Netflix’s latest teenage sci-fi thriller, Time Cut, revolves around a time-displaced teenager, Lucy, who is caught in the dilemma between saving her own future and undoing a tragedy in the past, which involves the murder of her sister, Summer. Time Cut kicks off by tiptoeing around oft-repeated yet interesting time-travel concepts that range from self-acceptance, sacrifice for the greater good, alternate possibilities, and second chances, but it ultimately ends up with a confused mess of a plot that doesn’t adhere to the rules set by itself. Marked by a predominantly peppy early 2000 vibe, the movie tries to mix-up time travel shenanigans with slasher tropes, but the potential of this combination is never properly utilized.Â
Spoilers Ahead
How Did Lucy Get Stranded in the Past?
Time Cut begins in 2003 in the small town of Sweetly, Minnesota, where a serial killer has been targeting high school teenagers. We are introduced to Summer Field, a teenage girl attending a spring break party hosted by her batchmates while mourning the loss of her close friends, Emmy, Brian, and Val, who were the latest victims of the unknown serial killer, dubbed by locals as the Sweetly Slasher. We meet Summer’s nerdy friend, Quinn, a physics prodigy who likes Lucy and almost professes his love for her with a letter, until her ex-boyfriend, Ethan, takes Summer elsewhere. Unbeknownst to any of them, Summer is especially traumatized by the loss of her friend Emmy, with whom she had a relationship but, in fear of persecution, refrained from coming out to her family—and before Emmy’s demise, she became estranged from Summer due to her decision. Excusing herself from the chirpy crowd, Summer goes towards a secluded barn, where she falls prey to the serial killer.Â
The narrative jumps to the year 2024. Summer’s parents, who never got over her tragic demise, tried to fill their emotional void by having another daughter, Lucy. However, it is revealed that the dark past never really left the Field household, as their overbearing and distant behavior always made Lucy feel like she was living in her late elder sister’s shadow—someone she never even get to know in the first place. Lucy is a brilliant student, as at a pretty young age she has landed an internship at NASA, but her father doesn’t want her to move away from the family and suggests she take an internship at SONR, the town’s nuclear research facility instead. Lucy’s physics teacher advises her to take control of her own life and her own future—but that is a job easier said than done given her present predicament.
On the day of Summer’s death anniversary, Lucy goes with her parents to her sister’s memorial to pay her respects and gets distracted after hearing a strange noise—which was emanating from a time-travel device inside the barn where Summer met her horrid end. Things go sideways when Lucy ends up back in 2003, the exact day when the serial killer began their rampage for the first time. As Lucy visits Summer’s school, she gets acquainted with Quinn, who warns her not to get tangled up with the past after Lucy tries to question her physics teacher about time travel rules.
The Time Travel Device
After seeing Quinn getting harassed by Brian and Ethan, Lucy decides to step up and saves him from getting thrown into the river. Guessing that Quinn knows a thing or two about physics and time travel, Lucy asks for his help by sharing her predicament with him, and having a smartphone at her disposal, she doesn’t need to worry too much about convincing Quinn of the fact that she has arrived from the future. As the duo bring the time travel device into Quinn’s nerd-den, they are quick to realize the device uses a collision of matter and anti-matter to create a micro-level wormhole that allows movement through the space-time continuum; however, this is purely narrative construct pseudoscience, as in reality the reaction would bear very different results. Given the fact that the device bears the marking of SONR labs, Lucy plans to go to her family and take her father’s keycard to access the labs to get the necessary means to make a trip in her timeline to 2024. Anyway, Quinn and Lucy quickly hit it off, as both of them share a knack for science and have a common grief in their parental woes. After learning Lucy is Summer’s sister, Quinn warns her not to mess with this past timeline, as he fears any minor interaction will create a ripple effect or butterfly effect through the space-time continuum, which will alter the future in a massive way.
Lucy’s Dilemma
Lucy meets Summer, gets the chance to know her sister for the first time, and is surprised after realizing how lively and warm their parents used to be before the tragedy befell their family. With Lucy learning this on the very day the serial killer begins his three-day killing spree, she finds herself in jeopardy—according to Quinn, her actions of saving the victims can trigger unknown major changes in the future; therefore, she must refrain herself from saving the victims of the serial killer. But on the other hand, Summer advises her to do the right thing if she has the chance to do so, and ultimately Lucy adheres to her sister’s advice. But unfortunately, she is unable to save the first couple of victims of the killer—Brian and Val—and to make matters worse, her intervention results in the death of a security guard as well. However, on the next occasion, Lucy, Summer, and Quinn are able to save the next victim, Emmy, which leads Summer and Emmy to patch things up between themselves. But now Lucy faces another dilemma: if she saves Summer, the next victim of the killer, then Lucy herself will cease to exist, as she learns that their parents never planned on having another child when Summer was alive. And returning to her own timeline at this point will mean sending her sister to her inevitable doom. However, Lucy decides to both arrange means to return to her timeline and save her sister at the same time.
Who Was The Sweetly Slasher?
As Quinn and Lucy infiltrate SONR labs to get their hands on anti-matter particles to activate the time travel device, they realize the killer is a time- traveler as well, who has obtained a canister of anti-matter particles already. On the other hand, Summer was encouraged by her sister and proudly came out during the party by kissing Emmy and acknowledging their relationship. As the serial killer manages to corner Summer once again, the duo of Quinn and Lucy make a timely rescue by saving Summer from the infamous Sweetly Slasher and get flabbergasted after learning the true identity of the killer. A future version of Quinn has been targeting his batchmates by travelling back in time, and in all probability, he invented the time-traveling device in the first place. It is revealed that there was no Lucy present to save this version of Quinn from his bullies, and even Summer made fun of him in his miserable state. Future Quinn was not able to handle rejection as well, as Summer didn’t accept his proposal. A vengeful Quinn decided to take revenge on Summer and her friends by going back in time and murdering them and going scot-free afterwards by slipping into the timestream.
The time-travel rules in Time Cut don’t follow a linear time progression pattern, and instead the branched timeline, which holds central place in recent Terminator: Zero and MCU multiverses, is the foundation of its space-time continuum. As a result, there is no fear of the butterfly effect messing up the future in unimaginable ways, as every action in the past leads to the creation of a totally separate, distinct timeline as a new offshoot of the original timeline. Which is why, if the past version of Quinn dies, nothing will happen to his future version, as he is considered a separate entity whose existence bifurcated the moment he changed events in the past.
Is Quinn Alive or Dead?
As Future Quinn chases the trio of Lucy, Summer, and past Quinn with the intention of killing them to cover up his crimes, Summer takes him to 2024 and ends up killing him—saving her sister in the process. And due to the fact the butterfly effect doesn’t work in this version of time travel, Lucy doesn’t cease to exist either. However, in this new future, her parents don’t recognize her, and it is hinted that Summer had found a life with Emmy, being able to take control of her life, just like her sister, Lucy, aimed to do. Lucy eventually decided to return to 2003, as there she has a life worth living among her sister and their loving parents. Lucy applied for a NASA internship in the past, which she was able to obtain as well.
Past Quinn, who had promised Lucy to never turn out like his darker future self, is ecstatic to see Lucy return to the past. Without Lucy’s kindness and friendship, he could have turned out like his killer counterpart, but fortunately things turned out great for him thanks to Lucy’s presence. In a way, Lucy has to thank future Quinn for her existence, as if not for his actions of killing Summer, Lucy would have never been born in the first place. Lucy herself belongs from an alternate timeline and chooses to find her place in the main timeline, where Summer gets to live.
