Breakfast with Girls

It depends on their timeline interpretation. You have a few possibilities:

• There is originally only one timeline, but going back in time creates a new, duplicate timeline that forks from the point of arrival. Any changes you make are reflected in the new timeline but not the original one.
  
• There is only one timeline, and you can travel back in time within it, but you can't change anything no matter how hard you try. Fitz evidently believes this one is the case.
  
• There are infinite parallel worlds, and going back in time is really finding and traveling to one of the infinite virtually-identical worlds that is simply time-shifted by that amount.

It's easy enough to explain with the second interpretation (although that won't happen, since it means they can't stop the destruction of the planet) or the third (since all travelers are from parallel worlds and your doppelgänger can jump into your reality). But since the show seems to going with the first, I'll give it a shot:

Timeline 1: The team goes to the diner, finishes their meal and leaves. Sometime later, Daisy is involved (though does not necessarily cause) with an incident that destroys the planet. The Kree invade, convert the Lighthouse into a space station, the Shield team dies, humanity is enslaved. Observing this, Enoch travels back in time, creating Timeline 2. Humans aboard the Lighthouse continue being subjugated by Kasius.

Timeline 2: The team goes to the diner and Enoch abducts them. An incident not involving Daisy occurs that destroys the planet. They travel to the future, where Daisy isn't known as the Destroyer of Worlds. Seeing the enslavement of humanity, they manage to go back in time to try to stop the destruction of the planet, creating Timeline 3. Kasius probably finishes the job of exterminating the remaining humans on the Lighthouse, and the only ones remaining survive below the planet's surface.

Timeline 3..N-1: The team goes back to the diner and Enoch abducts them. Sometime later, the team arrives from Timeline 2 and Daisy is involved (though does not necessarily cause) with an incident that destroys the planet. All that other stuff happens just like Timeline 2. We've only seen this timeline.

Timeline N: Presumably they figure out a way to create a timeline where the planet doesn't get destroyed.

In other words, there will be some external source of the disturbances not caused by Daisy.

SteelWill

Thus far has all been the same timeline. It has to be or Fitz couldn't have taken the long way. This episode's "flashbacks" were things that the team experiences after they get back. They were always getting back. And they were always abducted. It's a loop. Fitz even says flat out they are trapped in a loop in one of the flashbacks.

rw2516

It's mentioned in the show that they had to be taken at the diner because it was the only known time they were all at the exact same place.

hdnmickey

I know. Didn't post that given that should have been one of things everybody can agree on. The point was how that appears to have caused more confusion than usual for a time travel story line. Like I posted before, hopefully they will fill in more gaps during future episodes so everybody can be on the same page.

rw2516

The "flashbacks", which are Robin's memories, can't be after they get back. Fitz is trying to figure out to make a time machine. He's frustrated because he can't figure it out. He says that it's a waste of time because time travel is impossible. He wouldn't be doing and saying these things if he'd already time traveled after examining a time machine that works in the future.

gmanca

The only sensible answer is they messed up their own story!

If Fitz never takes “the long way” but instead traveled by other means or if they never showed the “last known footage” of Daisy before the incident, it wouldn’t be more difficult to understand than two timelines. One timeline where they all stayed together and another where they separated.

It’s the whole destroyer of worlds thing that is the real issue. The show is trying to connect to the Avengers movie coming out but due to the separation of the studios, it’s not coming together well. So if Thanos destroys the world, there is no way he wouldn’t be blamed over some shield/inhuman. Survivors would be talking about the purple man who was the destroyer of worlds.

SteelWill

Fitz says changing the future is impossible, not time travel. The whole point in Voss trying, and failing, to kill Daisy in the future was to break the loop and keep her from going back and having those events play out.

Refreshesher course in spacetime:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOb1...=youtu.be&t=65

rw2516

That clip is not from the last episode. In the last episode he says time travel is impossible. Because he's never witnessed it yet.
In these flashbacks the earth is still destroyed. So, after they return to 2018 the earth still gets destroyed anyway?

Breakfast with Girls

Fitz, prompted by Enoch's abduction of Shield, goes forward in every timeline from Timeline 2 onward where that event occurs. When the timeline splits, it creates a new timeline, but in both he is suspended in cryogenic sleep until he awakens in the future. There's no contradiction.

SteelWill

Yes, that's what has happened in this one single timeline we've been in so far. Fitz flipped out in the flashback this last episode because, as was established in the episode that clip was from, he thinks there's no changing it.

LOL, someone made a chart:

gmanca

He’s not suspended in the original timeline. He should not have awoken in a version of the future where the future survivors thought Daisy broke the Earth

Breakfast with Girls

Right, he's not suspended in the original timeline (Timeline 1)—his suspension is a direct result of Enoch traveling back in time and creating Timeline 2. He's suspended and wakes up in the future in every timeline after the original timeline.

In Timeline 1, no one time travels, no one goes into cryogenic sleep. The planet is destroyed, and Daisy is presumably known as the destroyer of worlds. It's only in Timeline 2, the timeline created by Enoch traveling back in time the first time, that Daisy couldn't have been involved in the incident, because he abducts her and skips that part of the timeline. In that timeline, she simply wasn't ever present during that time. When Shield travels back the first time, it creates Timeline 3, where Daisy is present to be the destroyer of worlds.

On screen, we're only seeing Timeline 3+, but we've been following the characters before they travel back in time to create yet another new timeline. They're just now starting to suspect that they're in a temporal loop.

Again, this is only if they're using this model of time travel. It's a pretty common model in fiction, but it's not the only one.

karoomba

Does anyone know what episode/season was Robin originally featured in? Daisy mentioned something about knowing her father and promising to protect her but failing, etc.

SteelWill

Season 3 Episode 15 Spacetime