Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s time travel thriller, ‘Time Cut,’ follows the story of a girl named Lucy who goes twenty years in the past to discover that she has landed a few days before her sister, Summer, is killed by a serial killer. Summer’s death changed the course of Lucy’s life, becoming an event that would hang over her head for the entirety of her existence. Even though Lucy never got to know Summer, she considers it her moral obligation to save her and three other people who were killed by the serial killer, dubbed the Sweetly Slasher. When her initial attempt fails and three people are killed, Lucy realizes that the only way to save people is by killing the serial killer himself. For that, his identity needs to be uncovered, and when that happens, it shocks Lucy, but more specifically Quinn. SPOILERS AHEAD
Why does Quinn Become a Serial Killer?
Knowing that the killer would come after Summer in the barn during the party, the trio (Summer, Lucy, and Quinn) set up a trap. Lucy and Quinn go to SONR to get rubidium to fire up the time machine, allowing Lucy a way back home, but they discover that the serial killer has already been there and stolen two from the stock. This confirms that the killer is from the future, which also means that he has been two steps ahead of them. By the time Lucy and Quinn reach the barn, the killer already has Summer in his grip and is ready to kill her, but Quinn hits him with his car. At first, it seems the killer is dead, but then he gets up and removes his mask, revealing himself to be the future version of Quinn.
Lucy is shocked because, having known Quinn for the past couple of days, she didn’t see him as someone who would turn into a killer. Even Quinn is shocked, wondering what happened to him that changed him into a serial killer. It turns out that it had to do with everything that happened in the original timeline, which was changed in this timeline due to Lucy’s presence. On the first day, Lucy stops Ethan and his gang of bullies from throwing Quinn into the river. In the original timeline, she was not there to stop it. Quinn was thrown into the river, even though he couldn’t swim, and instead of helping him, everyone laughed at him. The first three people he killed were a part of that crowd.
He also saw Summer as the one laughing at him, but he didn’t kill her instantly because he was in love with her. He wrote her a letter and gave it to her at the party, but she told him that she could never love him like that. Quinn took it as an insult on top of injury and decided that Summer needed to go. He seethed in anger and the desire for retaliation for years. Being a physics genius, he built a time machine and used it to go back to the day he was humiliated by being thrown into the river and committed the murders. The time machine would allow him to easily come back to his original timeline, which means that he would never be caught. However, he didn’t consider the possibility of Lucy following him to the past.
Does Lucy Save Summer? Is Quinn Dead?
When they escape the barn, Lucy, Summer, and Quinn go back to his lab, where they have the time machine. Quinn is worried that his future self will know where to find them, as it has been his lab as well. Lucy, however, is counting on it. She plans to use the rubidium to start the time machine and get both herself and Quinn back to the future. As expected, Future Quinn shows up at the lab, where he confesses to the reasons behind his killings. To stop him, Quinn threatens to kill himself, believing that his death would erase future Quinn from existence. However, Future Quinn reveals that this isn’t exactly how time travel works.
With no other recourse, the only way to stop him is to send him into the future. So, as Quinn and Summer run out of the lab, shutting the door behind them, Lucy activates the time machine, which throws her and Future Quinn into 2024. Angry over being stopped from killing Summer and getting his revenge, Future Quinn attacks Lucy, and the fight ends with her stabbing him in the chest. Thus, with his death, the whole cycle of killings comes to an end. Because he is the future version of Quinn (or at least one of the versions), his death had no impact whatsoever on the young Quinn back in 2003. If anything, now Quinn has become conscious of his actions and promises to Lucy and Summer, but more importantly, to himself, that he will never turn into anything like Future Quinn. Sure enough, due to the changes that have taken place in his timeline, things are very, very different now. Quinn has not been through the things that Future Quinn suffered through in his timeline, making both of them very different people.
It was also important for Future Quinn to die because his bloodlust would never have stopped. Because he built the time machine the first time around, he could also build it again. He already had rubidium, and even if he ran out of it, he could get it again from SONR or someplace else, considering that he already had a lot more knowledge on the subject than Lucy and her friends. Moreover, Lucy couldn’t have turned him into the cops because there was no way his guilt could have been proven. On top of that, due to the changes in the timeline, Lucy is not supposed to exist in the future anymore, which already creates a huge problem for her. Thus, Future Quinn’s death solves all these problems while making sure that Summer remains out of danger and gets to live her life to the fullest without worrying about a serial killer chasing after her.
How Does Lucy Still Exist?
The reason Lucy had never met or known her elder sister, Summer, is because she wasn’t born while Summer was still alive. In fact, their parents had never even considered having a second child. It was when Summer died that they decided to go for it, hoping that the new child would help them with the grief of losing Summer. So, when Lucy goes to 2003 and stops Summer from getting murdered, she takes away the reason for her parents to have another child. This means that in the new timeline, Lucy is never born. Generally, this would mean that because she is never born, she would be erased from existence and disappear completely from all timelines. This is what she had expected as well when she briefly thought about not meddling with Summer’s tragic fate. However, as Future Quinn puts it, time travel doesn’t quite work like that.
Yes, changing the past changes the future and creates a paradox, but it doesn’t mean that the things that have created the paradox would completely disappear. If that happened, then a whole new Pandora’s box of problems would emerge. To put it in terms of the grandfather paradox, if Lucy is never born, she will never go back to the past to stop Future Quinn, which means Summer would be murdered, which means her parents will try to have another child, which means that Lucy will be born, which means she will go back to the past and change the future, which means the cycle will keep repeating itself. This makes things even more chaotic than before, but with one small change, the whole cycle is prevented from happening.
What Lucy has done by going into the past is change the course of events and create a new timeline. She has altered the past timeline but not completely erased it, which means that she can still exist. It’s more like her entering a parallel universe where she was never born, but she was stillborn in her original universe and original timeline. This is why, when she goes back to 2024 and discovers that she was never born, she isn’t instantly erased. In the simplest terms, matter can neither be created nor destroyed, which means that if Lucy has been born, she cannot simply be erased. This means that she must continue to exist as a paradox, and this is what she does.
This same theory can be applied to Future Quinn as well. In the original timeline, while he was wronged, he didn’t get to kill his classmates until he had turned into an adult. He committed the murders years after he had faced the humiliation that would change him forever. So, originally, none of those four people was supposed to die. This means that Summer would get to live, and Lucy would never be born. This is why Quinn never met Lucy or knew about her existence. But then, he went back to the past, killed Summer, and kickstarted the events that would lead to Lucy’s birth. In a way, he unintentionally set the things in motion that would lead to his own death. He never knew Lucy, so he never factored in her existence in his plans, which is what leads to the events that unfold in the movie.
Why Does Lucy Go Back to 2003?
When the dust has settled on what becomes the most chaotic three days of her life, Lucy is in 2024, back to where she started. Only this time, her actions in the past have led to her not existing in 2024. Lucy didn’t like the way that her parents treated her and how they were with her, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t love them. She realizes that the reason for their behavior is rooted in their loss. So, when she sees them in 2003 when their daughter is still alive, she feels as if they are someone else’s parents. In 2024, when she goes back home, it becomes clear that it is not her home anymore. Her parents don’t recognize her because they are not her parents, considering that they never had another child. Because Lucy was never born in this timeline, she never went to school and never applied for and won the NASA internship. For all intents and purposes, she is a ghost that doesn’t belong there.
However, Lucy did feel like she belonged in 2003. Back there, her parents were happier and treated her better. Back there, she got to know her elder sister rather than live in the shadow of her tragedy and despise her for it. Moreover, she also has Quinn in 2003, with whom she relates on several levels, as she had felt like an outcast in 2024, just like Quinn felt he was different in 2003. Even if she lived there for only three days, Lucy realizes that her life exists in 2003, not in 2024. When she finds rubidium in Future Quinn’s pocket, she decides to take her chance and goes back to 2003, where she has more than what she’d have in 2024. She’d have to start anew in both timelines, but at least, in 2003, she would have a sister and a friend and a future to look forward to.
Read More: Netflix’s Time Cut: All Filming Locations Explored
