Temporal Paradox is the twenty-fourth episode of Code Lyoko Evolution and the overall one hundred and nineteenth episode of Code Lyoko.
Plot[]
Odd, Aelita, Yumi and Ulrich are on a training mission in the Cortex to see who can drive the MegaPod to the Dome fastest in case they need to urgently infect Tyron's Supercomputer with the virus. Odd has the fastest time so far, and Ulrich is up next. But as they approach the Megapod, it devirtualizes right in front of them. It wasn't Jeremie who did it, and he can't seem to reprogram it. The mission is aborted and Jeremie works on solving the bug overnight.
Outside gym class, Odd is telling his friends about a phone call he's about to receive, and in his excitement he bumps Laura, causing her to drop her papers. Odd offers to help, but Laura notices a card among her belongings. The card Graven gave to her when she was still part of the group; “Quantum Research Center - Switzerland”. But she can't remember where she got it from.
Everything is calm in the Cortex. Suddenly, the MegaPod virtualizes. Jeremie is elated: it was a simple conflict with a scanning program he had running. And speaking of which, this program activates, detecting an activated tower on the Cortex. He calls the others, and all but William come to the factory. There is no telling what X.A.N.A.'s attack could be, so each of the teens are equally worried about what awaits them.
Laura contemplates the card she found that morning, taking out her phone and dialing the number. She explains who she is and how she got their number, and the voice on the other end organizes a meeting later with their principal on via webcam.
The MegaPod stops a few meters away from a tower with a violet aura around it. Suddenly, Jeremie sees signals appearing on his screen around his friends. Five Ninjas appear, preparing to attack. That's when it clicks in Jeremie's mind, it wasn't X.A.N.A. who activated the tower, but Tyron himself. The attack was just bait to lure them to the Cortex, and into a trap.
The Ninjas suddenly stand in a circle around their enemies. A glowing circle of violet-colored energy forms around the gang as an enormous black metal orb rises from the ground and begins to trap them inside. Yumi, just on the outside of the circle, has time to jump out before the orb closes completely.
Odd, Ulrich and Aelita find themselves among the rest of their class in the gym. Jim begins a speech about not sleeping - the same speech he made earlier that day. Odd's phone rings and it is confiscated for the second time that day. The Lyoko Warriors have gone back to that morning's class. The scene repeats again. They're not just back in time; they're stuck in a time loop. Jeremie is the only one that can help them out of their situation, but they have no way of contacting him, seeing as they're back in the past. But then Aelita realizes that they don't have to call the Jeremie in the future, but the Jeremie of the present.
The scene starts again. Odd calls Jeremie on his phone, annoying Jim for the umpteenth time. However, Odd continues to talk, running away from the teacher. The Jeremie of their past can't believe Odd, thinking it's one of his jokes again. Jim then tackles Odd onto one of the gym mats, causing him to drop his phone. But before Odd can receive punishment, the scene starts again. The past Jeremie hangs up and continues his work.
Yumi's fans are deflected off the sphere. William arrives and inspects the metal sphere, deciding to try his Zweihander, but even it doesn't work. On Jeremie's end, he can't get any data from the sphere, as if it did not exist.
In her bedroom, Laura is waiting excitedly in front of her tablet. The clock ticks over to 1 P.M., the tablet beeps and a telephone icon appears. When she clicks on it, Tyron's face appears on the screen, but the girl obviously doesn't recognize him. He asks her how she got the card, but she only knows that she found it by chance in her bag. Tyron begins to describe his establishment: a place for young, gifted students like Laura to work on their passions with the correct equipment… a quantum supercomputer, for example. But Laura claims she has never worked with one, discouraging Tyron a little.
The scene in the gym restarts. Odd tries to call Jeremie immediately, and Jim chases after him again. Odd orders Jeremie not to hang up, but he still believes it to be one of Odd's jokes. Odd assures him that he knows the future, and describes the cause of the Megapod's bug just before Jim makes him drop his phone. The Jeremie of the past finally believes him, deciding to send his future self a message.
Yumi and William are still having no luck with the sphere. Jeremie feels defeated… but at that moment, an envelope icon appears on the screen… It's a message from himself. He opens it and reads that his friends are stuck in a temporal loop. The sphere is a time bubble. But what for? After some thinking, Jeremie figures out that. His reasoning: while they're stuck in the bubble, Tyron can work on that same time sequence. He therefore has a repetitive signal coming from Kadic. He can now localize the school and the gang.
Suddenly, the ground beneath Yumi and William's feet begins to move. They find themselves on a slope, falling and sliding down it, but luckily landing on a lower platform. The sphere also begins to roll towards the void, and towards them! Yumi notices a hole in the sphere, and William is sucked inside. Back in the gym, Odd begins to dial Jeremie's number when William appears out of nowhere beside him.
Jeremie figures out that Tyron only needs four more time loops to get a sufficient signal, but he still cannot figure out what to do about it. Yumi remembers that altering time takes up a lot of energy - hence why they limit the returns to the past - so if they reroute Tyron's supercomputer's energy flow, they may be able to break the sphere. Jeremie sends her to the Dome to implement the plan.
Yumi fares decently against the Ninjas that came to stop her, until suddenly the Dome's power goes out. On the outside, the sphere suddenly explodes, freeing the Lyoko Warriors. Yumi smiles at the Ninjas and leaps off the platform, disappearing into pixels.
Back in the lab, Jeremie and the others thank Yumi for her quick thinking. The sphere was destroyed before the final loop that Tyron needed.
However, back at the school, Tyron expresses his displeasure at Laura's only theoretical knowledge of quantum physics. Before hanging up, he shows her photos of the five Lyoko Warriors' virtual avatars, asking if she recognizes them. She says that she does indeed, that they look a lot like caricatures of Jeremie Belpois' best friends. Tyron thanks Laura for her help and hangs up, leaving Laura offended.
Trivia[]
- The original French title for this episode is Paradoxe temporel.
- The Catalan subtitles for this episode can be found here: Temporal Paradox: Catalan Subtitles
- This is the first time ever that a time bubble has been used, though the time loop has been implemented before in A Great Day.
- Tyron's Supercomputer repeatedly causing an effect similar to the Return to the Past may have further strengthened X.A.N.A., as it happened in earlier seasons.
- The Skid is back and running after being destroyed in the previous episode.
- The sphere used to implement the time loop resembles a Guardian, a monster from Season 1, but is not necessarily a Guardian. In fact, it is functionally closer to a Simulation Bubble.
- Only for this episode, a Ninja was devirtualized in blue pixels (it is possible that this was an error).
- This episode marks the last appearance of Laura Gauthier in the fifth season.
- This is also the only episode to show Laura in an outfit other than what she usually wears; in this case, gym clothes.
- This episode also marks the last appearance of the Ninjas in the fifth season.
- Jim seeing William appear mirrors the scene in Down to Earth where he saw him (or rather, his clone) disappear.
- The group never enters or directly deactivates the tower.
Errors[]
- Jeremie seems to have briefly forgotten about the Skid's ability to act as a virtualization link between the Factory and the Cortex. The Skid is already in the Cortex when the mission to deactivate the tower begins, meaning Jeremie could have just instantly virtualized the entire team to the Cortex from the start.
- When the Jeremie from the past's hands are shown at the keyboard, his hand brace is nowhere to be seen, though he had yet to take it off in this time period.
- When Odd, Aelita and Ulrich become trapped in the time loop, they go back to where they were in the past. By the same logic, William should not have joined them there but instead gone to where he originally was at the time.
Gallery[]
