Legends of Tomorrow Review: The Ex-Factor (Season 6 Episode 3)
Legends of Tomorrow Season 6 Episode 3, “The Ex-Factor,” tracks down their latest alien when an intergalactic warrior named Knoxacrillion lands on Earth in 2045 and kills Zari’s ex-boyfriend DJ D’Smore Money (which remains a great and ridiculous name) on live television.
To prevent this, the Legends embed themselves onto the reality singing competition that DJ hosts and convince the alien to join the show if he wants to take over the world.
This is a very typically — and enjoyable — nonsensical plot for Legends of Tomorrow that it is so very good at. It picks a solution that it is very good at and is only one of its modes. Sometimes the show likes to shoot first and ask questions later. Other times, it’ll take the most unexpected route and this is that.
This is a bit of the Doctor Who influence thrown in there; where the answer to a problem is, in most cases, one of nonviolence.
The episode finds a lot of success out of grounding this episode in Zari Tarazi in a further exploration of this new version of the character and what exactly makes her tick, along with her value as a team member. The show might not feel compelled to have an episode that validates a different character, but it does for Zari and it’s not hard to see why.
Zari 2.0 is great but she is the one on the Waverider that is most unlike the rest. The others are superpowered, strong, or intelligent in a conventional and recognizable way but she bucks that trend. She is a classic case of someone that it would be all too easy to brush aside or discount and the episode really wants you to be aware of what a mistake that is.
Zari is someone that we are conditioned by society to think less of. She’s an influencer, her voice is high-pitched, and, on the surface, she seems shallow and breakable. The show has done so much work — not that it really needed — to get us all to recognize the ways that she is just as sly and devious as her counterpart.
This time around, it takes a look at Zari and wonders what it looks like for her, in all the ways that she is, to genuinely or not be interested in someone. That someone being John Constantine. Whereas the fifth season put work into getting us board with Zari as a person, “The Ex-Factor” has the even more difficult task of winning us over with their relationship.
In the end, it really ends up selling the two of them by demonstrating how they are both more similar than they might appear at first glance.
They are both emotionally stunted people who both feel, for one reason or another, that they are undeserving of a love that lasts and are unsure what to do with it when they have it. Their dynamic is one that ends up making a good deal of sense and you can really see why these two would get drawn to each other.
What did you think of this episode of Legends of Tomorrow ? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Legends of Tomorrow airs Sundays at 8/7c on The CW.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.