TV Does Groundhog Day: 25 Shows That Got Thrown For A (Time) Loop

Does Groundhog Day, aka February 2, remind you of a certain Harold Ramis film starring a particularly beloved Ghostbuster? Same. But rewinds and replays happen all the time on the small screen as well, plopping favorite characters in perilous time loops that send them on missions to save family members, save themselves, avert tragedies and... defeat a monkey paw? Yes, that too.

From Mulder and Scully's booming bank bomb and the Green Arrow's pre-Crisis test, to The Mindy Project's never-ending ride on the Hot Mess Express, time loops have become one of TV's tried-and-true methods of storytelling.

We here at TVLine have picked 25 of the most memorable and twisted time loops that TV has thrown at us over the years. While some may have been comedic crests in a sea of larger storylines, others ended with devastating (read: fatal) consequences once the clock stopped rewinding. In a couple of cases (lookin' at you, Russian Doll!), mind-bending loops comprise entire premises.

The following list has it all, from witches (Charmed) and superheroes (Cloak & Dagger) to vampires (Angel) and not one but multiple Star Treks. Review our favorite time loop episodes in the list below, then tell us about the ones you remember best in the comments! 

To prevent the invention of time travel, Jones sent Cassie back in time to 2020 to kill... Jones. But when Cassie did the deed, the day was reset, with Cole joining her for the never-ending loop. As it turned out, time didn't want the pair to stop time travel. So to exit the loop and make sure that Jones' history wasn't changed, the travelers saved her sick daughter Hannah, while letting young Jones believe that the little girl died. Back in the future, Cassie and Cole reunited a stunned Jones with her now adult daughter in a twist that had major ramifications for the show's mythology: Hannah was later revealed to be — old spoiler alert! — Cole's mother! (No one said this series was simple!)

After the time-traveling Zephyr "jumped" into the eye of a time storm, Daisy repeatedly emerged from her protective healing chamber to experience the same time-sensitive, life-or-death crisis again and again. Throw in a murder mystery, a bit of new romance, a heartbreaking sacrifice and the hint of the team's time coming to an end, and you have one of the best episodes of the ABC series' strong farewell run — directed, it must be noted, by cast member Elizabeth Henstridge. 

Due to her excessive mystical energy, Illyria (aka, the demon that took over Fred Burkle's body) grew increasingly disoriented and was thrust uncontrollably back and forth across time. After traveling to the future and learning that the newly appointed Wolfram & Hart crew intended to kill her, she returned to the present day and whacked them first. When Illyria attempted to destroy the entire west coast, an explosion blasted Angel back in time to where he was able to disrupt Illyria's attack and prevent the murders. Wesley shot her with a massive ray gun to disarm her time-bending powers, and the demon was left devastated.

In one of the farewell season's final episodes, Oliver woke up in a reality where he needed to thwart a hostage situation at the SCPD and keep a bomb from going off, all while dealing with a resurrected Quentin, a seemingly duplicitous Lyla, an oaf telling bad party jokes and a similarly time-looping Laurel. In this test by the Monitor, Laurel got to say a much-needed goodbye to her "dad," while it was Oliver's lot to realize that he can't always win — since in the Crisis, he won't.

When Kai arrived on Erica's doorstep from the future and told her he can't find her in his time and that something awful happens in the city in nine years, it sent her reeling. Erica couldn't stop wondering if her life was cut short, so to teach her a lesson, Dr. Tom sent her back in time to relive the current day over and over and over. With each trip, Erica desperately tried to get answers out of Kai, but the day just kept rebooting — until Erica accepted that she must live in the present moment.

When Jonathan, Andrew and Warren set out to mess with Buffy, one of their trials involved having her repeat her first day as a Magic Box sales clerk ad nauseam. Cue Buffy having various run-ins with an incredibly unhelpful (but very animated) mummy hand before she finally circumvented the whole ordeal, and satisfied the customer, by ordering the mystical item online. 

The Charmed Ones fought their way out of several supernatural time loops during the WB drama's eight-season run, but none compared to their first, in which a demon named Tempus forced the sisters to relive their own deaths on repeat. Worst of all, the Halliwells' victory came at a devastating cost — the death of Prue's childhood sweetheart, Detective Andy Trudeau.

Freeform's short-lived Marvel series threw a number of high-concept episodes at us, but this Season 1 mind-blower — in which Tandy and Tyrone continuously relived the minutes before a devastating explosion — was an experience like no other. (The cast even admitted how "tedious" the filming process was during our interview at San Diego Comic-Con. Click here to watch.)

In this short-lived, ahead-of-its-time-loop ABC series, Taye Diggs played Brett Hopper ("hopper," get it?), an LAPD detective who repeats over and over the same day, in which he wakes at 6:18 am and quickly realizes he has been framed for the murder of an ADA — and that his loved ones, GF Moon Bloodgood included, are in danger. Hopper retained memories (and any injuries) from each trip through the time loop, and was able to affect some change, in aggregated (but reversible!) amounts.

This seminal episode of the Fox sci-fi drama followed a scientist (guest star Peter Weller) who, in a quest to travel back in time to save his fiancée from a fatal car cash, instead repeatedly landed aboard a commuter train, where his tech's energy demand drained the life out of those around him. As a result, we saw Olivia & Co. investigate the strange event and catch the scientist, multiple times, always leading to a "reset." Eventually, Weller's character completed his trip, but not before putting in the mail a sketch of a white tulip that will one day give Peter-stealing Walter the forgiveness he seeks.

It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when Zari didn't feel like part of the Waverider team. In fact, it took Gideon transporting the hacktivist's mind into a time loop that ended with the timeship repeatedly exploding for the newcomer to truly become a Legend. Over the course of the simulation, Zari found friendship in Nate's unquestioning belief that she's living out Groundhog Day — he even suggested a movie-like "fun montage" — and came to better understand Waverider captain Sara. Plus, the loop revealed that Mick was secretly writing a smutty sci-fi romance novel!

This one pulled double duty as both a time loop episode and a Christmas episode, as the mischievous Mr. Mxyzptlk (played by guest star Howie Mandel!) trapped the entire city of Metropolis in a time loop on Christmas Eve, their hope dwindling further with each loop. Only Clark was immune, and he managed to generate enough Christmas cheer to defeat the villain, with Lois tricking Mxyzptlk into returning to his home dimension. Plus, the whole ordeal even helped show a cynical Lois the magic of Christmas. Happy holidays, everyone!

The world came to an end... again... and again... and again, as Eliot and Margo found themselves repeatedly failing to save the planet from a lunar apocalypse. Eventually, Eliot was left on his own and discovered that the time loop was created by... whale magic. (Just go with it.) See, it had been keeping the Kraken at bay, but when the moon hit the Earth, the magical sigils were displaced, allowing the Kraken to break free. But there was a fail-safe, because those whales are crafty! When the Kraken was released, time rewinded 12 hours to stop a potential catastrophe. It's wacky, it's creative, it's The Magicians.  

It took umpteen playings of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," a $1 million bid for lunch with Oscar Isaac and a trip to (gasp!) Brooklyn, but Mindy eventually was able to break out of the Groundhog Day-esque loop she's stumbled into. The 24-hour cycle was repeated so often, even Morgan caught on — and ultimately helped Dr. Lahiri realize that she had to be less self-centered if she wanted a relationship with Ben to work. Real talk, though? We probably would've gotten more entertainment out of Mindy's never-ending repeats than we ever did outta that bland hook-up.

With only the salvation of the global economy at stake (!), Root, Finch, Reese and Fusco broached the basement of the Stock Exchange to deploy a device that could override Samaritan. But in doing so, they had to elude a small army of Martine's men. As the Machine calculated hundreds of thousands of attack options, we saw a few play out as simulations, yet each was distinctly (read: fatally) flawed. Finally, the Machine seemed to beat the 2.07% survival rate odds, but only because Shaw arrived on the scene to plant a kiss on Root before engaging in a sacrificial bit of derring-do.

Netflix's zany dramedy series follows Nadia, a software engineer who in Season 1 repeatedly died and relived the same night of her 36th birthday party. As the evening continually reset, she made different choices, diving deep into her past to try and figure out what the cock-a-roach was going on. Eventually she found Alan, a man who was suffering the same time-loopy fate that she was. By Season 1's end, Nadia and Alan wound up on different timelines with the past versions of each other. She managed to break the loop for Season 2 — but then found herself traveling back in time and inhabiting her mother Nora's body every time she stepped on the subway. What a concept!

It took them more than three decades, but The Simpsons finally put their spin on time loops in the 2020 edition of their annual Halloween anthology, with Lisa stuck celebrating her 9th birthday over and over again and finding that Nelson was trapped in the same loop with her. It was an especially meta take on time loops, with references to Russian Doll, Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow — not to mention Comic Book Guy rolling his eyes at what a lazy trope it is. In the end, Lisa learned to appreciate growing older, and as for Nelson, "as usual, I've learned nothing!"

A geomagnetic disturbance on a strange planet, coupled with Stargate activity and an Ancient altar, found Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c repeating the same 10 hours over and over, while their colleagues at Stargate Command remained oblivious. To solve their way out of the loop, O'Neill and Teal'c committed months to learning an alien language — but also kept themselves entertained with activities such as golf, bicycling, pottery-making and, for O'Neill, stealing a kiss from Major Carter!

The Discovery crew was just trying to cut loose and have a few drinks at a party when that trickster Harry Mudd (played by Rainn Wilson) trapped them in a temporal loop, using a time crystal to learn more about the ship each time so he could sell the Discovery and its spore drive technology to the Klingons for a tidy sum. Burnham and her pals eventually caught on, though, and Mudd was doomed to a fate worse than death: a forced reconciliation with his insufferable wife Stella.

Members of the Enterprise's crew played poker, encountered a space anomaly and died in spectacular fashion 17 times before they realized that the voices Beverly was hearing before bed were their own screams from the previous time around. Eventually, Data transmitted a cryptic-but-solvable message to his future self that allowed Picard & Co. to avoid disaster and free a ship that had been stuck in the time warp — we're sorry, "temporal causality loop" — for nearly a century.

In one of the show's most tragicomic episodes, the Trickster killed Dean again and again and again, in ways both horrifying (shot by a mugger) and ridiculous (food poisoning from a taco), to prove to Sam that he couldn't save his brother from his fate. The younger Winchester helplessly watched Dean die over and over until the Trickster finally broke the Tuesday loop, but Wednesday still concluded with the hunter's demise. After Sam tearfully begged the Trickster to bring back his brother, Dean woke up with little memory of what really happened. We, however, will never forget his many, many deaths in what is still one of the long-running drama's most memorable hours.

For Tru Davies, every day was Groundhog Day! When the 22-year-old medical student took a job at the city morgue, corpses awakened and asked for her help. Armed with information from the day before, her days rapidly rewound as she took on the trying task of preventing that person's death. A Season 2 twist added Jack Harper (Jason Priestley), a man who somehow knew about her special abilities and actively worked against her to ensure that fate played out the way it was supposed to. While juggling her big secret and racing against time, Tru learned that life and death are waaay more complicated than she thought. 

As far as inescapable time loops go, we can think of worse scenarios than having to relive the same grunge-themed '90s afternoon alongside Ian Somerhalder and Kat Graham. And, to be fair, their characters didn't hate every second of their time spent in their supernatural prison world. But once a murderous psychopath was added into the mix — even a witty, handsome one like Chris Wood's Kai Parker — the overall quality of the experience nosedived pretty quickly.

This fan-favorite episode found the Warrior Princess trapped in a mysterious time loop, one she eventually escaped by successfully uniting a pair of star-crossed lovers and bringing peace to a feuding town. Speaking of star-crossed lovers, this especially lighthearted hour was a true showcase episode for Xena and Gabrielle's, uh, comedic chemistry.

Who knew a leaky waterbed could cause such chaos? When Mulder needed to pay his landlord for a little water damage, he and Scully swung by the bank... and stumbled into a time loop that always ended with the detonation of a bomb and both of their deaths. Only the bomber's girlfriend realized what was happening, and she eventually got Mulder to remember that her boyfriend was going to blow the place to smithereens. Then she leapt in front of a bullet that in every other iteration lodged itself in the G-man's chest, literally taking one for the team as she died, breaking the loop.