The Amazon Prime series “The Devil’s Hour” majorly centers around Lucy Chambers and her young son, Isaac Stephens, who were both traumatized by the eerie visions that occurred throughout the series. It was visually revealed what visions Lucy was having, but in the case of Isaac, we had to rely on the words that he had told Lucy and his psychologist, Dr. Ruby Bennett. In the story, Lucy worked as a child protective services worker, who used to suddenly wake up at 3:33 am. She spent her entire life researching her problem and told Dr. Ruby Bennett that this exact hour was known as “The Devil’s Hour,” which is also the title of the series. However, the reason why Lucy was getting all the visions was somehow connected to this hour alone. How? Let’s find out.
At the end of “The Devil’s Hour,” Gideon Shepherd, a man blessed with some supernatural powers, tells Lucy that she had requested him in the previous life that he should help her and stop the most tragic thing in her life from happening. In the original reality, Lucy’s mother, Sylvia Chambers, tried to shoot herself to death, probably because of severe depression. In the flashback sequence, we don’t see any father, and thus we can speculate that it was probably Lucy’s father who had left the family, and thus the mother had decided to kill herself to end the misery. In such a case, Lucy would not only experience the most tragic night of her life but would also have to spend the rest of her life in a foster home or an orphanage. The childhood trauma might have mentally tormented her throughout her life, and she probably wanted to just erase the memory or forget that something like that ever happened to her, and thus she approached Gideon Shepherd.
Gideon and Lucy shared a very strange relationship, as Gideon would later tell Lucy that no matter how hard he tried, it was always one detective, Lucy Chambers, who would catch him in the end. Going by the original timeline, Lucy might have caught Gideon once again, but in one possibility, she tried to believe Gideon’s words, or maybe he convinced her to believe that he could remember things from past lives. Gideon knew that Lucy might seek his help and so he got himself incarcerated and waited for 25 years, hoping that Lucy would one day come to visit him in prison, which fortunately she did. It was the exact same scene that Lucy (in the current timeline) saw in her dreams, where an older version of herself visited an old Gideon and greeted him. At this point, Lucy asks Gideon to change the original course of events and stop her mother, Sylvia, from killing herself, thereby saving Lucy from lifelong trauma.
In the next rebirth, Gideon broke into Lucy’s house and interrupted the normal timeline, as a result of which Sylvia was alive, but at what cost? Sylvia was meant to be dead on that night, but a change in the present led to a change in the future, causing some adverse effects. Sylvia’s mental health started to decline as she started having visions of the past timeline, which were actually the events that should have happened in this timeline too, but Gideon had intervened. Gideon explained to Lucy that he had thought that all these timelines were laid out in a straight line, but through Lucy’s incident, he had understood that all these timelines were a part of a curve and, thus, were happening at the same time. As per Gideon, he thought he had memories of his past life, but in reality, these incidents were happening in the present too, somewhere in the other timeline, as a result of which he was able to see a glimpse of those timelines because these timelines were so tightly wound that they were almost touching each other. Hence, in Lucy’s case too, whatever visions she had, they were a part of her previous life where she had a dead mother and was married to detective Ravi Dhillon and not Mike Stephens. Everything Lucy saw had happened in the past timeline (or was happening in some other timeline). 3:33 am was the time when her mother shot herself, and thus, Lucy used to wake up suddenly at this time every night because she had never heard this gunshot in the current timeline.
Nevertheless, by saving Lucy, Gideon hadn’t caused any severe harm to the timelines, but unknowingly, Lucy had. She married Mike and had a child, Isaac, who wasn’t meant to be born in any of the timelines and thus was an anomaly. Gideon explained that because Isaac wasn’t bound to any of the original realities and was the product of his own interference, thus Isaac had no soul or spirit like normal human beings. It explains the reason why Isaac didn’t feel any emotions or pain throughout the series. And because Isaac wasn’t bound to any of the timelines, he was like a floating entity who could unknowingly jump from one timeline to another (mentally). It was the reason why Isaac used to see people around him (not just glimpses), and it was more real to him than it was to Lucy or Sylvia. In one incident, we found Isaac peeing in the school corridor as he had accidentally traveled to another timeline where there was really a toilet there instead of a corridor.
If we take into consideration the popular comic books, films, and television shows of the same genre, then probably Isaac’s frequent travel to other timelines would have created a hole in between these timelines, leading to the complete destruction of the entire spiral. He was like a branch branching out of the timeline, slowly spreading its effect to other timelines that could have had much more adverse effects if not stopped immediately. His powers were only increasing with time, which was why Gideon was so rigorously trying to find Lucy in order to stop Isaac. Now, I believe Gideon just wanted to kill Isaac, but he couldn’t do so because he was a man of heavy conscience who wanted to talk to Lucy before committing a grave sin. However, no matter how much Gideon tried to convince Lucy about the harm that Isaac could bring to the world, Lucy refused to believe him as she was blinded by her motherly love. She told Gideon that her child loved her dearly. At this point, Gideon was certain that Lucy would never be able to get rid of her own child, and thus he had to take matters into his own hands. He had run away from captivity, but what he wanted to do had already been accomplished.
At home, Isaac’s biological father, Mike Stephens, noticed some smoke coming out of Isaac’s room. Isaac had put his t-shirt on the room heater, to dry it and the cloth caught fire, leading to a fire that burned the entire house down. As Lucy arrived at the house, she tried to save Isaac but failed to do so. In the original timeline, this fire was meant to happen, but not in Lucy’s house. It should have been their neighbor’s house, where the new neighbors, Lee and Debbie Warren, lived with their daughter. Nevertheless, as Lucy tried to save her son, she lost her life in the fire, and the narrative quickly jumped to the next timeline, where we saw detective Lucy Chambers arriving at Warren’s house where their house was burning.
The ending of “The Devil’s Hour” suggests that Gideon probably learned from his mistake and thus, in the next rebirth, he didn’t try to save Sylvia’s life, as a result of which the normal course of events took place and Lucy became a detective where she met Ravi and the two of them married each other. We see Lucy investigating the case of Harold Slade and Aiden Stenner, which is the investigation in which Gideon played an important role, as previously established in the series. So maybe, in the next timeline, Gideon will do what he used to do with the other people’s lives except for Lucy’s, as he understood what events would follow if he would interfere in Lucy’s life. He really wanted to save Lucy from a lifelong trauma, but he couldn’t put humanity in danger for one person’s sake. Hence, things will play out as destined, and Lucy and Gideon will meet once again, where Lucy will arrest Gideon and put him behind bars, and this time there will be no bargain between them whatsoever.
