The Team Fights Bird Monsters & Bigotry in Our Legends of Tomorrow Episode 8 Recap

In the 1950s, a couple of kids decide to have a hot rod race, but when one of them crashes he finds a weird glowing rock. They aren’t the only ones that found it though, as Vandal Savage is present too. The team arrives in Harmony Falls, Oregon in 1958 where teens are being killed, meaning Savage is busy. What makes this a good time to strike? Savage hasn’t met them yet so he won’t be expecting. Okay, that’s actually clever. To infiltrate the town Ray and Kendra pose as a couple moving into the home of the first victim, Dr. Stein and Sara pose as as doctor and nurse at the local insane asylum, and Jax goes undercover as “the new kid.” Snart and Rip go undercover too, but as FBI agents investigating the town serial killer. The sheriff happily hands over the files on the murders too.

Stein, Sara and Jax meet in a local dinner. Jax talks about old monster movies always having this setting, forgetting that those movies were made in this era, and Stein starts feeling warm and fuzzy for the 1950s, forgetting all that casual racism, sexism and homophobia. When his teammates point this out, he takes off his nostalgia glasses and heads back to the hospital. Recognizing her as the girlfriend of one of the missing teens, Jax sits next to a young woman named Betty to try and get info. While most of the patrons are happy to just gasp in their seats and whisper, the two other guys from the first scene start making threats and taunting Betty for her “AWOL boyfriend.” Jax, not one to take fighting words lightly, stands up to them and they quickly leave. Impressed with his bravery, and his dashing good looks, Betty asks if he wants to hang out the next night.

Across town, Ray and Kendra move into their “new house,” and appear to be having a good time. Sara, on the other hand, thinks she and Stein are wasting their time at the asylum, but he tells her to find the files on violent inmates as a start. While searching for them, Sara hip checks a handsy doctor and saves one Nurse Carlisle from his unwanted advances. The two have a spark and she takes Sara on a tour, pointing to a Dr. Knox’s section of the hospital, Hall H, home of the violent psychotics; this is the best joke at the expense of San Diego Comic-Con I have ever heard. The key, however, is Sara notices Savage isn’t one of the patients, he’s Dr. Knox (which in itself is a reference to a villain from Smallville, a character that was meant to be Savage). Back at their home, a neighbor knocks on Ray and Kendra’s door, it’s Mrs. Knox and her husband Vandal Savage with a casserole! They’re also having a party!

In another part of town, a man goes to change a flat tire and is attacked by a mostly unseen, but clearly large bird. Kendra and Ray go back to the Waverider and relay all the info, but Kendra thinks they’re safe since Savage won’t kill her if he thinks she hasn’t awoken into her powers yet. The files Rip and Snart got were a dead end, which gives Jax a good chance to bring up Rory’s sudden disappearance. He eventually lets it go. Back at the hospital, Sara searches for anything in Savage’s office but Nurse Carlisle thinks she’s looking for booze and takes her to the cafeteria for a drink. Ray and Kendra head to the Savage party where the trademark racism of the era rears its head. The two split up to look for anything abnormal in the house and when Savage starts chatting her up, Ray finds a giant metal door with a lock on it. An alarm sounds at the hospital, summoning Savage, where we see his psychotic inmates: they’re bird monsters, and they killed a guy.

Ray explains to Rip about the door at Savage’s home while Jax gets dressed for his date, which isn’t for like 12 hours but that’s fine, he’s excited. Ray shrinks down and enters the room, not finding much of anything, until he stumbles upon a chest with hieroglyphics on it. Kendra watches as Savage arrives back home. Ray takes the dagger from inside and shrinks back down, zipping out as Savage enters the room. Sara and Nurse Carlisle talk at the asylum, where she asks if she ever gets freaked out staying there at night. Freaked out? Nah, but lonely. Which is her cue to share a kiss. Sara, however, does the freaking out and bolts.

Jax and Betty park their car as the kids do and when she decides to get hands on, Jax stops her, he “wants to know more about her.” So he asks about what the guys at the dinner said about her AWOL boyfriend. She tells him about what happened, but before she can elaborate, the delivery from the jerk store arrives and they pull Jax and Betty out of the car. The bird monster from before flies down and Betty notices something about it, realizing the monster is her boyfriend, Tommy. She and Jax climb inside the car to get away but the human-sized talons reach through and slash her neck. Jax books it in the car to get her to a hospital, but they’re quickly pulled over. After failing to properly explain what happened, Jax decides to just leave, when the Sheriff knocks him out cold and drags him into his car.

Rip and Snart find the car and Betty after Gideon tracked Jax to the location. They take her to the Waverider where Gideon deduces that the scratches were made by talons, not knives. Dr. Stein quickly realizes that an Nth metal meteorite must have landed nearby, the kind that gave Kendra her powers, but now it’s mutating kids into bird monsters. All right, sure, why not. The trouble is, it may not be curable. The team gets together to decide their plan, which is: find Jax and also attack Savage. Ray puts up a stink about Kendra going after him, but she puts her foot down, she can handle it. Sara confides in Dr. Stein that after coming back to life, she hasn’t been much for feelings, and kissing Nurse Carlisle felt like a first kiss all over again. It also made a world-renowned assassin realize how much you can hurt someone with your feelings.

Jax wakes up tied to a bed where the sheriff introduces him to Savage, who drains a liquid from the meteorite and injects into him. He begins to transform, and it’s not pretty. Savage has a visitor though, it’s Kendra, and she starts laying it on pretty thick. It’s kind of interesting how their dialogue is surface-level playful flirting but given their literal history has a whole other meaning. The team gets into position throughout the hospital as Kendra prepares to pull out the dagger and kill him, but Savage thought ahead. He knew it was too good to be true that she would not only be his neighbor but then his dagger would go missing. So the two fight, as they do, right after Savage hits a button setting all the bird monsters free.

Ray and Rip go look for Jax, only to be stopped by the Sheriff. A rogue bird monster flies through and attacks, giving Ray a chance to find Kendra. Sara saves Nurse Carlisle and offers to explain everything later. Dr. Stein and Snart enter the hospital from the entrance with no windows or lights and are quickly ambushed by the bird monsters. One of them stumbles forward, and it becomes clear it’s Jax. Snart has the chance to kill him, but opts to incapacitate him before they make a quick escape. Ray runs into Savage’s office and blasts the villain out of the window with his gauntlet. Stein and Snart make it to an upper level, but Bird-Jax finds them and snarls, just before Sara knocks him out.

On the ship, Gideon produces a cure for the bird monsters, which they test on Jax. Guess what? It didn’t work. Just kidding, this is a TV show. It worked. Sara goes to the hospital to apologize to Nurse Carlisle and plant a couple more smooches on her. She tells her the serum she gave has been working and maybe they’ll meet up again sometime. Jax presents Betty with a brand-new car, don’t bother with how he got it, just as the now bird-free Tommy and they embrace.

Ray and Kendra pack up their stuff at their home, because of course they had actual stuff to move in for this 27-hour adventure and of course it’s okay to just hang out at the house across the street from Vandal Savage’s house when all you did was throw him out a window. Of course. The two of them make-up from their fights across the episode. Snart and Jax share a moment too, where he apologizes for getting under his skin about Rory. An explosion rocks the Waverider, Chronos has arrived. As Rip tries to seal the ship, the assassin hops on board and opens fire. Sara, Kendra and Ray walk towards the Waverider but it then lifts off into the air and flies away.

You can watch a preview for the next episode, titled “Left Behind” and airing on March 31, in the player below.