time travel my beloved 💜

Allison’s immensely abusive childhood instilled in her that her value was measured by her ability to leverage her superpowers, which include warping reality and overwriting other’s autonomy. Allison carries that over into adulthood and effectively builds her life around it — until the gravity of what’s she done hits her, and it’s not the legal ramifications that give way to this heavy realization.

In S1, when she’s driving through the night in the effort to protect Viktor—if i remember correctly also the first scene we really see Allison alone with her thoughts—she’s overwhelmed with shame, knuckles hard on the steering wheel as memory after memory of her sins hit her, one after another, non-stop, relentless, choking her with that kind of guilt that makes it hard see past your tears or even breathe.

In that scene, the last memory Allison has of using her powers lingers on her stricken expression, her words inescapable, echoing:

I heard a rumor you were in love with me.

She knows that what she has done is unforgivable.

She participated in her father’s abuse of her sibling.

She perpetuated the cycle of abuse on her daughter.

She effectively stole much of her ex-husband’s life—and worse.

And yet she keeps driving.

Even when she hates herself, when she knows the people she wants to love and help either justifiably distrust or are unsafe around her in the wake of her choices, she keeps moving forward.

There’s no guarantee that she’ll be able to save Viktor, or that he’ll even believe her, or that telling him the truth won’t cause more harm to Viktor and their already strained sibling relationship.

There’s no guarantee that she’ll regain visitation or custody of Clair, or that her daughter will forgive her once she understands the magnitude of her mother choosing to use her powers on her.

All she can do is try.

And she works hard to do right by the people she has hurt, even if it may never be enough to change their view of her, and then to the new people that come into her life, even if they may never know the efforts Allison is making to be better than what she was.

In S2 she is thrust into a traumatic situation where her siblings are missing and she is immediately dehumanized, harassed, and narrowly escapes an attempted assault.

Trapped and without her loved ones in the 60’s US deep south, she has every reason to rewrite reality around her.

And yet she doesn’t.

If ever there was a use case for the moral use of her powers, it would be to set just an unjust world. But even when she loses faith in reuniting with her daughter, she does not alter history beyond her human means.

Because Allison knows it isn’t safe for her to use her powers, not for the people she loves, not after what’s she done, and she can’t risk being the person she used to be.

And she builds a new life, develops a healthy, loving relationship and marriage, becomes a leading voice in her community, all on her own merit.

When she does end up needing to use her power in necessary self-defense — for her husband’s life, not her own — she’s able to rebuild Ray’s wavering trust in her, and she shares in his horror when her childhood-instilled cruelty bleeds back in. Even though the person she harmed deserves no pity, Allison was so deliberate about her imposed consequence, having the bartender recreate his previous assault on her onto himself, unable to scream — Allison couldn’t speak either, when she first warped into the 60’s — and she does it so easily, not concerned for witnesses or permanent injury until Ray intervenes.

When Ray questions if she has ever used her power on him, I don’t believe we hear a response from Allison, with the implication being that it’s the possibility that unnerves her — as the viewer we know that she has not, and that’s she proud of the life she’s built.

But just the concept of her powers naturally yields concerns about their potential, and that usage starts and ends with Allison. She knows that now. She doesn’t guilt or really fault Ray for considering the idea. The shame never leaves, and Ray would be justified in feeling unsafe, in leaving, whether because of her powers or knowing how she once used them.

S2 ends with Allison having to leave Ray in the past for the chance to see her daughter again.

She asks for his consent to erase his memories — and how cruel it is for him to have all this knowledge and spend his life working hard to improve society, making a better world he may never live to see or at best will have so little time in — and though it aches for her to leave him heartbroken and alone, she respects his decision to remember.

She could’ve stayed with Ray, with the guarantee of spending her life with a partner who loves her fiercely.

But doing right by her daughter is what Allison chose long before Ray, and she moves forward.

There’s no guarantee that returning to the 2010’s/2020’s will reunite Allison with her daughter Clair. And even if she does find her, there’s no certainty that she’ll be redeemed or forgiven in her daughter’s eyes.