Timelines and Time Travel in Midnight at the Pera Palace, Explained

‘Midnight at the Pera Palace,’ the Trukish show about time travel, charts the riveting escapades of a couple of time travelers as they jump across different eras and attempt to leave the flow of history untouched in their wake. The show’s protagonist, Esra, finds herself entering the halls of the historical Pera Palace on a journalism assignment. However, after a meeting with the peculiar manager, Ahmet, she accidentally ends up going back in time to 1919. Therefore, as Esra and Ahmet become inextricably entangled in the assassination plot against Turkey’s first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, they find the country’s future riding on their shoulders.

As Esra’s path crosses with Halit’s, their budding love doomed by time and space leads to infinite more complications, setting the trio up for a world of hazardous adventure. In two seasons so far, Esra and her friends have already messed with time enough to stir significant trouble. Consequently, as with any time-traveling story, hers also comes with a complicated understanding of time as she meddles with the past to branch it out into different timelines. SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Mechanics of Time Travel at the Pera Palace

In the show’s mystery-driven historical drama narrative, time travel largely remains a prominent impetus that moves the plot along rather than the central focus. Consequently, instead of a sci-fi approach, the story creates its image of time traveling under a mystical light. Essentially, in this universe, the Pera Palace and its many rooms serve as a time machine, allowing individuals to travel back and forth in time. From the hundreds of rooms, the establishment houses dozens of them with time-traveling portals inside. However, one can only access these portals by being in the room at the stroke of midnight with the respective room’s magical key. Each room’s portal only works as a one-way passage to a particular moment in time, sweeping its residents to it regardless of their will.

At the start of the series, Ahmet, the hotel’s manager and keeper of its mystical secret, believes only one key to room 411 possesses these powers. However, as the narrative progresses, he learns that dozens of other keys can be used to jump across different time periods. It all started in 1894—a few years after the hotel’s creation. The Pera was built atop a graveyard, naturally holding spiritual powers within its premises. Therefore, after a large earthquake shook the continent, the magnetic force of the phenomenon led to a power surge, which activated the portals inside the Pera.

Consequently, now the hotel has dozens of active portals that can take an individual to any point in time, given they have the right key to take them to their destination. Nevertheless, these portals can often be finicky. Since the Pera allows people to mess with the linear flow of time, a big enough change can lead to a magnetic disturbance that will momentarily malfunction the portals’ mechanics or deactivate them. Therefore, at its core, the hotel’s time-traveling abilities remain chaotic in its impossible power.

The 1890s: Discovery of the Portals and the Gateway of Truth

Even though Ahmet believes himself to be the keeper of Pera Palace’s secret, he isn’t the first to discover its fascinating abilities. After the earthquake of 1894, Migirdic Panelokordz stumbled across the secret all on his own. Migirdic was the locksmith who created the doors and the keys to the Pera Palace, crafting the latter out of metal he found in the cemetery that preceded the hotel. He also discovered the existence of the Gateway of Truth, a mysterious portal situated under the hotel. Unlike the other rooms, the Gateway can take individuals to any moment in time.

Nevertheless, travel through the Gateway leaves a darkened impression upon one’s soul. Therefore, as Migirdic undertook a trip to stop his wife’s untimely death in the past, he emerged on the other side, deranged under the Gateway’s influence. In the end, he ended up killing his wife with his own hand. Afterward, when he came back to his own time, he continued slaughtering everyone near him until his own inevitable death. Ultimately, only his apprentice, Dimtri, was left around to tell the tale. Peride’s appearance at the hotel as a baby was another crucial thing that happened in this time period. Yet, that instance came with much more context around it, jumbled through different eras in time.

The 1910s: The Beginning of Esra’s Time-Traveling Adventure

Even though the ‘Midnight at the Pera Palace’ has a knack for looping across different time periods, creating confounding timelines, certain eras act as touchstones within the narrative. The year 1919 arrives as the first such era in Esra’s story. After the journalist’s one-night stay at the Pera in the 2020s, she travels back in time to 1919. Ahmet, perpetually concerned for the linear flow of time, follows after her and unwittingly chooses to become her companion through time and space. In 1919, the duo ran into Esra’s identical doppelganger, Peride, a woman who is said to have saved President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from an attempted assassination.

Only, the assassination hasn’t happened yet. As such, when Ahmet and Esra unexpectedly find Peride dead in a hotel room the night of their arrival in 1919, the duo have no choice but to stay in the time period. Since Peride’s actions changed the course of history, bringing Turkey to its future under Atatürk’s rule, Esra now must fulfill that role and ensure everything comes to pass it must. Consequently, in her mission, she crosses paths with Halit—the double agent spy assigned to Atatürk’s assassination. Ultimately, Esra, Ahmet, and Halit undergo several challenges but manage to prevent the assassination, ensuring Turkey’s future.

For the most part, Esra and Ahmet’s out-of-time actions in 1919 don’t change much about history. Even though the details surrounding certain events are changed—such as Atatürk’s assassination attempt unfolding on a boat rather than the Pera Palace—the end results remain. Even her impromptu visit to 1917, where Halit meets her for the first time, remains a continuation of reality that the 1919 Halit had always experienced. As for the more prominent outcomes of Esra’s untimely presence—such as Peride’s death—the details are insignificant enough not to entail any substantial butterfly effects. Nonetheless, the same cannot be said for one of her particularly reckless endeavors.

1942: Esra Creates Her First Alternate Timeline

While Esra and Ahmet manage to avoid making significant changes to the past during their stay in 1919, their actions indirectly lead to one notable outcome that creates a lethal paradox. In 1919, Ahmet comes across a young version of his mother, Sonya. Since Ahmet’s father left Sonya early on in their relationship, the man never knew him. However, he now discovers that Halit is his biological father. As such, when one misstep leads to Halit getting shot, it creates a paradox that threatens Ahmet’s existence. As the lives of the two men most dear to Esra are threatened, she decides on an impulsive solution.

Halit’s fight for his life seems bleak solely due to the lack of penicillin in 1919. Therefore, she decides to travel to the future and bring back some antibiotic medicine for the man. However, the future she lands in is one where Atatürk’s assassination succeeded without Halit’s intervention, putting George in a position of power. Thus, this future remains bleak and dystopian as Turkish citizens are forced to become fugitives in their own land. Nonetheless, since Esra returns to 1919 with the medicine and saves Halit, that future never comes to being, cementing it as an alternate universe that lies outside the main timeline.

1995: Esra’s Out-of-Time Beginning

After Esra and Ahmet ensure the passage of the central timeline remains safe and sound with Atatürk’s assassination foiled, they realize they must return to their own time. However, a malfunction with Pera’s portals caused the pair to land in 1995 instead of the 2020s. More concerningly, they find themselves in the company of a baby, left alone on the hotel bed.

As it turns out, this baby is the younger version of Esra. In 1995, the Pera Palace gave a baby to the authorities after finding her abandoned in one of their rooms. Since Esra had never read her file from the orphanage, she had never known about this detail. Thus, Esra realizes that her relationship with time traveling is more convoluted and expansive than she had thought.

1940s: Esra’s Fight Against Mumtaz

Directly after Esra and Ahemt’s unintended arrival in 1995, the Pera landed the pair in the 1940s due to its continued malfunctioning. After Esra left in 1919, Halit decided to go after his true love by learning about the hotel’s secrets and using the Gateway of Truth to find his time-traveling lover. Therefore, he arrived in 1941, where he befriended Mumtaz, hoping the man would help him find his way back to Esra. Nonetheless, once Mumtaz learns about Pera’s secret, he starts using its time-traveling abilities for his own personal benefit. Consequently, the portals malfunctioned, trapping Esra and Ahmet in 1941.

Almost all of season 2 unfolds within this period as a continuation of the show’s timeline. The viewers also learn that Esra and Peride, born as twins, originally came from this timeline before their mother died, and their father left them at the hotel to be taken to different time periods. However, unlike Esra’s interference in 1919, Halit’s presence in 1941 has led to numerous historical changes.

Mumtaz’s rise to power remains the most notable one, as he formed a secret organization to revert Turkey’s women’s rights movement. Inevitably, in stopping his plot, Esra finds herself again employing time traveling as a tool, leading to adverse outcomes. Nonetheless, by the end, Esra and her friends manage to save the day and set things on the right path. Even so, their misadventures result in a drastic paradox that kills Halit—at least in this timeline.

1979: The Dystopian Alternate Timeline of Mumtaz’s Creation

Much like season 1, Esra’s ill-advised jumps through time create another alternate timeline during her adventures in 1941. In her quest to prevent Mumtaz’s plans, Esra ends up jumping forward to 1979. There, she finds her interference in the past has created a dystopian future for Turkey, where Mumtaz’s reign has stripped all rights from women. This bleak future brings a truckload of complications for Esra and Ahmet. Still, it also equips them with the information they need to stop Mumtaz in 1941 and ensure such a timeline never comes to pass.

The 2020s: Esra Finally Breaks the Timeline

Halit’s death in 1941 entirely breaks Esra’s spirit. The lovers’ fate had been entangled and doomed across space and time. Even at the worst of times, Esra assumed the worst they would have to suffer as a couple would be separation. Therefore, the death of her better half leaves her disoriented. For the same reason, she decides to undo all the past actions that ever led her to cross paths with Halit in the first place. Thus, she concludes that she must stop herself from ever time-traveling in the first place. Naturally, given her significant contribution to past events, this decision comes with unexpected consequences.

Once Ahmet and Esra prevent the latter’s past self from time-traveling, an unprecedented malfunction occurs in the Pera Palace timeline. Such an action would have previously created a paradox that would threaten Ahmet and Esra’s current existence. Yet, this time, it completely shatters time within the hotel, bringing different eras together under the same roof. Consequently, key figures from the duo’s misadventures through time, including Halit, jump forward in time. Thus, now that the future has been irrevocably damaged, the trio only has one chance at redemption: 1894. Ultimately, the central timeline, as it stands, is a jumbled mess of incoherence. As such, a trip to the inception of the portals at Pera remains the only solution to bring time back to its linear harmony.