Diksha Sundriyal
Amazon Prime’s ‘Paper Girls’ is a time travel show that comes up with a fresh set of characters and mythology to deliver an exciting tale. The show, based on the comic book series of the same name, revolves around four twelve-year-old girls, who accidentally travel in time and then try to find a way back to their original timeline. Along the way, they find out about two factions who are at war with each other due to their differing ideologies regarding time travel. A lot of new names and terminologies are thrown their way, as everything starts to become more and more complex with each passing day. One of the terms that they are introduced to is ablution. It is an important part of the first season and becomes a defining factor in the future of the paper girls. But what does it mean? Here’s what you should know. SPOILERS AHEAD
What Does Ablution Mean in Paper Girls?
In a general sense of the term, ablution refers to the act of washing oneself clean. While in real life, one washes clean of dirt and other corporeal things, in ‘Paper Girls’, ablution means the washing off of memories that one is not supposed to have. Time travel is not allowed under the regime of the Old Watch. They don’t want anyone to go back and forth, trying to correct the course of history and messing it up in the process. Whenever someone takes a jump in time, past or future, they kickstart a series of events that only results in chaos. The Old Watch’s job is to stop that from happening, and if not that, then to at least cover it up.
STF has already caused a lot of trouble since they came across the technology that allows them to time travel. Their presence in a time that they don’t belong leads a number of people to find out about time travel and create further troubles. It would probably have been easier to kill anyone who gets involved with STF, but the organization has evolved so much that there are too many people involved with it to kill them all. Moreover, killing off people every time STF agents travel out of time would only result in more mess. Besides, there are only so many people that the Old Watch can kill before making the people in the present suspicious.
To curb the situation, the Old Watch comes up with an ingenious solution. Every time they catch someone traveling in time, they clean up after them by removing people’s memories of the events. Anyone who has come in contact with a time traveler will have their memories removed. Because the number of such people increases by the day, the Old Watch has found a way to perform ablution on a large scale. In this event, a magenta glow envelopes the world, and people are taken away, one by one, to have their memories removed. We see the actual process happen in the final episode when Juniper and older Tiffany levitate and then disappear as if beamed up by an alien ship.
This also explains the disappearance of people in the first episode, before the girls time travel. This was when Heck and Naldo had been in 1988. To remove the traces of their presence, an ablution was conducted, for which every person in Stony Stream was taken away to have their memories removed before they could be allowed to go back to their lives. This helps the Old Watch keep the timeline in check while not causing a bloodbath and attracting undue attention to themselves. However, they don’t claim to extend the same kindness to time travelers, who are killed for the crime of trying to tamper with the timeline.
Read More: What is the Meaning of Blue Tongues Don’t Lie in Paper Girls?
