Please note that, as with all these recaps, they are filled with spoilers.  Don’t read on if you haven’t seen the episode – you have been warned…

We start with the usual “Previously…” montage.

The Waverider – Zari is working on a new program, while arguing with the ship’s computer, Gideon.  Zari starts to run the program when the team walk in, lead by Sara.  They’ve been battling back in 1975 and all look resplendent in their 70’s garb, very Saturday Night Fever for the men, with the ladies looking like they’ve come straight from an Abba gig.  Zari tries to hide what she is up to and when Sara asks Gideon for a check, Zari is found out and owns up to what she has been working on – an assimilation to look for loopholes in the hope that, ideally, she can go to 2042, the time she is originally from, and save he brother.

This causes an argument between Sara and Zari and it comes to a point that Zari either does as Captain Lance orders, or she leaves the ship. Zari isn’t happy and walks off, going to do some work in the engine room as ordered.  As she does so, she is covered in a coloured liquid, Gideon doesn’t come back online and, well, the Waverider explodes.

Oh well, that’s it I guess, episode end.

Nah, of course it isn’t and a moment later Zari opens her eyes to find that she has gone back an hour in time, right in the middle of her argument with Sara.

Title Card

Zari realizes she has gone back an, tries to clear her head and make sense of what has just happened.  She asks Mick, after going to his room, if he has ever suffered from Deja Vu but, Mick being Mick, he has no idea what that is.  She then goes to the library and overhears them talking of something that happened in the battle they have just returned from, that nothing more can be said about.

Amaya leaves the library and Zari speaks to Nate, who has no idea of anything strange occurring.  It’s the same with Ray who also tells her he has noticed nothing strange.

As before, she returns to the engine room, the same thing happens and, again, the ship explodes.

“Mamma Mia, Here I Go Again!”

Back to arguing with Sara and Zari tries to tell her what is happening to her, unfortunately Sara isn’t listening and twists her arm.  Ray ask what is going on and Zari tries to explain.  He, obviously, doesn’t believe in what she is saying and, after taking her to the med bay to look at her wrist, he drugs her, sending her to sleep.

It’s no surprise to the viewer that Zari again wakes up in the middle of the row with Sara.  This time, she calls all the team members to the bridge of the ship and tries to explain to them all what is going on, that the ship needs checking or they will all die.  None of the team are listening and, ultimately, Mick does the necessary and takes her to the med bay and she is given the drug to send her to sleep.  In the med bay, Ray has an idea as to what may be the problem with Zari and tells Mick.  However, due to the nature of the episode, we then see a great montage of the same scene, but Ray coming up with different reasons for what is wrong.  Very funny.

After what I am assuming is a very large number of times of it happening, Zari has built up a tolerance to the sleeping drug that Ray has been administering.  Believing her to be asleep, she is left in the med bay alone but, due to the tolerance to the drug, she doesn’t sleep and gets up, leaves the med bay and bumps in to Nate.  He asks her, her plan – she doesn’t have one.  She tells him he is stuck in a time loop.  Nate thinks of a movie with a similar storyline and mentions this to Zari.  As they talk, it is getting closer to the time that the ship will explode, so Nate tells her that if it happens again, find him and say the words…

“Groundhog Day”

Oh yes, it happens again.   She finds Nate in the library, when she gets him alone she says the words to him… “Hedgehog Day”.  Nope.  Nate figures it out and works out that Zari is stuck in the time loop and wants to her, after all, that is what friends are for.  Him saying that is something that Zari is surprised at, but you can see it has a wonderful affect on her.

Zari tells Nate that it isn’t coming from outside but from inside the ship.  They wonder who would do something like that purposely and can think of no-one in particular.  Unless acting suspiciously.  Zari tells Nate that he and Amaya came across as suspicious in the library and Mick doing laundry was certainly odd.  They follow Mick to the laundry room and, where Mick states he can’t get “that song” out of his head.  Due to earlier, and Micks costume he wore in 1975, I’m guessing it’s Waterloo.  He uses a memory flash to rid himself of the song, then Amaya, who is in attendance, takes the memory flash from him.  It has Zari wondering why she would want it.  It’s suggested by Zari that, maybe Kuasa put her up to it but Nate tells her that she is going to fan with the conspiracy theories.

She then bumps in to Ray who wants to know why she pushes things with Sara.  ray is obviously worried about how Sara may react, especially, after the warning he received from Constantine previously.   He comes up with the quote…

“Happy Captain, Happy Ship!”

She finds Amaya and Nate, where she finds Amaya wants to use the memory flash on them both.  It becomes apparent that they want to use it to enable them not to remember what happens between them.  Yes, they have sex.  It’s clear that this is the reason they put the team in jeopardy during the last battle.  However, it doesn’t stop them going for it again, with Zari having to listen to it.

“Kill me now!”

Luckily for Zari, her listening pleasure is cut short as the ship explodes……..again.

On coming back, she goes straight for Nate and he tells them about things between himself and Amaya.  They start to investigate by, first, going to Mick’s room.  They obviously don’t trust him, can’t imagine why.  In there, as they try to get through his belongings, Nate is caught in a bear trap (I kid you not).  Refresh to the next day where they do the same thing but this time they are ready for the trap.  They find a box, a suspicious looking box apparently, Nate tries to open it but is electrocuted and,yes, refresh.  They open the box this time and are covered in ink.  It appears the box contains a typewriter, on which Mick is writing a Sci-Fi novel.  Cue explosion.

Next up, Zari and Nate investigate Ray, he’s talking to Sara who says that Zari is pissing her off.  When Sara leaves, they go to Ray, scaring his witless in the process, when he blurts out what Constantine told him about Sara and what he has to do if Mallus takes over her again.  They tell Ray about the time loop and tell him that Mick is clean.

Sara’s turn to be investigated and to do this, Ray shrinks both himself and Zari so they can enter the jump ship without being noticed.  They find Sara talking to Ava and Sara is telling her all about Zari and, despite what Zari thinks, how important she is to the team but doesn’t make it easy.  Sara feels she has to have the tough stance, something that Ava knows all about, and that she doesn’t like to always be the “bad cop”.  Ava suggests she goes to see Sara.  Zari can see that Ava is, quite clearly, “crushing” on Sara but Sara just can’t see it.  Sara, all of a sudden, asks Ava if she can hear a buzzing sound, like a fly.  Ava tells Sara that she needs to kill it cos it could have certain consequences to the timeline (?).  Sara grabs ahold of a paper and swats Ray/Zari.

Back to the beginning and Zari is starting to feel the effects of what has been happening to her, she is really feeling the strain.  She tells Nate, who suggests that, as there are no consequences, why doesn’t she have some fun.  We are then treated to a number of scenes where Zari lets her hair down and really does have fun, she reads Mick’s book (not bad) and learns to play the violin by using the Stradivarius that is on the ship.

As you’ll guess, the time loop keeps happening and Zari says she just can’t do it anymore, the fun has stopped.  She thinks that killing herself would be the answer to stopping the time loop and saving the team and, at the bridge, she finds a gun, puts it to her head and pulls the trigger.  It doesn’t fire, Sara talks to her and now listens to everything that Zari is saying.  Sara puts a plan in to action and, as an aside, everyone realises what Zari has seen and now knows.  They have to search the ship for a bomb, but they find nothing.  It’s only Mick throws a bottle down the garbage chute, and it comes back up at him, that they realise the spot they haven’t searched is the trash compactor.

A number of the team make their way to the compactor and, on opening it, they find Gary (member of the Time Bureau from earlier episodes) stuck in it.  They want to know why he is there and he explains that he tried to portal across but ended up in the wrong place.  He says that he concocted the time loop in order to save the team from dying and Mick, being Mick, took the device used away from Gary, thinking it a bomb and destroyed it.  Without that, the time loop can not occur again and if the ship explodes again, then that is it.  The team need to find the bomb and diffuse it.

Gary tells the team that the bomb has come from 1975, when Mick mentions…

“That stupid song.”

Sara clicks, calls him a genius and finds a tape/music player smashed on the floor.  Yes, that is where the bomb is, the one place that Zari didn’t look.  Zari thinks that, during battle, Damien Darhk planted the bomb so it made its way to the Waverider.  As Gideon is still out of action, the team can not open the doors to get rid of the bomb and it needs diffusing.

“Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb.”

Sara feels that Zari is the only one who can diffuse the bomb and, while Zari thinks about it she walks away from the team.  All of a sudden, she puts herself behind a force field, which will give the team time to get away without fear of harm from the bomb.

Zari is willing to sacrifice herself for this team, a helluva gesture.  While behind the force field and as the bomb counts down, she has some words for the team.  She tells Mick to follow his heart, keep writing.  The Nate and Amaya, she tells them she is lucky to call them friends and that they should not fight how they feel for each other.  She tells Ray how nice he is and that if everyone was like him the world would be a better place.  All the while, Sara is pleading with her to come out from behind the field.  On to Sara, who she calls a pain in the ass, but she needs to be like that.  She tells her to put some of how she acts in to her personal life and that she should ask Ava out.  Gary – well, he asks if there is a meaningful message for him but he gets shouted down.  Nate pleads with Zari not to do this and that they can work it out but Zari is not having it.  The bomb counts down to zero and…….

……………..nothing.

Nothing happens, Zari comes out from behind the field and everyone has gone.  She hears someone clapping and it turns out that it is the physical form of Gideon.  Zari wants to know what is happening and Gideon tells her that, despite what she thinks, she is, actually, in the med bay.  After the argument with Sara, and being angry, Zari is told she made her way to the engine room and, as you read earlier, she was covered in the coloured liquid.  It turns out that this was a liquid that powers the ships time travel.  Due to the nature of it, it does cause harm and Zari have been in the med bay since.  Gideon tells her that, while her body is in the med bay, she has uploaded her mind to the ships matrix, similar to Gideon herself.  Zari is told that none of what has happened is real in the way she is used to.

Zari asks why Gideon has done this and is told that when she questioned about 2042 (and finding the loopholes) the program she had been working on went in to overdrive, looking for an answer, with trillions of possibilities but just the one constant – Zari herself.  Gideon tells her that to find the loophole she must work with the Legends.

The program Zari was working on worked and it predicted that Zari would leave the team.  The reason put Gideon in to the matrix/program, and put her through what she has been through, was to help her grow closer to the team and form a bond.

The bomb – well, that was a plot device, a problem to solve.  However, Gideon says that Zari was the real problem.  If she had stayed angry with Sara she would have left the team, taking with her, her totem, thus hindering the chances of them beating Mallus and saving 2042.

Zari wants to know of the things she learned from the team were fake but finds that everything she saw was real.  Gideon tells Zari that the software she created was impressive and that it was time for her to wake up in the med bay.  Zari has one more question before though.

“Why Gary?”

Gideon just explains that she thought it would be funny.

A click of Gideon’s fingers and Zari wakes up to Ray and Sara watching over her and asking how she was feeling.  She tells them everything that has happened, with Gideon, the time loop etc.  They don’t believe at first but then Zari tells Sara to ask Ray what Constantine told him about Sara.  He is flummoxed to how she would know that but,ultimately, he does tell Sara, who agrees with what Constantine said.

Sara and Zari talk over coffee and Zari tells Sara what she knows about her, that she is afraid of the loophole because she may go and try save her sister.  Zari also gives her reasons for doing what she did in wanting to save her brother, to which Sara explains she has been thinking and feels that it may not be a loophole as it is in the future and the future is open to change.

On a final note, Zari tells Sara to ask Ava out, love is worth the risk.

Zari then goes to Nate and Amaya, she knows the reasons for the memory flash and the reasons they almost put paid to the battle, they had sneaked off to have sex, almost blowing the mission.  She feels that the memory flash isn’t needed and that they should work it out without the memory flash.  Guess what happens next?

With Mick, she tells him she knows he’s writing a novel and that he should look at the ending, giving him a little advice.  The book, however, is good.

Finally, she finds the Stradivarius, wondering if the skills she learnt were real.  She finds that those talents are real and she goes on to play.  As she plays, we see various segments of the other Legends taking on the advice she has given them and we hear a segment from Mick’s book.

“Not Bad.”

Epilogue – China 2018 and we find Wally West meditating, when he receives a visit from the, recently escaped from prison, Rip Hunter.  Rip tells Wally that he is trying to save the universe and he needs his help.

Episode End.

Wowsers, what a cracking episode.  Being a fan of this sort of format, the Groundhog Day format (one of the greatest comedies of all time), I thoroughly enjoyed this.  I loved how it was centered on Zari and Tala Ashe is just wonderful at bringing out the full emotions of the character during this episode.

Loved the twists, Gary being on the ship to help the team, to the twist of Gideon, almost testing Zari to show her, her worth to the team.

Great to see Gideon in the flesh, as it were.

Mick the author – who saw that coming?  When is the book released, gotta be a must read.

Nate and Amaya – about time.

Sara – am I right in thinking that she is one of the, if not the most stunning woman in the DC CW Universe?

Loving Ava, her turnaround from hard face Time Bureau agent to her relationship with Sara is really nice to watch.

Ray – he really is the nicest guy in this universe.  Brandon Routh plays him so well and, if you think the same, then please feel free to vote for him in the DC World Hall of Fame February vote here and you can read the article on why Brandon was nominated here.

Super episode from what is turning out to be my favourite CW series.

Thank you for reading, if you want to leave your own views, please do so below or on any of our social media pages.

Cheers, John