Way back in the glorious '90s, when comic book heroes had too many muscles and way too many pockets, there was an "event" called "Zero Hour" that spanned months and books and it was kooky but amazing—Continuum's own "Zero Hour" was a lot like that. Continuum's benevolent time lord Jesus finally lost his patience with Alec's endless waffling and tossed him into the matrix with his older self. His older evil self. His older, evil, alternative self—THIS. SHOW.
Despite the extra effort required to wrap our heads around the Alec Sadler mind-meld, the meeting between the two Alecs was easily the highlight of the episode. Where Old Alec has long been a mostly fearsome character, with a history of being awful and the resources to make his visions reality, "Zero Hour" gave us a look at the other side of Old Alec. Alec Sadler, in that particular timeline, grew up to reshape the world—for better or worse—and became the sort of massive figure that was both adored and vilified by the unwashed masses. However, he also grew up to be a sad, lonely old man, all alone in his castle after a lifetime of alienating anyone who ever cared about him. That's the real connection between our two Alecs. Even now, it's sometimes hard to imagine our precious puppy dog superhero nerd growing so far away from who we know, but now we know where Old Alec's reality comes from, and it's a place I think anyone can admit to feeling stuck in at some time or another.
Humanizing the enemy was edgy when The Sopranos debuted and has subsequently devolved into a cliche of it's own—which is probably why batshit crazy Jerome over on Gotham is currently such a blast—but, like so many snoozefests that Continuum manages to wake up, Old Alec's humanity felt right.
I'm so sick of complimenting this show, you guys. Somebody recommend me a show that's sure to induce a raging hate-boner. All this goodwill is making me feel weird and out of balance and I was really banking on Gotham coming back and being a mess and then lo and behold, it got its act together. For now.
Anyway, Continuum is only two episodes away from sweet, sweet oblivion and that means that it's time to rope all the timey-wimey stuff in and somehow make it make sense. From the start, one of my biggest fears about Continuum was the mechanics of time travel. It is messy; you've got your grandfather paradoxes and your butterfly effects and Doctor Who's "fixed points in time" that never end up quite so inflexible as the name implies. From the beginning, Continuum has, to its credit, been meticulous to the point of obsession regarding its canon and its mythology, the realities and rules of its universe. Continuum isn't the first series to build its time travel on the idea of parallel universes and timelines, but it's among the first to do it with a completely straight face. Evil Alec might have been laughable in his try-hard villainy, but Continuum supported all of his antics with evidence from his own reality. Alec's capacity for evil exists in every timeline, whether he gives in to its temptation or not; there is no "real" or "true" Alec. Every Alec (or Kiera or Carlos or Garza or whomever) is real in their respective reality, but reality is vast and wibbly-wobbly. If all of these alternative timelines exist at the same time, then they are all real. The Traveler plucking Chen's consciousness out of one reality and plopping it in his body in another confirms this. Chen is Chen is Chen.
So when we talk about Evil Alec vs. Real Alec (and I know, I'm so guilty of doing this myself) we're not talking about two different individuals. Old Alec, Evil Alec, and Alec Prime: they're all Alec. They come from different circumstances, different worlds, make different decisions based on different influences, but the fundamental person is still one and the same.
Ultimately, this means that Kiera can certainly go home, not just to 2077, but to the 2077 she came from. If there is no one true timeline, then the changes Kiera and Liber8 forced in 2012, '13 and '14 shouldn't have actually affected the reality that Kiera came from. The question we're left with is this: if all of the alternate timelines exist independently of each other, then what is Time Lord Jesus' role in all of it? If he's hopping in and out of them, swapping out souls or whatever, then clearly the timelines are related, at least in the sense that New Jersey and Oklahoma are two very different states that don't even touch each other, yet exist in the same neighborhood, globally. Even bigger picture: Japan and Madagascar and Scotland and Pakistan are all vastly different cultures, countries, and people... but we all live on Earth.
Are the alternate timelines just a matter of having different zip codes in the same city?
Continuum's mythology is still a big tangled ball of crazy, but the progress made in "Zero Hour" at least gives me confidence that in the end, all will be clear. And awesome. So awesome.
WIBBLY-WOBBLY, TIMEY-WIMEY NOTES
– Jason and Alec stalked future Mrs. Alec and Jason was weird and precious and OMG ALEC YOU'RE LITERALLY THE WORST PARENT ON THE PLANET(S).
– Even having my kindergartener grasp of Continuum's timelines, I was waiting for Jason to POOF out of existence as soon as Alec committed to not hooking up with Jason's mom, raising a maladjusted son, and eventually driving his wife to suicide.
– LIKE WHAT THE HELL, ALEC.
– So this means Emily can come back, right?
– Overlord Kellogg needs a kidney transplant and the fact that he's invading Kellogg Prime's timeline—and we know that killing someone in one timeline doesn't necessarily end them in another—is totally nothing to be worried about, right? Nah.
– Whenever Carlos and Kiera fight, it's like watching mommy and daddy fight and I need them to stop.