Hulu’s ‘Future Man’ Season 3 features top-notch science fiction concepts to explain major plot points
'Future Man' might indulge in some low-brow humor once in a while (like the consequences of exchanged body parts), but its sci-fi concepts have always been high-brow. Here is a quick recap of what Doctor Who would call "big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff" on the show's third season.
Time-Traveling Device
The Time-Traveling Device or TTD is badly named because not only does it allow people to travel through time but also across space. It is why Josh Futturman (Josh Hutcherson), Tiger (Eliza Coupe), and Wolf (Derek Wilson), who could virtually travel anywhere anytime, should have been hard to find. But Wolf and then Tiger are so extraordinary that they can't help disrupt history as soon as they show up.
Also, as Josh discovers, it is not so easy to use either. Without the voice in his ear, he would never have been able to operate the thing. The voice tells him that the device has to be operated with his mind and he has to start with "picturing a square in eight dimensions -- that's step one".
When Tiger and Wolf find him, chased by the genetically engineered Spartan soldier, Josh's eyes are nearly crossed over with mental exhaustion as he performs the last step to activate the device, which is to "rotates the tesseract, but only three-quarters, then flatten it!"
DNA-based, cross-temporal, aural transmitter
Josh realizes only in episode 4 that the voice in his ear is not "god" but the time-traveling Osama Bin Laden (Fajer Kaisi), who has been hiding out in Canada in the 1500s as the "Outlaw Wild Sam Bladden". His first reaction is, of course, complete and utter collapse.
But after Susan (Seth Rogen) shows up, Josh starts asking Bin Laden, who claims to be his "BFF", some hard questions. His first one is how Bin Laden was talking to him as the "voice in his ear" across time and space. Turns out, Bin Laden had picked up a few tricks during his stint as a time-traveler.
After the "other Josh" let in "infidels into the Holy Land" of Haven, Bin Laden sliced off his ear to get him to listen to him and then when that did not work, strangled him to death. When the others living in Haven tossed him out of the "Big Time's Door", he became an exile, desperate to return. That is when he used the duplicate Josh's ear to fashion a "DNA-based, cross-temporal, aural transmitter" so that he could whisper into Josh's ear whenever and wherever he wanted.
Haven, the land after time
Haven is described as the "hideout of the worst criminals Time has ever known" according to Susan. These "time criminals" turn out to be all the celebs the duplicate Josh rescued from across history from horrible deaths like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, Vincent Van Gogh, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Tupac, Biggie Smalls, and Buddy Holly. Unmappable, it exists beyond space and time and beyond the reach of the time cops.
As soon as Josh, Wolf and Tiger land up there, they realize something is wrong when they can't map the perimeter of the space, ending up exactly where they started each time they try. Inside Haven, the same second ticks, again and again, in perpetuity. Our heroes spend thousands of years in Haven without realizing it playing out the same endless cycle. Wolf, in his madness, even composes a nifty little rhyme describing the place to the others trapped in Haven. "Show them, show never tell. You think this is Heaven, but this is hell".
The only way in and out of Haven is through the multiple converged bodies of the unfortunate nerd Tim Kilvitus, the Iowa State University's student, who becomes "Big Time's Door", after several people use the singular anomaly he creates on December 31, 1999, at midnight during Y2K to travel to Haven.
The Big Suck
The singular anomaly Tim creates makes time travel possible. But as more and more people enter Haven, time itself starts collapsing in and on itself. The hole in the sky in Haven represents a gigantic time black hole into which all timelines will eventually get sucked into, and end Time itself and thus, the Universe. So it's appropriate that Wolf while trying to explain to Susan why all timelines seem to be converging calls it the "Big Suck". The only way to stop the end of the Universe is to travel to the exact moment in time and space when Tim birthed the anomaly and stop him from pushing the button on his keyboard that he thought would "fix everything".
As soon as Josh manages to do that, not only does the Big Suck not exist anymore, time travel is also no longer possible. This means Josh, Tiger, Wolf, Susan and his robotic family have to put a stop to their time adventures and settle down in their home in the year 2000.
'Future Man' Season 3 dropped all its eight episodes on April 3 on Hulu.