Time Travel on Supernatural.

I was a little shocked to find how confused some people were regarding what happened during the most recent time travel episode of Supernatural(Frontier land). Most of the confusion seems to stem from Sam's cellphone.


Several people seem to think that because Sam left his cellphone in the past that he couldn't have had it before he traveled back in time. This however makes absolutely no sense, since if he didn't have the cellphone, he couldn't have left it in the past. Nor could it have been returned to him upon coming back to his relative present.

This kind of reminds me of posts I saw after Lost introduced physical time travel in season 4\5. Posters would often ask "But how do they not remember those events when they crash on the Island?" Well from the characters perspective, these events had not yet occurred. Their memories aren't effected by events they had not yet experienced.

The same is true for the cellphone. Sam has the cellphone in 2011 because he hasn't gone back to 1861 to lose it yet. Technically there are two of Sam's cellphone in 2011, the one he bought a year earlier, and the one which will be delivered to Sam upon his return to the present. The one Sam is holding will ultimately become the one that's delivered to him.

The idea works like this. Sam buys a cellphone in 2010 and uses it for a year. Castiel then sends Sam and Dean 150 years into the past on a mission. During that time in 1861 Sam hands his phone to Samuel Colt and forgets to get it back. Upon the boys return to the present, a package is delivered, which contains Sam's now 150 year old cellphone and the object they went on their mission for in the first place.

Now here is where the second bit of confusion comes in. Several people seem to think that Sam and Dean changed something by being in the past. But as we see when they return to the present, literally nothing has changed. This means that the method of time travel here is very similar to what we had with Lost. Sam and Dean were basically just playing out their role in historical events. In other words, they always had the plan to make this mission, and it always worked out exactly the way we saw it.

Questions? Comments?