie spends most of the episode being totally fine with buggering the timeline to get her powers back, but seeing the Legends descend into bloodthirsty monster killers is too much for her.
- Facial Horror: Neron may be wearing Desmond's face, but he puts on a Game Face that's just flesh covering the entire head, full of holes.
- Forced Transformation: All the transformations are courtesy of the Fairy Godmother. Zari is a cat because of her and Sara, Nate and Ray all were turned into puppets in one timeline after she bonded to Mick and he called them "Puppets of the Time Bureau". Constantine briefly changes Zari back into a human, but quickly reverses the spell when Zari makes it clear that she won't settle for anything less than restoring time to its previous state.
- Foreshadowing: The very first timeline alteration we see shows an alternate version of the Legends (where Sara was killed by the unicorn) being gung-ho about killing magical creatures outright. It's implied Sara dying is the cause, only it becomes more apparent by the end that Sara had nothing to do with it: in all of the new timelines, the Legends always refer to Charlie as their "white whale", showing her significance to their attitudes towards magical creatures.
- Forgot About His Powers:
- During the shoot-out at the Time Bureau, Nate seems to forget that he can become bulletproof and gets killed for his trouble.
- Likewise, Ray doesn't wear his Atom suit (also bulletproof) and also gets shot.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Charlie receives numerous deadly injuries throughout the episode, but her shapeshifting powers apparently also provide a Healing Factor.
- Guilty Pleasures: Despite the incredibly clichéd writing, Ava takes a liking to Mick's novel.
- Heartbroken Badass: In the timeline where Sara is dead, Ava is, initially, left in a massive depression. Upon finding out that Charlie intends to avert Sara's death, she instead grabs a shotgun and helps Charlie fight her way through the Time Bureau.
- Hero Antagonist: Charlie briefly tries to stop John and Zari from putting things back to normal by disguising herself as Ava and telling the Legends where they are, because she doesn't want to give up her powers again, as they are a part of her.
- History Repeats: By the end, Constantine's attempt to save Desmond is a repeat of Barry's "Flashpoint" debacle, to the point where ultimately three Constantines are present when the timeline is restored.
- Ignored Expert: Zari, throughout the episode.
- Imposter Forgot One Detail: The Sirens expose Charlie when she doesn't know what Zambesi is.
- In Spite of a Nail: Mona still gets employed by the Time Bureau even though in that timeline the creatures are never captured.
- Internal Reveal:
- John finally tells Sara about the threat they're facing: Neron.
- Nate's father learns that the Kaupe escaped.
- It's a Wonderful Plot: Downplayed: Charlie ultimately realizes the reason why, in every alternate timeline, the Legends are gung-ho about killing magical creatures is because she never made them realize there was another way.
- Jerkass Ball: Even without Charlie opening their eyes, it seems extremely cruel and out-of-character for the Legends of an alternate timeline to just kill every magical creature on sight, especially as they never lost anybody to one of them (as opposed to the Sirens and the Custodians).
- Kick the Dog: The Custodians are savage towards any magical creature, but turning the Kaupe into a rug is especially petty and cruel.
- Killed Offscreen: In nearly every alternate timeline, somebody died.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: John takes a surprisingly strong liking to Zari as a cat.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The Custodians are alerted to missed calls from Barry, Oliver, and Kara which Ray rightly deduces it must be the "annual crossover". Nate even jokingly asks whether they'll change costumes this time.
- Moral Event Horizon: An unintended example: Charlie's last ditch effort to prevent the timeline from being reset is turning into Ava and telling the Legends of a magical creature sighting in New Orleans 2018. To her shock, when they become convinced that Constantine is the creature in question, Sara immediately orders his death.
- Moral Myopia: Charlie is initially fine with Zari being stuck as a cat as long as she has her own powers back. She quickly changes her tune when she sees the other results of Constantine changing time.
- Moustache de Plume: Inverted. Mick's pen name is Rebecca Silver.
- My Skull Runneth Over: As the center of the timeline shift, Constantine's brain is taking on the memories of the changes they keep making. Just having two timelines drives him insane, at the end of it his nose is bleeding and he's passing out.
- Never My Fault: Charlie puts the entire blame for the broken timeline on Constantine.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Charlie and Constantine changing time has massive consequences. Without Constantine to help the Legends with his magical expertise, the Unicorn killed Sara which caused the remaining Legends to become Darker and Edgier 1980s Anti-Heroes — the Custodians of Chronology.
- Basically all of their attempts to fix the timeline without going back to New Orleans.
- Zari giving Charlie an air blast and leaving her behind only hardens her resolve to fight for her powers.
- No-Sell: In the final timeline, Charlie's attempts at making Sara realize that killing magical creatures isn't the solution results in Sara repeatedly attempting to kill her (since she's a shapeshifter, a magical creature). Because Charlie still has her powers, none of these attempts stick: getting her neck snapped is only a mild inconvenience, and getting shot isn't any more effective.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Charlie's reaction when she realizes that Sara is about to order Ray and Rory to shoot Constantine.
- The Fairy Godmother when Charlie, impersonating her, causes Prudence to sever her ties with the godmother, resulting in the latter losing her magic and now being at the mercy of a very angry Mick.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: Subverted in the end. Everything's returned to normal, and Charlie and Constantine return to the Waverider only to find a raging puppet, thinking they brought back the "Puppets of Tomorrow" reality. It was actually Mike the Spike, now restrained with a straigtjacket.
- Old Friend: The leprechaun is one to Charlie.
- Refuge in Audacity: When Gary sees Charlie disguised as him, the latter is able to convince him that she is his future self. While the Bureau is looking for a shapeshifter.
- Refusal of the Call: In at least one of the altered timelines, the Legends did receive calls from Barry, Oliver, and Kara but they elected to blow it off.
- Replacement Goldfish: In one of the timelines the Fairy Godmother latches onto Mick and becomes Captain Cold II.
- Retool: The running gag of the episode is that with the changes of each timeline the survivors rearrange the dynamic of the team, with the new teams taking on new names complete with their own opening sequences.
- The Reveal: Hank's mysterious superior in the half-baked scheme to use the magical creatures as Living Weapons is Neron, who is using Desmond's visage just For the Evulz because he's that cruel.
- Revenge Before Reason: The Custodians have adopted a shoot-on-sight policy for magical creatures after Sara got killed by the Unicorn. They won't let anybody stand in the way of that, not even the bureau (and in Nate's case, his own father).
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory:
- Zari and Charlie are physically affected by the changes to the timeline, but remember how things are supposed to be.
- Deconstructed with Constantine; being at the epicenter of the changes, he remembers both the original timeline and the new ones, and the stress of the collective memories drive him insane.
- Sadist: John tells Sara that Neron doesn't just want to win; he wants to win in the cruelest way possible. Neron using Desmond's face as a disguise is a good sign that John is right on the money.
- Sanity Slippage: Having two timelines worth of memories jammed into his skull drives Constantine half-insane, and it only gets worse as he and Charlie bungle their way through fixing the various problems that crop up as a result of their meddling in the timeline.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Charlie is confronted by the Sirens about being a shapeshifter, Sara is goaded into bragging that she could take Charlie on alone. Charlie takes this moment to bolt for the jump ship.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Constantine and Charlie believe they can set things right by stopping the Unicorn from killing Sara, rather than do the right but still painful experience of John hooking up with Desmond and then having to banish him to Hell. It doesn't work when they save Sara, but all that does is cause the boys to die and Sara, Ava, and Gideon to come the "Sirens of Space Time", amongst many many other time changes. They finally relent and stop John from changing the past.
- Shout-Out:
- The Custodians of Chronology to the A-Team, The Sirens of Space Time to Charlie's Angels, and finally DC's Puppets of Tomorrow to Sesame Street.
- At the sight of Sara, Nate, and Ray as puppets, Constantine utters a confused "What the Fraggle Rock is going on?"
- The "Puppets of Tomorrow" logo looks a lot like the new Pigs in Space logo
seen on The Muppets' YouTube channel.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Both Charlie and Constantine seem to perfectly understand Zari as a cat.
- Spotting the Thread:
- Charlie's attempt at being Sara while trying to talk to the "Custodians of Chronology" falls apart almost instantly due to one minor contradiction: Sara died in this timeline. (Then again, this is Sara Lance we're talking about...)
- When disguised as Gary while breaking Constantine out of the Time Bureau, Charlie has the misfortune of bumping into the real Gary. Luckily, Gary is stupid enough to be convinced that the other Gary he's seeing is actually from the future.
- The go-to sign for Charlie that the timeline is still messed up the more and more they alter it is the sign of memorial plaques at the Time Bureau. And it's the absence of them in the final alternate timeline that implies everything is fixed.
- As the timeline is resetting, the sign that everything is truly fixed is that the target of Sara's flying kick changes from Charlie to the Stein puppet.
- Stating the Simple Solution: Zari repeatedly makes it clear that the actual solution is to just go back to New Orleans 2018 and undo the initial alteration.
- Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Played both ways. Since this episode overlaps with Elseworlds, the temporal shenanigans here explain why the Legends were blowing off Barry, Oliver, and Kara's calls during the crossover event. And since the other heroes don't know what's happening on the Waverider (let alone being in the middle of the Book of Destiny crisis), they likewise can't assist Constantine and Charlie's efforts to salvage this mess.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: In the first alternate timeline, when Charlie breaks Constantine out of his prison cell, they run into Mona. When asked how much she heard, she claims she certainly didn't hear anything about breaking out of the Time Bureau or resetting time.
- Tastes Like Friendship: Mick and Ava bury the hatchet over snickerdoodles.
- Took a Level in Badass: Gary has been named employee of the month in the first alternate timeline and even bravely returns fire towards the Custodians.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: In every altered timeline, the Legends up taking the genocidal approach with magical creatures without Charlie being there to steer them. In at least one timeline they elected to ignore a distress call from Barry and the others without a care for the consequences.
- Undignified Death:
- In one timeline, both Hank and Nate meet their deaths at the hands of a garden gnome.
- None of the deaths are particularly great. Sara is unicorned; Mick, Ray, and Nate are choked to death by the Fairy Godmother; Ava is killed and then replaced with another clone; Gary apparently accidentally time couriered into a volcano. The Custodians also die in a fight between themselves and the Time Bureau, apparently forgetting that one of them has a bulletproof suit and another can become bulletproof.
- Wham Shot: Hank Heywood's golfing buddy and implied superior is shown to have Desmond's face, which flickers into a demonic visage for a moment, revealing him to be Neron.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Mona's condition from the previous episode goes unaddressed once the timeline is repaired.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Zari calls out Charlie and John several times.
