![]() It was a hard-earned and costly finale that nearly didn't happen because "Timeless" was actually canceled twice over the course of its two seasons. As all three characters - a history professor, a soldier, and an engineer - jump through time, they find themselves trying to keep history on track during some of the world's most significant events, from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to the launch of Apollo 11.Ĭo-created by TV veteran Shawn Ryan ("The Shield," "S.W.A.T."), "Timeless" aired for two seasons before getting the chance to wrap up its story with a two-hour series finale movie event. ![]() Debuting on NBC in 2016, the science fiction drama starred Abigail Spencer, Matt Lanter, and Malcolm Barrett as a trio focused on preventing a mysterious organization from changing the course of history. As long as the characters and their circumstances get fleshed out a bit more, viewers will be back for more."Timeless," an NBC time travel series, is another well-loved - if less-known - entry on Kripke's resume. As full-blown sci-fi, Timeless might feel a bit light, but for a procedural with a twist, it succeeds nicely. Why did the changes with the Hindenburg prevent Lucy’s mother from getting sick and Amy from being born? Why was Lucy, however great a historian she might be, chosen for this mission, and what is “Rittenhouse”? Why did Flynn and his men take Matt Frewer’s character, seemingly someone integral to the time travel project, into the past with them? And who the heck is Lucy engaged to?Īnd of course, Timeless viewers will wonder each week, “What historical event will the show visit this week?” Flynn was seen flipping to pages in Lucy’s notebook that mentioned the moon landing - could that be a possibility? Just by posing this potential, the show has its hook. Whatever expectations viewers came into the premiere with, they can’t help but be pulled in by their lingering questions. Despite these stilted moments, both Wyatt and Rufus have great potential as characters: Wyatt feeling guilt over his wife’s death that he can’t undo even with time travel, and Rufus having to navigate a racially-divided past (reminding viewers all too well of their own troubled present) while clandestinely recording Lucy and Wyatt at Mason’s behest for some reason. The fun ending also smooths over some bumpy narrative elements of the premiere, including Wyatt’s stereotypical military brusqueness and Rufus’ somewhat contrived reactions to problems he encounters as a black man in an unwelcoming past. The audience is just supposed to take all that at face value, and that’s fine. Such butterfly-effect stakes make it easier to accept certain glossed-over details at face value, such as the unsubstantiated rule that the time travelers can’t visit a place they have already been or the fact that Mason Industries, headed by mysterious (and perhaps devious) genius, Connor Mason, built a time machine outside of government control but which now finds itself dealing with Homeland Security. For a show that creators Eric Kripke and Shawn Ryan were selling as a less complex time travel tale, these wrinkles pose plenty of potential for paradoxical fun. And what viewers may have initially thought was an unexpected miracle, the undoing of Lucy’s mother’s illness, was negated by the sudden erasure of Lucy’s sister, Amy, from existence altogether. In fact, in perhaps the most successful turn of the opening episode, the world that Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus return to doesn’t remember the original version of the Hindenburg disaster. What could possibly warrant such a historical change, for ill or for good? And even though Flynn is foiled, the repercussions - at least in Lucy’s life - are still felt. Although he and his team of so-called terrorists save the Hindenburg by preventing the ropes from being dragged through the mud, they instead plot to blow up the airship once it departs with such heavyweights as UN-cofounder Rockefeller, D-Day mastermind Bradley, and helicopter inventor Sikorsky. On the surface, Flynn’s mission does seem horrific if what Lucy surmises is true.
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