User blog comment:Thailog/Ep. 201 "Happy New Year!" discussion/@comment-99.141.80.243-20120503023209

Hey, guys. For those of you who think that this time jump is permanent, and also for those of you who are wishing that it wasn't, I've just thought of a few reasons why there has to be a jump-back to the original timeline during season 2.

1. This story-line is set in 2016, a future that even the real world hasn't seen yet. As far as I heard about Greg Weisman, he has never written a story that was set in a year that even he didn't know anything about without jumping back to the present soon after. Why would he waste six months of his life doing that for this entire season?

2. The way that the story jumped right into the future after that recap of "Auld Acquaintances" without giving a narration of what happened in the last five years seemed like an interruption of a new plotline and makes me think that this was just a glimpse of the future that would end after a short interval of time. Otherwise, this whole season wouldn't make sense. Greg Weisman has done that on "The Spectacular Spider-Man", albeit for shorter intervals, so it would be his MO.

3. For those of you who are saying that a jump-back to the present wouldn't make sense and would take the fun out of the show by revealing what's gonna happen later, let me remind you that William Shakespeare did that sort of thing all the time with his plays and that he was a huge inspiration for Greg Weisman. So don't say that it wouldn't be Greg's MO. Besides, a lot of the stuff in the 2016 would probably be negated by what happens after the jump-back. I know that that he's not known for doing that, but that statement was said a long time ago, so he probably doesn't think that way anymore. And even if he does, remember that this show doesn't just belong to him; it also belongs to Brandon Vietti and a lot of other writers and producers.

4. From what I've saw in the early trailers for Season 1, they had only shown what would happen in the first five episodes. I don't think that it's any different for Season 2. So I wouldn't rely on the trailers to determine what's gonna happen this whole season. If the 2016 plotline is only gonna last for these first five episodes, the trailers wouldn't show any more of Season 2 than that.

5. For those of you who are relying on flashbacks, the Legacy game and the tie-in comics to tell you what happened in the previous five years after Season 1, your arguments are invalid. There's no way that they're gonna clutter the whole season up with scattered, nonconsecutive flashbacks that are gonna take away from the main invasion plotline and the character development of the stars. They didn't do that in Season 1, they haven't done that in the first episode so far, and there's no reason for them to start now. The tie-in comics still haven't gone past the events of "Targets" and the Legacy game isn't coming until early-2013 at the soonest. By the time the Season 2 tie-in issues and the game come out, much of Season 2 will have already progressed and I doubt that they're gonna have as many hiatuses as in Season 1.

These are a few of the many reasons I can think of why I'm fairly certain that there's gonna be a jump-back during Season 2. Of course, I don't know what's gonna happen after this episode and I can't read the creators' minds. But if I were you, I would wait until "Earthlings" airs and see if there are any flashbacks in that episode or until Greg Weisman says that there isn't gonna be a jump-back before telling me that I'm wrong. If there are no flashbacks in "Earthlings" and Greg hasn't denied a jump-back, there's still a possibility that my theory is correct.

P.S. I know. Long post, right?