TGM

I have no clue what's going on anymore.

Nth Power

I don't either. I gave up on trying to keep track of what's going on in what timeline.

Did they explain what happened with Ramse's hand?

TerryW

Ramse got blood on his hands during the fight with Cole but it was Cole's blood.

When he got beat up in prison his hand was injured and he was spitting up blood in the sink.

PhantomStranger

That was one amazing hour of television, riveting stuff. Ramse doesn't know that Cole was bumped forward in time before getting executed in 1987.

I think we are heading to the point where we discover the time traveling was the initial cause of the virus.

Eric F

Wow, this episode was so good it made my head hurt. Paradox within paradox within paradox. How could Cole exist in 1987 when he was splintered to 2015? None of this makes much sense but it's still great.

As far as Ramse not aging, he does have the nanobots in his blood required to time travel.

I speculate that the corpse is either Ramse or Cole.

Thrush

This episode was excellent. I like how theyre not spoon feeding the audience every plot point and detail. You have to pay attention when watching this.

Ahh that makes sense. The part of his skin with Cole's blood on it got splintered when Cole Splintered. I was confused by that also.


I'm glad there was a payoff to the Ramse and Cole storyline, because while watching it I thought it was just a waste of time.

Jay G.

Cole was splintered from 2043 to 1987, to follow Ramse. After Cole was stabbed, the scientists splinted him from 1987 directly to 2015. He jumped from one time to the other, he never existed in both at the same time.

This was the first time we saw them deliberately splinter Cole between two past times without first bringing him to the "present" in 2043, although a few episodes back Cole was splintered from 2015 to 2017 accidentally when the Core failed while trying to bring him back to 2043.

Strafe

Agreed, this ep was fantastic but it feels like what led to it, and the episode itself should have been stretched out into an entire season, but would the viewers have hung around that long? I feel like Ramse's motivation, while plausible, happened way too fast. This episode was so good because we got a seasons worth of development in one episode. It reminds me of the final episode of Caprica, where they basically sped through what they had intended the series to be.

slop101

I'm not buying Ramse's motivation to do all of this.

Eric F

Time is relative. You can exist in two different times simultaneously, but not being the same age. Cole shouldn't technically exist in any time before he was born.

I suppose I can overlook this by some explanation like the nanobots in his blood, but the paradoxes make no sense.

PhantomStranger

I agree it's a little thin and flimsy, but I think Ramse is fairly typical of most people. Most time travel stories have the traveler weigh the needs of millions of complete strangers over their own personal lives. Ramse is a guy doing it for the one relationship left in his own timeline, his son. I could see many people choosing their own relatives over the rest of the world. Who is to say which is the correct timeline? Maybe these time travelers stop the virus, only for the world to end in nuclear holocaust a few years later.

Jay G.

The latest webisode for the series strongly hints that the Army of the 12 Monkeys are doing what they do to preserve this timeline for some reason. The last episode strongly indicated that Olivia's father may be a time traveler of some type.

TerryW

Everything we're seeing occur in the past already happened and actually caused the plague. There's nothing they can do to stop it. It's inevitable. It's fate.

Cole was 'chosen' to go back and stop the plague but if he ever actually succeeded that would create a paradox because then he wouldn't be there to go back.

Even when Cole thinks he's changed something like the death of Ramse he was always there. The shots he heard were his own saving Ramse from his Atari.

They actually stopped the plague in Chechnya but in the storage container Cassie couldn't pull the trigger on the scientist and actually gave him motivation to create the virus again by letting him know his partner was dead.

Cole was always meant to go back to 1987 as Goines said he already met him then. Rames was also meant to go back and go through his painful process.

Jay G.

Yes and no. The show has already changed history once, with Cassie dying and Cole going back to stop it. So changing the future is possible.

Also, the scientists are aware of the paradox, and in fact have been counting on it, since they expect to no longer exist. Again, a paradox has already been created since Cole went back to save Cassie after learning of her death in the alternate future.

Now, it may be true that nothing Cole did before traveling to 1987 changed anything, since his first encounter with Goines in 2015 referenced the 1987 encounter. So aside from Cassie's death, everything so far has been a "closed loop," so to speak. Now that Cole's in 2015 again though, it may be possible for him to change the future.

TerryW

Cole came back to an alternate future where they assumed Cassie had died. He went back and had Cassie's friend shoot to try and save her but ended up shooting Cole instead. Which, of course, already previously happened. They never knew for sure what happened to cause the change because Cole splintered out of there.

In any case, the plague still happened because Cole was there and a version of the future was too.

Thrush

I have less of an issue with Ramse's motivation than the people who are helping him. They are actively trying to end the world for some unknown reason.

Also how did they even know about Ramse before he got to 1987? They knew where he would be, who he was and how he got there. The only thing that makes sense is there was another time traveler. Maybe this current Ramse will sometime in the future travel back to set everything up.

Now that I think about it Cole's blood on the floor of the dance club didn't splinter with him. So Ramse's injuries to his hands still doesnt make sense.

Eric F

Hah! This show is a lot of fun trying to figure out the timelines. It reminds me of Primer but much more fun.

Kdogg

The scientist had already recreated the virus by the time Cassie found him. It was too late. That's why she spared him and told him to go underground.

It looks like there is a third traveler from the future beside Cole and Rames. Maybe the female cult leader's father? The cult has information about the future even before bringing in Rames. It seems their information stops with this episode though because they don't know Cole is still alive (or do they and don't tell Rames?).

Jay G.

I'm pretty sure they specifically said in the alternate future that, based on their records, Cassie had died in 2015. Thus, Cassie hadn't made the recording that Jones and the Splinter group found in the original timeline, and thus Jones didn't save Cole when he and Ramse were captured by the Splinter guards. Once Cole rescued Cassie in 2015, the next time he splintered back to the future, it was the original timeline again.

Whatever the cause though, we know that the future was changed, because Cole splintered to it. So changing the future is possible, paradoxes be damned.

Jay G.

Not "end the world," but preserve the timeline. The virus is horrible and wipes out most of humanity, and it looks bleak in 2043, but what's to say that the future doesn't get better?

Think about it this way: WWII and the Holocaust were horrible events that cost millions of lives. If someone in, say 1950's East Germany discovered time travel, they'd be tempted to go back in time and stop it from ever happening. But in our time, 2015, we've progressed past it, and Germany is now a prosperous, democratic nation. Wiping out our present doesn't seem necessary, or advisable, and if someone traveled back in time to change it, we might send someone else back to stop them and try and preserve our present.

This is potentially what the Army of the 12 Monkeys is about: they're looking at the long game.

Baron Of Hell

Maybe events need to play out exactly the same. If so she has to give out the same info as before even knowing it isn't correct. The same logic has been used multiple times on the show.

PhantomStranger

It's possible the Army of the 12 Monkeys (there has to be a better acronym or something to call them) were the original time travelers tampering with the timeline and created an alternate timeline, which ended up being what we think of as the "real" timeline with Cole and Cassie. The scientists in 2043 may not be aware they are already in an alternate timeline, leading to the time-jumping conflict between the Army of the 12 Monkeys and Cole's side.

phantom_azazel

just going by whats said on the show, but that the virus will keep mutating and killing people

Baron Of Hell

According to the lady that believed in time travel. The other guy believed he could make a cure and considering the lady burned his research he might have been right.

randian

I think he did have a cure, her complaint was that it didn't work on the current version of the virus.