In the final timeline, wouldn't Edna have known everything all along?
In the final timeline, Edna's personal history is somewhat like this-she's gone through ALL the events of all 5 episodes in 1931...then she takes the Delorean back to 1876, spends a couple of months there, and is forcibly brought back to 1931 by Doc and Marty, arrested, and imprisoned.
So basically, the Edna of the final timeline (whom we see in the end married to Kid Tannen) should logically remember everything about her time travel experiance.
In fact, she would know all about the Delorean time machine, and Marty and Doc's time travel adventures, before even THEY would!
She knew the McFly's in the 1980's (as implied by the final scene), so she would have known Marty. And she could thus possibly have recognised Marty, as early as say, 1982 or 1983, as being 'Sonny Crockett' (or 'Michael Corleone'), the time traveler who screwed up her's and Emmett's relationship in 1931.
And I dunno if Edna learnt in episode 5 that 'Carl Sagan' was Emmett Brown's future self (the comment about how he was travelling under a false name does seem to imply this)...but either way, by the 1980's, she would have realised that her ex-boyfriend Emmett was the Carl Sagan she met back in 1931. If she ever saw the Delorean around town (even say, at the time when Doc first bought it, to prepare converting it into a time machine), she would recognise it for what it was (or rather, what it would come to be!)
If she ever had a chat with her step-son Biff, she might also have learnt of Biff's weird experiances in 1955, including the Almanac from the future, and his run-ins with a certain 'Calvin Klien' and figured out even MORE about Marty's time travels in the past. (Biff telling her about seeing the flying Delorean disappear outside the McFly house would cinch it!)
Just something interesting which occured to me now...
So basically, the Edna of the final timeline (whom we see in the end married to Kid Tannen) should logically remember everything about her time travel experiance.
In fact, she would know all about the Delorean time machine, and Marty and Doc's time travel adventures, before even THEY would!
She knew the McFly's in the 1980's (as implied by the final scene), so she would have known Marty. And she could thus possibly have recognised Marty, as early as say, 1982 or 1983, as being 'Sonny Crockett' (or 'Michael Corleone'), the time traveler who screwed up her's and Emmett's relationship in 1931.
And I dunno if Edna learnt in episode 5 that 'Carl Sagan' was Emmett Brown's future self (the comment about how he was travelling under a false name does seem to imply this)...but either way, by the 1980's, she would have realised that her ex-boyfriend Emmett was the Carl Sagan she met back in 1931. If she ever saw the Delorean around town (even say, at the time when Doc first bought it, to prepare converting it into a time machine), she would recognise it for what it was (or rather, what it would come to be!)
If she ever had a chat with her step-son Biff, she might also have learnt of Biff's weird experiances in 1955, including the Almanac from the future, and his run-ins with a certain 'Calvin Klien' and figured out even MORE about Marty's time travels in the past. (Biff telling her about seeing the flying Delorean disappear outside the McFly house would cinch it!)
Just something interesting which occured to me now...
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Plus she probably suppressed it thinking she was mad, after all who would believe her?
And its safe to say people don't recognise them, as you don't expect them to be the same people with no changes after so long; examples of this include Lorraine, George, Arthur, Trixie, Biff, Kid & FCB who all saw Marty out of time but did not recognise this later (unless prompted to)
However, in the final timeline, she definetly wouldn't be suffering from 'repressed memory syndrome'.
Granted, she may at first believe it was all a dream or a hallucination. But she would realise there was a LOT of basis for that hallucination of her's in reality. People remember 'Carl Sagan' and 'Sonny Crockett'...Danny Parker remembers seeing the Delorean (so do a lot of other people). Many people would have commented on the disappearance of Sagan and Crockett after the day of the Expo. Plus, she was also wearing 19th century clothes at the time of her arrest...another piece of tangible evidence.
Plus, even if she somehow convinced herself for years that it was 'all a dream', by the 1980's (or hell, even by the 1950's), she would have noticed Emmett's increasing resemblance to Carl Sagan, and that would certainly have rekindled her memory of the events of 1931 and 1876. And when she saw Marty in the 1980's, she should start to remember Sonny Crockett.
Her case is different from that of George, Lorraine, Biff or any other character Marty and Doc interacted with in the past. These people had no inkling about time travel being involved (Biff, at most, caught a glimpse of the flying Delorean in 1955, though he may well remember the old man who gave him the Almanac vividly). There may be suspicions, but no conclusive evidence. Whereas Edna has actually time traveled HERSELF and knew for a FACT that Marty and Doc were time travelers.
It's kinda like Jennifer's case in BTTF2 and 3. She time travels to the future and has some vivid experiances in 2015. Then, after she faints, and Marty brings her back to 1985, when she wakes up she assumes its all a dream, and all goes well. But the moment she begins to encounter tangible evidence (for instance, Marty mentioning Hilldale, the (near) accident with the Rolls Royce, the 'Your Fired' note from the future etc), she realizes the truth because there's no way to deny it.
Maybe that's why she's so nice to Emmett and eventually Marty. I mean would you want to be in the bad books of someone who had a time machine?
Yeah...there's that. But I wonder if she ever thought to put her knowledge to some use...maybe by stealing the Delorean and messing around with the past again.
As for Edna...I can't seem to recall if, in episode 5, she learns that Carl Sagan is Emmett Brown's future self or not. At the saloon in 1876, she definetly seems to know that 'Carl Sagan' isn't his real name...but I don't seem to recall if there was any mention of her knowing who he really was in that scene. But I feel she would have figured out eventually, as time went by and Emmett, her ex boyfriend, got older and started to resemble Carl Sagan. After all, Edna had a lot to do with Carl Sagan (actually, three different versions of him!) back in 1931. She frames him for the speakeasy fire. Then later, she colludes with him to sabotage Emmett's scientific career. And finally, she ends up confronting him back in 1876, and is forcibly pulled through time by him, leading to her arrest. I think she had ample reason to remember his face.
I doubt many people have seen the delorean, even Marty implies he's never seen it at the beginning of part I. Doc does of course need to build the time circuits. It's unlikely he drives it around hill valley as he'd be worried about it getting stolen.
Okay...but I guess the Delorean WAS seen around town since Doc's return from the Old West, since he does seem to drive it around openly, and leave it parked out in the street; so Edna MIGHT have seen it.
Hey, now that you mention it...it IS possible she spouted off about time travel in prison and had psychiatric 'treatment' of some sort (might have been what led to her nicer demeanor in the end). Although seeing Marty and Doc in the 1980's might have reminded her, and convinced her that the events of 1931 were real...though she MIGHT just keep quiet apart it, since she doesn't want to end up back in the loony bin, if your theory is true!
While she has no clue where Yakoff Smirnov and Carl Sagan actually come from, she probably deducts it's from the future; for one thing the car moves way faster than any 1931 car should (despite what the chase when marty first arrives in part I implies) and she does see the other delorean flying.
So I wonder what she'd think once the DeLoreans actually get invented?
It's possible they follow the same path Biff does in the 'good' timelines. Gets wussified but is still mean at heart; we see 2015 biff is acting more to his 'true' self as well as his one and only scene in part III. We see this again in episode 1.
This does dive deep into human psychology but some minds are corruptable, some arent. Ednas seems to be the type with the ability to be corrupted given what we see in the burnt down hill valley timeline; notice she doesn't seem to question how Emmett is the same age as her even though she's been in the past for 55 years (or the fact that it's 1931 which is the same year she left); her mind is clearly capable of fabricating things as well as denying truths. So odds are she is eventually convinced it didnt happen.
You also have to question how long her and Kid could have been in prisons together since it's rare for men and women to be housed together... but it IS more common in mental institutions.
You know...I could almost picture Kid as trying to Randle P. McMurphy his way out of being put in a big prison.
Edna's mind is totally shattered in the Burnt Hill Valley timeline though...in the normal timeline however, she would retain her reason in the final timeline. Even if she convinced herself it was all a dream in 1931...as time goes by, stuff like Emmett's appearance, the production of Deloreans in 1981, seeing Marty McFly by the time he's 15-16 etc MIGHT rekindle her memories.
Again I don't recall if, in the scene in Episode 5 in 1876, Edna mentions that she knows that Carl Sagan is Emmett's future self or not...she seems to know its not his real name, but I can't recall anything more than that.
It would be funny if for some reason, somehow,if, she witnessed the lighting bolt event in 1955... (that is if the final version of her has the same apartment in the town sqaure 31 years before the 1st version of herself[highly unlikely])... And cause her somekind of re-trama of 1931 making her have mutiple trips through out her life to the shady acres insane asylum.
Hey...that's interesting. I forgot all about her apartment being at the Town Square. Who knows...it MIGHT have been possible? There is apparently a Space-time Preservation Effect (SPE) which tries to keep things as consistent as possible between timelines...which explains stuff like the McFly's having the same house in both Twin Pines and Lone Pine 1985 etc.
I wonder what Edna thought when she heard about Old Man Peabody's run-in with a 'flying saucer' at Twin Pines Ranch? Or if Biff told her about Calvin Klien escaping on one after stealing the Almanac?
Still, she could have figured it out as Emmett got older.
Well she does in the burnt down timeline but that is irrelevant now. FCB always refers to Emmett in the 3rd person to Edna. But she does know that 'Carl Sagan' and Marty have access to time travel and at the end of episode 4/beginning of 5 FCB does imply he knows the future.
Well, I was under the impression that FCB was merely bullsh*tting Edna with all that crap about Marty being the anarchist 'Yakov Smirnoff', just to get her to derail Emmett's scientific debut. I don't think she ever found out about the time travel before her escape through time.
Oh I agree she probably doesn't realize anything about time travel until she actually does it herself. I'm just saying she probably has enough evidence to rightly assume they are from the future (instead of the past).