If you ignore all the time-travel plot holes in Don’t Come Home, then at the end of the day, it is a pretty simple and straightforward series. But I guess a lot of confusion arises in the viewer’s mind, simply because the writers didn’t bother to explain the gaps in the story, especially the matter of how Min came into existence. I was kind of shocked to see so many people still confused about the “time travel” aspect of it even after reading our ending explained article, and since the replies aren’t the best place to discuss things in detail, I decided to lay it all out in layman’s terms. Hope this one helps.
Spoiler Alert
Panida Didn’t Create A Time Machine
So, first things first, Panida Jarukanant, Varee’s real mother, didn’t create a time machine. It would be blasphemous to call that glass chamber a time machine. In any science fiction film or series that you’ll come across, a time machine is basically a device where you can set a particular time or date so it can take you to your intended destination. The lake in the recently released film Caddo Lake was not a time machine. It was a portal. And because these things don’t have any set coordinates, the screenwriters often take advantage of such a flaw to make the audience believe that these time portals have a mind of their own. So, what did Panida actually create?
I really don’t want to get into the complexities of branching universes, so I will keep it as simple as I can for the sake of my own sanity and yours. Thanks to Avengers: Endgame, we all know a little about different timelines running parallel to the original timeline, right? Taking that into consideration, Panida’s faulty generator created a portal between two timelines, and because of that, people or objects from one timeline ended up in another timeline due to this mischievous portal. Again, you might wonder how Varee (or adult Min) from 2024 (I suppose) ended up in 1992 if the timelines run parallel to each other. The hole created by the generator should be in a straight line, right? The thing is, there isn’t any defined law. We are just assuming that timelines run parallel to each other, which doesn’t mean that the time periods would match up as well. I know this is one of the biggest time travel flaws in Don’t Come Home, but Apple TV’s Dark Matter handled this concept quite well. In that show, despite traveling across different timelines, the traveler landed in the same time period as the one they had originated from. Meanwhile, HBO’s Caddo Lake didn’t bother to explain how the time travel portal really worked. People entered the liminal space in one time period and ended up in a different time period altogether, thereby creating all kinds of paradoxes and complications. So, you have just to accept that that’s how things are in Don’t Come Home.
Additionally, the electrical vibrations from the generator not only created a portal but “slightly shifted” it, because of which the two timelines converged into each other, which is the only reason why young Min and Varee (adult Min) were seeing ghosts in the house in the present time (2024). But that’s only one out of the many theories that we can come up with to talk about the time travel shenanigans.
Don’t Come Home doesn’t really address the time paradox, but we have often seen in popular time travel narratives that if two versions of the same person exist in the same timeline, then things get pretty weird, and so these terrifying visions or hallucinations could be a result of that. The third possibility is that both Mins (adult and young) had lived pretty traumatized lives, and their trauma might have had a crucial role to play in their hallucinations. Funny thing is, a plethora of policemen, househelp workers, Fah, and many other people visited the house, but the time traveling portal didn’t affect anyone except for the Jarukanant family. Well, there isn’t any logical reason for it, but the creators didn’t want more work on their hands by getting other characters’ lives affected by the time-traveling portal.
Yes, Min Gave Birth To Herself
I won’t be referring to adult Min as Varee because the original Varee already died with her father in a car accident that took place in 1991. Many of us are only confused with the names because Varee’s mother, who blamed herself for her daughter and husband’s deaths, started calling young Min Varee.
Moving forward, I really want to let you know that Min doesn’t exist in the original timeline. There is no way she could, and she came into existence only because Panida decided to fiddle with the timeline. But I know a question comes to your mind: How could Min exist in other timelines? There has to be a starting point, right? Well, there isn’t. This is one of the biggest paradoxes in the series, which is why Min’s existence cannot be explained. We can bang our heads on the table but still won’t be able to answer the question of which came first: the chicken or the egg.
In Caddo Lake, the character of Anna Bennett, who went into the past and created a branched timeline, was an adopted child, which would have made a bit of sense in Don’t Come Home if we consider the possibility that Min didn’t give birth to herself and young Min was an adopted child. Even adult Min’s husband, Yutthachai, had told Inspector Fah that young Min wasn’t his child. But even after moving in circles, the question remains the same: if in the original timeline, adult Min doesn’t exist, then how did young Min, whom we are considering not to be Yutthachai’s biological child, end up at the Jarukanant house to start the infinite loop? There has to be a person to bring her to that house so she can hide in the wardrobe and fall into the madness of the multiverse. I know you all eagerly want to ask who came first, adult Min or young Min, but there isn’t any logical answer to that question, and it’s a paradox that could never be explained.
But if you are not going into that complex zone and just want to ask how someone could give birth to themselves; then it is a case of simple human biology. To “create” a human, we just need X and Y chromosomes (I am sure I am going to upset a lot of religious fanatics and medical experts, but pardon my science). Even though it sounds like an incestuous relationship, Min did give birth to her own daughter, and her own father was the father of her new child, also named Min. It does sound creepy, but it’s not impossible.
Min Is Stuck In A Time Loop
Time is a flat circle, and just like any geometrical circle, there isn’t any beginning or end. The lore of Don’t Come Home says that an adult Min fell in love with Colonel Yutthachai while working as a reporter and married him, only to find out in the end that he was a toxic “alpha male” who accused adult Min of cheating on him and started to physically and sexually abuse her. As per the final montage of the series, Yutthachai started raising his hand against his wife only after she got pregnant, and it surely had something to do with Min’s pregnancy. Maybe he believed that adult Min was carrying someone else’s child, and that was the reason he told Fah that the child wasn’t his.
Min was stuck in an abusive marriage, and the day she decided to break the chain, she ended up in another loop. Adult Min, with her daughter, also Min, arrived at the Jarukanant house, and after spending a day or two in the house, she switched on the generator that opened the time-travel portal in the house. Both mother and daughter started to experience supernatural events around them, which were nothing but events of the past occurring in front of their eyes due to the faulty generator. On one stormy night, a frightened young Min hid in the closet, only to fall into another timeline where she met her grandmother, Panida, who had recently lost her entire family. Panida decided to keep Min and raise her as her own, but soon she reactivated the generator, and an adult Min arrived in 1992, looking for her lost daughter. Panida, possessed by demons of her own, refused to give young Min to adult Min and finally killed an adult Min in the end. Both Panida and young Min left the house after such a tragic turn of events, and as Min grew up, she made the same mistakes as her former self, or her mother, whatever you want to call her. Maybe, it is an example of how history repeats itself and we are destined to repeat our parents’ mistakes.
I guess, at this point, it would be safe to assume that Min would never be able to break out of the time loop because she never really finds out that she was stuck in one. We, as normal human beings, are imprisoned in the cage of our own thoughts and upbringing, and only in retrospect are we able to see the mistakes we have committed. Adult Min found out that she was stuck in the past only a day before her death, and she couldn’t have done much to escape it. Panida had imprisoned herself in her own grief, and while trying to overcome her own trauma, she was ready to steal a mother’s child and kill the mother to protect her vested interest. Last but not least, men like Yutthachai are prisoners of their own pride, and I will leave it at that.
I believe, in the end, it was only Fah who was able to break “her” loop. She made peace with the fact that she would never be able to bring back adult Min, as she’d already died in 1992, and Fah didn’t have the means to travel to the past. She knew that she couldn’t save a young Min either because the young girl was already lost in time. So, looking ahead, Fah decided to change what she could. She broke off her secret affair with Superintendent Danai, the man who had gotten her pregnant but refused to acknowledge the relationship they had. Fah decided to raise her child without a father and even asked the nurse not to mention the child’s father’s name on the birth certificate because Danai didn’t deserve it. And I am sure Fah is the only person who comes out transformed in the end. As far as Min is concerned, it’s a tragedy that no one can really resolve, and one can only learn from her story. Before wrapping up, I think I answered pretty much all the things that have been bugging you after finishing the series, but apologies if I missed anything. Feel free to drop your queries in the comment box below, and I would be happy to discuss further.
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