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TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews Legends of Tomorrow Season 6 Episode 9: This Is Gus

July 12th, 2021 by Todd Black Comments

Behrad as a whole has been a rather curious thing in Legends since the “Zari timeline change” and “This is Gus” was meant to be an origin story for him of sorts in regards to how certain life choices he made affected his being. All in all…it was fine, but they really tried to lean into a lot of things as a result.

First up, it was a mission to a “beloved” sitcom of Behrad’s, one that greatly influenced his life. The problem? It was a two-season show and the star’s brother asked for something to fix things…and an alien (thanks to Spooner) was the result of that. The show was to be changed from a “niche show” to something “more mainstream” by having the alien be the star and turning away from the “real-life comedy” that certain people enjoy. Mainly, the star of the show and Behrad.

On the surface, your ordinary deal, until Behrad himself started to change timeline-wise because of how important that show was to him. He went from…well…a hippie…to a business major who never stolen the family totem (thus never being a legend) and is obsessed with the bottom dollar in order to show up his famous sister Zari.

Now, that alone would be enough for a full episode, but the show then played up the rather turbulent relationship of Zari 2.0 and Behrad and that led to various things happening in sometimes odd fashion all to get the show (and Behrad) back to the way it was.

Yes, this is standard Legends stuff, but it did lose some steam at points and was rather shallow in others. For example, they’ve been teasing an Astra/Behrad relationship for a while, and then the moment that Behrad “glams up” she’s suddenly all into him? That’s sad, and shallow! Which Astra should not be.

Amidst all of this was the return of Leah, Mick’s daughter, who (because they were in 2023 for this episode) was found out to be pregnant…and Mick was not happy at all. This was another one that could’ve been great on all levels if they played it straight…but of course they had to go and muck it up with tropes and side-gags.

How so? Mick blowing up like he did was understandable because in his “time” he just left his little girl at college and suddenly she’s pregnant (in his timeline that is). Him bonding with her over the jar was great and you thought that maybe they would get to a great state…and then he sets out on a mission to kill her baby daddy…and then they didn’t…and then Gary revealed that Mick is apparently pregnant with Kayla’s kids…and it’s just too much.

Oh, and OG Zari is back…and no one thought to ask about bringing her back temporarily because…?

In the end, “This Is Gus” was a fine-enough episode of Legends to get certain points across, but in truth, they could’ve done a bit better on certain fronts and not tried to cram everything in.

Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!