STAY OFF MY TERRITORY - Time Travel in Lore Olympus (feat. Springlock, our resident time traveller)
AH YES. TIME TRAVEL. BUILDING COFFEE TABLES FROM IKEA. BOTH A MESS, BOTH SOMETHING YOU SHOULD NEVER ATTEMPT EVEN AS A GAG.
THERE WILL BE FASTPASS SPOILERS IN THIS ANALYTICAL DISSECTION OF LORE OLYMPUS' TIME TRAVEL !!!
Let's establish the "time travel" in LO first of all - it's briefly introduced by Hecate, who says that Hades isn't in a 'where' but a 'when' , hahahaha i so love time travel jokes /s THIS ISN'T A LAUGHING MATTER-
We had already covered this in the criticisms that Kronos' 'dream comas' would have been better allocated to his time travel abilities, and it seems now Rachel is trying to make that a reality at the last possible minute. I'm going to completely tear apart that reality to present to you why it doesn't work in LO.
Aw, Kronos' time abilities are finite? Get on my level, sir.
The caveat is the existential toll that time travel takes on the jumper, and the fact that in most cases, it's impossible to perform due to paradoxes. And Lore Olympus' time travel presents a lot of paradoxes. No wonder Kronos went crazy, I'm going crazy just thinking about everything that's wrong with this.
So Hades is trapped 'somewhere' in time. This isn't something I haven't seen before, but the issue it presents is getting someone back to their present time, as it presents the first paradox -
PARADOX #1 - There are no accidents. If someone is to jump into a timeline outside of their own, even if by 'accident', that would still have to be predestined by the timeline itself. This is in line with the grandfather paradox, which I will let the almighty Google define for us all to keep things brief:
You cannot travel back in time 'by accident'. If you were to travel back in time, it would have been written into the script of reality already, so any effects caused by your jumping would be purposeful, even if they seem like 'accidents' to you - such as becoming your own grandfather, Philip J Fry.
Moving on, in the most recent FastPass episode, Melinoe reveals that she was taken from her timeline by Kronos.
PARADOX #2 - Which version of Kronos took her? Was it the present version travelling into the future to take her from her timeline into his present? Or was it some future version of Kronos who has escaped yet again at some point in the future and then travelled back into the past to interfere with the events of the current present, possibly in an attempt to rewrite the script? If it's the latter, this means that Hera and Persephone can't feasibly stop Kronos indefinitely, as to stop Kronos would mean that he wouldn't exist in the future to take Melinoe from her future timeline and thus this present timeline of events would cease to exist. If we want to get even more granular with it, 'present' Kronos is still 'past' Kronos as it's the Kronos from ten years ago who got his hands on a deity to help him mess with people's dreams, and that deity has been revealed to be Melinoe, who would have had to be ripped from some point in their future timeline. This falls in line with a temporal paradox, or as most people know it, the 'kill baby Hitler' paradox, which designates that one cannot go back in time to kill baby Hitler, as killing baby Hitler would remove all the subsequent events that would lead up to you deciding to build a time machine and go back in time to kill baby Hitler.
Melinoe claims she's only been here a few days. That would be all well and good, as time is funny like that - I've done my fair share of jumps into the distant past only to return a few minutes later - but what doesn't line up is the present timeline of events that would only work unless she's actually been trapped for longer than a few days.
PARADOX #3 - So it's only been a few days, but Hades and Persephone have known about this child trapped in Tartarus for weeks, and we know Kronos has had her since the dream diving arc back near the end of S2. So unless Kronos is simply jumping to different points in time to cause shenanigans - which leads to even MORE paradoxes as you feasibly cannot travel to your own past to change it due to it creating a different future - then it can't have only been a 'few days' for Melinoe, it would have been at least a few weeks, giving some wiggle room to the past events of her appearing before Hades in his dreams due to her being the goddess of nightmares. Kronos escaping Tartarus after using Melinoe to put people to sleep and possess them was not something that happened in a pocket dimension, it was very real and very present.
Hades commits an even bigger sin, however, and the biggest issue with this 'time travel' plotline:
PARADOX #4 - I truly hope 'home' means 'home point in her timeline' and not their literal home. Hades and Persephone cannot take Melinoe, for two reasons: they haven't had their daughter yet, and the future timeline versions of Hades and Persephone need their daughter back. If Hades and Persephone were to adopt this version of Melinoe in their present timeline, it would create a clone paradox, as they would have a duplicate Melinoe from the future, OR it would create the grandfather paradox if they opted not to try for a child knowing they already have Melinoe which would erase the whole sequence of events that led to future Melinoe's birth in the first place.
Ultimately Lore Olympus' time travel suffers from the same issue many time travel stories suffer from - not having consistent rules. It is choosing now , near the finale of the series, to introduce time travel, rather than establishing it back in Season 1 when Kronos was first hinted at. It's also still not clear in what Hades' role is in this, as him being taken to a 'when' could still be read as a dream sequence rather than actual time travel. After all, Kronos supposedly "exhausted" his time travelling powers centuries ago - surely as a way for Rachel to have her cake and cover for the fact that she's had Kronos in the series since S1 and never actually had him do what he's known for - but now she's trying to eat it too by just giving him his time travel powers again for no reason besides rewriting the dream diving finale from S2 but with ambiguous time travel instead.
It's all a huge mess and the best thing I can do for myself is simply not let it keep me up at night. I have enough time travelling problems to worry about as it is. I will be sticking to the Austin Powers method -
(I am not enjoying myself.)
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Seeing Akane reacts so strongly seeing Kako being destroyed was already a big shot at my heart but Mirai and Akane protecting each other absolutely annihilated me in the last chapter.
Akane is a character who is really blunt about his opinion and stands his ground, he said right away in his introduction chapter how strongly he hates the clock keepers, and insists on how much he isn't like them.
In this new arc, he is forced to face this part of him he doesn't want to acknowledge since the beginning, he has been forced to do it a lot since the grim reaper arc (and I think it's really starting to get to him but this is for another day)
Aoi Akane, the human forced to be a supernatural who hates his contract and the clock keepers so much he wants nothing to do with them. But what does he do when fighting Tsukasa? He keeps the latter's attention on him so the threat can't get to Mirai.
Akane is mortal and human. The only mortal clock keepers and supernatural, and he still risks his life to protect Mirai. The yorishiro of the clock keepers yes, but mostly Mirai.
He shifts his attention from Tsukasa to her because he knows what she represents for the clock keepers and he waits for the moment to let her free, even if it results in him getting hurt.
Akane is the character of the cast who shows the most how he loves life, he definitely doesn't want to die. We can see it in how he defends himself, his last movement in this fight being one of protection (and fear). Something he has been doing more since coming back a second time from the far shore. Even if he doesn't want to die, he is still at his core a nice person. He is distressed at the idea of death, disappearing for good, no matter who it may concern in the end. Finding a way to protect Mirai (and the yorishiro) goes before his own safety.
And then Mirai gets the blow for him. She knows it means Tsukasa will get the yorishiro. Kako has been the mystery the most alarmed about the yorishiros being destroyed by Hanako. But Mirai, n°1, who knows how dangerous it is for another yorishiro to be destroyed for the land, sacrifices their seat number, herself and what is supposely the most important thing to them, for Akane.
Akane is a proactive character who rarely stops in his actions. Even when Aoi was "dead" he was activaly searching for a way to bring her back and when he learned she was gone he was quick to try to find a way to go where she was. When he stops, it's because he is physically unable to move. But here, even if he is still concsious and has Time's power he doesn't do anything, like he is the one being stopped in time, unable to move on from Mirai's body.
Mirai may be made of gears but it's been clear since the beginning that she has a real attachement to Akane. Wearing the name he gave her like a medal, jumping on him whenever she can, having a personality where she clearly has fun when he is present, and actually being the one noticing him on his first day at school.
And what does it mean after all for a yorishiro to be sacrified to protect something else? That maybe Akane is in the end more important than what the yorishiro represents for the clock keepers.
If this follows the pattern of a lot of mysteries it may mean that Mirai and Kako have strong regrets/resentment towards the story/person behind their yorishiro.
It's kind of beautiful in the end to see Mirai sacrifiying their past and future to focus on the one representing the present.
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