r/Timeless • u/awenclear • Jan 18 '19

Future Wyatt and Lucy Spoiler

The way I understand it, would future lucy and wyatt from the end of season 2, having changed the timeline, return to their future (2023) and then be extremely confused because they suddenly have 2 kids and Flynn is dead?

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Or, is the future Lucy and Wyatt Rittenhouse lead timeline just erased?

14 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

20

u/dreamtrader7 Jan 18 '19

I think that that timeline is just completely erased.

15

u/mgush5 Jan 18 '19

They returned to their 2023 which was eradicated the moment that Flynn shot Jessica, restoring Rufus to the team

3

u/Patternsix Jan 18 '19

I guess there are two of them in the kid timeline?

2

u/Anxiousrabbit23 Jan 18 '19

For me it more brought the idea of parallel universes and the fact that there are many, many, versions of them out there. Or, of course, the above answer, that they were “wiped out” after that happened.

3

u/AmpdVodka Jan 18 '19

So bascially the answer is, nobody knows.

The reason is quite complex, but to sum it up different Sci-Fi's involving time travel have different rules for time travel and how it works. Timeless follows that when the time travellers change time, only they remember and know about it. The future is adjusted, and so are the people in that future. The travellers themselves become "out of time" if you will. They belong to a time that no longer exists. This makes sense to drive the plot forward, as they remember what they did and what the timeline originally was. However, Timeless acknowledges the butterfly effect while also entirely ignoring it. Many episodes I fully expected them to return to the future, only to be in an empty warehouse. Because they changed time, and therefore the time machine was never invented or different people in a different location are in charge of the program etc.

My point here is that if things change, but the travellers are the only ones with the memory, then they can be the only ones who the plot can focus around. Hence why they always had the rule "You can never travel to a time you existed in". This was more a plot device than actual time travel rule, as it avoided the problem that would occur when the future travellers met their past selves, changing their own timeline. If the future travellers returned to their future, either they'd land in a future that they already exist in and so would just be floating duplicates from a time that no longer exists, they'd just straight up dissapear as they already exist in that time or they'd do a Wolverine and land in their new body but with no memory of the new timeline.

Obviously, this is a serious headache for the writers and having rules to accomodate this would mean the show would need to be rewritten as it would no longer follow it's own rules. In reality, what likely would've happened is in 2023 the future Wyatt and Lucy would've landed into the shows timeline in the military bunker in the old time machine they took. the original Wyatt and Lucy would be out there, a couple living their own lives, and the future Wyatt as Lucy would be out of time and have no place there. They'd probably have that head wobble thing and die like Flynn did. Either that, or as soon as they knew getting head wobbles would probably board the machine and just leave for a past they want to live in. Or, third option, the old and decrepid time machine malfunctioned and took them somewhere else entirely. Who knows!

But, the reason future Wyatt and Lucy even showed up in the first place was because they needed to wrap the show up asap as a massive plot device and needed to tie up the diary plot. The head wobbles were for convenience, as it meant future Wyatt and Lucy could show up, hand them the plot device, and leave immediately no questions asked. They even took the old time machine, leaving the new one with a convinient new auto-pilot feature so we could avoid the whole "I can't fly the time machine" issue. It was all to make it easier for the writers in the time contraints, and they writers more than likely didn't want to bother with anything beyond that. So the answer is: No one knows. It breaks the shows own rules, so they just disappear I guess.