The second season of Continuum finished up this weekend (in the US, it’s been finished in Canada for a while now). And while, it was still good, I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as season one. There was a lot going on, but, at times, it seemed to jump from place to place without much reason except that the storyline needed something to happen. But there were some good moments along the way. Let’s check it out. Spoilers ahoy.

As I mentioned in my review of the first half (or so) of the season, Kiera has found some more time travelers. Only these people are even more confusing. The freelanceers are some sort of time line managers who want to “fix” the timeline that liber8 and Kiera dropped into. And then there is Escher, who sent Emily to monitor Alec. As we resolve our season a few good things happened. Carlos now knows that Kiera is from the future (and he doesn’t think she’s mentally troubled for believing it). This brings Carlos in on a lot more of the happenings (such as Kiera and Alec) without unbelievable plot mechanisms. Also Piron has taken over the liber8 task force. This presages what Kiera’s future is like in a corporate controlled police department.

There were also some revelations about future Alec’s plan. We find out that Jason (the other time traveler that Kiera ran into last year) is actually future Alec’s son sent back to help Alec’s plan. We also know that future Alec made sure that future Kiera didn’t know anything about time travel (even erasing a memory to keep it secret). So obviously Kiera is important to this plan somehow, but we still don’t know how.

In surprising news, Escher is an ex-freelancer who is Alec’s father. And he has his own plans for something. So we have future-Alec, his father Escher and the freelancers all with plans on what they want to happen in the future/past (tense is confusing in time-travel).

So at the end of the episode, Carlos figures out that Betty is the mole and is in trouble for helping Kiera. So he goes off to hang with Julian (who went from scared kid to rebel leader in a remarkably short time). Emily, who is holding the time travel device, throws it to get the freelancers off their back. Kiera runs to grab it and Emily gets killed. Alec blasts Kiera for being selfish (which is a fair assessment since she’s only interested in getting home). Then we end up with Alec holding the time travel device and (winking at Kiera) activates it. We are then in some future where Kiera is in a cell with the liber8 folks. I’m assuming this is the surprise cliffhanger and we’ll find out what happened at the beginning of season 3. Since Alec was mad at Kiera (or was he with the wink), is that why she is in the cell? Or is something changed in the timeline. Also, is there just one timeline? Or do we have multiple timelines where different things happen in each of them

The season was a little too plot heavy. Too much time was spent moving people around and not enough time with the characters so you could see why they would move around. There was too many things that felt like plot mechanics rather than organic character growth. Kiera still looks wooden in the past scenes and a lot more natural in the future scenes. The wink is interesting, but confusing. It’s impossible to tell what Alec wants, since he spends most of the season only wanting Emily. I still enjoy watching the show, but I’d like to see it get better next season.

This post is part of the thread: Continuum – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.