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Theory regarding the Faction and last episode of season 1 (spoilers)

posted 8 years ago by scorenow16-1
47 replies | jump to latest

In the season 1 finale, we are told that after preventing Helios 685 the Travelers created a new timeline where a faction fights against the director deciding humanities fate. So in this episode Grace informs the team about the Faction and war in the future, the team is unaware of the Faction(due to altering the timeline), and Grace also states that it was the Faction that abducted the team in Episode 5 "Room 101." If you listen to that whole dialogue at the end of Episode 12 "Grace" it would appear as if the Faction was only created after the team prevented Helios 685; however, Marcy, Carly, Trever,and Philip were abducted in Episode 5 and Helios 685 wasn't prevented till the next episode.

So the question is who abducted Marcy, Carly, Trever, and Philip in episode 5 if the Faction was only created after preventing Helios 685? My theory is that it was the Director sent back in time in the season 1 finale who kidnapped them. We know the director is able to send itself and others back in time and if the timeline was altered then the director would not be aware of the teams original mission (to prevent Helios 685). Furthermore, Grace reset the Director prior to the Director's arrival in the 21st Century. This could help explain why the monitor kept asking "what is your mission" and "when are you from" in the abduction episode.

The question then became how could the Director exist in the future if the reason for its existence was to prevent Helios 685 (which was prevented)? The Director was programed to be God and therefore would need to exist in every scenario. Therefore, it would need to calculate both a means to prevent Helios 685)and also maintain its existence and survival in an alternate timeline.

Another theory I have is that Grace was actually on the side of the Faction and the little girl was on the side of the director. The show went out of its way in the last two episodes of season 1 to illustrate Grace's human emotions through an abundance of overacting. I found it annoying at first until I saw the juxtaposed lack of personality and emotion of the little girl after she was taken over. The little girl was robotic, like a terminator or agent from the Matrix.

I think the missions the team received after Episode 6 came from the Faction in an effort to prevent the director controlling the future of humanity. Grace and Ellis's missions was to save the future by resetting the Director and bringing it to the past in an attempt to control it and guide humanity to a brighter future. However, this had the opposite effect and only created that which they hoped to destroy.

Let me know your thoughts.

[–] mobocracy 8 years ago

The question then became how could the Director exist in the future if the reason for its existence was to prevent Helios 685 (which was prevented)?

There was a line in the last episode about the director managing every aspect of life in the future to manage human life free from human weaknesses. My assumption was that the director came into existence as an AI to manage the basic economy of the future where resources were extremely limited, possibly to calculate food production, reproduction, energy consumption, etc. Basically manage all the variables of human survival.

Maybe its one of those AIs that once it comes into existence is able to make itself smarter by assimilating all possible information and thus become self-aware and develop a plan to fix the causal chain that led to the human future.

But I don't think they created the Director explicitly to fix the Helios situation, it's control and planning for that plan was an effect that developed after it was put in charge managing human life.

[–] Sluggr-3 8 years ago

Things went bad which led to a dystopic future. In the original timeline, an asteroid hit the planet which upset the balance and led to bad things. In the new timeline they detonated an anti-matter bomb to deflect the asteroid, and that explosion creates an arms race and wars which lead to a similar, or possibly worse, dystopic future.

As I see it, the faction arose as a group to prevent the helios deflection which created what they believed was a worse future. They didn't do that, so I see their new game plan as one to alter the potential for bad things happening following the detonation of the anti-matter bomb. We might see a collusion between the Travelers and .gov similar to what was seen in SG-1 to defeat Anubis.

My Chimp DNA seems to have lost its password temporarily. Sluggr-2

[–] mobocracy 8 years ago

It almost seems like they could be working with the "inevitability" concept in time travel, where you can go back to the past and make changes but ultimately you can't change the larger direction of the future.

They go back and deflect Helios, which is supposed to prevent impact, wars, etc, but they still end up with basically the same crapsack future, made slightly worse by the factionalism.

[–] chrisjdel 8 years ago

In some time travel stories the future can be changed but there's a sort of inertia, the timeline resists being altered and you really have to force it to yield. Of course the same inflexibility can also result if someone else is deliberately sabotaging everything you try to do, matching each change with one of their own that cancels out the effect you've had on the future. Why exactly the Faction wouldn't want a better world than the one they had, I couldn't tell you. Maybe their plan calls for waiting until a certain event has occurred before jumping in and intervening. Who knows?

[–] Sluggr-3 8 years ago

In a sense, it isn't parallel timelines, but rather parallel story lines. Very little occurs in isolation and quite often there are multiple people/groups working on the same or similar ideas. It wasn't a case of Hitler being the onlybevil person at the time, he just happened to be the one to capture the fervor of the times.

The faction is trying to hit a moving target as well now. Both are trying, in their own way, to effect a better future without creating a bigger problem, and like many .gov programs, the end result is usually a bigger problem. feeding people in a country which can't produce enough food to feed their own only leads to having twice as many people to feed in the future, again, from a place that couldn't feed them in the first place. The catholic church decided the way that they could cement their power in the future was to dominate with numbers, hence bans on birth control, which has accelerated over-population. Their solution to a problem created a bigger problem. The Muslims are just version 2.0 of this. meanwhile, those of us who can do math and wait to have have one or two children instead of litters at 17 are slowly being outnumbered by the ignorant unwashed masses, because someone down the road hopes that they will vote democrat. yea!

My Chimp DNA seems to have lost its password temporarily. Sluggr-2

[–] Theshornwonder 8 years ago

You're a complete effing moron.

[–] Theshornwonder 8 years ago

It's spelled Trevor with an "O"

[–] Alex05222 8 years ago

I think The Director achieved its primary objective: Stop Helios 685. However, its mission wasn't entirely over. It still had to force other, "replacement" events to happen. So, technically, it would have to kill the exact same people that Helios would've killed, to ensure its survival, so that it could then send people in the past to stop Helios 685, as altering that future would cancel out its existence and cause Helios to still crash and kill everyone.

So, I figure, it devised a way to end everything: Send itself back into the past and kill itself shortly after stopping Helios 685. That way, it would destroy itself, but after saving everyone chronogically, though in the past, so the future would not be affected. Some Time Travel / Quantum Physics 'pseudoscientific' mumbo-jumbo would explain why it could only die in the past, away from its own present, lest it erase everything it had worked to alter in the past.

That's what I think they're going for. Essentially, the story was supposed to end right then and there, but because they didn't destroy The Director, it sets off a different future. Or perhaps that's the point, only by going to the past, can it ensure that Helios stays gone, but that it doesn't die and cause the timeline to reset to its original "Helios kills everyone" state.