Chapter 1 - The OTL (Original Timeline)
So let’s all try to imagine what the Blake Holsey High Multiverse was like before the first time traveler...what do we have? But perhaps a better starting point is to consider what we don’t have...
For starters, we don’t have a Blake Holsey High. The school was built by Andreas Avenir, a time traveler. So in the OTL, before Avenir was born or time travelled, the school doesn’t exist. Avenir is Josie’s father. So that means Josie Trent doesn’t exist either.
No Josie Trent means no clone of Josie, so no Sojie. It also means no Qi gong ball & no Pearadyne likely. A “time travel free” timeline also means no Janitor. And no Sarah Pearson. No Sarah means no Vaughn. I think that’s all the subtractions.
We still have Noel Zachary who likely never becomes a “professor” without a Pearadyne scholarship, as the events of the episode Fate showed us. Fate also casts doubt on Victor’s future as a scientist without Sarah’s intervention. We have Lucas, Marshall & Corrine.
Do Lucas, Marshall & Corrine ever meet? Possible that 2 or all 3 of them end up at the same school, but it seems more unlikely than likely. Ditto Amanda Durst & the rest of the students like Stu, Madison, Tyler etc. possible crossover there between some characters.
So what’s the inciting event that forces time travel to happen in the Strange Days at Blake Holsey High, setting the wheel in motion for the events of the series to unfold? That’s what we’ll tackle next.
Chapter 2: The Inciting Event
At some point in the distant future a collective of scientists begin working together to explore the feasibility of time travel. Among them is a man named Andreas Avenir.
As part of the collective’s research, they study the writings & theories of past scientists. People like Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku & Susan Schneider. But Andreas Avenir is most intrigued by the theories of a little known early 21st century scientist named Victor Pearson.
Believing that Pearson’s theories hold the key to time travel, Avenir presents his findings to his colleagues. While his fellow scientists are intrigued, they determine that what Pearson proposed is dangerously unstable, & in the case of failure, potentially catastrophic.
Forbidden by his colleagues from attempting to put any of Victor Pearson’s theories into practice, Andreas Avenir goes rogue. Avenir leaves the scientific collective, determined to make time travel a reality, using Pearson’s theories as his initial building blocks.
Avenir begins his research & experiments. Alone. Weeks turn into months, months turn into years. Nothing. Then, an epiphany. Victor Pearson took extensive notes on astronomical charts, and measured the strength of Earth’s magnetic field at different coordinates.
Perhaps just as important as the experiment itself, is where the experiment takes place. Avenir brings his mobile laboratory to Southern Ontario. The site of what was once the Pearson family estate, & what would in another timeline, be the location of Blake Holsey High.
If this is to succeed, surely this will be the place. For the 110th time, Avenir again activates the time travel device, inspired by the work of Victor Pearson. And this time... it works. Andreas Avenir disappears. He has become the world’s first time traveler.
Chapter 3: The Travels of Avenir
Andreas Avenir’s first few moments are an incomprehensible blur, rapidly leaping from one time to the next, without a respite to comprehend where or when he is. But the effect begins to stabilize.
Soon, Avenir is spending several seconds in each different time & is able to recognize that he is in the same place, the Pearson Estate, but trees grow in an instant & disappear. Pearson Mansion rises out of thin air one moment, falls into disrepair the next, then is gone.
Avenir then realizes that the time between jumps is gradually becoming longer. Eventually he is spending several minutes in each time period, then hours, then days. The longer stays allow him to establish that he is traveling to twelve distinct periods in time.
For the purposes of this conversation, we’ll concentrate on the four years that most directly impacted events at Blake Holsey High... 1879 1977 1987 2005 The rest of Avenir’s travels shall for the time being remain a mystery.
Chapter 4: Enter the Observers
When Andreas Avenir’s time travels begin, the temporal disturbance alerts “The Observers” a group that resides in a place called “The Omission,” a region which exists outside the known space-time continuum.
At first, the Observers regard Avenir’s travels as a mere curiosity. But as Avenir’s time spent in each different period increases, so does their concern. It soon becomes clear that Avenir is not content to simply travel through time, he intends to manipulate time.
Avenir inserts himself into Victor Pearson’s life, mining him for information, particularly at two critical junctures. 1977, where he encourages Victor’s love of science. And 1987, where his surreptitious aid results in the creation of Pearadyne Industries.
While Avenir has achieved his goal of time travel, he’s still uncontrollably lurching from one time to the next. He needs Victor’s expertise, & Pearadyne Industries, to control time travel. Pearadyne grows, attracting other gifted scientists, including Kelly Trent.
Buoyed by Avenir, Pearadyne enables Victor to test his time travel theories for the very first time. The result is disaster. From their perch outside the space/time continuum, The Observers witness temporal destruction on a scale unlike anything they’ve seen before.
As Professor Z speculated in Conclusions, a new timeline/universe is created whenever someone time travels. The Observers see that Avenir has created hundreds of new timelines in his travels...but the Pearadyne disaster has triggered a cascade of timeline destruction.
The Observers concern grows when they realize that Avenir is undeterred. When Avenir returns to 1987 there is another accident, and more timeline destruction. If Avenir is allowed to persist, it represents an existential threat to all known life in the universe.
Chapter 5: 1879 & 1977
The Observers determine that to stop Avenir, they must find a way to counteract his influence over Victor. And that the key lies not in 1987, but 10 years earlier in 1977, when Victor is an impressionable teen.
A young observer named Sarah Lynch is sent to 1977 to befriend Victor Pearson at Blake Holsey Preparatory School, which is in fact, another artifact of Avenir’s travels. Once Avenir realized that manipulating Victor in 1987 wasn’t proving successful, he made other plans...
Using his knowledge of the future, Avenir amassed a fortune which he used to purchase a parcel of land adjacent to the Pearson estate. Avenir was convinced that the secret to time travel lie not just in Victor Pearson’s mind, but in the magnetic field around his estate.
In 1879, Avenir opened a school on the land, the New Chichester Preparatory Academy, hoping to cultivate young scientific minds. Just as he planned, a young Victor Pearson later attended the school. But Sarah Lynch was a complication he hadn’t accounted for.
Chapter 6: Children of the Future
Sarah’s influence over Victor succeeds in limiting the damage from his time travel experiments. It also forces Avenir to find another way to manipulate events in his favor...through Kelly Trent.
Sarah was sent to 1977 to channel Victor’s time travel efforts in a less destructive course.
She succeeds, but in the next ten years she also falls in love. Victor & Sarah are married. In the months before the 1987 accident at Pearadyne, their son is born. Vaughn Pearson.
Meanwhile, romance develops between Andreas Avenir & Kelly Trent.
Sarah disappears as a direct result of the accident, but in its aftermath, Avenir disappears as well & isn’t seen again until 2005. Kelly's daughter Josie is born about 8 months following the accident.
As Avenir states in Conclusions, he tries to convince Kelly to work against Victor & Sarah. While Kelly is suspicious of Victor & Sarah’s plans & motives, and provides Avenir with information on their progress, she stops short of sabotaging or altering their efforts.
Following the 1987 accident, Sarah & Avenir are, temporarily at least, off the board. Victor raises Vaughn while desperately trying to find his lost wife. Kelly is determined to raise Josie far away from all this, until an eerily familiar visitor convinces her otherwise.
Kelly doesn’t know the extent of Avenir’s treachery, but she knows enough to be very worried about what he’ll do next. When Kelly learns that Josie being at Blake Holsey High is essential to saving the future, she knows what she must do.
Chapter 7: Josie & Sojie
Josie Trent’s arrival at Blake Holsey High in 2002 isn’t mere happenstance, it’s pure calculation. Until now, Avenir hasn’t betrayed a shred of sentimentality, but the presence of his daughter is a game changer.
Within months of her arrival at Blake Holsey High, Josie Trent triggers two seismic, timeline-shifting events. First, in the episode “Fate,” is the creation of the floating qigong ball when she and Vaughn travel to the year 1977, which is then taken by Victor Pearson.
To this point, Victor’s time travel experiments have been at best ill-advised & at worst, disastrous. But the qigong ball gives Victor a stable power source & with Sarah’s knowledge, a viable path towards stable time travel. But the ball has another major impact as well.
The ball captures the imagination of Andreas Avenir, who sees it as the key to enabling him to finally control time travel, instead of it controlling him. To his mind, the fact that it’s his daughter that made this breakthrough possible, means it’s absolute destiny.
Josie’s second timeline-altering moment occurs in Culture, when her clone, Sojie, is created. The fact that the Janitor knows Sojie will arrive is a major series revelation. But what does it tell us? If nothing else, it tells us that Sojie’s existence isn’t a surprise.
This seems like a good time to further explore the ones we call...The Observers. What their rules are... What they know and don’t know... What they can and can’t do... We’ll get into that next.
Chapter 8: Into the Omission
Imagine you’re a forest ranger, & from your vantage point, you can clearly see 1,000,000 trees. You can’t tell what is happening at each & every tree, but when one catches fire, you know. That’s the Observers.
The Observers exist in a place called The Omission, outside the known space-time continuum. How? Why? We don’t know. At least not yet. They aren’t all knowing, but they do know trouble when they see it. So the Observers had a choice, do something or do nothing?
The Observers undergo rigorous training and operate according to a strict code... But they are also granted wide latitude when it comes to issues of moral discernment. That’s why even though they’re sworn “not to interfere,” as the Janitor says, sometimes...they do.
While Sarah is sent to 1977 to prevent Avenir’s wide scale timeline devastation, her mission as an Observer had a more noble slant... Be a positive influence on Victor. Help him make safer, more thoughtful decisions. Guide him towards a less destructive future.
In Stopwatch & Transference, the Janitor allows Sojie to make her own decisions re: taking the ball from Josie & returning it to Victor, implying that while the Janitor may be more experienced, there’s no hierarchy. Each Observer acts in line with their own moral compass.
In Inquiry, the Janitor all but pleads with Josie not to do what he fears she’s about to do, but the Janitor is determined to encourage and guide, not instruct. The Janitor’s tactics reveal his greatest fear...that he might give an order that has unforeseen consequences.
In Inquiry, when the Janitor says “The Josie Trent problem can no longer be ignored. It must be neutralized. By any means necessary.” It’s a cry for help. He’s done all he can do without directly intervening, which he won’t allow himself to do. And it’s all gone sideways.
In Conclusions we see just how different the Janitor & Sojie are as observers. Sojie knows that she unequivocally crossed a line when she assumed Josie’s identity, but her willingness to take larger risks than the Janitor is ultimately essential to solving the problem.
My last thought for now on Observers is this: When they let someone become a member of their order, they’re placing absolute faith in that persons capacity for good. They’ll inevitably be faced with profoundly grave decisions & must completely trust each other’s morality.
Chapter 9: The Ramifications of Inquiry
By the last episode of Season 3, steam has been steadily gathering over the past 38 episodes. Blake Holsey High is at its breaking point. In Inquiry, episode 39, it’s finally about to blow.
Let’s look at Inquiry from the Janitor’s POV... He knows the endgame is coming and he realizes that the events of “Past” are an absolute harbinger of disaster. Avenir came way too close to meeting Josie for comfort. And Vaughn ending up in 1977? This is not good.
Then Josie shows up. Bad situation, meet worse. I think that the last thing that the janitor wants to happen is what happens next. Josie finds out that what transpired between Victor, Sarah & the ball wasn’t spontaneous, it was somehow planned. And she was the catalyst.
In this way, the Observers involvement in events backfires in an unexpected way. I think Josie can handle having made a mistake, but she hates the idea that she was somehow manipulated. The idea that she was in someway fated to bring Victor the ball feels decidedly wrong.
When something feels wrong Josie doesn’t sit still, she pushes back. So she pushes back against the idea that it was “destiny” that she bring Victor the ball. When the Janitor stands in the way of that, and betrays her trust...as the Janitor himself said “all is lost.”
When Josie returns from 1977, she’s a freight train at full throttle. I’m not sure that anything could have stopped her. Then Victor made it worse. Then the Janitor made it worse. Again. She can’t be talked out of feeling that this is all on her. And she needs to fix it.
Still I don’t believe the Janitor or Sojie expect what happens to Josie at the end of Inquiry. What we see is the result of Avenir’s temporal destruction that we talked about earlier. The magnetic field around the school has protected it, but everything else is destroyed.
By taking the ball at the point in the past she does, Josie creates a universe where Victor’s time travel efforts (without the ball) are sabotaged by Avenir in someway, leading to the condemnation of the school and the eventual destruction of all the surrounding universe.
At Inquiry’s end, we see the Janitor & Sojie confronted with the worst case scenario. They know that Avenir is about to arrive in the main series timeline & that Josie is key to putting a stop to Avenir once and for all, but Josie has caged herself in a barren timeline.
Chapter 10: Coming to Conclusions
When Conclusions begins, Josie has been missing for a year. I think we can assume Avenir arrived shortly after her disappearance to put his plan into motion. So what has he been doing over the past year?
Avenir’s aim is to disrupt Victor’s life & work, and some of that just happens. We didn’t have time to explore this onscreen, but I imagine that when Josie disappears, it’s a sobering reality check for Victor. Then there’s how it affected his relationship with Vaughn.
As Vaughn confessed to Corrine, he has always harbored resentment towards his father for his mother’s disappearance. When Josie disappears too, it’s another wedge to drive them further apart. Josie’s disappearance also negatively affects the school in very real ways.
Enrollment drops as parents withdraw students in droves, including Marshall Wheeler. Victor has always been the schools biggest benefactor, but it soon becomes a tremendous financial burden. Victor soon can’t support Blake Holsey & keep Pearadyne solvent at the same time.
Enter Avenir who offers to absorb the school’s financial losses allowing him to supplant Victor as head of the school’s board. Victor, now detached from the school & estranged from his son, becomes desperate & erratic causing him to lose investors. Victor is a broken man.
By announcing that he is closing the school Avenir starts a ticking clock, hoping to sow desperation, particularly with Vaughn. With the school closing & Victor facing bankruptcy, Vaughn has to act now if he ever wants to see his mother again or hope to rescue Josie.
Vaughn plays directly into Avenir’s hands. Avenir even knows exactly when Vaughn will enter his office. It’s like, as Avenir says, “an exquisitely played chess match” with every move choreographed. Well, almost. Avenir was prepared for everything... except Sojie.
As it turns out, Sojie is the only one who can free Josie from the alternate timeline she’s trapped in. Without her, Josie never returns and neither does Sarah Pearson’s necklace, which means the message is never played alerting them all to Avenir’s plan.
Without Josie’s interference, Avenir would be able to use Vaughn, the ball & the palladium floor in Z’s office to stop his random time jumps & control his travel through time in any way he wishes. This ultimately is what the Observers were sent to stop. And they succeed.
Epilogue
At the end of Conclusions, we are truly entering a future that hasn’t been written. The ball has lost its power. With Sarah at Victor’s side, he’ll surely be discouraged from publishing any controversial works on time travel.
Sojie is trapped in an alternate timeline. The Janitor is seemingly stuck in the present. Avenir’s ceaseless time jumps have finally been brought to end, thus ending his constant attempts at time manipulation, but his ultimate fate and whereabouts, remain unknown.
Josie, Corrine, Lucas, Marshall, Vaughn & Z move on from Blake Holsey High, but they’ve been forever changed. The now uncertain fates of Sojie, The Janitor, Victor & Avenir will one day affect all of them. And write the next chapter of the Blake Holsey High Multiverse.