‘Legends of Tomorrow’: Tala Ashe on Why Zari Has a Hard Time Fitting In

It has been a while since Zari (Tala Ashe) has seemed out of place on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, but her role on the team — along with her different philosophy on the role of time-travel — will be examined more deeply on tonight’s episode, “Here I Go Again.”

The episode, which centers on Zari, sees the Waverider stuck in a time loop that keeps leading to its destruction…but then Zari gets a cosmic reset button. That reset, of course, is likely a point of contention with the rest of the Legends, who believe that it is not safe to participate in events that you already were a part of in the past. On the other hand, besides giving Zari a more concrete role on the team, the events of the episode might also allow her the opportunity to sway some people to her way of thinking.

“[Zari has been] plotting, and she does have a different long game than the rest of the Legends,” Ashe told ComicBook.com. “She totally wants to do all the missions and very much believes in helping people and being part of that, but given her background and what’s important to her and what she wants to change and what she wants to fix, she’s got some different irons in the fire and we first start this episode with that conflicting,e specially with the direction that Sara wants to go.”

A major source of conflict between Zari and the rest of the team is her choice to send Helen of Troy to Themyscira at the end of the December episode “Helen Hunt,” in which she was tossed through time and accidentally created a turf war between two movie executives. While some on the ship know that she did it, the act has not been a subject of a broader conversation yet, in part because of the fast-paced nature of what has been going on since then, with “Crisis on Earth-X” followed by the death of two characters and a whirlwind adventure with John Constantine (Matt Ryan).

“This episode actually is going to address all of that, and it sort of starts with Zari trying to tackle that very thing and she and Sara really butt heads over it in a way that we haven’t seen I think either of them sort of be angry at each other in this way,” Ashe said. “We see her beginning in that way and we see it kind of resolved in the end and everyone is more on the same page by the end of the episode.”

Even following the events of “Crisis on Earth-X,” Ashe said, it was clear Zari is not 100% on board with the way Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) does things.

“She wanted to see if it was possible to save [Professor Stein] and was encouraging [Jax] to find a way, to find that loophole,” Ashe added. “What we are seeing is that she is a hacker and she is kind of using her hacking skills to find those loopholes and it’s going to get her in trouble with the rest of the crew. What’s fun is that the episode is sort of about what happens on the ship, what we normally don’t see. What hobbies, what things do people do on the ship — things that we never explore because we’re always on mission and we have stuff to do.”

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow airs on Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.