Tonight’s episode of Legends of Tomorrow may have seen Zari live the same hour over and over and over again, but all that repetition gave fans a lot to take in — including some clever Easter eggs.
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Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Legends of Tomorrow, “Here I Go Again”, below.
Tonight’s episode saw Zari (Tala Ashe) stay behind on the Waverider to do some routine maintenance while the rest of the Legends dealt with an anachronism in 1975. However, Zari saw this as an opportunity to run a program she created to look for various time loopholes that would permit her to change the bleak, dystopian future she came from and potentially save her brother. Things don’t quite go as planned, leading to the ship — particularly Gideon — being fried, Sara (Caity Lotz) being mad and Zari storming off only to find herself in a time loop with the ship exploding and everyone dying every hour on the hour.
Sounds like heavy subject matter, but this is Legends which means even a death loop has its moments of levity. While Zari is trapped trying to figure out how to save the team and the ship she discovers that Mick (Dominic Purcell) is writing a sci-fi romance novel, that Ray (Brandon Routh) has a very valid reason to be afraid of Sara, and even discovers that Nate (Nick Zano) and Amaya (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) are hooking up in a hilariously awkward scene. It’s in those moments of levity that the show sneaks in some fantastic pop culture references that you might just have missed while waiting for everything to blow up. Again.
So, what did we see? Read on to find out. Think we missed something? Tweet us at @ComicBookNow to let us know!
ABBA
While tonight’s episode didn’t actually show the team head off to the 1970s to correct an anachronism, we did get to see how their time visiting 1975 looked. Nate, Sara, Amaya, and Ray were all wearing some seriously amazing jumpsuits with Amaya and Ray bringing the look to a whole new level with amazing, era-appropriate hairstyles, but Mick’s outfit took the cake. While everyone else was rocking platform shoes and bell bottoms, Mick was dressed like Napoleon, and he had some serious questions about why anyone would write a song about a military defeat.
The song he’s referring to is “Waterloo” by the Swedish pop group ABBA. Released in 1974, the song is one of the group’s most well-known songs and is about a woman who essentially surrenders to a man, promising to love him and referencing Napoleon’s surrender at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 to emphasize the point. It’s an odd theme for a love song, but that didn’t prevent it from being a huge hit. The song was a No. 1 hit in several countries and broke the Top 10 on the charts in the United States. It remains one of the best-selling singles of all time.
Justice League Goo
Legends contained a visual reference to the DCEU films in tonight’s episode that, while it was impossible to miss it might not be something some fans connected to the Justice League movie. When Zari goes to fix what she broke when trying to run her loophole-finding simulation program, she detaches a tube that spews a fluorescent green goo in her face. For fans who also saw Justice League, that goo might have looked very familiar.
In Justice League, Steppenwolf’s Parademons explode in a very similar-looking green goo when they are killed and while DC Films and DC TV exist in two separate universes — don’t expect the Arrowverse and the Justice League to collide anytime soon — it was a nice little reference between the television world and the movies.
Dartayus
A Marvel Comics reference in the Arrowverse? It isn’t the first time. One of the things that Zari and Nate — who is the first to believe Zari about the time loop and helps her try to figure out who causes the explosion — discovers is that Mick has been writing a sci-fi romance novel. They discover what appears to be the final page of his novel, and in it is a reference to the alien world Dartayus where the hero has found love.
In Marvel Comics, Dartayus is a planet located in the Negative Zone. It first appeared in X-Men Gold Vol 2 #12 very recently (November of last year to be exact) and was the homeworld of Kologoth Antares, a political revolutionary exiled to Earth.
Groundhog Day
If the idea of Zari having to relive the same moments over and over again until she can somehow figure out how to stop the loop sounds like the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day to you, you’re in good company. Turns out, Nate was thinking the same thing when Zari told him about the time loop. He brings up the 1993 movie and even tells Zari that, when the loop resets, to find him and tell him “Groundhog Day” as a code.
While Zari has apparently never heard of Groundhog Day as she mistakenly calls it “Hedgehog Day” — which only makes us think that 2042 is a truly horrible place if the cult classic movie is no longer known the population — the name-drop isn’t the only reference to the film in the episode. In the movie, Phil (Murray’s character) has to relive the day until he manages to get things right and learns a lesson in the process. Zari is also forced to continue in the same hour until she gets it right, and in this case, right means coming to realize that she is important to the team and they have become her new family.
“Cause and Effect”
While the Groundhog Day reference is obvious both in how its presented and the way the episode plays out, fans might also have caught a reference to and episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Cause and Effect.”
In “Cause and Effect,” The Enterprise finds itself entering a time anomaly; they see a crisis looming and work to avert it, but fail; the craft is destroyed, and the crew would have died, except that time gives them numerous “do-overs.” The catch? The crew have no idea what is happening and each time are trying to advance their understanding of the situation without the benefit of the knowledge they might have gained in previous attempts.
Sounds a lot like tonight’s episode, doesn’t it? If the thematic similarities weren’t enough, though, Ray also name-drops the episode when Zari and Nate fill him in on the situation.
Star Wars
One of the more humorous moments in the episode, with the whole team now on the same page about the impending reset of the time loop they discover that everyone’s favorite Time Bureau agent, Gary, is inexplicably hiding in the Waverider’s trash compactor. Gary ended up there due to not accounting for temporal shift when he ported on board.
Gary being in the ship’s trash compacter is a fun nod to Star Wars: A New Hope when Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Leia Organa all ended up in the Death Star’s garbage compactor, sorted into recyclable waste because of their armor and weapons. Like the beloved Star Wars characters, Gary is rescued before he can be smashed.
Hawkgirl’s Helmet
Repeating the same events over and over gets to be exhausting and Nick convinces Zari to have a little bit of fun since the time loop keeps resetting. In addition to playing pranks on her teammates, eating some junk food, and playing the violin, Zari also plays with the team’s various costumes — including Hawkgirl’s helmet.
One of the original members of the Legends, Kendra Saunders/Hawkgirl departed the team at the end of the show’s first season, flying off with Carter Hall/Hawkman after the defeat of the villain Vandal Savage. The presence of Hawkgirl’s helmet on the Waverider seems to prove that when Kendra and Carter left the Legends, they also left their hero days behind.
Legends of Tomorrow airs Mondays at 8/7c on The CW.
