It took three seasons, but we finally did it. We got the time travel story trope I've been waiting for from day one. We got the Groundhog's Day episode and I couldn't be more excited.

But of course, it wouldn't be Legends of Tomorrow if it were just a simple time loop scenario. There's just gotta be some weirdness, right? And boy howdy, there was plenty of it to go around this week.

To catch you up to speed, just in case, this week was all about Zari reliving the same hour on the Waverider over and over only for it to constantly end in the ship blowing up. Try as she might, she found herself unable to stop the explosion, even with help from her teammates enlisted in every loop. Of course, at the end of the day, it turned out that the loop itself—as well as the bomb—were actually just a simulation being run in Zari's head over and over by Gideon as Zari herself recovered in the med bay. But that doesn't actually mean the details of the story Zari kept living over and over were inherently false.

It turns out Gideon's got some pretty brutal ideas for how to teach a person to be a team player, and they all revolve around putting them through horrifyingly traumatic experiences over and over again until they learn their lesson.

Poor Zari.

But praise (and critique) of Gideon's methods aside, there was a lot going on in this episode.

I mean, aside from the whole bomb scenario Gideon made up, the simulation she kept throwing Zari into over and over was populated by Gideon's own home-brew representations of the crew, which gave Zari (and us) a chance to see some totally new sides of the Legends and some were a little more...um...revealing than others.

First, we've got Nate and Amaya, whose romance continues to be an on-again-off-again sticking point for the both of them, which, okay. Sorry, Nate and Amaya shippers, but I can't be the only one who is very ready for the two of them to move on, can I? It's time to let go.

Then we've got Sara who is struggling with romance problems of her own. She and Ava, the director of the Time Bureau, might be this season's most unexpected relationship for me, but unlike the Nate and Amaya stuff, I'm actually really into it. This week we learn that Sara's hold-up is a fear of getting too close to people, which I'm sure anyone who has ever met Sara could have diagnosed within seconds.

Then there's Ray, who after his brief meeting with Constantine last week, has found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to keep Sara's vulnerability to Mallus-possession a secret. And keeping secrets is definitely not one of Ray's strong suits.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, who could have ever guessed Mick Rory is a burgeoning sci-fi romance writer?

Do you think he's ever going to get his manuscript published? I hope he does. It sounds like he's got some real untapped potential here and—

Okay, okay, I'll get back on track.

The point is, we spend a lot of time with the Legends looking at the bigger picture. You know, the major threats like Mallus or Vandal Savage or the complete collapse of the timestream, so it's easy to forget that there are a lot of much smaller, way more personal consequences that come from being able to hop around the timeline at will. It's all a bit of a Monkey's Paw scenario for the crew—this endless reminder that they can go back and change things that would arguably change their lives for the better, but they really shouldn't. And sure, they might be superheroes who signed up for this, but that doesn't make them any less vulnerable to the totally normal, human stuff we all struggle with everyday. It's all just a matter of figuring out how to deal with the small stuff in their own way, out of the way of the bigger mission.  

For the most part, the crew who have been around from the start have internalized that lesson really well—Sara probably best of all, for obvious reasons. But Zari? She hasn't had the chance to, so it makes sense that she's still struggling with the fact that she can't just fix her own past with the tools she has available.

I'll be totally honest here. If I were suddenly put on a timeship and told I could now travel anywhere I wanted, to any point in history, I genuinely don't know if I could avoid the temptation of going back and doing some personal course correcting, even if I knew full well it was dangerous to try.

It all gets kind of heavy if you think about it too hard. Time travel really isn't for the faint of heart.

And speaking of, it looks like we're about to get an all-new crewmember for the Waverider! On a scale of Sara to Zari, how hard do you think it'll be for Wally West to adjust to the Legends lifestyle?
 

Meg Downey covers DC's Legends of Tomorrow as a part of the #DCTV Couch Club. Look for Meg on Twitter at @rustypolished. DC's Legends of Tomorrow airs Mondays at 8 p.m. (7 p.m. CST) on The CW.