The Timeless season finale is an emotional punch in the gut, and ended with an exciting revelation that has the possibility to greatly expand the series potential moving forward. The future of the series wrests on the decision maker’s at NBC as to whether they give Timeless another season or not, and if they pass, it would be up to another network to step in and pick Timeless up. The second season was such an incredible leap in quality and character development that it would be silly not to let Eric Kripke and Shawn Ryan continue to traipse through time with another season.

The first half of the finale is titled, “The General” and its action hinges on a homage to Back to the Future II. In that film an older Biff Tannen steals Doc’s time machine and travels back in time to give his younger self an almanac that allows him to place winning bets on sporting events for years. It makes Biff a wealthy man, and changes history for the worse. Here, Emma travels back to 1863 South Carolina to deliver a Civil War history book to one of Rittenhouse’s sleeper agents posing as a confederate Colonel, in an attempt to help the Confederacy win the Civil War.

The idea is to disrupt Harriet Tubman’s (yes the Underground Railroad lady!) raid on plantations on the Combahee River where she led between 150-300 black Union soldiers and rescued around 700 slaves, and burned the plantations holding them captive. Most of the adult male former slaves immediately joined the Union army, and Tubman’s actions helped turn the tide of the war. With the history book in hand, the sleeper agent is able to massacre the majority of Tubman’s men before the raid even takes place, which puts the future of the raids as well as the Union’s advantage in jeopardy. It’s up to Lucy, Flynn, Rufus, and Wyatt to help Ms. Tubman complete the raids, but to do so they need to get the history book out of the sleeper agents hand.

As much as “The General” (which was Tubman’s nickname) is a history lesson, it’s also a showcase for Jiya’s visions, what they mean, and how she may be able to use them to her advantage. While the gang is busy saving history, she forces Mason to take her to see one of the other former time pilots, Stanley Fisher. Mason insists he’s completely deranged, but he’s wrong. Stanley is the only other person who understands what Jiya is going through. What Mason believes to be catatonic states is merely Stanley tapping into his ability to travel through time without a time machine. The visions are a way to look into the past, and with his instruction, Jiya is able to let her self go and give in to the visions to use them as a tool. There’s a correlation between Jiya’s visions and Ms. Tubman describing her own visions of Rufus and Wyatt coming to help. Hearing Tubman tell him that all of her visions do not come true relaxes Wyatt, and gives him hope he may escape the death Jiya’s vision has foretold.

Jessica also plays an important role, but mostly at the end of the first part of the two-hour finale. Agent Christopher finally reveals all of the pictures of Jessica they found on the Rittenhouse hard drive to Wyatt. He lets his heart overrule his brain despite the evidence. The fact she may be carrying his child clouds his judgment in a major way. Allowing her to continue to stay in the bunker gives her the opportunity to kidnap Jiya and force her to pilot them both away in the Life Boat. “Chinatown” begins after Wyatt is unable to stop Jessica. Now Rittenhouse has both time machines, and holds Jiya hostage because of her ability to pilot the time machines. This leaves the team in the darkest place we’ve ever seen them. Rufus tells Wyatt if anything happens to Jiya he’ll never forgive him. Soon Wyatt and Flynn come to blows while arguing. During the scuffle, Wyatt accidently strikes Lucy, giving her a physical pain to match the emotional one she’s had since Jessica came into their lives.

Things feel hopeless, and now with Rittenhouse in charge of both the Life Boat and the Mother Ship, there’s no way to stop them from unleashing their diabolical plans. Rittenhouse has it’s own inner turmoil going on with Carol and Emma pushing and pulling for control and influence over Keynes. Carol argues for pure blood Rittenhouse and its traditions, and since Emma is not a member of Rittenhouse this leaves her on the outside. Grabbing Jiya is an insurance policy and a threat to Emma that there’ll be someone to pilot the time machines if something were to happen to her. In short, she’s replaceable. It’s a move that’s meant to put Emma in her place, especially since Keynes backs it, but instead it causes a lot of resentment that festers and comes to a head later in the episode. Jiya isn’t the helpless person Rittenhouse thinks she is though, and she soon orchestrates a perfect escape, killing her guard and running for the Life Boat. Emma shoots and misses Jiya, but damages the computer system in the Life Boat. Jiya attempts to get back to the bunker, but doesn’t stick the landing, and is lost somewhere in time.

Rufus and Lucy know that wherever in time Jiya ends up, she’ll send them a message. It isn’t long before they find a picture of Jiya in a book Lucy wrote. She’s in San Francisco in 1888, and has had her picture taken in Chinatown, with a message hidden in the picture in Klingon. She’s left them coordinates to find the Life Boat, as well as a warning not to come and find her. This being a matter of the heart for Rufus, it’s impossible to deny him help once he and Mason fix the Life Boat and get it back into working condition. Rufus wants everyone to help him find Jiya in San Francisco, but when they get there, Carol, Emma, Jessica, and Keynes have already arrived and are looking for both Jiya and the Life Boat in order to wrest back control of both vessels.

The second half of the two-part finale takes a very dark turn as the stakes become increasingly heightened as both teams converge on the photography studio Jiya had her picture taken at. It’s important to remember the tension roiling between Carol and Emma all season long in regards to Lucy. There’s an ideological wedge between the two. Emma is more calculating, and wants to do away with Lucy and her disruptions once and for all, but Carol can’t allow this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because she’s sentimentally attached to Lucy as her mother, and secondly, because Lucy’s a pure blood Rittenhouse with vast potential and a birthright to lead Rittenhouse to glory. It’s why Carol has thwarted Emma from killing Lucy time after time, and it’s why she thwarts her here once again. The difference now is that Emma has had enough of the pure blood bull shit, so when Carol attempts to stop Emma from shooting Lucy in the photo shop, Emma unloads on Carol, and then turns and kills Keynes as well. She believes she and Jessica are now the future of Rittenhouse, which is a scary proposition given Emma’s propensity for violence and extreme ruthlessness to get what she wants.

In the aftermath of the shootings, Emma and Jessica split up, and Wyatt chases after Jessica. He corners her, and learns she’s been a member of Rittenhouse ever since they cured her brother of Leukemia. She was supposed to infiltrate the team, get information, steal the lifeboat, and kill them all; only she couldn’t do it because she cared too much for Wyatt. She really is carrying his baby, but won’t be swayed by his pleas to leave Rittenhouse and be a family together. She believes her only future is with Rittenhouse. With Carol and Keynes dead, Emma and Jessica will be the new leaders of Rittenhouse, meaning Wyatt’s child will be raised and indoctrinated into Rittenhouse unless he can find a solution to rescue his child or sway Jessica, both of which seem like long shots.

When Rufus does find Jiya in a saloon, she’s changed. Life in 1880’s San Francisco has made her scrappy. She can hold her own in a bar fight, and doesn’t take crap from anyone. She’s not happy to see Rufus, especially after her warning not to come find her. To be fair she’s thrilled to see him, but asking him not to come was an attempt to protect him from the death she’s seen in her visions. Her newfound ability to manipulate her visions has shown her that no matter how she tries to stop it, Rufus always dies in the end. She loves him too much to see that happen. If it means they can’t be together and are parted by a sea of time, than so be it. Lucy won’t take no for an answer when Jiya tells them to leave her and go back. Her optimism of being able to change history, as well as knowing finally in the wake of her mom’s death that the only real family she has is their team, sways Jiya to go along with their plan. Carol and Jessica show up to stop them and for a moment it seems Jiya is able to save Rufus from the death she foresaw in her visions, but as they leave the saloon, Emma fires a fateful shot, killing Rufus. It’s an emotionally raw moment for viewers, and for Lucy who has now seen both her mother and one of her best friends die by the hand of Emma.

All of Lucy’s anger and hatred come boiling to the surface, and she’s hell bent on killing Emma. If she were a better shot, or had military training she’d have easily gotten the better of Emma, but Lucy isn’t hardened like that yet. Sure she killed a man in the season premiere, but she never wanted to be a killer, and when given the opportunity to kill Emma and end things once and for all, she struggles to pull the trigger. When she does, the gun is out of bullets, which allows Emma to escape, but it’s important that Lucy was going to kill Emma. She’s changed in this final episode. The optimism has disappeared, and she knows she can no longer hope for the best without getting her hands dirty. How this will change her character moving forward is hard to imagine, until a surprise twist at the end of the episode reveals it to us.

When the team arrives back to the bunker, everyone is in a somber mood. Jiya is angry with them for not listening to her warnings, everyone is beat up and bloodied, and Rufus is left dead in the past. As they sit around unsure what to do next, Wyatt tells Lucy that he loves her. Rufus always wanted him to admit it, and though it may be too late, he admits it now. Rufus would be proud of him, and it’s clear they are all going to miss him dearly. If they could go back in time again and save him they would, but they can’t go back to a time period they previously existed in with the current time machine’s set up, which leaves the matter of Rufus seemingly unchangeable, until a second Life Boat appears out of nowhere in the bunker. As the team stands around confused, wondering how in the world this is even possible, the door to the new Life Boat opens. Future versions of Lucy and Wyatt step out. They look like grizzled, badass, post apocalyptic warriors and they ask the team, “Do you guys want to get Rufus back or what?”

This ability to travel into their own timelines changes everything for the team, and for Timeless as a show. This twist expands the possibilities for story telling for future seasons, much in the same way Lost was able to expand its own narrative when it revealed flash-forwards into the mix. It’s notable that it appears to only be Lucy and Wyatt in the revamped Life Boat, which begs the question of where Flynn and Jiya are in the future? Has something happened to them, are they still on the team, or are they on their own missions? The season finale’s cliffhanger leaves a lot to speculate on, as well as a lot of exciting possibilities for Timeless moving forward. The only question we need to know right away is, will NBC renew it for a third season?