Where is she? Stuck in a future that never was? Is she gone forever?

WHO CARES!

WHO CARES ABOUT CAITLIN!


I swear to god, if I hear Peter EVER say her name again, I will personally kill him. His BROTHER just died in his ARMS. FORGET HER ALREADY!

Forget Caitln long live SIMONE!

She better not be stuck forever... or forgotten. It'll be another female that the writers have abused for no reason other than to abuse woman. Caitlin stuck in future. Monica locked up and almost killed. Niki killed? Maya killed? Elle tortured by her father... gah. And that's only tonights episode.

Also, can't Peter catch a break? His girlfriend and his brother? Really?

Meh...

Seriously though, we have a paradox. Present day Caitlin is in the future. Future Caitlin is probably dead. So, there's no more Caitlin in the present, as she replaced her future self. But then... that future no longer exists.
I think that it's as if someone entered a building, and then the building blew up (lol sorry, I had to. R.I.P. Niki). That person would no longer exist, would they?

lmao

Well, they've gotta come back to this sometime...right?

I was never a big fan of Caitlin, but if Peter doesn't at least mention her again at some point it would be really stupid. He was so determined to get her back - he can't just forget she ever existed. I wonder if he will try, or if he thinks she is lost in time now that the timeline has changed.

BTW I repeat what I've said before: Hiro probably could have helped him, since Peter has had trouble using his time travel ability. But Hiro seems to have taken himeself out of the picture for the moment.

Yeah, she got pretty screwed over.

The timeline that Caitlin was in got replaced with a new timeline, so she's now lost in time. I don't see Peter ever getting him back. He's got his own brother's death to worry about now, too.

Agreed. Let us never hear of her again. Peter should and will be too broken up about his brother death to care about her. In this case little Miss Barmaid is irrelevant becasue big brother Nathan is more important.



Its a sad state of affairs when Simone is looking way more interesting.

No one knows how time travel works or what theory the writers are using for future travel/shifting, so it is all left up in the air till the strike is over.

I think she'll be back too... They left too many story arcs open with the end of Volume 2. I thought she was an alright character.

She was ok but like Simone she dragged the story down because she served no real purpose and lets face it some of the stories don't need to be dragged down.

Makes sense.. She's probably gone forever..

I think you should chill out, it was a good and interesting question.

Logically, Peter has to leave her in the future where she has been exposed to the virus. Bringing her back would risk billions of lives.

QFT

But it'll be funny if he goes forward in time and it turns out she's taken over the world or something in the meantime.

She has been completely erased from space and time.
She now exists in a timeline that does not exist.
So she no longer exists.

Peter is dumb. You save the girl, THEN save the world..

Wow, I never really thought about it, but you're right, the women in this show (maybe except Niki) are there just to be women and are gotten rid of once there is no more use for them.
Forget about Peter catching a break, Micah just lost BOTH his parents.

Seems to me that at the moment Peter destroyed the virus, at least two things happened:
1. Caitlin ceased to exist.
2. Peter (and anyone else left alive who had known her) immediately forgot her. (How can anyone "remember" something that doesn't exist?)

This would be very convenient for those who felt the need to apologize for the first half of the season.

Caitlin was never much of a favorite anyway. I think they're just going to decide to "forget" about her.

Well, he could go back to the past, and then take her.

"Hello. I am the guy you just made out with in the other room."
"Orly? How do I know you're not his evil twin?"
"Because this is not daytime television."
"Okey dokey then!"

I don't understand why it's assumed that if the future timeline changed, she ceased to exist?

Maybe I was asleep in Time Travel class when they were discussing other famous cases of people ceasing to exist in timelines that change.  Can someone help me out here?  References to other famous cases where this has happened?  Case studies? Pie charts?

Back to the Future!

If we use the tangent time-line theory then it no longer exists and she should be gone. But she may have just been thrown into an alternate time-line. Either way I would rather see Peter with Elle than Caitlin anyway.

I would like to see them do something more between Peter and Elle as well; Elle is a heck of a lot more interesting. Though if Caitlin ceased to exist then they need to make that known so at least we know what happened to her.

Seeing as there is no experience to prove how time works, only different philosophies, tv can pick and chose how it wants time travel to work in it's show.

If peter or hiro were still in the future when one of them was in the past/present changing things, I believe that the world around them would change but they would stay where they were in the timeline, because they were just a visitor there, not a resident. I feel like Caitlin's gonna be the same way, and she's gonna be fine and existing, just in a completely different future.

But then again, the way that this show goes, every time they try and prevent a terrible future, an even worse one happens, so maybe she'd get killed by whatever happens to be the new terrible thing in the future.

Careful.  If Caitlin does end up living in such a situation, someone is bound to yell, "Plot hole!"  It seems to be the popular thing to do, lately.

whoa dude, you have problems

If she's in the future and the world changes around her, Peter doesn't need to go get her. There is a Peter in 2008 that has lived there the whole time, now that there is not virus timeline. It will be better for him because she won't have aged a year.

The scientific geniuses of this world still debate whether or not its physically or logically possible to travel through time without paradoxes mucking things up, so there's no point in getting on the backs of writers who just don't know any better or who aren't as creative as they should be so questions like these don't come up. Time travel stories will probably always be confusing in one way or another.

The problem with the Caitlin situation is that it really didn't need to happen in the first place. Peter should not have transported back to the present without her if they were not going to properly resolve the conflict. If it was simply a matter of getting Caitlin out of the picture because she was dead weight (or the fans didn't approve) then why bring her along for the ride in the first place? Or maybe by that point it was already two late for them to realize she wasn't needed for the remainder of the season.

This is very similar to what happened in the Back To The Future movies where Marty's girlfriend Jennifer went with them to the future to "do something about their kids" only to have Doc knock her unconcious and stick her in an alley because she would only get in the way.

When Marty asked the question "Then what did you bring her for?" his response was that she had already seen the time machine and they couldn't just leave her there. According to the commentary on the DVD, the ending of the first movie was originally intended to be a joke and there never were any initial plans to do a sequel. This may be the reason why they had to figure out a way to write the Jennifer character out altogether by simply dumping her on a porch swing and expecting everything to magically change around her.

This appears to be the same approach that they were trying to use on Heroes. Peter believed that by preventing the Shanti virus outbreak that Caitlin would be fine in the future. Now its easy to say that from Caitlin's point of view that everything would change around her but she was only a year in the future which means that we're eventually going to catch up with her. The paradox that presents itself is how will Caitlin appear to us once the future has arrived?

Originally Caitlin appeared in New York 2008 with Peter in a future where the Shanti virus wiped everyone out. We are now led to believe that the virus was stopped which means that Peter and Caitlin would not arrive the same way that they had before and anything that happened this time would be completely different negating the resolution we were given. Now we can say at that point that Peter and Caitlin never show up, meaning they only showed up in an alternate future and history will always recognize that. To accept that though means the world did not change around Caitlin and she now is trapped in a future that no longer exists.

Unless the writers get pretty creative this will be a tough one for them to fix. The best solution would be that they haven't stopped the outbreak from happening and that future still awaits them which means Caitlin is still retrievable. Of course the writers may decide never to mention her again and they're welcome to do so though I really can't respect them for that. Again they shouldn't have brought her into it to begin with.

That's a fair point.

But then again, with how peter's been acting, he would probably still try and find her or some stupid thing like that.

There's no reason that Caitlin "shouldn't exist." Back to the Future is a good reference point. They didn't go back in the past and do something that would cause Caitlin not to be born. Caitlin's present self was removed from this point and time and shot forward in time. So there's no reason for Peter to 'forget' she exists. She was born, she grew up, she had a brother, she met Peter, her brother was killed, she went forward in time with Peter. All that happened and still has happened, despite the fact Peter destroyed the virus.

However, since he destroyed hte virus, I also don't see how she is *not* currently lost in time. Because the reality she traveled to is not going to happen at all. Or if it does, then it is an alternative reality from the one we are currently viewing so she is stuck there (I have difficulty calling it an 'alternate' reality since it seems to be the true reality that Peter has altered as a result of having traveled to the future we are the ones who have moved off on a tangent).

So I believe that Caitlin must be rescued. How they are going to deal with that rescue is anyone's guess. Perhaps Hiro also has the power to travel to alternative realities. Maybe Hiro along with Maya can find her. Who knows. It's definately a quandry. D.GOOCH

The way time travel seems to work then either an infinite number of alternate realities are created every nanosecond and none of them actually matter, or Caitlin & Peter should appear in about a year in New York, and to preserve the current reality someone (most likely the Peter who lived through the intervening time) needs to be there when they arrive, and the memories that Peter originally experienced implanted in his mind, at which point he would be sent/taken back without her to live out the rest of the timeline as he "originally" did ...

i think she's a goner.
the future she was in no longer exists. Yes, the "back to the future" thing makes sense, but where is she? she cant just poof back to the present because the timeline she's stuck in is gone.

or if she blows Peter's mind by showing up back in the present, no thanks to him, and is out for revenge against him for abandoning her in that future hell-hole. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

I wouldn't be surprised to see that kind of a twist on the Caitlin story.

spyder, relative time travel is possible... but time travel as depicted in films/tv is not. time is a man maded concept based on orbits... it doesn't exist.

the question should not be is time travel possible, but instead, whether it is possible to travel through the effects of time.

Man, amolion, stop repeating this nonsence already! Time does exists: Many physicians study it as we speak right now! And if it didn't exists, then speed doesn't exists either (being "distance/time"), nor acceleration (being "distance/time^2")/ If acceleration doesn't exists, then gravity doesn't exists (gravity being a force of acceleration). If both speed and gravity doesn't exists, then kinetic and potential energies don't exists either... I could go on forever like that, just to prove the existence of time! Moreover, if time wouldn't exist, then it couldn't have any "effects", so to talk about "travel throught the effects of time" is wrong, too. And since the main effect of time is for things to change, then without time, there is no change, so we should be standing stills... Well, actually, we wouldn't exists, since the universe would be, eternally, the second the Big Bang happened (considering there were no time before this explosion, which is not certain yet, since it disobey to the rule of the causal effect... So maybe the Big Bang wouldn't even have happened without the existence of time).


Anyway, let's get back to the point! Since time travel has many possibilities, there is one where Caitlin is still alive, on the same timeline, AND she didn't saw things to change around here. First, we say that the destroyed future doesn't exists (which is the argument for "Caitlin's "death""). Now the question is: How could she travel, in time, to a moment that doesn't exists? My idea is that, now that the destroyed future doesn't exist, Caitlin, when she time-traveled, appeared in the "nice" future, thanks to the changes in the present. Many would say this would create a time paradox, since it would mean that Peter didn't traveled to the "destroyed" future either, didn't saw the effect of the virus, and couldn't decide to destroy it (and I agree with that), but almost any change in a timeline, due to a time-traveler, would create a time paradox anyway, so it's also a possibility!

Quite true - only today my physician said Muggles, it's time you got into shape. Not knowing whether this was a Newtonian or Kantian reference I decided to create several timelines in which I was either in shape or not in shape, and one where I could travel back in time and tell myself to get off my backside.

But this was all relative as I think I only have this issue in his now obsolete future timeline. Ergo, I think I was.

wait rewind...

remember when caitlin drew the clan tattoo on peters arm and it morphed into a helix..

then i remember reading a graphic novel about her telling peter the story of a man finding a mermaid and this mermaid being able to amplify his weapons powers or something like that by adding her mark to whatever tool he used...

she cant just be gone like that... i think she has a higher calling... something the writers dont want to make too clear right now but i think she'll be back..