Last episode, the Legends finally gathered all the pieces of the Loom of Fate. Mission accomplished, right? Well, nothing’s ever that easy. Not only do they not really know how to use it, there’s some disagreement about what to try first. The team spends a very tense episode largely trapped aboard the Waverider because, well, “Ship Broken.”

The show opens with Mick trying to once again make things up to Lita. You have to admit, as excuses go, “Trapped in Hell” is pretty good, but she’s not really listening to him anymore. He breaks all sorts of rules by showing off a little and decloaking the Waverider, which finally impresses the sullen teen. Yeah, that’d probably work on me, too, and Lita is further enticed by having a time-ship at her disposal to help study for her history exam. Aboard, and for all we know completely unaware of what’s happening outside, Astra and Constantine talk about their tangled interests while Charlie meditates to try and prepare to use the Loom. Next problem—what do you do first? Behrad’s resurrection, unscrewing Astra’s life, or doing something about the troubling coma Captain Sara Lance is still in? There are several different suggestions, and an “emotional support animal” suddenly showing up, because things aren’t chaotic enough. Charlie decides the issue by trying to bring back Behrad. To no surprise at all if you really think about it, his thread in the Loom is remarkably complicated. Between time travel, dying, and his entire timeline being rewritten, I’m sure it is. We see some pretty special effects, and no one gets the result they wanted. What they do get is a truly spectacular amount of energy feedback, which isn’t a great thing on board the ship. Me, I don’t think I’d have tried playing with great cosmic forces while the ship was in flight, but what do I know?

The energy has had multiple unwelcome effects, and the summation is no one is going anywhere by any means at their disposal. There are a lot of disappointed Legends at this point, which I get. Wandering around the edges of the chaos, Lita gets a tour from Mick, and asks a few questions he can’t really answer. Ava goes to visit Sara in the med-bay, and is thrilled when Sara suddenly wakes up. They’re a bit less thrilled to discover that Sara is blind, and that enough of Gideon’s systems are offline that the AI can’t really do anything about it right now. As if that’s not enough, Sara seems to have developed a new talent, which she doesn’t want and starts immediately lying about. The Captain finds out about the new arrivals on board, and gets shaken by another episode with her newest skill. Zari, worried, moons over a picture of her and Behrad, and she and Astra have a chat. Lita gives Mick the details of her upcoming test, and Mick, no idiot, goes for reinforcements: Professor Nathan Heywood, historian. I was a bit worried about where I thought they were about to go with some of this, but it didn’t happen, to my relief. Nate sends Mick off for snacks to help the studying, which Mick isn’t thrilled about. Constantine gets brought up to speed on what’s going on with Sara, and, in turn, tells her about Astra being aboard. Sara’s understandably not happy about that, and has another little episode.

Astra runs a pretty obvious con on Zari, while Mick finds more parts of the ship that don’t work, and Gary babbles but actually makes a few good points for once. Later, the bumbling apprentice makes a discovery. Ava and Sara try and repair some of the damage to the ship, and Sara finally admits what’s going on under some questioning from Charlie. Various suspicions come bubbling up, not helped by new information from both Zari and Gary. As the natural suspect, Astra gets put in the holding cell that they magic-proofed a while back. I swear, the only part of the ship that never fails is that damn containment field. She and John have some words, and John makes a decent point in his usual unpleasant way.

Trying to help, Nate tells Lita about the team, and the teen is not impressed by Rory’s flame-gun. Or guns in general. Nate keeps plugging away, makes things worse, and then sends them on an errand to try and make thing better. The damage to the ship seems to be getting worse, not better, much to Ava’s frustration. Zari tries to turn the tables on Astra, which doesn’t work at all well. Constantine and Sara follow different paths to get to the same place, have an argument, and Sara sees more than she bargained for as tempers flare. Shaken, Sara isolates in the med-bay while Ava and Constantine try and keep things moving. Mick has a room that reminds me a lot of Smaug’s horde, and we finally see some shared interests with father and daughter. He cuts some of her plans short when things take a turn, which goes about as well as you’d expect.

Zari draws on her other self’s computer skills again, which impresses Astra, however unwillingly. They talk about the strangeness that is Zari’s life, and then, as Nate and Charlie arrive, they all make some surprising discoveries together. It’s a twist to the mystery I certainly didn’t see coming. Things keep getting worse and more confusing as they go. We also get reminded the ship has a fabricator, which makes me wonder yet again why they keep having budget issues. Gary tries to do something nice which ends up revealing what’s actually going on, and it’s even weirder than usual for the Legends. Sara has had a rough day, and her initial explanations don’t really make a lot of sense to Ava or John, but they end up going with it.

Zari’s hacking turns up a really useful clue, and then we finally learn something really important about the origin of the big problems this week. Nate almost does something horrible, but gets saved at the last minute. Things start looking worse as their problem takes on a new form. Menaced by the new threat, the team takes cover in the cell with Astra, because, among other things, Nate seems to have forgotten he has powers again. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and they take a gamble, but someone almost immediately takes advantage. As danger gets everywhere on the ship, Mick does something heroic for Lita, and Sara and John go hunting. John points out a few things that Sara seems to have forgotten just since the beginning of the episode, and things go well, finally, with some help from an unexpected source. Well, they mostly go well. Gary tries to make up for some earlier mistakes, finds something that was lost, and brings a potential new problem, or at least a tribute to a classic 80’s movie.

Mick and Lita finally do some bonding while Zari tries to extend an olive branch to someone who doesn’t want it. Ava and Sara finally get back to the med-bay to try and wrap up the other major outstanding complication. This doesn’t go at all as anyone hoped. Personally, I think they’re missing a really obvious bet here, but that’s me.

 

What I liked: We finally got to see more of Lita than just a passing sulk, and I kinda liked her. The big mystery was kind of clever and I like the twists they worked in. I’m glad someone finally remembered Nate has some useful knowledge. Astra was actually useful and interesting. The Loom not working perfectly immediately made sense as did the various divided priorities.

 

What I didn’t: Nate’s powers are once again either useless or forgotten. Sara seemed a bit out of character on several fronts. Everyone seems to be missing a few obvious things about some recent developments.

 

It was an entertaining episode with some clever spins. I enjoyed it. I’ll give it a high 3.5 out of 5.