Legends of Tomorrow star unpacks Charlie's fatal family reunion, Sara's new power
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Tuesday's episode of Legends of Tomorrow, "Zari, Not Zari."
The titular heroes of DC's Legends of Tomorrow can't seem to catch a break. After saying goodbye to sweet Ray Palmer, who left the Waverider with wife Nora Darhk in last week's episode, the team lost another member Tuesday night.
In the superhero drama's latest episode, Sara (Caity Lotz), Charlie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers), and Constantine (Matt Ryan) traveled to Vancouver to recover a piece of the Loom of Fate hidden there. There they crossed paths with Charlie's murderous sister, Atropos (Joanna Vanderham), who stole the piece from them and then boarded the Waverider to take the ring they recovered from Shakespeare. Behrad (Shayan Sobhian) tried to defend the ring and his sister, Zari (Tala Ashe), but Atropos killed him by unraveling his fate.
Behrad's death will obviously have a huge impact on Zari, but it also affects Charlie because, as we learned in "Mortal Khanbat," the two had a thing, and now she feels guilt over his death.
"For her, she’s not only lost her best friend, but it’s slightly at her own hand, and I think that really drives home the gravitas of what is happening and the sense of guilt," Richardson-Sellers tells EW. "She feels like she’s the one who brought all of this trouble to the Legends. She’s the reason why her sister is running after them. She’s the reason all of these casualties are happening at her hand. She has to make that decision: Does she let herself be succumbed by this guilt and decide, ‘I’m actually not good enough in myself, anyway and I should join my sisters,’ or can I be strong enough to just let go of this and fight and make sure those deaths didn’t happen in vain?"
The actress adds that she and Sobhian came up with a backstory for Charlie and Behrad's friendship that went beyond what played out on screen. "What we talked about among ourselves is that Charlie and Behrad literally became best friends," she says. "Just as Charlie and Zari were very close last year by the end, Behrad sort of stepped into that place in this new reality, and they would hang out all the time. They would just kind bro-out together."
"Zari, Not Zari" also featured a major new development for Sara. Last summer, EW broke the news that Sara would get a superpower this season, and her ability finally manifested itself in Tuesday's episode. Somehow Sara survived seeing Atropos' true form, which should've killed her (to be fair, Sara has a tendency to avoid death). Though Sara doesn't think it's a big deal, Charlie does and will try to help with it in the coming episodes.
"[Charlie] really tries to get Sara to confront this new reality of what might be happening to her, but Sara is determined that she’s fine and everything will go on as normal and she will still lead the team, and that we can just carry on as we were," Richardson Sellers says. "Whereas Charlie is very much aware that even though she’s never seen this happen before — she’s never seen someone survive her sister’s powers — she knows that this is gonna have big consequences and she’s also very aware that she doesn’t know how this is going to manifest So she’s the one that’s very wary of the situation and trying to monitor it, but Sara has no interest in that, so that also creates a little bit of an interesting dynamic between them as we go forward."
DC's Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on the CW.
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