Whatever Happened to the Second Marty?

More often than not, we treat the Back to the Future Film franchise as a charming little adventure tale centered on a young man and his fantastic time traveling Delorean.  However, if we peel back the exterior storyline and look into the implications of the details, we find that Martin McFly, our protagonist, isn’t so much traveling through time as he is traveling to alternate dimensions.  Essentially, he is driving through the multiverse.

In the first film, Back to the Future, Marty witnesses the death of his mentor figure Doc Brown and accidentally flees into the past by thirty years, where he encounters his parents as they were as teenagers.  There his actions make significant changes to the way they came together as a couple and how they interact within their own social structures.  For the most part, he leaves them better than they were before.  As Marty is going “home”, he tweaks the controls to the time machine and arrives roughly a minute before he left.  There he actually witnesses the gunning down of Doc Brown and himself fleeing in the time machine.  After the assailants clear the scene he approaches his friend only to find he did not die, but rather used information Marty had left in the past to prepare for the attack by way of body armor.

This is our jumping in point for analysis, because we establish in the next sequence of scenes that the 1985 Marty arrived in is a different setting than what he left.  This is made immediately clear from his arrival at the parking lot because, when he started his journey it was called “Twin Pines Mall.”  In our newly established reality, it is now “Lone Pine Mall”.  This is actually a very important detail because it shows us he is not returning to the same reality he left.  In this new reality, Doc Brown has lived the last thirty years with the knowledge that 1) he will build a functioning time machine, 2) most of his other inventions will fail, 3) Some terrorist will try to kill him.  Already Marty’s presence has altered the course of history in a dramatic way.

Marty, being separated from the events that occurred in between this newly established 1955, where in he influenced his parents, and this new 1985, where his parents are now successful, has no recollection of his life from this newly established timeline.  An argument could be made that since he is a time traveler, his experiences are locked his memory so that it could not be influenced by the new time line, which is a very common time travel story trope.  However, there is another aspect we do need to take into account; somewhere out in time and/or space, is a Marty McFly who considers the “new” 1985 as the long established reality.  Where did he go?

Established wisdom when it comes to paradoxes indicates that the Marty McFly of this timeline, for the simplicity we will refer to him as Marty-2, went back to 1955.  However, he didn’t, at least not the 1955 we witnessed.  The 1955 we witnessed involved the first Marty, as he is the protagonist and thus focal point of the story.  We never discover what happened to Marty-2.  However, there is a different possibility.  Marty-2 went to Marty’s original 1955.

            Consider for a moment that a timeline is fixed, in that all the decisions made in a single universe could not have gone any other way.  This is where we get the concept of the Multiverse.  Let us say, for instance, that you go to a restaurant and order a steak rather than the chicken, you have made a choice that could not have gone any other way within the context of your universe.  However, in an alternate universe, an alternate you chose the chicken.  Likewise, that decision is fixed within the context of that universe.  In another established universe you ordered the fish and that decision is fixed as well.

We should also take into account the prevailing theory that energy and matter cannot be created, nor destroyed, only altered.  That means that, at the point of the creation of the universe, all matter and energy was created and since that point, all that has happened is a redistribution of that energy and matter, altering its form and function over billions and billions of years until it reaches it’s current state, only to continue to be altered.  Never added, never subtracted only altered.  With that concept in mind, we can view the universe as like a Jenga tower that is one move away from toppling, pieces are redistributed and never actually “removed”. When Marty McFly and his Delorean travel out of one universe, that matter and energy must be replaced by an equal amount of matter and energy in order for the transfer to work properly.  When Marty-2 vacates 1985-2 at the end of the first film, Marty, our Marty, replaces him.

It could be argued that since there is an overlap, where in Marty sees Marty-2 leaving that this theory collapses at that point.  If we talk to Einstein, we discover that space/time itself is malleable.  The universe is actually constantly in flux, like the surface of a pond.  There is no such thing as a perfectly still pond, and space is never perfectly still in of itself.  When Marty punches his hole into 1985-2, there is still a residual ripple effect in place, which allows Marty-2 to flee 1985-2 without causing a universe destabilizing overload of energy and matter. 

            So what became of Marty-2?  My theory is simple enough, whenever Marty, vanishes into time and space, Marty-2, or ostensibly mass and energy of equal value, enter to replace him.  I propose that when Marty disappeared into 1955-2, Marty-2 entered the original 1985 from the original 1955 where he witnessed the untimely death of Doc Brown.  So what happened to Marty-2 in 1955?  He kept a low profile and did not influence the events involving his parents.  Since he did not, they did not grow into the strong, forthright people he grew up to know, and when he arrived in 1985, he found himself in a world where his family is significantly less prominent than he left.  Without a Doc Brown to assist him with the time machine, he went on with his lack luster life until he grew up and had a family of his own.

In the second film, Marty travels to the future, 2015, where he views his older self.  I believe this is literally Marty (original) traveling to 2015 (original) rather than 2015-2.  What he is seeing is Marty-2 living in the original 1985 universe.  This is why the “future” Marty sees himself as though he had never had any adventures in time travel.  Gone is that adventurer’s spirit, and left is a man broken by the world.

Our Marty then travels back to another 1985, 1985-3.  We know virtually nothing about this universe’s Marty, only that “Marty-3” is away at boarding school.  It could be that this universe’s Marty followed in the footsteps of his predecessors and discovered another time machine that transported him on his own adventures, thus creating the appropriate matter-energy displacement to allow our Marty to enter this universe.  This universe was created when the Biff Tannen of 2015 stole the Delorean and used it to travel to a younger version of him, Biff Tannen of 1955-2, and offer him a book that would allow him to be financially successful as an adult.  Given how 1985-3 turned out, it can be speculated that another Biff Tannen, from an alternate universe gave Biff Tannen-3 the same book in 1955-3.  Biff Tannen of 2015’s attempt, however, proves unsuccessful as he inadvertently travels to 1955-2, and is followed by our Marty, who witnesses events from his first adventure to this alternate past.

Since the film is very much centered on our Marty McFly, we do not get to see what his alternate versions are up to, but we can extrapolate from our initial theory that each universe in this little neighborhood of the multiverse has it’s own version of these characters and a Delorean which allows them to traverse between the various dimensions, like needles stitching pieces of cloth together, rarely intersecting, but always passing each other in time and space. 

            Obviously the theory does not state that at no point do the characters travel through time.  They clearly do, traversing from one version of the time stream to another; however they are at the same time crossing dimensions and experiencing the results of different combinations of events.  Remember that each universe has its own unique timeline which ultimately cannot be corrupted because those events are fixed.  When we see pictures and faxes alter or fade, indicating they are creating a paradox, what we are actually looking at is the time/space field finishing its ripple effect.  Remember how we talked about the ripple, that ripple has to express itself in some manner.

            I could go on into the third film, where in the majority of the adventure takes place in 1885, however if you take the theory presented, you can see how it applies and fits together.  Doc Brown travels back in time and sends a message to Marty in 1955-2.  We cannot conclude that this is the Doc Brown of 1955-2, since it is plausible this Doc Brown is from a similar but different timeline.  Likewise, we cannot conclude that Marty traveled to 1885-2 in his attempt to save his friend (yet again), because Marty is presented with hard evidence in 1955-2 that, at least, a version of his friend died in 1955-2.  When Marty jumps in the Delorean to rescue Doc Brown, whatever 1885 he finds himself in; it cannot be connected to 1955-2 because of the evidence presented to him in 1955-2 of Doc Brown’s death.  This evidence is muted in the context of whatever 1885 they are in, we could possibly assume it is 1885-3, because of the ripple effect of time/space travel rendering documents taken out of context from their own timeline incapable of supporting the information they contain. 

Further, there is evidence within the films themselves that support my theory;

1)      In the second film, Marty encounters a version of his older self that, in his youth, suffered a bad car accident that somehow crushed his spirit.  This is clearly not the Marty who, in fact, traveled to 2015 to view his older self, otherwise he would have made some sort of acknowledgement of young Marty’s presence.  It is far more likely that this was Marty of 1985-2 who was stranded in 1985, and suffered a car accident while acclimating himself to his new world, and thus had no further adventures.

In fact, for a man who has traveled in time and space, he seems to forget that ever happened.  I can accept forgetting some of the smaller adventures of youth, but you would think he would possess some recollection of seeing himself when he was younger.

2)      Later in the second film, Doc Brown directly states the existence of alternate timelines, but rather than creating them (as he states in the picture), they are in fact tripping over them in their travels.

 The multiversal theory does not negate the title or premise of the film; rather it adds an extra dimension to the concept.  Rather than limiting the travel to just one timeline, our characters are branching out, breaking the bounds of our very reality and venturing into others.  That and, “Back to as Close as we can get to our Universe” doesn’t hold as well as a title.

            So what exactly is the multiverse?  Put in its basic context, there are several universes that run concurrent with each other, each existing separate from the others but bearing enough similarities that crossing from one to the other would place the traveler in a time of simultaneous familiarity and disorientation.  The theory of what it is does not, however, explain how they came to pass, just as the theory of the Big Bang explains an origin point for the universe, but does not explain how that origin came into being in the first place.

Remember the analogy of several layers of fabric and the needles.  I want to go back to that because I think that expresses the multiverse extremely well.  These bolts of fabric are each unique, but similar; each a different color, but woven the same way.  Our needles are the characters and their time machines weaving in and out of the realities.  They make small holes in reality which close around them due to the energy exchange happening. 

The notion that they are traveling in between universes also allots a little more credibility to them traveling in time as well.  If you found a way to exit one universe, as you are making your approach into the other, conceivably looking at the universe from the outside, you could pick and choose where along the time stream to land.  It could be said that they seem to travel rather clumsily through time, rather than picking and choosing where on the time stream to land.  In at least two incidents, the first venture to 1955-2 and the landing in 1885 were portrayed as strictly accidental.  However, since their presence there was required for that specific universe’s events to unfold the way they did, it could be argued that it was inevitable for them to fall out of their universe into another.

However you view the story, be it strictly time travel or complex multiuniversal travel, the possibilities laid out in the series are ground breaking theoretical physics and I believe could only serve to expand our way of viewing reality around us.