S02.E00: The Miracle of Christmas

[Cranberry]

As Christmas arrives in the Bunker, the Time Team is inspired by a visit from their future selves to find a way to try to save Rufus (Malcolm Barrett). But when the Mothership jumps to 1848 California, they're forced to put those plans on hold and chase Rittenhouse back to the Gold Rush, where they encounter one of the era's most dangerous villains. Then chasing the Mothership to Korea in the winter of 1950, our team helps a stranded, pregnant refugee attempt to escape a tragic fate. Stuck with no way out, our team faces its toughest challenge yet, and in the process, come to terms with their feelings for each other.

[edhopper]

Thanks NBC, nice send off.

[Guest]

Can someone recap the first 5 min for me?  I didn't realize it was on until Wyatt and Abigail were reading the journal and totally missed their future selves.

Doing a bunch of happy ending stuff with 15 min left was totally nerve wracking.

Edited December 21, 2018 by ParadoxLost

[Goldmoon]

I didn't really appreciate the 15 minute denouement. What is up with Lucy's head pain?

[bluestocking]

Nice way to tie up all the loose ends.

1 minute ago, Goldmoon said:

I didn't really appreciate the 15 minute denouement. What is up with Lucy's head pain?

All sorts of bad things happen when you time travel to a time when you were alive.  Mostly we saw tinnitus.

[Bort]

It was like watching fan fiction come to life. Mostly tied up in a nice bow. Flynn goes out a hero, Jessica gets undone, Emma gets her come uppance… I do like that they had the guts to not bring Amy back.

[ketose]

I just hope it's over, despite that bit at the end where someone else invents a time machine. They broke so many of their own rules in this finale.

Edited December 21, 2018 by ketose
Whoops. One thing wasn't actually an error.

[Mrs peel]

So odd they used Time After Time as the song at the end.  Not sure I like the Christmas bow, but certainly better than the usual “it just ended.”

[reggiejax]

24 minutes ago, ketose said:

I just hope it's over, despite that bit at the end where someone else invents a time machine. They broke so many of their own rules in this finale. For example, how did Emma remember Jessica?

That in fact was in line with the show's internal time travel logic. People who travel in time remember things from their timeline, even if their trek through time has caused history to change. Meaning Emma would remember Jessica because, in Emma's timeline, Jessica was alive and part of the Rittenhouse team. It is the same reason Lucy remembers her sister, even though her sister was wiped completely from existence.

Edited December 21, 2018 by reggiejax

[Writing Wrongs]

So people in 2023 revert to dressing like they are in 1963?

16 minutes ago, ketose said:

For example, how did Emma remember Jessica?

Maybe because she was time traveling at the time? It doesn't change for the people in the machines.

[Bort]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. If Emma was tooling around in the mothership at the time, she'd still remember Jessica.

[ScorpioSoul]

They named a girl after Flynn?

[ketose]

Also, the Jessica stuff is BS. Obviously, there was a "good" Jessica whose brother died, because Wyatt remembers it. Flynn probably should have killed Emma in the past, because she's the real nexus of evil.

[legaleagle53]

9 minutes ago, reggiejax said:

That actually was in keeping with the rules of the show. People who travel in time remember things from their timeline, even if their trek through time has caused history to change. Meaning Emma would remember Jessica because, in Emma's timeline, Jessica was alive and part of the Rittenhouse team. It is the same reason Lucy remembers her sister, even though her sister was wiped completely from existence.

 

And the rule about not traveling to an era in which you already exist?  We now know why the rule exists and what the consequences are of breaking it. You CAN do it, but the longer you stay in that era, the more you put yourself at risk for eventual physical breakdown and death.  That's why Future Wyatt and Lucy didn't stick around in 2018, Flynn died in 2012, and the other Future Lucy started suffering physical pain in 2014 and could only stay there long enough to set Flynn on the path to stealing the Mothership so the temporal loop could finally be closed.

Edited December 21, 2018 by legaleagle53

[tennisgurl]

That was a nice wrap up of the show, with just about everything that I want in an episode of Timeless. Little known but interesting historical figures, pop culture references, timey wimey hijinks, Lucy/Wyatt and Rufus/Jiya cuteness, and a lot of confusion. 

But Lucy, how would the Jessica that Wyatt knew also be the one that was a Rittenhouse agent and if Flynn knew all along what he was doing, why did he keep trying to kill everyone and oh no I've gone cross eyed. 

Time After Time is an inspired song choice to finish the show up, and the ending montogue did hit me in the feels. I am really going to miss this show, warts and all. 

[edhopper]

Time had changed re Jessica. She was originally strangled, not shot. And this Jessica had Rittenhouse fighting skills.

The time sickness is what killed Flynn,  She was only there for a short time, so just headaches.

[thuganomics85]

I guess it was a decent enough finale all things considering, but it definitely felt like a lot of things were rushed to wrap everything up in a bow, and the development to really make it work just wasn't there.  In particular, they really hand-waved a lot of the awful things Flynn did, in order to make him "redeem" himself by more or less sacrificing himself, so that Rufus would come back.  And it all happened in the first hour.  Makes me wonder if Goran Visnjic had limited availability, and that's why he bounced so quickly, and they might have wanted to do more with him in these two hours.

Also, they seem to really go out of their way to make Jessica as unlikable as possible, so that we would hopefully not care when she gets snuffed for good.  Granted, it seem like she already aligned with Rittenhouse at the time before her death, thanks to all of the time-traveling craziness.

While both Lucy/Wyatt and Rufus/Jiya were both having some Christmas Eve lovin in their respected rooms, I wonder what Christopher and Connor were up to?  I'd like to believe getting drunk, which led to Christopher drunk-knitting even more ugly scarfs, while Connor went on more rants about what a big shot he use to be.  Hee!

Did find it funny that Emma basically got taken out by a random solider, because I have to imagine that being unceremoniously killed off would eat at her.

Still, I'll admit to getting a bit choked-up during the final montage.  If nothing else, I'll give the show credit for making me care and enjoy these characters despite only being two seasons (and a movie!)

Fare thee well, Timeless.  You might not have been the best show in the world, but you were at least entertaining and fun to watch.  I'll miss the time-traveling hijinks, pop culture remarks and hidden identities, and various historical figures revealing themselves to be badasses.

[ketose]

So, why did Flynn try to blow up the Hindenburg?

[ScorpioSoul]

If I remember right, there were important people to history on it. He was trying to stop Rittenhouse.

Edited December 21, 2018 by ScorpioSoul

[Shorty186]

I really wanted Flynn to get a happy ending and his death in the first hour bummed me out for the rest of the episode. I don't understand why he chose to stay in 2012. Because it was the only way to see his family again? Slowly dying of time travel sickness sounds tortuous. 

 

Also I'm not sure how reading the journal helped them get Rufus back. Wyatt figured out that Jessica needed to be removed from the timeline, but Flynn didn't hear that, right? He came up with that on his own?

[shapeshifter]

I did clap when Rufus first came back from the dead.

When they covered the time machine with a tarp I got Stargate flashbacks.

I wonder if Matt Lanter looked at himself backwards in the mirror and asked his fellow cast members: "Do these Western style jeans make my butt look big?" because the camera was really not helping . . .

[phalange]

Oh, I loved it. Lucy and Wyatt got to meet their future selves and finally read the journal. Not surprised that Jessica lied about the baby. Makes sense that Flynn was the one to take her out.

Rufus got the best entrance! “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.” So from his perspective, he’s been traveling with them the whole time and Lucy and Wyatt were together because Jessica never existed. I loved, “I’m still totally shipping team Lyatt.” Rufus is the biggest shipper of us all. Also, “heliclockters.” Ha. Nice shoutout to the fans.

Lucy’s character development was really good here. When they first started going back in time, she didn’t want to make any changes to history, and here she insists on saving a woman she doesn’t know because everybody’s important. “What’s the point of history if we don’t save the people in it” is my favorite line and really sums up the whole show. I’m happy that the woman they saved was able to reunite with her family and they all ended up surviving. Lucy bonding with her over being history teachers was a sweet moment.

Agent Christopher finally got the chance to time travel! And Emma really got her comeuppance, didn’t she? Scheming to become the leader of Rittenhouse only to be taken out by a random soldier in Korea.

Being the unapologetic Lyatt shipper that I am, I adore the scene of Lucy telling Wyatt she’s loved him since the Alamo, and of course the seat belt buckling, Wyatt calling her ma’am, and the kiss under the mistletoe. Also, Lyatt babies! It was nice they named one after Amy (though I wish the one named Flynn was a boy, since that name on a girl is not great). I chuckled when Lucy told the one student that there just wasn't enough time to learn about the men of American history and maybe they'd get to it next semester. Jiya and Rufus naming their company Riya was cute, and them inspiring kids to go into STEM is exactly what I imagine them doing.

I really did think they were going have Lucy get Amy back, so I agree that it was a brave choice on the writers’ part to have Lucy decide not to. If the show ever gets picked up again one day, that could be a plotline to explore, though. Admittedly, I teared up during the montage to Time After Time. When I read about the cast saying that none of them were in the final scene, I was curious about how that would work, and honestly, I really liked it. Seeing a young girl inspired to invent her own time machine felt like the show coming full circle. 

[bros402]

I really liked that episode. It was a great way to tie up this fun show with an amazing fanbase. Sure, they had to gloss over some things and slide past others, but given the time constraints, they did an admirable job.

[tennisgurl]

Some of this was definitely rushed (especially with Flynn being redeemed) but I thought it was a nice wrap up for the series. The rush is understandable, considering they had to fit so much story into one finale movie, so for the time constraints they had, I think they did a good job at getting all of the stories wrapped up. 

The one thing that did bug me was it felt like they really brushed some of Flynn's evil acts under the carpet so he could be the hero, and he even gets a kid named after him! It wasn't too bad, as he did admit to doing awful things, showed some self awareness, and he did go out saving Rufus, but I wish that if they had more time, they would have explored that more. 

"Merry Christmas ya filthy animals" Dang, thats an awesome intro, Rufus! Glad that he made it back, and I am totally fine with Jess being sacrificed to save him. So in this timeline, Jess was always evil? Because I thought in the original timeline, she wasn't at first, and she became evil after Rittenhouse saved her brother in a different timeline? Time travel is confusing. 

The ending was so sweet and happy, I was super worried that everything was about to fall to pieces! Also, nice to know that the 2030s are going through a retro 60s trend! They wrapped everything up really well, but left it open just a bit with the girl making her own time machine just in case they get another 11th hour rescue. I wonder if she is a relative of the woman Lucy saved in Korea, and her being saved allowed her to have more kids, and that changed the timeline? 

For all of the happiness, the show did have some balls in not bringing Amy back. Poor Amy, and poor Lucy, but it did stop the ending from being just a super happy hug fest. That and Flynn dying, and basically being set on the course to die ever since his family died, and Lucy gave him the journal, kicking off the whole plot. 

[Manda317]

Im kind of disappointed that everybody liked the finale so much when I hated it because I wanted to have company in my misery lol, but I guess it is good that most people enjoyed it. 

Why did Lucy originally give Flynn the diary? I thought her goal in 2023 was to get Amy back, and to help him get his family, and she specifically told him what to do. Why did he need to do such horrible things? 

What happened to Flynn in the new timeline? Did he never leave prison? Did he die on a mission? Time travelling Flynn died in 2012, but what happened to the Flynn that he was watching with his family after he stole the mothership? Lucy and Wyatt were together in the bunker, as were Riya, but I didn't hear what happened to Flynn. 

I had hoped that Lucy's mom left Rittenhouse when she met Amy's father. She turned her back on the organization for love, and Lucy's fond memories of her mother were real. Without her adoptive dad, she never left and continued being brainwashed. I wish this had been revealed in the show, even if Amy never came back. 

Jessica's ending was a bit sad, because she wasn't a bad person before. That was done to her by Rittenhouse. Death was a bit much, they simply could have returned and stopped Wyatt from bringing her into the bunker. I guess Rittenhouse would still have an agent, but they have others, and it would have been a chance for her to reform or live on, which is what someone would want for someone they once loved.

[Female83]

Flynn was killed off too soon 

[shapeshifter]

Regarding:

5 hours ago, phalange said:

Lucy’s character development . . . When they first started going back in time, she didn’t want to make any changes to history, and here she insists on saving a woman she doesn’t know because everybody’s important. “What’s the point of history if we don’t save the people in it” I’m happy that the woman they saved was able to reunite with her family and they all ended up surviving.

Sure. But I immediately wondered if they would wind up like my uncle's family: Divorced and 2 of 3 kids die young of reckless driving and overdose.
And then, when we saw:

4 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

the girl making her own time machine just in case they get another 11th hour rescue. I wonder if she is a relative of the woman Lucy saved in Korea, and her being saved allowed her to have more kids, and that changed the timeline? 

--and the first thought that popped into my head was: And there she is, "The Destroyer of Worlds," the daughter who would not have been born if they hadn't messed with the N. Korean woman's life/timeline.

 

4 hours ago, Manda317 said:

Why did Lucy originally give Flynn the diary? I thought her goal in 2023 was to get Amy back, and to help him get his family, and she specifically told him what to do. Why did he need to do such horrible things? 

My interpretation is that Flynn had to have the journal to direct him to do horrible things to counteract Rittenhouse.

 

4 hours ago, Manda317 said:

Jessica's ending was a bit sad, because she wasn't a bad person before. That was done to her by Rittenhouse.

IRL, "a leopard doesn't change its spots." That is: we never really change, we just become more of who we really are. Most of the time. There are exceptions. I just don't see this as one since they were having a pissy argument when the Wyatt-Jessica relationship all went south in the first place.

 

3 hours ago, Female83 said:

Flynn was killed off too soon 

Nah, likely the little engineer girl in the final scene will bring him back.

 

9 hours ago, ScorpioSoul said:

They named a girl after Flynn?

Sure. And I'm old enough to remember when it was edgy that my older sister gave her daughter the boy name of Ashley. If the show fanbase if big enough to create billboards in NYC, no doubt Flynn will be a common girl's name within a few years.

 

 

[Bort]

I guess Wyatt and Lucy really took to heart the mantra of not wasting time. Less than five years later for the epilogue and those kids look at least four.

[wanderingstar]

I'm so glad Lucy chose not to try to get Amy back. If everyone tries to get back the person they love, it goes on and on with everyone indulging their own desires. Good for her for learning that lesson.

Loved the story with the Korean family. I was worried for a bit that they wouldn't make it.

I also loved that they showed the differences between Jiya and Rufus since Jiya was stuck in the 1880s and Rufus was, you know, dead. And now, I want to invest in Riya industries!

Really enjoyed this finale.

[nilyank]

7 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

"Merry Christmas ya filthy animals" Dang, thats an awesome intro, Rufus! Glad that he made it back, and I am totally fine with Jess being sacrificed to save him. So in this timeline, Jess was always evil? Because I thought in the original timeline, she wasn't at first, and she became evil after Rittenhouse saved her brother in a different timeline? Time travel is confusing. 

Rittenhouse had already gone back in time to save her brother so Jess grew up a Rittenhouse believer. Flynn didn't change that. He went back to kill Jess when she died in the original timeline.

[Sandman]

11 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

But Lucy, how would the Jessica that Wyatt knew also be the one that was a Rittenhouse agent and if Flynn knew all along what he was doing, why did he keep trying to kill everyone and oh no I've gone cross eyed. 

This sums up my feelings on the finale nicely -- except that I didn't catch at first that Paulina, Future Time-Ship Genius and World-Ender was (probably) descended from the baby born in Korea. Yikes. Overall, I liked it, even though I gave up part way into the second season, really with the arrival of Nicholas Keynes.

Nitpick: Connor's incomplete quote from the Bhagavad Gita struck me as both lazy and out of character. The line Oppenheimer spoke was "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." He didn't invent it -- he could apparently read it in the original Sanskrit.

And, yes, the scene where Lucy is a happy history teacher, getting tenure and "accidentally" leaving out the men, meeting Wyatt and their girls after work, was pure fanfic trope.

[KaveDweller]

7 hours ago, Manda317 said:

What happened to Flynn in the new timeline? Did he never leave prison? Did he die on a mission? Time travelling Flynn died in 2012, but what happened to the Flynn that he was watching with his family after he stole the mothership? Lucy and Wyatt were together in the bunker, as were Riya, but I didn't hear what happened to Flynn. 

The Flynn that Time Travel Flynn was watching saw his family die, then got super depressed and drunk until 2023 Lucy showed up and gave him a journal and kicked off the events of the pilot.

Overall I like this. It was a bit fan fictiony at times, but it was supposed to be a wrap up. I thought they resolved everything a bit early, but then really liked them circling back to Lucy giving Flynn the diary and the montage of everything that had happened. I'm not really sure why Lucy still had to give him the diary, but I'll go with it. Also liked the hint that someone will invent a new time machine in the future, although I think with the end it would be hard to use that as the basis for a future continuation. I like how everyone ended up.

My one complaint, would Rufus really just appear back in the 1840s after Flynn changed the timeline? Wouldn't they have had to go back to the present to see the change?

Really surprised they didn't save Amy, but I guess it would have been really unfair to get Amy back when Jessica had to die.

[ketose]

7 hours ago, Manda317 said:

Im kind of disappointed that everybody liked the finale so much when I hated it because I wanted to have company in my misery lol, but I guess it is good that most people enjoyed it. 

Why did Lucy originally give Flynn the diary? I thought her goal in 2023 was to get Amy back, and to help him get his family, and she specifically told him what to do. Why did he need to do such horrible things? 

What happened to Flynn in the new timeline? Did he never leave prison? Did he die on a mission? Time travelling Flynn died in 2012, but what happened to the Flynn that he was watching with his family after he stole the mothership? Lucy and Wyatt were together in the bunker, as were Riya, but I didn't hear what happened to Flynn. 

I had hoped that Lucy's mom left Rittenhouse when she met Amy's father. She turned her back on the organization for love, and Lucy's fond memories of her mother were real. Without her adoptive dad, she never left and continued being brainwashed. I wish this had been revealed in the show, even if Amy never came back. 

Jessica's ending was a bit sad, because she wasn't a bad person before. That was done to her by Rittenhouse. Death was a bit much, they simply could have returned and stopped Wyatt from bringing her into the bunker. I guess Rittenhouse would still have an agent, but they have others, and it would have been a chance for her to reform or live on, which is what someone would want for someone they once loved.

You have some company. I wasn't a huge fan. I am glad that they attempted to wrap it up instead of that cliffhanger that almost went unresolved.

The producers wrote themselves into a corner with the diary and they never really got out of it. Lucy had 5 years to write a comprehensive guide to Rittenhouse and time travel while she was living her best life. Instead, they wrote Lucy as afraid to change the timeline one bit because it was supposedly too hard to handle the consequences. The reality is that most watchers don't care about Amy because she only had about 4 minutes of screen time. Bringing her back is only an aspect of Lucy's character arc.

The Flynn thing is a good question. Rufus joked about Flynn like he was the third wheel team member he was in Season 2. If I understand the made up rules of Timeless, if Flynn left on 12/24/18 on a mission and died before he came back, Flynn in any alternate timeline (prison or the bunker) would kind of disappear on 12/24/18.

On the plus side, Jessica dying as a Rittenhouse agent means that her brother lived.

[KaveDweller]

10 minutes ago, ketose said:

The Flynn thing is a good question. Rufus joked about Flynn like he was the third wheel team member he was in Season 2. If I understand the made up rules of Timeless, if Flynn left on 12/24/18 on a mission and died before he came back, Flynn in any alternate timeline (prison or the bunker) would kind of disappear on 12/24/18.

I think Flynn was still with them on the mission in the 1840s and he just never made it back to 2018. So since he went back in time, there was no Flynn on 12/24/18 to disappear. It sounded like Agent Christopher and Mason were expecting him to return.

[TexasGal]

Did 2023 Lucy and Wyatt also return in bedraggled disguise to warn 2018 Lucy and Wyatt to save Rufus?  Otherwise wouldn't that have also changed the timeline?

I wonder if Goran Visnjic was just booked and couldn't devote time for the whole finale, or if they wanted to have the plot turn that way?

[CTrent29]

What a piece of crap!!!

I am so over this show.  I wish Jessica had survived.  I wish Jessica had never been Rittenhouse.  Then I would have been spared of this school girl romance crap with Lucy and Wyatt.  This was just so damn cheap. Instead of resolving the issue with Lucy, Jessica and Wyatt with any semblance of maturity, the showrunners had decided to use an easy way and make Jessica a villain to pave the road for "Lyatt".  I'm too disgusted beyond words.  And I’m seriously interested in getting rid of my DVD copies of “Timeless”.  I have never been so disappointed in a show . . . until this one . . . and "Poldark".  Good-bye “Timeless”.  Thanks for disappointing me on so many levels.

Edited December 21, 2018 by CTrent29

[Bort]

4 minutes ago, TexasGal said:

Did 2023 Lucy and Wyatt also return in bedraggled disguise to warn 2018 Lucy and Wyatt to save Rufus?  Otherwise wouldn't that have also changed the timeline?

Once Jessica was taken back out of the timeline, Rufus was no longer dead and that version of Lucy and Wyatt didn't exist anymore. It was like an insular little time loop inside the bigger one.

[TexasGal]

1 minute ago, kariyaki said:

Once Jessica was taken back out of the timeline, Rufus was no longer dead and that version of Lucy and Wyatt didn't exist anymore. It was like an insular little time loop inside the bigger one.

Thanks.  Timey Wimey.

[Sandman]

2 hours ago, ketose said:

The producers wrote themselves into a corner with the diary and they never really got out of it.

It was my impression that the writers had the meeting between Future Lucy and 2014 Drunk and Kinda Crazy Flynn planned (i.e., closing the circle as "endpoint") from the beginning of the show. I think they had to fudge some things to get there, and rush the structure and pace of the finale, but I have a feeling that this is what they wanted to do all along.

I think the role of Jessica ("Hey, what if Jessica was actually evil -- and working for Rittenhouse all along?") might have been the one they took the flyer on, late one night in the writers' room. 

Edited December 21, 2018 by Sandman
"had a"?? wtf typo.

[albinerhawk]

I ran across the name Flynn for a girl in an Irish cartoon, my children watch. I just looked it up, and while still more popular as a boy's name, it's trending female. I actually like the name so I may be biased.

Overall, I was disappointed by the finale. I didn't hate it. I just felt like it was too neatly trying to do fan service rather than create a compelling story. At least I got my Christmas presents wrapped while watching it.

[iMonrey]

Honestly, I didn't think this was very good. The ending was emotionally satisfying, but the timey-wimey stuff was way too confusing and the two pasts they went back to were inexplicably boring for a final episode. The California Gold Rush and 1950 Korea? Really? It seems like maybe the writers had a couple of stories left over on the back burner when this show was cancelled and then dusted them off and used them to craft a finale around when they got the green light for the 2-hour special. The trip to North Korea in particular seemed pointless. At first Emma told Jessica she was going to Korea to buy a new sleeper agent, but then it all turned out to be a ruse so the Time Team would go there and get shot by . . . Chinese soldiers? What? How did she manage to arrange that when the only person we saw her talking to was an American soldier? 

I know we have to hand-wave a lot of this stuff but there were way too many instances where people shouldn't have remembered certain things since the timeline kept changing. I think the worst part of this  episode is that it really showed how the writers were never really up to the challenge of dealing with this premise, which is why the show always felt so "safe" and never took many chances or was ambitious enough to tackle some of the headier consequences of time travel. Most of what they attempted here didn't quite work.

Quote

Rittenhouse had already gone back in time to save her brother so Jess grew up a Rittenhouse believer. Flynn didn't change that. He went back to kill Jess when she died in the original timeline.

Not quite. In the original timeline, Jessica was strangled by someone. In the timeline Flynn went back to, there was a Rittenhouse agent waiting to rescue Jessica and Flynn had to shoot him to prevent him from doing so. It does not appear that Rittenhouse "raised" Jessica, but rather they stepped in and saved her right at the moment when she was originally killed, then went back in time and saved her brother to win her over. 

I also think it's a safe bet that her pregnancy with Wyatt's baby was real until the show got cancelled. I re-watched the final episode to refresh my memory of what was going on, and in the Chinatown episode, Wyatt confronts her and she cops to everything but says she really is pregnant with his baby. There was no reason for her to keep up the lie at that point, but I think for the sake of expediency they decided to jettison the baby plot and facilitate an easier/quicker reunion for Lucy and Wyatt.

Overall I'm happy we got some closure for these characters, but the criticisms I had about this show for 2 years were more or less magnified by this final episode. So it's probably better off being over.

[NeenerNeener]

1 hour ago, ketose said:

The reality is that most watchers don't care about Amy because she only had about 4 minutes of screen time.

Yeah, it's been so long since I saw Season 1  that I forgot all about her, and Lucy's dad too. All in all it was good enough. I've seen final episodes done worse (*cough*Medium*cough*How I met Your Mother*cough*).

Edited December 21, 2018 by NeenerNeener

[TexasGal]

7 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Honestly, I didn't think this was very good. The ending was emotionally satisfying, but the timey-wimey stuff was way too confusing and the two pasts they went back to were inexplicably boring for a final episode. The California Gold Rush and 1950 Korea? Really? It seems like maybe the writers had a couple of stories left over on the back burner when this show was cancelled and then dusted them off and used them to craft a finale around when they got the green light for the 2-hour special. The trip to North Korea in particular seemed pointless. At first Emma told Jessica she was going to Korea to buy a new sleeper agent, but then it all turned out to be a ruse so the Time Team would go there and get shot by . . . Chinese soldiers? What? How did she manage to arrange that when the only person we saw her talking to was an American soldier? 

 

I think it was a fluke that they (in some timeline) were killed by Chinese soldiers.  Her plan was to have the American soldier she talked to and bribed kill them, he was the one who took them in the helicopter (plane? that's how closely I was paying attention).

I thought they were going to go with Emma wasn't really dead in North Korea and she would end up giving North Korea the technology to build another mother ship.

[ketose]

I watched Timeless because it seemed like the best of the 3 time travel shows that premiered in 2016. The fundamental truth about a TV show about time travel is that people don't want to watch one where they "preserve the timeline" because it would be boring as hell. Even Lucy was eventually going to just go all in on being a time heroine. I tend to like a little more scifi and less drama in my time travel shows (which is why I stopped watching Dr. Who after 30 years). Either the show ends by being cancelled with no resolution, they hit the big reset button (which most people hate) or they give the characters a bittersweet resolution. I think Timeless mostly accomplished that, much like Continuum did. The other "solution" would be to go back and try to kill Mr. Rittenhouse in the crib and hope it wasn't replaced by a worse dynasty of evil.

[Writing Wrongs]

10 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

The one thing that did bug me was it felt like they really brushed some of Flynn's evil acts under the carpet so he could be the hero, and he even gets a kid named after him!

He's the Snape of the group.

[ketose]

Because of the journal, Flynn is essentially a pawn of the Time Team anyway.

[shapeshifter]

5 hours ago, Gillian Rosh said:

I'm so glad Lucy chose not to try to get Amy back. If everyone tries to get back the person they love, it goes on and on with everyone indulging their own desires. Good for her for learning that lesson.

The moral of the Amy story was a good one,
but when I heard Lucy's lines:
     Flynn told me something else in his letter, - about Amy.
     He said there might be a way that I could get Amy back, but I can't figure it out.
all I could think was: Yeah. Good luck getting the actress back for the episode.
And when they did a flashback of her, I thought: That's Amy? 

[Sandman]

36 minutes ago, ketose said:

Because of the journal, Flynn is essentially a pawn of the Time Team anyway.

Agreed. There's a little touch of "... All You Zombies" in the closed loop of the journal, I'd say.

[CooperTV]

Lucy put Flynn on the pass of destruction and murder so Layatt, the twins and Rufus/Giya could happen, lol. Although they still tried and white-washed Flynn via putting him in pure bleach for about a year, he's still the same horrible, inconsistent character with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. All the speechifying about his "awesomeness" fell flat. I literally cannot with these writers and their BS biases. I guess, at least they managed to do a bare minimum for their male lead's butchered characterization in s2, so the romance didn't feel forced.

Whatt's up with Evil!Jessica, by the way? I mean, I knew her and Wyatt were never a perfect couple, and him struggling to accept her death was always about his feeling of guilt (because it's Wyatt, he's responsible for every bad single thing in the known universe). But her AU!self wasn't a monster, was she? I'm so confused right now.

[saber5055]

13 hours ago, phalange said:

Seeing a young girl inspired to invent her own time machine felt like the show coming full circle. 

I was wondering if that girl was either 1. a descendant of the baby born via Wyatt in Korea, or 2. Agent Christopher in another timeline.

I also wondered why Flynn bailed out of the time machine when, if he had gone with it, his back-in-time sickness would have gone away. I think. Just to see his family again? And that picture of him as a dead John Doe would have freaked out the Flynn family who was still living in that era. Someone would have ID'd him, or at least his fingerprints. He had a live twin, so to speak.

I was sorry Flynn and Lucy didn't work out. I wonder why. They had so much more chemistry than Lucy/Wyatt.

I wondered why the 2023 Lucy/Wyatt looked the same as 2018 Lucy/Wyatt when, when they went back in time to tell themselves to save Rufus, they looked nothing like they did, Wyatt with full beard, etc.

I know, *hand wave.* I guess when it comes to time travel, writers can make it be however they want. Whether viewers understand any of it is another matter ... that DOESN'T matter!

Oh: I wondered why they killed the Mothership but kept the Flying Eyeball. Was the Eyeball the one that had been updated for anyone to fly? Not that it matters I guess. Unless it's going to fly on some other network.

Still, the end made me tear up. But I'm sappy that way, almost anything makes me sob a few tears these days.