The Moment 12 Monkeys Redefined The Predestination Paradox

When it comes to time travel in sci-fi stories, one of the first questions your brain is asking is: What kind of time travel is this? Is this the you-can-change-the-past sort of time travel, or is this the everything-you’ve-done-has-already-happened predestination type of time travel? Interestingly, the now-cult classic 12 Monkeys TV series did all kinds. While the film was content to only present a closed loop of a few specific paradoxes, the epic TV series took several big swings, including alternate timelines, altering the present, and yes, plenty of predestination paradoxes.

Ten years ago, one of the show’s best predestination paradox stories came in a pivotal episode in Season 2 called “Fatherland,” which aired on SyFy during the week of June 20, 2016. While this episode doesn’t quite work as a standalone like a few other great episodes from 12 Monkeys Season 2 (namely “Lullaby”), it does provide one of the best paradox twists in all of TV sci-fi. Not only does this story show the unique problem with chasing time travel clues, it also has a double twist that still feels fresh today.

Mild spoilers ahead.

Much of 12 Monkeys Season 2 is focused on Team Splinter trying to find the location of the mysterious “Witness,” the mastermind not just of the plague, but also the person leading the Army of the 12 Monkeys to try and destroy time itself. How, where, and when their efforts should be focused creates major division among the characters, which leads to the basic premise of “Fatherland.” While Cole (Aaron Stanford) and Dr. Jones (Barbara Sukowa) are intent on sending a team to 1957 to top the origin of one paradox that has created temporal storms in the future, Cassie (Amanda Schull) and Ramse (Kirk Acevedo) are determined to go instead to 1961, and find an evil dude named Dr. Kirschner (Matt Frewer), who, according to a redacted document, mentioned both “the Witness” and the time-traveling city “Titan” while getting interrogated. So Cassie and Ramse trick Cole into going to 1961 instead of 1957, and things get very timey-wimey.

Basically, once in 1961, Cassie and Ramse head to Berlin to track down and interrogate Kirschner, who is a Nazi criminal, wanted by Mossad agents. Cole teams up with his CIA buddy, Gale (Jay Karnes), to try to save Cassie and Ramse from getting picked up by Mossad, which only partially works. Cassie and Ramse end up being able to grill Kirschner, but it turns out the redacted CIA files that everybody read in the future — in which the words “Titan” and “the Witness” are mentioned — were actually just said in real-time by Cassie and Ramse. “You created your own clue, genius!” Cole says to Ramse dismally. “You’re chasing your own tail!”

Now a lot of sci-fi episodes would have ended right there, with the mindf*ck that the entire mission was a predestined paradox that started with Cassie and Rasme finding the redacted files in the future, and then creating those files themselves in the past. Nice. Neat. Classic. And, very much in line with the types of paradoxes in the original 1995 upon which 12 Monkeys, the series, is based. But then, this episode pulls a second twist. Just as Cole has remonstrated with Cassie and Cole, and the gang is about to give up on this mission, Cassie finds that Kirschner is wearing a pendant, one that the whole gang knows is a secret sign of the Army of the 12 Monkeys.

So, brilliantly, 12 Monkeys has its paradox cake and a linear plot twist at the same time. Cole was right: Ramse and Cassie did create their own false clue via a paradox. But Ramse and Cassie were right, too, but for the wrong reasons: Kirschner is connected to the Army of the 12 Monkeys in some twisted way, and fate or destiny brought the entire team to this moment to make this discovery. Instead of being content with another cool time-travel twist, 12 Monkeys pushed the envelope further and created something a bit more contemplative about sci-fi paradoxes: The nature of cause and effect is naturally upended in a story like this. But there’s something slightly more philosophical in this story. The predestination paradox was both a mistake and the correct fate for the heroes. Something, possibly divine, moved the characters to this point, even though all their motivations were slightly incorrect.

To top things off, “Fatherland” becomes an even more hardcore episode because it reveals that Gale dies saving the time travelers in a mad dash across the Berlin Wall. That said, as fans know, Gale appears in future episodes of the show. So does he really buy it here? And does Gale’s sacrifice, perhaps, create his own salvation in the future? This was the brilliance of 12 Monkeys; just when the show revealed one very sharp time travel twist, it was already cooking up the next one.

12 Monkeys streams on Prime Video.