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In the end of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children we see Jake going to his grandfather's house. And he is alive even when he was killed in the very beginning of the movie.

Why was Abraham "Abe" Portman, the grandparent of Jake Portman alive when they destroyed Mr. Barron?

Does it mean that everyone killed by Mr. Barron returned to life or just the ones who lived in Miss Peregrine's loop?

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  • Some nonsense about killing him in the loop will erase him for anyone not in the loop I think. I saw it in spanish so I can't be 100% on this right now.
    – cde
    Oct 19, 2016 at 2:45
  • Hmmm. I was under the impression that our main character had simply returned to a point in time where Abe hadn't yet been killed. Is that incorrect?
    – Dr R Dizzle
    Oct 19, 2016 at 10:32
  • No, because stopping Barron specifically stopped Abe from ever being killed by a Hollow. They even theorized that could happen halfway through the film.
    – cde
    Oct 19, 2016 at 12:32
  • @DrRDizzle Emma specifically tells Jake "Jake, you know what this means don't you? ... We have to get to our own time but you don't. You can continue to live in 2016... If we kill Barron, he'll be gone but time will carry on. He won't go to Florida, Abe won't die, and you can go home."
    – Keshav Srinivasan
    May 7, 2017 at 4:10

3 Answers 3

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On Wikipedia's page for the movie plot it says:

Malthus' death erased himself and his murder of Abe from the future.

So you can chalk that one off as a bad writing / writers not understanding how time travel works / glossing over these details to make a happy ending.

If Abe doesn't get killed, Jake (in that timeline) will not travel to meet Miss Peregrine (he only goes to Wales after Dr. Golan helped him to convince his parents) therefore possibly not killing Malthus, breaking the whole time travel in the movie.

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  • The book was much better in that regards. I could come up with a weird way that it would kind of work, but it's very much hand-wavy and super annoying.
    – Wayne Werner
    Jan 17, 2017 at 22:32
  • It's a bit unfair blaming the writers for not understanding how time travel works because nobody really does. The only 2 time travel theories that make some sense are the Causal Loop / Predestination Paradox (where the past can't really be changed) and Alternate timelines / Parallel universe (where changes don't affect the original timeline you traveled from). Most of the movies don't follow either of these, so time travel in them don't make much sense.
    – John29
    Jan 16, 2021 at 22:39
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The ending does not make sense. At least to me. Here is what Emma tells Jake while they're aboard the ship on the way to Blackpool (the location of Miss Avocet's January 2016 loop):

Jake, you know what this means don't you? ... We have to get to our own time but you don't. You can continue to live in 2016... If we kill Barron, he'll be gone but time will carry on. He won't go to Florida, Abe won't die, and you can go home."

At least to me, it doesn't make logical sense that killing Barron would save the life of Jake's grandfather Abe. Abe died in July 2016, so theoretically killing a version of Barron from before then would prevent Abe's death. But that's not what happens; in Blackpool Barron speaks about Abe's death:

I tracked Abe Portman for months. All I needed was a few minutes to get the location of Miss Peregrine's loop from him. But no, Mathus couldn't wait. And instead, I had to masquerade as a psychiatrist for three weeks in Florida.

So Barron has already participated in the Florida events. So it does not make logical sense that killing Barron will mean that "he won't go to Florida [and] Abe won't die".

The movie logic seems to be something like "If you die in a loop then both your past and your future are completely erased from the timeline." I think that's the meaning of the statement "he'll be gone but time will carry on". But it seems impossible to come up with a model of time travel where that would make sense.

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No, time was linear for the main characters. Baron's associate, the hollowgast, killed Abe, which led Jake to the island, which allowed Baron to locate the loop, which led to the chase and the London loop. The London loop was 6 months in the past, which is what allowed Jake to visit his grandparent. Only visit, not save. See https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/142842/how-did-this-character-survive/142878 for additional comments.

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    The dialogue does not support this.
    – cde
    Oct 27, 2016 at 17:43
  • Which dialogue? If Abe was never killed, then Jake would not have left for the island and all his actions would have been erased. The Baron that was killed was the one from after Abe was killed and followed Jake, not a past version, so how could killing him erase his past actions? Jake visited Abe in the past, which they just glossed over in the movie in a lazy storytelling way, because again if he would have warned him or stopped his eventual death 6 months later, then the Jake of that time would not have left for the island.
    – BlueGI
    Oct 27, 2016 at 18:33
  • Ah.. I see what you wrote in the other thread and agree, the dialogue does not make sense with what should be their linear actions. I would chalk it up to bad writing, or maybe the characters themselves not understanding how time works.
    – BlueGI
    Oct 27, 2016 at 18:47
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    Well, put it this way, they could access the future loop 70 years before the loop was created, in linear time. So that means the time travel here breaks all rules of causality. As far as the characters know, and act, Abe will never die at a Hollows hands. It's a literal Grandfather paradox (well, boot strap paradox) that the movie decides to gloss over for a cutesy ending.
    – cde
    Oct 27, 2016 at 20:16

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