The end of ‘Paper Girl’ has been the most surprising of an already very particular series, and you may be wondering things. After all, there are even dinosaurs.
Spoilers for ‘Paper Girl’ season 1 below
Time travel is a tricky business, and Amazon Prime Video’s ‘Paper Girls’ have gotten their hands dirty a lot. We don’t even begin to break down the laws of time travel and how its futuristic excursions have likely caused timelines to branch off (too complicated, and it’s fiction, after all). Instead, let us fix our gaze on the complicated situation in which they find themselves in 1999.
The girls’ failed attempt to return home in 1988 from 2019 was full of incidents. Their best bet to get back from their paper route was to wait seven years until they could get on the first fold (time portal) and get out of the nineties.
This understandably felt bad for the four of them, who had long since finished their adventure: there were attempted memory ablutions and the deaths kept piling up. And on top of that, the creators still found time to add a pterodactyl to the mix.
The ending is packed with anxiety-inducing suspense and if the details have left you a little scrambled in the head, who could blame you?
‘Paper Girls’: Ending Explained
The old guard has finally caught up with the girls, who are now looking for a Hail Mary to save them from this mess. Fortunately, the gap in space and time at Larry’s farm throws up random items from his journey through it, including an earpiece from Tiffany’s pair of walkie-talkies.
The rest are with STF Underground agents Heck and Naldo, who stole it in 1988, whose recovery started this unfortunate chain of events. Tiffany (Camryn Jones) realizes that she can communicate with Heck and Naldo through her current walkie. She alerts Juniper (Celeste Arias), partner of Heck and Naldo, from STF Underground, and they do so in the hope that they can send them home.
Warning the team of what’s to come could also be to the STF’s advantage: Juniper hopes that “taking advantage of these bastards” will finally give the STF enough clout to win the war. The girls begin to dream of a brighter future which, as you know, is a sign that “things are about to blow up in their faces.”
Unfortunately, there is a snag in his plan. The voice they hear on the walkie is not Heck and Naldo, but Mac from 1988. They realize that the person they communicated with in 1988 in Hell Day was this Juniper who stood shoulder to shoulder with them in 1999. This could only mean one thing: this turn of events is a closed loop. Everything that has happened has happened before and is in the process of happening again.
Mac’s future cancer diagnosis and subsequently her mortality begin to weigh on her and she runs.
KJ (Fina Strazza) chases after her just as the Old Clock begins to make an appearance. She catches up with her in the barn. Mac (Sofia Rosinsky), grateful for her support, shows affection and gratitude towards KJ (who is dealing with her sexuality). This throws KJ but she brushes her hand away from him. Rarely emotional, Mac mistakes this for rejection and runs back to the house where he comes face to face with the Prioress, a soldier of the Old Guard.
Priora comes with a different agenda, less murderous this time, like Strange with Dormammu, she came to bargain. KJ finds Mac hoping to apologize and Prioress stops him. Prioress promises to send them back home with their memories of all futuristic events completely erased. All she needs is the date they traveled, which Mac provides over KJ’s objections.
However, before they can leave, they must meet Grandpa (Jason Mantzoukas). The apparent leader of The Old Guard tells them that they have completely messed up their own timeline and tries to convince them that they have been manipulated by the STF. He states that his enemies only want to erase the “bad events” and change the timelines, but by doing so they are weakening it to the point of breaking, bringing about the end of the universe.
Returning them to 1988 with no memory, he claims, will get things back to normal, however, KJ wants to make another deal, one that will leave them in the future with curative cancer treatment so that Mac is saved. The intent of The Old Guard is to keep the original timeline intact with no exceptions, which means Mac is out of luck.
They head out to complete the deal, but KJ has some nagging last minute questions, like why executing other STF members out of time doesn’t mess up the sacred timeline they’re so hell-bent on keeping intact. It’s a fair question considering that The Old Guard insists that the existing timeline should not be changed under any circumstances, but killing these STF members goes against that spirit.
Grandpa gives KJ a flimsy answer to her question, causing her and Mac to reconsider the offer and ultimately back out of their deal. This upsets Grandpa, who intends to force them to comply by any means necessary.
Larry steps in to protect them with his rifle, thus attempting to make up for his future self’s mistakes that led to the death of the adult Erin. KJ and Mac manage to escape and return to Erin (Riley Lai Nelet) and Tiffany, but unfortunately, Larry is eaten by Grandpa’s pet pterodactyl, Tessa. Yes, a pterodactyl emerged from the sky shortly before to join the fight.
The girls run back to the house and barricade themselves in the basement. It is then that Mac reveals to the others that he has cancer. They squeeze into a warm and touching moment filled with support and friendship at its finest, but there isn’t much time to grieve over their dire situation.
Prioress orders them out before Tessa rips the roof off the place. Knowing that they have run out of options, they do so. Prioress forces them to follow her to the Cathedral (the headquarters of The Old Guard) and gives them a little history lesson where she explains that the STF historically holds The Old Guard responsible for the terrible future they came from.
The clash between the two spawned a new kind of war made possible by the discoveries of a team led by Dr. Jo Bronstein, which included an older Tiffany Quilkin under the banner of the Quilkin Institute. Yes, the future Tiffany is in it up to her neck.
It is then that Prioress becomes the mother of all 180 and offers them the chance to help stop the war, as well as the chance to save Mac from his future fate with cancer. Exhausted from failed fighting efforts, Prioess betrays The Old Guard. She wants to send the girls back to a time she considers “her last best chance to make sure the war never happens” and instructs them to tell Dr. Quilkin what they have seen.
She takes them to a room where they can manually control the folds and ride ships to any destination. With all of them agreeing, Prioress sets the ship up with the coordinates for a future time that begins an imminent countdown.
The ticking of the clock is a classic television signal for more threats on the horizon, but it doesn’t make the suspense any less delicious. As the others head to the pod, KJ stops. He blames her for killing Prioress’s brother when he was defending himself overwhelms her and apologizes, promising to undo it if he can.
During her confession, Prioress is shot by another member of The Old Guard who has discovered her attempts to evacuate the girls. Prioress shoots her to secure her exit, but things still don’t go according to plan. With a minute to go, KJ tries to help a mortally wounded Prioress. Erin leaves the pod to help use mechanical winged insects to heal her, like they did to her when she was shot in episode one.
Tiffany also leaves the capsule to accompany the others, and as Prioress heals, they run back just in time. Well, for KJ at least, who can join Mac in the pod while the others stay behind.
There is a brief and sad emotional goodbye when KJ and Mac are taken out of time. More members of The Old Guard descend on them, but Prioress is able to activate another pod in time to send the girls stranded. Grandpa arrives disillusioned with Prioress. For her crimes, he removes the healing bugs and leaves her to die.
Where are Erin and Tiffany?
The two arrive at a field and the first thing they notice is the absence of another capsule. It doesn’t look too good for the two of them, who assumed they would meet with Mac and KJ. They walk further and come across a drive-in movie theater. David Bowie’s ‘Golden Years’ is the soundtrack to his weary, wandering footsteps.
‘Golden years’ premiered on November 21, 1975. Suspicious, yes, but it could be attributed to the good musical choice of the creators. However, when you compare it to the clothes and ‘The Bonebreaker’ in the foreground (a movie released on August 21, 1974), it’s very likely that Erin and Tiffany traveled even further back in time and not to their futuristic destination. provided.
The clues place them somewhere between 1974 and 1975, trapped outside of time with no way to communicate with their female companions. Season two is about to get really interesting.
Where are Mac and KJ?
Who the hell knows? Assuming their journey was successful, they would have reached a point where the Quilkin Institute is already established. The time frame for this is incomplete. Thanks to the younger Tiffany’s research on herself, we know that it was a successful organization in 2019, but that it didn’t exist in 1999. The fact that they hoped to find a foolproof cure for Mac’s cancer would also suggest that they didn’t arrive between 1999 and 2019, but have instead gone much further down the timeline. Where? It’ll have to wait and see…
All episodes of ‘Paper Girls’ are available on Amazon Prime Video.
Source: Fotogramas
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
