After defeating an alien invasion in season 6, the latest season of “Legends of Tomorrow” finds the Legends stranded in 1925 with a destroyed ship and no means to return home. For the first half of the season, the show took a more serialized approach than ever, with each episode focused on the team finding a way back home without causing irreparable damage to the timeline.

The lack of a time-travel adventure of the week allowed the writers to tighten the script this season and focus on the Legends themselves. Character work has always been the secret weapon of “Legends of Tomorrow,” and by only focusing on a single time period, the characters have more time to react and grow without having to worry about introducing and working with a new time period every week. That they also are devoid of any future technology helps, as they have to rely on their wits to survive, leading to hilarious scenarios like the Legends forming a circus, or Sara (Caity Lotz) and Ava (Jes Macallan) forming their own bank-robbing duo, The Bullet Blondes. Likewise, the team splits up for the first few episodes, which made it easier to focus on building specific relationships — like the most recent additions to the team, Spooner (Lisseth Chavez) and Astra (Olivia Swann), finding they have a lot in common and becoming friends.

Because of the tighter narrative that was largely free of a main villain, and a goal that was more personal than ever, “Legends of Tomorrow” allowed its characters to grow like they never had before. By the end of the season, you actually feel like the characters have been through a lot, changed, and are ready for new things. Bojack Horseman once said that characters in a sitcom can never change or improve, because if they do, there is no more show. We still don’t know if the Legends will return for another season, but there is no doubt that these characters have actually achieved something.

The “Legends of Tomorrow” cast has always been a bit of a revolving door, with characters coming and going each season. This has a lot of benefits, like allowing characters to actually grow and leave, and giving the show the ability to introduce new and fun characters. But it is also heartbreaking to see characters you’ve watched for years depart the show. Indeed, by the end of season 7, only one character from before season 3 remains. But it works. The ever-changing cast keeps things fresh and exciting in the show, and it makes it feel more like a superhero team-up comic book, with an ever-changing roster and characters that leave for a while to have their own adventures elsewhere.