As is Nate’s character. He’s effectively Gideon for now, as the real Gideon is a half-naked human being in Odessa as Nate heads for New York. He’s the one who feels a responsibility to protect the timeline because he’s the one who knows the most, and as the person inhabiting Hoover’s persona, he finds himself put into positions he doesn’t want to be in to try and protect the real Hoover’s reputation – like being an inveterate racist, or torturing a suspect. He makes the right choice on both, but you see the struggle, and it feels earned.
The other two stories this week follow Astra, Spooner, and Gideon as they try and make sense of Gideon’s new fleshy appearance; and Zari, Ava and Sara spending time in the mansion – Zari because she’s baked as she tries to process Constantine’s departure, and Ava and Sara because they’re getting their backs banged out for their honeymoon.
Zari’s story is a little more important to the outcome of the episode – her high brings clarity, as she uses the neverending supply of whisky bottles in the fridge to start trying to figure out who their primary foes are on the other Waverider, and then they use some of those free refills to try and buy off Capone’s men before they kill Nate. It’s also pretty funny: she gets jokes in about Ava and Sara being “loud,” and a crack in at Crisis on Infinite Earths (“What even is a paragon, anyway?” amazing stuff).
Gideon is unable to communicate, and Astra resents her because of the weakness she feels it shows in her magic. I’m willing to bet this understanding gets reversed by the end of the season – Astra brought life into a machine where none was previously. That feels like a big deal. That said, she feels needlessly mean here, especially as Gideon reads as disabled through much of the episode before she regains the ability to talk with Spooner and Astra as a person.
