Episode 3 of “The Time Traveler’s Wife” focuses on Clare’s childhood. We get to understand the friendship between Clare and Henry from Clare’s point of view. The episode begins with an old Clare looking at the camera and sharing her bizarre love story. She compares her old age with her young age because both involve waiting. But according to her, knowing is worse than waiting. She believes that one must never meet one’s soulmate when they are just 6. Even after all these years, she remembers the first time she met Henry. He came to meet her at the field. He asked her to keep her father’s clothes ready for him and to bring along food since time traveling made him hungry. A young Clare found the idea of an invisible secret friend charming. Though what came after knowing him was his absence, she was left with an empty feeling every time he disappeared.
‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ Episode 3: Recap Summary
Clare waited to meet Henry for the second time. She counted her days and tried not to be impatient. Henry met her as promised on the 29th of September. Clare carried a notebook with her to write down all the dates Henry would visit her. She wrote down a total of 150 dates. He would visit her till the age of 18. Even though it was Henry all the time, he was not of the same age. He would visit her from different timelines. One Henry had dark hair and was fun to be with. There was the other with greying hair, who was almost like a father who made her do her homework. And then there was the sad Henry. Even though there were several of them, it did not matter to Clare since it was all Henry in the end. When Clare was 12, Henry mentioned in their conversation how he would meet her parents when she would be 20. That made her always question who she was to Henry in the future. She knew he had a wife named Clare, but he never confirmed whether or not she was his wife.
One night, Clare heard Henry scream for help. She ran out to help him; the backyard was covered in snow. She saw her father and brother shooting. She knew something might have gone wrong. She saw blood on the snow, but that soon disappeared. This hints at Henry’s accident that will impact his future. While Clare shared with Henry what she had witnessed the next time they met, he was not bothered because he did not wish to know much about the future. Clare bolstered the courage to ask Henry about his wife. She shared with him her theory about the future. She believed that she would be Henry’s wife in the future. When a 13-year-old girl asks a man in his mid-30s if she would be his wife in the future, the safest way to go for Henry was to lie. Even though the lie did upset Clare, it was a decent thing to do. Young Clare was heartbroken, but by the time she was 16, she had learned to find her way around her desire.
She made Henry play a game of checkers, and with every right move, she provided him with a clothing item. To her disappointment, he was a great player. He tried to reason with her about how inappropriate it would be for a man of his age to attract a teenager like Clare. To calm her down, he bought her an ice cream. Clare’s friends noticed her and Henry sitting together. The next time Henry visited, she left him a note saying that she had gone to a party. She left him with a sandwich and his clothes. Henry waited for Clare at their usual spot.
Ending Explained: What Had Happened To Clare On The Night Of The Party? How Did She Seek Revenge?
Clare went to a party with her friends. Even though she was in love with Henry, she knew that he had a different life in the future that did not involve her. Like any other 16-year-old, she found herself attracted to a sportsman, Jason, from school. What Clare thought would be a fun night at a party turned into a disaster, and she came running looking for Henry at their spot. Though as she reached, Henry disappeared and only his clothes remained.
The next day, when Henry met with Clare, she asked him to accompany her on a car ride. She rode the car at a scary fast speed and asked Henry to introduce his younger self to her since he was already a part of her world. Henry refused her idea, stating that she would only meet him when they were supposed to, as was written in history. Out of anger and frustration, she drove the car in the wrong lane, stating that no matter what she did now, she would survive since she was already a part of the future Henry spoke about. Henry stopped the car and later made her understand that the future is built on the choices she makes now. She might not die, but she could have killed multiple families and been responsible for her mistake for the rest of her life. This conversation with Henry broke her down. She asked him if he had gotten away from a police arrest before. Being a time traveler, Henry often had to choose unfair means to get clothes and food, which led to police arrests. But he always got away since he could disappear easily. She then added that she wanted him to kill Jason. 32-year-old Henry makes a call to 24-year-old Henry working at the library. He asks young Henry to not be alone for the night because he would need an alibi from 8 to 10 pm. After getting back into the car, Henry asks Clare to have an alibi as well, which she refuses because she wanted to be with him that night. She wanted to watch Jason suffer. Henry got the tapes and, for some reason, a marker with him. Clare had a gun kept ready in the glove box of the car. They were ready to murder Jason.
Clare knew Jason would be alone that night. Henry went up to the door, and Jason answered the bell. He was asked to fit himself into the back of the car at gunpoint. Jason urinated out of fear, and without a fight, he got into the car. After going a few feet away from his house, Clare heard him breathe heavily. She had forgotten about his inhaler and drove back to his house to get it even though Henry thought it was a bad idea. After taking the inhaler, Clare changed her mind. She wanted him to suffer but did not want him to die. Henry was confused by her change of heart. Clare stopped the car and finally spoke about what had happened that night with her. She stood in front of the headlight and undressed herself, revealing her bruises. Henry was shocked and angry. Jason had physically tortured her after she refused to get intimate with him. According to him, she could not back out once she had agreed to be with him in his car. Clare was in tears as she described the abuse. Jason had burned her body with the cigarette he was smoking. Henry wanted to kill the man now, but Clare explained that she wanted him to suffer and not die. She lied to Henry, saying that Jason did not rape her when, in reality, he did. She believed that by sharing the truth, it would always remain a part of their story, particularly hers. She refused to carry with her the truth that a monster had forced himself on her, forever.
Henry tied Jason to a tree while Clare held him at gunpoint. Jason tried to prove his innocence by referring to the texts Clare had sent after that night. According to him, she was happy and had enjoyed the night. Clare explained that she had sent those texts because she was scared that Jason would harm her. Henry knew Clare, and there was no doubt in his mind with regards to what had happened. He punched Jason in the face, saying that Clare could never have enjoyed that. Jason continued to say that she enjoyed it rough, and this infuriated Henry. He shouted, saying that he knew she could never have enjoyed that because she was his wife. Clare was taken by surprise. Even though she doubted him from the age of 13, he always maintained that she was not his wife in the future.
After admitting the truth and as a result of the pressure, Henry knew that he was about to disappear. Before leaving, he gave Clare the marker he bought, stating that he did not know why he chose to buy it, but he believed it would be of some help to her. Alone now, Clare called all her friends who were abused by men. She marked Jason’s body with her narrative, and her friends wrote down their truth as well. He became her first sculpture. It was then that she learned that art was not meant to be hung on a wall; sometimes, it was meant for revenge.
In the end, Henry found the old marker kept in Clare’s art room. Henry, who had just traveled to her traumatic past, did not know the significance of the marker up until now. Clare, now 24, said that he had given it to her, indicating that in the timeline of the 24-year-old Clare, Henry from another timeline had done the same thing. “The Time Traveler’s Wife” Episode 3 ends with Clare mentioning how Henry last met her when she was 18. She waited for two more years and at last came across a young Henry at the library. Just the way they were meant to meet on time. But she found him to be extremely annoying. Clare’s story is what the series is about; how her life took shape around a time traveler. While in most sci-fi, time travel is treated as a boon, but here it is nothing less than a curse, especially for Clare, who in every timeline has to wait to be with the one she loves.
