“The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln” is episode two of season one of Timeless.
In the previous episode, “Pilot”, Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus hadn’t manage to stop Flynn from stopping the Hindenburg disaster, but had stopped him from blowing it up on the return trip – his actual aim, as Flynn wanted to kill all the important people who would have been on it. It seems that the book Flynn is using as a reference is a journal written by Lucy, but she hasn’t written it – yet. Lucy things that Flynn wants to destroy the United States before it became fully formed (although the 1930s seems like a poor place to start; perhaps this is down to Lucy’s journal).
The passengers not dying in the disaster has already had a surprisingly dramatic effect on Lucy’s own life; her mother is no longer seriously ill, but her sister, Amy, now never existed and she herself is apparently engaged to someone. A pretty serious butterfly effect.
This episode opens on April 14th 1865, in a bar next to a theatre. In the bar is John Wilkes Booth; the theatre next door is where U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is watching a play. The date is that of Lincoln’s assassination, and he gets shot dead by booth.
Lucy is called in because Flynn took the mothership back in time. Wyatt and Rufus haven’t noticed any changes, and initially Lucy isn’t believed – but she has a picture of her sister in a locket she took back on the previous mission. Agent Christopher is not too helpful, but Jiya offers to look into Lucy’s past to see what changed. Connor Mason has Rufus making recordings for someone; why is not yet known.
They are, of course, heading back to the Lincoln assassination. Flynn approaches Booth before the assassination and offers to help. The three travellers have to figure out just how Flynn is going to change the assassination. Whilst Lucy and Wyatt are in the theatre, Rufus, who is wearing sergeant stripes in the Union Army, is approached by a group of what describe themselves as coloured soldiers, who want him to write letters for them. This doesn’t go that well. Lucy meets Lincoln’s son in the theatre. Rufus would like to prevent Lincoln’s assassination, and Lucy would kind of like to, but she doesn’t want to alter history. Rufus thinks they might change things for the better.
It looks like Flynn may be trying to help by helping Booth’s accomplices kill the men they had targeted, as Lincoln’s was only one of several planned assassinations. Flynn meets Lucy again, and tells her he’s trying to save America – not destroy it like she thinks. He claims that he is writing wrongs. He also says that they will work together in the future.
The whole thing gets Lucy, Rufus and Wyatt discussing the ethics of time travel, and what they should, or shouldn’t, do, and how that might change their future.