One of Netflix‘s newest films, Time Cut, is a YA slasher drama that is packed with time travel and a huge twist that has viewers talking.

It follows a teenager who inadvertently time-travels to the early 2000s to stop a serial killer from murdering her sister.

Directed by Hannah Macpherson, the film is written by her and Michael Kennedy, and is based on a story by Kennedy.

Outer Banks star Madison Bailey and Ginny & Georgia star Antonia Gentry lead the film as sisters Lucy and Summer, with Michael Shanks and Griffin Gluck also starring. The cast also includes Rachael Crawford, Jordan Pettle, Megan Best, Samuel Braun, Sydney Sabiston and Kataem O’Connor.

Plot and summary of ‘Time Cut’

The movie begins with Summer (Gentry) attending a high school party in 2003 just after three of her friends were murdered by a serial killer. The killer is still on the loose, and Summer becomes the killer’s next victim.

There is a time jump after this, and 21 years later, in 2024, Summer’s parents have now had another child, Lucy (Bailey). Life hasn’t exactly been great for Lucy, as she was born due to her parents’ grief after losing Summer, and she’s always had to live in the shadow of the sister she never met. Lucy and her parents visit the barn where Summer was murdered to commemorate the anniversary of her death, and while there, Lucy notices a time machine. She’s swept into the machine and is transported to the year 2003, just days before Summer is murdered.

Lucy immediately befriends Quinn (Gluck), the school nerd/outcast, and saves him when classmates try to throw him in the river. Quinn believes that she is from the future and wants to help her get home, but cautions against trying to save her sister because she would damage the timeline and many things could change, including her own existence.

How did Lucy convince Summer that she is her sister?

Lucy also slowly befriends Summer and meets her parents in this timeline, who she sees are very different and not the grief-stricken parents who raised her. She asks them if they have thought about having another child, and they tell her no. Lucy then tries to save the first two victims of the killer, Brian and Val, but is unable to– and her attempt to save them even causes the death of another victim, a security guard.

She eventually has to tell Summer the truth once the first murders take place. Lucy convinces Summer by showing her a break-up letter from someone named “E,” that she found in her old room, and Lucy assumes this is from Summer’s ex-boyfriend, Ethan. Realizing that Lucy is really her sister from the future, Summer then wants to save her best friend Emmy (with whom she has a strained relationship right now), as she is set to be the next victim. Quinn, motivated by a crush that he has on Summer, agrees to help her save Emmy, and Lucy agrees to do so as well. They end up saving Emmy, and have seemingly changed the past. Lucy also realizes that she was wrong. The “E” person who gave Summer the note was Emmy, not Ethan, and Summer was in a relationship with Emmy.

Emmy became upset with Summer as they were dating and were going to come out to their parents, but Summer got cold feet. Lucy reassures her that the future is more accepting of LGBT people and relationships. Given the fact that Lucy knows her parents wouldn’t have had another child if Summer hadn’t died, she also knows that she is risking her own existence if she saves Lucy– but she still wants to take the risk and wants to try to save her sister. Summer, Quinn and Lucy then come up with a plan to stop the killer, transport Lucy back to 2024, and save Summer in the process. They go to the party that was shown at the top of the movie, where Summer kisses Emmy and publicly confesses her feelings for her.

Who was the serial killer in ‘Time Cut’ and why did they do this?

As a part of their plan, the trio breaks into the place to get a part for the time-travel technology, and they realize that the killer is from the future and time-traveled back in time just like Lucy. They then lure the killer to the barn where Summer would be murdered and hit him with a car just as he’s about to kill Summer. But he doesn’t die upon impact. Then the killer reveal happens: he takes off the mask, and the murderer is unveiled to be an older version of Quinn.

However, it is not the Quinn from this timeline. This Quinn, who actually did get thrown in the water and wasn’t saved by Lucy, had deep resentment for his community and classmates, and was angry that Summer, who said she couldn’t have feelings for him as she is a lesbian, rejected his advances. The Quinn in the current timeline is not like this future Quinn, due to the fact that Lucy intervened. But this older, hardened version of Quinn spent most of his life vowing to get revenge on the people who wronged him, built the time machine, and went back and killed them.

How did ‘Time Cut’ end?

They lure the future Quinn into the current timeline Quinn’s garage, sending both the future Quinn and Lucy back to 2024. In 2024, the two are transported to a parking deck and a scuffle ensues as they both try to grab a knife. Lucy ends up killing the future Quinn, stabbing him many times.

We then go back to 2003, where Lucy and Quinn are both alive and they are assuming that Lucy does not exist anymore. However, Lucy is alive and uses the time machine to return to 2003. She says that in 2024, her parents didn’t know who she was (it appears that the timeline in which she was born does not exist anymore), so she decides to come back to 2003 and live her life with her sister.

Was there an alternate ending for the movie?

There was a version of the movie that would have actually ended with a timeline that had Summer older and Lucy younger.

“We had a variety of different options for endings, including both sisters being alive in the present day,” Macpherson told Netflix’s Tudum. “Summer would have been 20 years older than Lucy, but they were still both alive. We just felt that that image of 45-year-old Summer and teenage Lucy wasn’t as happy as the two girls as teenagers getting to experience life together. It just felt so good, time-travel logic be damned.”