DC's Legends of Tomorrow: The One Where We're Trapped on TV Recap With Spoilers

The episode opens on a bleak alternate timeline, where Mona is in charge of writing the official history of the world. It's sanitized beyond parody, though, and she can't remember any of her personal history. After a brief conversation with her supervisor, Atropos appears on a monitor at the end of the room to let him know that his life is at an end and his thread is hereby cut. He slumps onto his desk, just as the work day ends, so Mona takes his desk plant home with her. While she walks home, everyone looks the same, everyone acts cowed -- except a wild-haired Gary, who is a doom-and-gloom protestor saying "the world is wrong!"

In the Fates' world, eveyrone wears gray and eats mush, then lives vicariously through TV characters. Mona comes home and starts watching Ultimate Buds, a Friends-style sitcom that centers on Behrad, Zari, and Nate as lovable neighbors in wacky sitcom situations.

In the episode, Zari and Nate play a will-they-or-won't-they couple, while Behrad is Zari's brother, just as in real life. He has the totem, but doesn't know what it is, and when he gets mush sprayed on him (the result of Nate's over-enthusiastic story about how he is auditioning to play Robin Hood in a show called Arrow), he takes it off to go change.

As soon as he leaves the room, though, it lights up, and when Nate touches it, it shocks him and a vision of Zari 1.0 steps out of it. She walks into TV's Zari, possessing her body and hugging Nate, thrilled to see him. She notices the studio audience, though, and quickly realizes something is wrong. As she starts quizzing Nate about where the other Legends are, she rattles off names that include "Mona Wu," and Mona realizes something isn't right.

When she sees Behrad and is shocked to see him alive, Behrad and Nate assume she has eaten a "Behrad brownie," so when he boss knocks at the door, they rush her into a closet to hide. She realizes what's going on, summons the totem to her, and blows the door out, trying to explain the situation to a confused and incredulous Behrad and Nate. When she finds a door that doesn't seem to go anywhere, though, Zari opens it and brings the two through it -- to a whole different show.

Suddenly dressed in fancy period clothes, the trio find themselves in Highcastle Abbey, where John Constantine is a butler who takes care of Astra and her mother, who is looking to set her up with an aristocrat -- Behrad. Assuming that Nate is the Tarazi family valet, they send him away with John. As Astra and Behrad get to know each other, Zari leaves to track down Constantine. As she tells him about his real life, she mentions Gary, and Mona goes to get him.

They discover that John knows magic here, too, and that will send them to another show in order to get rid of them and keep the secret that he's got magic from his wealthy family. Astra and Behrad, meanwhile, have decided to run away from Highcastle Abbey and start a new life together. The group all leave together, to find themselves on the set of Star Trip, a Star Trek knockoff where Sara and Ava have replaced Kirk and Spock as co-captains of the "Enterider."

Unfortunately for the other Legends, they jump into the bodies of villainous space bandits and Sara and Ava go on the offensive. Things aren't improved when Nate and Behrad, trying to prove that the reality is fake, launch an attack on Sara and Ava, killing their (robotic) crew.

At "Clotho Productions," where Charlie creates the shows on TV, Gary and Mona con their way in, claiming to be there to fill the mush vending machines.

On the show, Sara and Ava get transported to the "Gromulan" ship where the crew are. While they talk about it, Mona and Gary start to pieces together what's happening, as they can see an algorithm writing scripts in real time for the shows they're watching and the Legends' life threads attached to the computers.

Back inside Star Trip, the team respond to a signal from a distant world -- the theme song to Mister Parker's Cul-de-Sac -- and are pulled through space by a giant hand in a read sweater.

On Mister Parker's, the team find themselves dressed as small-town heroes (although still holding onto their previous TV identities). They can't figure out how to get out of there, but after a rousing speech from Zari about the importance of who the Legends are and what they do, Mona types into the computers that the Legends remember who they are. Just after they do, though, Charlie storms in and tells Gary and Mona that they have ruined everything. She rewrites reality to send everyone back to where they started -- although now, they know who they are (including both Zaris).

At Highcastle Abbey, Astra realizes that her mother is a character on a TV show, not her "real" mother, but John tells her that they can stay anyway if that's what she wants, because everything that went wrong in his life flowed forth from the Newcastle incident.

On Star Trip, Ava tries to convince Sara to stay behind, because she saw Sara die during the zombie apolcaypse last week. Sara realizes that Charlie gave them everything they thought they wanted back at the pub -- but that doesn't make it real. When Mick shows up as "Don" -- a Khan doppelganger -- and blasts their ship, Sara refuses to defend the Enterider, assuming that since Charlie had given them a world where they never lost, losing would get their show canceled and free them.

Mick, Sara, and Ava find themselves backstage at Highcastle Abbey, where John and Astra are with Natalie, who says she heard Astra longing for an adventure and bought her a ticket to London to go have her own life. Astra tells John they can't stay, and John tells her that her real mother would be proud. He casts a spell and they join the other Legends backstage.

On Ultimate Buds, Zari realizes that they are being used to indoctinate the masses, and starts talking about insurrection and taking control of your own lives. Their show, too, is cancelled and the team are found all together. They're approached by Charlie, who tries to convince them to go back to their old lives by splitting Zari's life thread, giving the team both Zaris. The team rejects her offer, leaving the backstage area. They're free now, but Charlie can't protect them from her sisters anymore.