A lot of strange things have been happening since the beginning of “The Devil’s Hour,” and our protagonist, Lucy Chambers, has been yearning for answers. Throughout the series, Lucy kept getting visions of the murders (or mishappenings) that were going to occur in the future. It was through these visions that she came across DI Ravi Dhillon, who later concluded that there was a strange serial killer on the loose who could be the root cause of all the mishappenings so far. Lucy had been interacting with this man in her visions but still had no idea who he was until episode 5, when she finally came face-to-face with him in her 3:33 dream, where she visited the future and greeted the man as Gideon Shepherd. So, who was he? Why was he looking for Lucy?
Who Was Gideon Shepherd?
Through a news article on the internet, Lucy found out that a nine-year-old boy named Gideon Shepherd had stabbed his father to death in 1967 and vanished without a trace, never to be found again. Soon, Ravi and Lucy started an investigation of their own and were able to catch Gideon, who finally revealed who he really was. Gideon was a pretty normal boy, like all of us, until he realized that he could remember the memories of his past life. Gideon and his younger brother, Malcolm, had a pretty traumatizing childhood. Their father, an extremely religious man, used to physically assault Gideon for his mistake, but that didn’t stop there. He started suspecting his wife of having affairs with other men, a seed of doubt that later led to their divorce. Probably, after Gideon’s mother walked out of the marriage, his father lost his mind. One day, he drove the car off the cliff and killed both himself and the kids. Things should have ended there, but it didn’t.
A new timeline began as Gideon Shepherd was reborn in the same time period to the same parents and had the same body. In this alternate timeline, the only thing that had changed was that Gideon remembered his past lives. He had glimpses of what was about to happen in the future because a past variant of him had already seen it. These glimpses helped Gideon not only to avoid any tragedy but also to stop the chaos (or as he called it). Gideon knew that his father was going to kill him and his brother, which was why he stabbed his father to avoid the tragedy. In the original timeline, Gideon should have been dead by the age of 9, but because of his supernatural powers, he survived. There wasn’t any fate ascertained for him, which was why he was free to choose his own. As Gideon realized this, he used his memories and power of recurrence to save other innocent lives and try to contain the chaos. Gideon soon realized that even if his father or any other thing wouldn’t kill him, he would still have to die a natural death, and thus, every time he was reborn, he would try to help more and more innocent people survive the chaos.
Maybe Gideon didn’t realize this, but in trying to help the people, he was unknowingly changing the predefined course of events, leading to more and more chaos in the process. On September 5th, 1977, Gideon saved the lives of a young girl named Evelyn and her family, who should have been dead in the fatal car crash in Hackbridge. But Gideon saved Evelyn, and soon after, she started getting visions of her past lives, which were probably the events that should be happening in the original timeline. Evelyn was not meant to live in this world, and these visions took a toll on her mental health as wherever she went, she used to get visions of the original timeline. As a result of this, Gideon approached her later in life and helped her come to terms with these glitches in reality. He took Evelyn to an old house in the moor where no reality had opened so far, and thus that place in itself wasn’t a part of her memory; because of this, she was able to calm down a bit and understand what was happening in her life.
How Did Gideon Help Lucy in the Past? What Did Lucy Ask Him to Do?
During the interrogation, Gideon Shepherd told Lucy that no matter what he did, there was one detective who would always find him. Here, Ravi Dhillon really took pride in his expertise, but unfortunately, it was Lucy Chambers who would always find Gideon in the original timeline. In the original reality, Lucy was a part of the police force and married Ravi, as was suggested in one of the glimpses Lucy had. Nevertheless, after catching Gideon, Lucy somehow believed in his supernatural powers and thus wanted him to help her to stop the worst tragedy that had happened in her life. Her mother, Sylvia Chambers, had killed herself at 3:33 at nighttime in the original timeline when Lucy was just a child, and this incident probably left a severe mental scar from which Lucy never really recovered and thus wanted Gideon to change the timeline. In the current timeline, Gideon broke into Lucy’s house and removed the firing pin from the gun from which Sylvia was going to shoot herself, thus giving both Sylvia and Lucy a second chance in life. However, Sylvia was not meant to survive that day as per the original timeline, and thus she started getting visions like Evelyn, because of which she was declared as a patient suffering from schizophrenia, which wasn’t exactly the case. Lucy, too, used to wake up suddenly at 3:33, the devil’s hour, from a gunshot because it was the exact time when her mother had shot herself in the original timeline.
Lucy, who had never witnessed any such tragedy in the changed timeline, had a very different approach to life, and instead of meeting Ravi, she met Mike Stephens and married him. Again, this set course wasn’t meant to happen, and to add another conflict, Lucy got pregnant with Mike’s child, and later Isaac was born. Both Gideon and Lucy in the past timeline might not have considered the fact that a simple change in the present would lead to such severe consequences in the future. Isaac was an anomaly who wasn’t meant to be born, and thus he didn’t belong to any of the timelines, and as Gideon explained, he had the power to travel between different timelines as he wasn’t bound to any timeline. Isaac could have broken the entire timeline, which was why Gideon tried to convince Lucy to get rid of Isaac as soon as possible, or the chaos would lead to the destruction of all humanity. But Lucy, as a mother, didn’t want to believe it, as she thought Issac was a normal kid who loved his mother, even though Gideon told her that Issac had no soul. At this point, Lucy refused to believe any of Gideon’s words and went straight back home, only to find out that her house was on fire and Issac was inside it. Lucy tried to save Issac’s life, but she couldn’t find him. Unfortunately, she lost her life in the fire, and Gideon, who was being sent to prison, managed to escape. We don’t know what happened to Gideon in that timeline, but we are certain that he didn’t try to save Sylvia’s life in the next recurrence, because of which Lucy followed her original set course and ended up becoming the detective as it was meant to be. We saw her standing in front of the burning house, which was their neighbor’s house. In the previous timeline, Lucy had a glimpse of Debbie Warren’s burned face, which was actually a part of the original timeline.
Final Words
“The Devil’s Hour” introduces the concept of alternate realities, but here, Gideon Shepherd is the starting and end point of all chaos. In the universe created by the series, there is only one “naturally” born person who can remember the incidents of his past lives and thus has the powers to play with reality, but with such powers comes huge responsibility, and hence Gideon should not take his powers for granted. He had assisted in the creation of an anomaly by helping Lucy, and such an anomaly could have led to the destruction of all other timelines. We hope that after Lucy’s incident, Gideon will really be cautious in changing the course of events and whom he should save and whom he should not, as the ripples so created can have a really adverse effect on the entire humanity.
