S04.E04: Zero Hour

[greenbean]

Kiera and Brad's trust reaches a breaking point; Carlos and Kellog come to their own realizations; Alec has a strange encounter.

 

[tessaray]

A very strange encounter.  Not sure how I feel about that whole thing.  Or the reveal of Jason's mother.  

 

This episode feels like we just crossed a line.  Like when you have to move and there are all those boxes neatly packed and stacked - then you get to the point where the movers are coming and you start throwing stuff in boxes like crazy, because you have about 2 hours before they get there and you aren't done yet. 

[greenbean]

Alec and Jason awkwardly saying goodbye, had me cracking up.

 

 

Not sure how I feel about that whole thing.  Or the reveal of Jason's mother.  

 

I wasn't too fond of this either. Maybe it now means Alec is on a different path, but it seemed too revealing.

 

We discovered quite a bit this episode. I think future Kellog could be coming back in time for the transplant. I'm going to predict that he kills current Kellog, or he goes forward in time with Kira and meets old Alec. Thus undoing something.

[wanderingstar]

I was completely riveted during this episode - particularly during the Young Alec/Old Alec scene. 

 

I also found all of the stuff around Brad/Keira/Carlos and their various trust issues very compelling. 

 

Kellogg was Kellogg - loathsome and completely absorbing (after this show ends, I'm going to need more Stephen Lobo in my life. Someone, please get him on a show where he can wear the hell out of tailored suits from now until forever. Pleaseandthankyou)

 

So, the Time Marines building a portal to bring folks from 2039 to 2015 was unexpected. It never occurred to me that they'd want to come to our time to escape the awfulness of theirs. And it's a two-way street. Interesting.

 

Have I mentioned how much I am going to miss this show? 

Edited October 3, 2015 by Gillian Rosh

[Bort]

Kiera sure does jump to the worst possible conclusions, though. It's not just an invading army that might need blood and medical supplies. Will it occur to her that refugees might need these things?

[shapeshifter]

I adore Ian Tracey (Jason) whenever he's on my screen, so I really ate up all the Jason-Alec scenes in this episode.

Like when you have to move and there are all those boxes neatly packed and stacked - then you get to the point where the movers are coming and you start throwing stuff in boxes like crazy, because you have about 2 hours before they get there and you aren't done yet.

*shudder* Too familiar of an experience, but, yeah. And it seems like they couldn't decide what the destination of the moving van was going to be, so they went back to the original plan/plot (Kira getting "home" to the future and her family), but after all this time and all these episodes, it doesn't seem like a believable resolution.

[ketose]

When your series plan of 9 seasons gets cut to 7 episodes, there's going to be some clutter. I actually have some trust that there will be a good enough resolution. They've kept me guessing enough that I don't know what the "right" outcome would be. Given the choice, however, I would take Kiera's 2077 over Brad's 2039.

 

From what Chen said (which requires a grain of salt) Alec invents time travel on his own. That makes no damn sense at all since he's the son of a Freelancer. And the Traveller seems to be some kind of cyborg with a bunch of 25th century superpowers.

 

I'd definitely like to know what Simon Barry was going to do if Continuum had an unlimited series run.

[greenbean]

Kellogg was Kellogg - loathsome and completely absorbing (after this show ends, I'm going to need more Stephen Lobo in my life. Someone, please get him on a show where he can where the hell out of tailored suits from now until forever. Pleaseandthankyou)

 

This is so true. I went to look at his imdb page to see what he's doing. I really hope he lands a good tv show or something.

[Collinwood]

Does anyone else think that future Kellogg's only motive in all of this time travelling is to grab current Kellogg's body and harvest it for parts?

[xaxat]

Kiera sure does jump to the worst possible conclusions, though. It's not just an invading army that might need blood and medical supplies. Will it occur to her that refugees might need these things?

 

I thought about that possibility as well. But it's a society led by Kellogg, so I totally understand her assuming the worst. Plus, the first time she saw someone from that timeline (Brad) he was assassinating an alt version of her.

 

I feel so bad for Carlos. He's like a puppy that everyone is ignoring.

[Shanna Marie]

Does anyone else think that future Kellogg's only motive in all of this time travelling is to grab current Kellogg's body and harvest it for parts?

That was where I went immediately, and I think that's what Kellogg is thinking, which is why he freaked out about it and suddenly wanted to cooperate with Kiera.

 

The awkward "should we hug, maybe shake hands, no, never mind" parting between Alec and Jason was genius.

[alias1]

I love everyone's comments and I love this show. With all the crap that's on TV, why couldn't they give this more episodes?   It does seem a little rushed at this point.  I think the point of the Alec and Annie reveal is that it will never happen.  And that goodbye for Alec and Jason was perfectly done.   

[ketose]

It seems like Alec is making an effort to stay away from Annie because future Alec will love and then destroy her.

 

The "time is shifting" bit was a little heavy-handed, but this show is all about the way history unfolds in ways we don't expect. Sadler created a Big Brother corporatocracy, but Liber8 made the world burn. At least Alec regretted his actions. Kellog was a weak character when this began, greedy and broken. Now he is the most powerful person in the future. He was the first to decide he had no future. By killing his grandmother, Kellog couldn't go back and also would figure out he could use this past self for spare parts.

 

When they showed the scenes of Sadler setting his plan in motion, did they show him and Garza? She seemed to be an important part of his plan.

[TVSpectator]

When they showed the scenes of Sadler setting his plan in motion, did they show him and Garza? She seemed to be an important part of his plan.

 

A few notes, first I do think that Kellog is going to stay here, but wasn't he already enjoying himself when Lber8 first came to the 2010s, before his grandmother got shot? Although, it does look like the Future Soldiers do want to  send over some refugees but whose to say there won't be any more soldiers and also whose to say that they won't continue their fight here in 2015? Also, it looks like that maybe Brad is going to side with the Future Soldiers because of his sister and nephews being some of the possible refugees.

 

Second, I didn't see Garza in that montage where Older Alec sets the plan in motion, but I did see him giving Kagame the time device (or what I like to call the Cholate Orange Device) during a prison visit and Older Alec looking up Kiera in the 2070s. Although, I do like the idea that this whole thing was caused by the Traveler, when he had Older Alec and Younger Alec meet, and then Younger Alec telling the Older a few things (including Kiera's name which probably started this obsession with her) about time travel. 

[Chyromaniac]

what I like to call the Cholate Orange Device

 

 

At our house it's known as the Time Travel Grapefruit.

[shapeshifter]

(or what I like to call the Cholate Orange Device)

At our house it's known as the Time Travel Grapefruit.

How about Chocolate Time Travel Grapefruit?

[sluggish neko]

I found the meeting between old and young Alec fascinating too. It was nice to see Alec finally freed from the fear of his destiny. As I understood it, Alec was the one that gave future knowledge to his older self in Keira's timeline to give his present self a chance to undo the damage that he could potentially do. Young Alec-- not evil old man Alec-- is actually the future Alec of a new timeline, one where Jason isn't born and where Alec can choose not to create an evil corporate empire. Maybe Keira doesn't exist in this timeline either and if these parallel timelines can exist side by side, then its possible for Keira to return.

 

Even so, it's still a lot of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey hand waving. Because if that's the case and the Traveler has the power to cross parallel timelines, then why can't the Traveler return to his particular time? How does a parallel timeline just disappear? Eh, whatever. I thought I was done trying to figure this out last season. I'm just happy to get scenes of Alec awkwardly trying to be a good father to Jason; Jason seeking approval from his young father; and the both of them uncomfortably interacting with Annie.

 

Also, I loved Carlos's line to Alec asking if he had time-traveled back to season one where Keira and Alec were keeping secrets from him. Glad the show acknowledges that Carlos frequently gets sidelined.

 

Now I know why the future soldier girl watching over Kellog looks the way she does. Future Kellog knows exactly how to manipulate himself. Well played, future Kellog.

 

All the scenes of Dillon complaining to Kellog about the terms of his employment seem to indicate that he's going to switch sides at some crucial point. He better. I was annoyed he survived when Sonya died trying to take him out.

[ketose]

Continuum went with the unremarkable "time ball." Actually, Continuum seems to have less of the timey-wimey BS of Doctor Who. For one thing, no one has ever gone forward in time so far.

 

If anyone saw Voyager's "Year of Hell" episodes, the Traveller's situation reminds me of that. In YOH, the time ship captain screwed up one event and it made his wife disappear. He spent the next 200 years trying to fix it by making more changes. In the case of the Traveller, it's worse. He came from a time where time travel already happened, so a reset button wouldn't help him, Instead, he's trying to lock up all the people on Earth who used time travel. Being the end of the series, I guess there's one Hail Mary play that will act as a big reset button. Or it will be like Babylon 5, where one big ass causality loop is required to make everything fall into place.

[sjohnson]

The traveler has somehow ensured there is a causal loop for the events of the series. Personally, I was impressed that young Alec's rejection of Jason was a big step towards becoming evil old Alec. Kellogg I thought has to die, not just because he's useless and evil, but because his permanent existence is a paradox. I had assumed the show was building up to creating a single timeline, with causal loops, but still a single timeline. If all timelines exist, nothing matters: All bad things still happen and all good things were foreordained. 

 

The thing about the traveler is, if what he wants is to go home, regardless of what kind of future it makes, why should we care if he gets what he wants? 

 

The people trying to change their past are sort of out of the loop for me. The project is self-defeating. What interests me is the people trying to change their future, which to me means first of all Alec, Julian, Carlos. 

[iMonrey]

I still don't understand how either Kiera or Alec thinks Kiera can go "home." When they both traveled back in time one week (or was it two?) they created the alternate timeline they're in now, which ultimately leads to Brad's future, not Kiera's. How can Kiera go home when her future no longer exists? If she went forward sixty two years she'd be in Brad's future, not her own.

 

What I'm beginning to think is that this will all end with Kiera being able to go forward to 2077 and find it some kind of idealized utopia where her husband and son are still there but everything else has changed since she and Alec changed the past. That would seem like sort of a childishly simplistic way to end the series and ignores the various alternate timelines they've created.

[madam magpie]

Does anyone else think that future Kellogg's only motive in all of this time travelling is to grab current Kellogg's body and harvest it for parts?

Yes! I was sure whatsherfacefromhelix was going to force him into a kidney donation.

Refugees! I like that, actually, much better than the woo woo stuff I feared was coming. But why not just tell Kiera that?

Who is the Traveler again??

Count me among those who have no idea why Kiera or Alex thinks she can ever go "home," and it will be lame if she does.

Edited October 6, 2015 by madam magpie

[ketose]

Not to confuse the issue more, but harvesting young Kellogg would probably erase Brad's future. Given the Continuum rules, everyone who makes it to 2015 will still be there, but either old Kellogg learns from his mistakes or makes different choices, either of which will change the timeline. We also know that the manifesto that Theseus hasn't actually written is on the internet and that Julian is becoming Kagame's mentor anyway.

 

From this episode, the Traveller is some kind of cybernetic enhanced man from centuries in the future. The story from the Freelancers a couple years ago is that he saw what damage time travel was doing and went back 1000 years, the most the technology would allow. Then he started the Freelancers to monitor time travel and contain anyone who travelled back. Now, he apparently has a plan to get history back on track.

[sjohnson]

The traveler could be the initiator of a causal loop where old evil Alec sends back Kiera and Liber8 to change things, but instead young Alec starts the time travel scheme. The corporate dystopia comes to fruition, but when Kiera returns, the only evil overlord left standing is old evil Alec...and she's got stuff on him. It's Kiera who uses her knowledge to initiate the successful rebellion against the corporate dystopia, creating the timeline that led to the traveler. 

 

But probably not, I suspect I'm just rationalizing a way for my heroine to get her son back and be one of the good guys, instead of a cog in the machinery of oppression.

[tessaray]

From this episode, the Traveller is some kind of cybernetic enhanced man from centuries in the future. The story from the Freelancers a couple years ago is that he saw what damage time travel was doing and went back 1000 years, the most the technology would allow. Then he started the Freelancers to monitor time travel and contain anyone who travelled back. Now, he apparently has a plan to get history back on track.

 

IMO, the Freelancers were one of the weakest parts of the story and most hurt by the early series ending.  But then, I really feel like Alec should be the one to set things right.  It would be the most emotionally satisfying resolution.     

[TVSpectator]

The traveler could be the initiator of a causal loop where old evil Alec sends back Kiera and Liber8 to change things, but instead young Alec starts the time travel scheme. The corporate dystopia comes to fruition, but when Kiera returns, the only evil overlord left standing is old evil Alec...and she's got stuff on him. It's Kiera who uses her knowledge to initiate the successful rebellion against the corporate dystopia, creating the timeline that led to the traveler. 

 

But probably not, I suspect I'm just rationalizing a way for my heroine to get her son back and be one of the good guys, instead of a cog in the machinery of oppression.

 

I won't be surprised that if Kiera does return to her future (as unlikely as it is but wasn't that her main goal back in Season 1?) I do hope that she does start to rebel against the corporate dystopia and is able to remake her society. Also, didn't another Freelancer told her that they came from her future, something like 200+ after she timed traveled and that everyone knows about it? So, I would imagine that they were from Kiera's original timeline and maybe the Traveler was from their future?

[TVSpectator]

At our house it's known as the Time Travel Grapefruit.

 

 Chocolate Oranges are a favorite candy (and btw it's so fun just to break them apart) and I do think that Kiera's and Liber8's Time Piece looks a lot like a broken up Chocolate Orange. Here is a picture that reminds me of a broken up Time Piece:

 

 

Here is the Time Piece (or in the caption: Quantum Device):

 

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/continuumshow/images/7/7f/Quantum_Device_design.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/180?cb=20130812082839

Edited October 7, 2015 by TVSpectator

[sjohnson]

I won't be surprised that if Kiera does return to her future (as unlikely as it is but wasn't that her main goal back in Season 1?) I do hope that she does start to rebel against the corporate dystopia and is able to remake her society. Also, didn't another Freelancer told her that they came from her future, something like 200+ after she timed traveled and that everyone knows about it? So, I would imagine that they were from Kiera's original timeline and maybe the Traveler was from their future?

That's what I'm hoping, but for some reason Simon Barry doesn't return my emails.

[iMonrey]

At the beginning of Season 3, they did a really good job of explaining how time travel impacted the timeline and what the Freelancers were doing. It's the first time they ever really hashed it out on the show, and really spelled out what this show's premise was for alternate timelines. That became the basis for the third season, and the reason for Brad's existence. The alternate timeline that Kiera and Liber8 created by traveling back to 2012 (or whenever) was destroyed once Alec used the time ball to go back one week and save Emily. Without Alec, that timeline was no longer viable, and literally began to collapse. That's why the Freelancers sent Kiera back one week, to mitigate whatever Alec might do in the new timeline he created by going back one week.

 

However, I'm beginning  to suspect she show has sort of tossed aside the whole premise that served as the basis of Season 3, simply because they only have 6 episodes to wrap this whole thing up. I really don't know what they have in mind for an end-game, but every time Kiera and Alec talk about Kiera "going home" it just throws me. It doesn't make any sense given what they told us about the timeline last season. The only way Kiera "goes hom" from here is if somehow Kiera and Alec restore the original timeline Kiera came from. And that means Alec needs to follow the exact same path he did originally, and so does Julian, and so does Kagame, etc. Yet both Alec and Julian are determined to follow different paths and create a different future, not to mention Kellogg and Liber8. That means Kiera's "home" will never exist in this timeline. She can go forward in time, but it's going to be a different future altogether. There probably wouldn't even be any "protectors." Her husband might never be born, let alone her son. She'd just be a stranger in a different future, worse off than where she is now.

 

You would think they would get that. I'd hate to think Kiera finally travels forward to 2077, finds everything changed and goes "Wait, why is everything different?" Or worse, goes forward to 2077 and finds everything exactly as she left it, which would make no sense whatsoever.

[Izeinwinter]

I don't think *any* of them can go home. They are all deluding themselves, up to and including the traveler. Note how Kiera's "'it's complicated" had his sister and her kids suddenly be alive, when they were dead when he left? The second team that came back wasn't from his future at all, just one that was largely similar in it's generalities.

The timeline you depart didn't have time-traveling you in it's past, but any future you go forward into does so even if the timeline you came from does not in fact poof out of existence, you can't get back there. 

Edited October 7, 2015 by Izeinwinter

[TVSpectator]

As with Kiera going "home". I think that Chen brought this up during one of his conversations, with Alec and Kiera that there are multiple timelines that can co-exist with each other. Sort of like them being parallel universes and that the Freelancers have the technology to pull one of Chen's body doubles (to borrow a phrase from Sliders  ) consciences and place it inside his dead's body. Thus resurrecting him from the grave. I am going to think that Kiera wants to do the same thing but would want to live out her life in that parallel timeline (and I am going to assume that this timeline wasn't the original timeline for the Traveler, but maybe something very close to it).

 

Overall, I really don't know since the show is juggling (as of now) 5-7 different timelines.  

Edited October 7, 2015 by TVSpectator

[sjohnson]

The timeline you depart didn't have time-traveling you in it's past, but any future you go forward into does so even if the timeline you came from does not in fact poof out of existence, you can't get back there. 

I think there's a loophole here. All that's required is that "doesn't have time-traveling you in it's past" be read as "was, unbeknownst to you prior to departure, the product of your time-traveling." Think "Appointment in Samara." Causal loops are consistent, not paradoxical. And if everyone does what they want they are not even violations of free will, even if the hoped for consequences fail to come to pass. 

 

The alternative that seems to be on offer here, which is that all time travel creates different timelines, one for each occasion a time traveler appears, and there's never any returning to the original timeline, only to the traveler's present in the new timeline, has I think a couple of problems.

 

First, an example. Alice leaves her present, call this the omega event, and travels back to the past, call that the alpha event. Her advent creates a new timeline, call it the prime time line. Alice, hopping into her time machine, skips over the intervening period of events, a span equal to the years that she traveled in the original timeline. Call this trip forward in time the omega prime event.

 

A)Is the omega prime event the departure of the prime timeline Alice for the past, only to be replaced by original timeline Alice who will discover her timeline has disappeared? B)Or is the omega prime event the second appearance of original Alice in the prime timeline which has no other Alice? C)Or is the omega prime event the sudden appearance of original timeline Alice alongside prime timeline Alice?

 

If A, where does prime timeline Alice go? I don't think you can say that she goes to double prime alpha event, without some sort of coordination of departures. It seems to me an infinite number of Alices will be leaving their respective timelines, at the equivalent dates. The simultaneous appearance in separate universes of causeless acts seems like a paradox to me, but the notion of new timelines was intended to do away with paradoxes. 

 

If B, how can original Alice know anything about the prime timeline where she never existed? The causeless appearance of historical knowledge again seems to me to be a paradox. 

 

If C, original Alice seems to me to be a genie out of a bottle. She herself is the paradox, I think. (And also a violation of conservation of mass/energy, for whatever that's worth.) 

 

And, in some ways much more to the point, in multiple timeline stories why should we care about anything except whether the time traveler is happy with a new timeline and decides to settle down? Or if instead it is a tragedy of how they have destroyed their entire world by time travel?

Edited October 8, 2015 by sjohnson

[tessaray]

Do you think that's what the writer's room sounded like over the last few years?  :-)  

[Izeinwinter]

The show isn't using a loop model. Alex *murdered* himself, and is still around, so yes, all time travelers do appear ex-nihilo, and and violate the fuck out of local conservation of matter, information and energy. From the perspective of the original timeline, the one Alice travels backwards from, she just annihilated herself. After traveling forward, Alice will appear from nowhere in a time and place which is *not* the one she left, even if likely fairly similar, if the only divergent point is that a time machine briefly appeared in the past.

This came up in conversation on the show! Departing time travelers simply disappear, never to be heard from again.

Arriving time travelers have a history and memories from a timeline they have orphaned themselves from, and possibly destroyed. They dont have information about their future, they just know how events already in motion in turned out in another universe. This is both amazingly predictive - if someone is going to invent a super battery, and are currently running the set of experiments that they did the last time to get there, they will almost certainly invent it "again" - and not. If you brought back weather records I would expect them to become very useless quite quickly. 

[sjohnson]

Yes, Alex murdering his non-time traveling self is logically the same as a grandfather paradox in a single timeline amenable to being changed scenario. Hence the notion that time travelers go back to another timeline, to avoid that paradox. Unfortunately, a multiple timelines scenario doesn't seem to me to allow for the destruction of whole timelines. If I understood what was going on, that was actually shown on screen. Maybe that can be explained by saying that temporal paradoxes destroy timelines? Or maybe the explanation is that there is only one timeline until there is a time traveler creating new timelines? Except that in either "explanation" we seem to have paradoxes back, plus the offhand creation of new universes. At any rate, I have no idea how time traveler Alice inadvertently picks a timeline apparently identical to her own up until the very moment she arrives in the "past." Since there are an infinity of timelines in this scenario, the odds against her doing so approximate to infinity against. I suppose you could argue that there is also an infinity of Alices, but then we must wonder why we no more care about the heroine than about the random strangers in an infinity of timelines. Which raises serious problems I think for even temporary predictivity. 

 

Young Alec prompting old Alec to start his time travel project says to me that the final timeline of the series' events already contains a causal loop. Although I don't know what dramatic significance it can have in a cosmic order with multiple timelines. After all, there are an infinity of timelines where young Alec grows up to be evil old Alec in the corporate congress hellhole, complete with a Kiera the Protector in each. 

 

Incidentally, the chaotic nature of weather is an argument in principle that any time travel must have unpredictable consequences for the timeline, i.e., either change the past (raising the problem of paradoxes,) or be a trip to another timeline. 

 

What I want from the series is for Kiera to get back home, and finish Liber8's job in overthrowing the corporate congress. Basically I'm trying to rationalize a way to do that. Simon Barry will probably make it impossible, maybe by choosing another ending entirely.

[Izeinwinter]

The destruction we saw was .. strangely limited, if it was supposed to be the result of time ripping that universe to shreds. Honestly, I figure that particular time machine was just a hideously destructive design in some way. 

 

That conversation was interesting. The old Alec young Alec was talking to didn't have any memories of having had that same conversation when young. Or of having met his wife in a coffee shop at that date, neither of which is the kind of thing that could plausibly slip his mind. This means he cannot be the future of the alec having the conversation, but either was entirely an illusion brought about by the traveler to manipulate alec... or the traveler reaching across time lines to set in motion a new chain of time travel. And I am not sure why... Wait. Gah. I think I may in fact know why he would do that. 

Assume that the Traveler is telling the truth when he claims he can reach across timelines. Travel not just forward or back, but to alternate presents. Further assume that his ability to do so has a limited reach. If it did not, it would, after all, be utterly trivial for him to get home. So.. what he is doing is getting rid of the Kiera in one of the timelines he has access to so that he can send the Kiera in this one there. 

It's not her home, it is just one close enough that she likely wont be able to tell. 

 

Or maybe she will. I mean, it would be one hell of an ending if she makes it back to a corporate future very, very like the one she left, and is greeted by a 13 year old girl going "Mommy!" and jumping into her arms. 

Edited October 8, 2015 by Izeinwinter

[sjohnson]

Agreed about the limited destruction but perhaps it's a convention like Marty McFly's slow disappearance at the climax of the first installment. 

 

If Old Alec is just changing another timeline, instead of the one young Alec is in, the whole experience might just as well have been a dream. I think there are still some hidden paradoxes in multiple timeline scenarios plus the added problem that they have no meaning for anyone but the time traveler. Which to me seems like weak drama.

  

Young Alec may be determined to ditch Baby Mama and exterminate Jason now, but when he meets her later on, will he stick to his resolution? And will he repress his memory of having once decided to take her, even having been told she'd come to a bad end from it? 

[iMonrey]

 

. I think that Chen brought this up during one of his conversations, with Alec and Kiera that there are multiple timelines that can co-exist with each other. Sort of like them being parallel universes and that the Freelancers have the technology to pull one of Chen's body doubles (to borrow a phrase from Sliders  )

 

It's not the multi-verse as depicted in Sliders though, not according to what that head Freelancer lady told Kiera at the beginning of Season 3. There's one timeline - anyone who travels into the past creates a new "branch" on that timeline, and if they alter history too much the original timeline will be destroyed and a new timeline will grow from that new branch. That's why Freelancers gather up the time travelers, to mitigate any damage they do to the original timeline. Their job is to preserve it. Under that premise, the future Kiera came from will not exist as an "alternate" timeline. It will never exist, unless history plays out almost exactly as it did originally, going forward in the timeline she and Alec are in now.

 

An argument could be made that there's an alternate past, in which Kiera and Liber8 never appeared in 2011 (although nothing on this show has suggested that theory), but there's nothing to support an alternate future in the mechanics of how the timeline works according to the Freelancers. Unless they were just lying or something.

[TVSpectator]

It's not the multi-verse as depicted in Sliders though, not according to what that head Freelancer lady told Kiera at the beginning of Season 3. There's one timeline - anyone who travels into the past creates a new "branch" on that timeline, and if they alter history too much the original timeline will be destroyed and a new timeline will grow from that new branch. That's why Freelancers gather up the time travelers, to mitigate any damage they do to the original timeline. Their job is to preserve it. Under that premise, the future Kiera came from will not exist as an "alternate" timeline. It will never exist, unless history plays out almost exactly as it did originally, going forward in the timeline she and Alec are in now.

 

An argument could be made that there's an alternate past, in which Kiera and Liber8 never appeared in 2011 (although nothing on this show has suggested that theory), but there's nothing to support an alternate future in the mechanics of how the timeline works according to the Freelancers. Unless they were just lying or something.

 

I see but for all we know, the female Freelancer Leader was lying to Kiera or was just telling half-truths to her, or Chen is lying to her, etc.... 

 

As with your explanation, I have found an amazing explanation of this whole show's plot on IO9, and in the comment section, right  here:

 

BlueSeraph from IO9 Said....

Curtis confronts Keira and explains that he is playing all sides to put everything into place for the Traveler. The Traveler came from yet another timeline that was supposed to be the original timeline. He came from the far future where man and technology were perfectly united and he was given the ability to go back in time and observe the lost history but not interfere. When he returned to his own time he discovered that it didn’t exist anymore. He knew something was altered and went back to discover what. That’s when he met the freelancers which weren’t suppose to exist, but they captured him or he allowed them to capture him until he forms a plan to put everything back. But he didn’t explain what changed only that he was determined to put it all back.

 

Curtis explains that he now knows that the original curtis did die and that his consciousness was extracted from an alternate timeline/parallel universe by the traveler. It was placed into the dead body so that he can help him end the free lancers and escape to start his plan. It went into Fringe territory explaining about multiple universes and multiple you’s. Alex says that’s impossible but Curtis just writes it off that you can’t comprehend the science behind it. Curtis says the plan is that Alex, Kiera, Liber8, Kellogg, the future soldiers, are all being set up for some big “reset” or a dues ex machina deal. Because each timeline that was brought into the show including Kiera’s appear to not be the original timeline the traveler is trying to bring back. There will be an event which, I believe is the last episode, where a choice will be made that will either reset everything to the original timeline we never saw, or destroy everything.

 

Alex doesn’t believe it and tries to leave, but the Traveler appears out of nowhere....more like out of the bushes like a creepy perv and touches Alex that suddenly transports him to a white room where he confronts his future self from Kiera’s timeline. It appears future Alex has an idea about how to fix the problems he created, but it’s actually Alex from the altered timeline in the past that convinces him to go for it, that time travel is possible and you can alter destiny or fix the mistakes. Alex realizes that it wasn’t future him that started all this, but himself, which then goes into a montage of the show of how it all started because of Alex telling his future self to proceed with the plan. Alex wakes up from that believes Curtis version and wants to help Kiera set it all back right and send her home but doesn’t tell her what happened or can’t remember as he doesn’t know if it was all a dream.

 

Meanwhile we discover the truth about what future Kellogg is building, which is a massive time portal that will allow a large number of people from that altered timeline to cross over into the past. The soldiers say they’re refugees, but Kiera believes it could be an invading army, and corporate Kellogg discovers that his future self is dying of kidney failure and needs a transplant, mainly himself and persuade Kiera to let him team up with her to stop his future self, because if future Kellogg had only one obstacle standing in his way where he needed to lie, manipulate, and eventually screw over, it was himself. Oh and probably kill to get his kidneys because the show already stated that for whatever reason, killing a relative or yourself in the past wont erase your future self.

 

That’s about it in a nutshell. At least for the next episode.

 

http://io9.com/heres-the-moment-when-continuum-revealed-its-greatest-p-1734875476

Edited October 10, 2015 by TVSpectator