Continuum “Final Hour” 

I had to sit with this a while because I wasn’t sure how to write the last recap, and I hope we will see some of these folks again, in a web series or a one-off. I also was sort of torn on where we ended up, and I wanted to watch the episode again after I’d talked to  Simon Barry. Finally, when I checked last week, the finale was originally going to reair tonight but it looks like that changed…

So, two airings later, I settled on–we ended where we had to, that Kiera had to go home, but as with most twisty, turny time-travel shows, I had a fair amount of lingering “what if” and “why” thoughts. We begin “Final Hour” in the aftermath of the leveling of VPD, and Kiera is determined to still get home, but there’s a wrinkle because Brad absconded with the key and Kellog–two things they need.

Carlos agrees to stagger his raid until Kiera can get a head start on her own mission. But he also throws a last suggestion out that she can stay and work alongside him and she declines. She has a quiet moment with Dillon, too, when she shows him her DNA-linked gun and suddenly everything he didn’t understand before makes perfect sense.

Alec and Kiera load up to go to the warehouse after Jason fetches the time travel device from Alec’s house, and she tells him he can come with her and go home, too, but he says no, it’s too late, he’s been there too long and he’s home now and still has work to do. He gives her a note to give to his dad if she does get back.

When the Future Soldier intel crystallizes and they realize they’re dealing with an invasion, the focus of the mission changes a bit. Things get messy in a hurry when the Soldiers press pause on their plans to bring people through so they can power up one of the suits and decimate VPD further. Unfortunately, Dillon is killed in the melee.

In the moments leading up to that, Kellog makes a last attempt to convince Vazquez to let him go, to choose him over older Kellog, appealing to her romantically, which is an epically wrong play. She shoots him down, and he stabs her, and then as she lies dying, she tells him why–she’s his daughter (well played, show!). Kellog grieves that for about 30 seconds and then switches gears back to letting Kiera and Alec in the building. Then he double crosses them when his own men don’t intervene until he needs the air cover so he can leap with his Piron version of the time travel device. And then he jumps through.

Once the room is cleared of unfriendlies, Kiera gets her shot, too. She exchanges simple goodbyes–but no hugs, dammit–with Carlos, who tells her she doesn’t need to say anything because he knows, and Alec, who tells her he will build her a better future–and then she leaps, too. So does the Traveler. Afterward, Alec, Carlos, Curtis, Garza, Jason, and Brad converge and agree that they will work together on the future Kiera wanted.

Kellog gets his due when he lands in what looks like the days of really early man due to Alec planning ahead for Kellog’s double cross and nudging his settings just so. Talk your way out of that one, big boy.

And then we’re in 2077. Kiera blasts into a room in a show of light and winds up sprawled on the floor in front of Kagame. Her immediate reaction is that she failed, and he’s puzzled. He tells her he knows who she is because his Uncle Julian had talked about her. Older Alec rushes in joyful and miffed that he missed it. He tells her she just left him, and she realizes he’s good Alec.

They hug (finally!) and she says it’s so strange that a blink of the eye for her is 60 years for him. She asks about Sam and he says he’ll take her to him. As they walk across a mildly futuristic landscape that is not the 2077 from before, he explain that the Corporate Congress never happened, and they enter a park named for Carlos, something Emily fought for–he tells her they were together until she died. When she spies her son, she starts out toward him, and Alec grabs her arm to stop her.

He slowly explains that they thought she died that day she leapt, and they built this future in honor of her sacrifice. He tells her Sam will grow up in a  peaceful world because of what she did, and this was the price of love, real love. Her face falls and she gasps a simple, “no,” as another Kiera comes into frame and hugs her son and she can only look on from a distance in tears.

And that’s were we end.

What I wanted, if Kiera had to go home and find an alternate version of herself already in place, was for her to be allowed to know that version, and Sam. They could have been primed for her arrival and understand who she was and what she had done for all of them–and while it was possible she was dead, they didn’t know for sure. I get why we didn’t, but that’s what stayed with me days later. That they would never know her, or what she did. And, if she’d already motivated everyone to work together and do and be better in 2015, why did she have to leave at all?

I do like that there are 60 years of untold story, so there is a rich mine yet to be tapped of what everybody back in the present day did without Kiera, and there’s certainly room for her to re-leap backward. And what was in Jason’s note to older (and different) Alec? Never say never. I’m grateful we had four seasons to get to know everyone. I will miss them, but I am so glad for them and us they went out on their own terms.

In case you missed it, check out my exclusive interview with Continuum creator Simon Barry here.

You can catch up with the entire series on DVD, iTunes, and Amazon. All of our coverage is here. Thank you for reading.