Abhiroop Das
Written and helmed by BenDavid Grabinski, Hulu’s ‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ follows two criminal enforcers, Mike and Nick, on a journey that unexpectedly goes back in time. Just before Mike can plan out his early retirement from this job, a version of Nick comes up, claiming to be from the future. Turns out, somewhere along the line, Nick ventures upon a time machine and decides to jump back to this very night and undo his biggest mistake to date. What this leads to is a seemingly never-ending string of chaotic events, where the duo has to cut through a den of criminals and survive the night. At the heart of it all is the mysterious time machine, which almost functions as a Pandora’s Box with more questions than answers hidden inside it. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Time Travel in This World is Riddled With Paradoxes
While the internal logic of time travel ‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ makes sense upon first glance, the more we look into it, the more impossible it seemingly gets. For starters, it appears that the time machine can go back both forwards and backwards, with nothing but a handful of knob adjustments. However, the movie never quite gives a clear answer on what happens to the original universe once the user has left it. Classic time travel stories often fall into one of two categories: the kind where going back into the past can change the future, and the kind where going back or forward in time is already predestined through a time loop.
Introducing a closed-loop in such stories is useful in dealing with the “Grandfather paradox,” which calls out how an altered future might not create the conditions that allow time travel in the first place. Such a scenario renders the entire process contradictory, which is how we arrive at the first challenge in Nick’s journey back to the past. Given that the entire point of his trip is to undo Mike’s death, this suggests that the reality where Nick found the time machine should no longer exist. To reconcile with this, there are two routes that we can take, both of which lead to their own set of paradoxes.
Nick and Mike’s Journey Breaks Down if the Universe is Reset With Every Time Jump
The first and simplest explanation for Nick’s journey is that it completely undoes the previous reality and allows the time traveller to start from scratch. While this explains why Nick is so adamant about righting his wrongs, it also opens a huge can of worms, particularly by the time we get to the ending. After Present Nick dies and Future Nick disappears, Mike hops into the backup time machine to return to the start of this night, all to save both Nicks from dying. While this supports the idea of there only being one timeline in this world, it also leaves us with no way of returning to Mike’s present.
Even if Present Mike can save his past self, as well as Present and Future Nick, it doesn’t mean much if he cannot return home to Present Alice. In the scenario where his world is entirely reset every time he presses the button, this idea gets even darker, signaling that both Present Alice and her child might not even be alive anymore. Just as in the case of Nick, it appears that one has to sacrifice their life in every cycle for the others to have their happy ending.
Mick Might Have a Way to Contact Symon and Figure Out His Way Back
Another scenario in this case is that ‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ is a world with multiple timelines. Every time Nick or Mike presses the button, they are shipped to a clean slate version of reality, which can then branch off to create a new present and future. While this interpretation confirms that Future Nick, Present Alice, and her baby are alive and well, it also raises two new questions. The existence of multiple timelines suggests that Nick’s rescue of Mike only applies to this one universe, and not necessarily his own. The same holds true for whatever Mike is trying to achieve in the ending, and while that is realistic on paper, it does take the edge off their actions. More importantly, we still don’t have a way by which either Present Mike or Future Nick can return to their own timeline.
As it stands, the most probable explanation for how Mike and Nick return to their respective presents is by dialing back to the exact moment they left the universe. It is possible that doing so pushes them back into their home world to fill up the vacuum and maintain balance. We see something similar happen in ‘Avengers: Endgame,’ which proves that there is a cinematic precedent for this maneuver. On the other hand, it is also possible for Present Mike to go back in time and save Symon from dying at Future Nick’s hand, which can get them access to the very mind that birthed all this technology into existence. If Symon is able to create a time machine from the ground up, he must be capable of figuring out a way to bring our two protagonists back to their home world, which is how everyone gets their good ending.
Read More: Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice Ending Explained: Does Mike Go Back in Time and Save Nick?
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