What would happen after the end of "Twelve Monkeys"? (spoilers)

[repoman]

I just watched it again today and the final scene with the future woman on the plane with the virus spreader has me thinking.

I think that James Cole is in a time loop and will always die at the airport.

I also think that the virus will always have killed 5 billion people. The loop can only end after the latest date that James Cole worked for the future people (roughly 2025). Maybe at that point the woman on the plane can use the original virus as cure/vaccine for everyone still alive - or whoever she chooses.

Basically she is also part of the loop temporarily, but nested outside of Cole's loop. Like Cole always getting shot she always is on the plane. However, in her the future timeline, there is a forward flow of time. After she handles her task and comes back she need not be in the time loop anymore.

If the virus guy is stopped the time loop goes poof.

This would mean that Cole would be a sacrificial pawn without knowing it. Also, maybe the woman knows all of this.

What say ye?

 

[Keith&Co.]

I also think that the virus will always have killed 5 billion people.

It's been a while but i thought that was the whole point of the movie. Cole kept trying to stop the plague, but the people who sent him back in time would not be in power in a world without a plague.
They wanted access to the original plague so they could better control it in their time, but not to save the whole world.

I don't think there are any time 'loops' as much as the past is written in stone. The virus DID kill billyuns. Cole DID die at the airport. Young Cole DID see himself die. And his efforts to stop the release merely told the powers of the future when they could secure a sample of the original virus. When she returns to her time (which could be a day after Cole was sent back, or five years after), they'll have what they wanted and can move towards an airtight and endless control of futureworld.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I also think that the virus will always have killed 5 billion people.

It's been a while but i thought that was the whole point of the movie. Cole kept trying to stop the plague, but the people who sent him back in time would not be in power in a world without a plague.
They wanted access to the original plague so they could better control it in their time, but not to save the whole world.

I don't think there are any time 'loops' as much as the past is written in stone. The virus DID kill billyuns. Cole DID die at the airport. Young Cole DID see himself die. And his efforts to stop the release merely told the powers of the future when they could secure a sample of the original virus. When she returns to her time (which could be a day after Cole was sent back, or five years after), they'll have what they wanted and can move towards an airtight and endless control of futureworld.

You realize they also made a TV series on this?

 

[repoman]

Is it any good?

I don't care if it is a lot different.

 

[Keith&Co.]

You realize they also made a TV series on this?

Vaguely.
And they made a mini-series out of the Andromeda Strain which had very little to do with the original.

 

[Valjean]

Everett was right. All possible futures will be realized.

 

[Jesse]

Everett was right. All possible futures will be realized.

Stephen Hawking has said that even if Everett is right, each time traveler would probably find themselves in a single self-consistent history rather than being able to "change the past" and end up in a different timeline than they started from (see the "Many-worlds interpretation" section of the wikipedia "time travel" article). Twelve Monkeys is one of only a handful of time travel movies that stick to this version of time travel (only others I can think of are the Bill & Ted movies, Chronocrimes, and maybe Predestination and Interstellar), and it makes very good dramatic use of it. The TV series drops the idea of a fixed unchangeable timeline, understandably I suppose for an ongoing story.

 

[Jayjay]

The tv series is following the rule of cool, which means sometimes they have time loops, sometimes they change history, depending on whatever the writer of that episode had in mind. This why the ending did absolutely nothing for me. It was a nod to the movie ending, but with all the other inconsistencies going on it was othewise devoid of any meaning.

I heard there is like a tv movie made to conclude the series, which I haven't seen though.

Speaking of time travel, I'm also disappointed at Timeless not delivering on the premise. Sure it doesn't have a fixed timeline, but it started off with changing history and did some small changes in every episode (like Hindenburg not crashing, Abraham Lincoln shot by an unknown assailant instead of John Wilkes Booth), and I was really hoping they would have continued to diverge from the "real" timeline, making bigger changes along the way and culminating in a cliffhanger at the end of the season. But then they kind of veered off course into the omnipotent conspiracy nonsense, and for some reason they also seem to inconsistently have a fixed time loop involving whatshername's diary.

I wish there was a good time travel show somewhere out there that has the courage to decide on whether it has multiple worlds or a fixed timeline, and sticks with it.

 

[Patooka]

I heard there is like a tv movie made to conclude the series, which I haven't seen though.

Tv series is still going. Season 3 starts in a month and SyFy has renewed it for a fourth season.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I also think that the virus will always have killed 5 billion people.

It's been a while but i thought that was the whole point of the movie. Cole kept trying to stop the plague, but the people who sent him back in time would not be in power in a world without a plague.
They wanted access to the original plague so they could better control it in their time, but not to save the whole world.

I don't think there are any time 'loops' as much as the past is written in stone. The virus DID kill billyuns. Cole DID die at the airport. Young Cole DID see himself die. And his efforts to stop the release merely told the powers of the future when they could secure a sample of the original virus. When she returns to her time (which could be a day after Cole was sent back, or five years after), they'll have what they wanted and can move towards an airtight and endless control of futureworld.

Ya, I think that the point of the movie was that when you travel back in time, everything that you do is something that already happened and there are no "alternate timelines" or "changing the future". The whole point of sending him back was to gather information, so that the lady can be on the plane and get a sample of the virus in order to bring it back to the future and manufacture a cure. They can't change the outcome because their actions in the past are already part of the outcome, but they can use what hey learn from the past to fix things going forward.