Fear the Walking Dead is one of many shows using time jumps

There has been a lot of talk about the time jumps in Fear the Walking Dead season 4, but Fear isn’t the only show to featuring multiple stories in multiple time periods.

Fear the Walking Dead was a tale of two timelines in the first half of season 4. After leaving season 3 behind at the dam, th show moved forward with the story but still needed to explain what happened to the group following the explosion while simultaneously operating in the present. For sme viewers, this was perplexing, but Fear the Walking Dead gave viewers more of a roadmap than some of the other shows that have utilized time jumps this year.

Anyone who remembers Lost (which starred Maggie Grace for a period of time) will recall wondering what the heck was going on. At the time, the show was considered avant gard, even though no one really knew was was going on. A plance crash on a desert island, polar bears and palm trees, secret hatches and lottery numbers were but a few of the mysteries. To this day the show’s finale remains a question. Did the survivors die? Were they dead the whole time? What the heck was that all about? It was a lot to take in.

More recently, NBC’s This Is Us debuted a show that revealed a twist in the pilot episode: There are two stories operating at the same time. One is set in the present and one is set over 30 years in the past. In watching the two shows, fans started to notice that some of the characters weren’t showing up in the present, leading them to realize that not everyone is alive in the present. The easiest way to tell which timeline fans were seeing was with the age of the cast members. If the kids were kids, then it was the past. If the kids were grown up, then fans were seeing the present. While it took a while to get the full story, the pieces started to fall into place in season 2 when Jack’s story was revealed.

While Fear utilized color to separate the timelines, and This is Us used the ages of the people in the story, HBO’s Westworld has been a free for all. Talk about confusion in timelines. The season 2 finale was chock full of past, present and future stories, all mixed together. The season 2 premiere started at one point that ended up not being the beginning of the tale. Of all the shows with confusing time jumps, Westworld is perhaps the most perplexing of them all.

Now that fans have caught up with the present story in Fear the Walking Dead, there probably won’t be any more dueling timelines, though flashbacks shouldn’t be ruled out entirely.

Next: The Walking Dead Carol marathon this weekend

For the fans of Fear the Walking Dead, Lost, This Is Us and Westworld, which show features the most confusing time jumps for you? Do you enjoy shows that play with time, or would you prefer a chronological narrative?