DC Legends of Tomorrow continues to tackle complex issues and “Zari” gives us one of the feistiest and action packed episodes so far. The team resides to save Time Bureau pencil pusher Gary when he sends out a distress call after an attack from the mystical water woman seen at the end of last weeks episode. While half the team sets off to find out who was in the TB’s mystery transport box, aka the reason for the water assassins attack, the other half tries to solve the mystery of Amaya’s glitchy totem power.

While the professor and Nate decide to mansplain the power of the totem to Amaya (nice Job writers for calling it what it was) the rest of the team go out on the hunt for the escaped prisoner. The future is hella bleak, religion and being a metahuman are both illegal and Argus sends out drones to hunt them down which is challenging enough without the “water bitch” hot on their trails. When push comes to shove, newcomer Zari fights against the water walker and when there’s a moment of space she saves Ray, while Sarah plays chicken with the Time Bureau’s ships to save Zari. Amaya gets much of her toughness back just in time for the episodes final battle against the big bad and embraces her inner totem , after a long talk with her one of her ancestors. Tonight’s episode gave us a heist as a jail break, glowing necklaces, impromptu metahuman rescue from a detention center, and a vision quest, all rolled into one amazing hour of television.

The writers continue to tackle biases, societal norms (newcomer Zari is a Muslim female with metahuman adjacent powers courtesy of her very own totem), gender issues (so much mansplaining and attempts at manfixing). I love the way that they keep things fresh, honest and relatable enough that the diversity calls for the viewer to question their own issues with “the other.” The stunningly diverse cast stays refreshing and openly allows for chances to view the world through people outside the norm/default (cis white/male) views. There’s something hella awesome about a show that manages to inject some social theory into an action packed, camptastic series but, the writers manage to do it and I’m all the way here for it,

Overall: 8.9