Skip to main content

dc - In Legends Of Tomorrow, are changes not yet done to the past already in the current timeline's past or not?


Of course we have not to think to much about most time travel stories, otherwise we will find inconsistencies and logical breaches all over the place. But what beside other things comes to my mind when watching legend of tomorrow is the following:


Rip Hunter takes the main characters out of their timeline in 2016. In the future they meet friends (like Arrow) but they never meet themselve. In the future it seems that they disappear in 2016. But they seem not to be concerned about that could mean they never made it back to 2016. So if they succeed in their mission and return safely to 2016, this would change the futures they visited, because now they didn't disappear in 2016 and never came back. This kind of logic seems to imply, that things you do later that change the past (like returning to 2016) have not happened yet and the timeline does not respect it. Therefore the future where they met Arrow and where they all have disappeared in 2016. But if we look now at the case of Chronos, this logic does not hold true. Chronos pursuits them from the beginning, in spite of being "created" by them much later. So in this case, some change of the timeline they will do later, already has happened and affects them.


So how exactly do changes of the timeline work in the show?



Answer



As Rip himself later says about changing the timeline:




It takes time for the timeline to set



I may be paraphrasing slightly, but you get the idea. When the heroes left 2016, after a while that timeline settled and the future became one in which they had left in 2016. If and when any of them return, the timeline will shift again and eventually settle into a new timeline in which they have returned.


The first timeline, the one in which they left, is the same timeline in which Chronos was created. This meant he was able to travel back in time to come after Rip and the others once that timeline had become set.


It's also worth noting that Chronos had help from the Time Masters and as such has the normal rules of time bent slightly for him for the purposes of capturing / killing Rip.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...