Time Traveler’s Wife Show Already Answers The Movie’s Biggest Question

HBO's The Time Traveler's Wife has used its first episode to address one of the burning questions left unanswered by the 2009 movie adaptation.

Time Traveler’s Wife Show Already Answers The Movie’s Biggest Question

This article contains spoilers for The Time Traveler’s Wife episode 1.

HBO’s The Time Traveler’s Wife series has already answered one of the movie’s biggest unanswered questions about time travel. Following the love story of Henry (Theo James) and Clare (Rose Leslie), The Time Traveler’s Wife is a six-episode adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s bestselling 2003 novel of the same name. The book was also adapted into a 2009 movie, which starred Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams, although the two adaptations possess distinct differences.

The central premise revolves around Henry’s genetic ability to time travel, although it’s something that he cannot control. As a result, Henry and Clare’s love story happens all out of order, with their meetings scattered across their timelines, making their romance decidedly non-linear. As well as causing The Time Traveler’s Wife‘s characters to repeatedly meet at different points in their respective timelines, Henry’s involuntary time travel also comes with another inconvenient side effect: whenever he travels through time, his clothes are left behind, causing him to appear naked at his destination.

As Henry repeatedly appears naked in seemingly random locations around New York, it would seem that people would likely seek to do something about it—or, at the very least, Henry would become a cryptid-like figure or urban legend. Despite this, the public’s reaction to Henry’s appearance isn’t addressed in the 2009 film. Interestingly, 2022’s episodic HBO version of The Time Traveler’s Wife has gone some way toward explaining the reason why Henry hasn’t become infamous. His naked body and hasty retreats make it difficult for people to accurately describe his face.

The time travel in The Time Traveler’s Wife is explained in only general terms. It’s the result of a rare genetic disorder that causes Henry to travel through time whenever he becomes stressed, not entirely dissimilar to America Chavez’s multiverse-traveling ability in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The added complication of always arriving at his destination naked has forced Henry to become athletic and scrappy, as suddenly appearing naked in public is enough to trigger confrontations with bystanders or the police. However, despite this regular problem, Henry manages to avoid becoming notorious, and when this isn’t addressed – such as in the 2009 movie – it becomes something of a plot hole.

The show’s explanation that people struggle to memorize Henry’s features is played as something of a joke, but it rings true. In a bustling metropolis like New York, the problem faced by The Time Traveler’s Wife‘s protagonist is offset by the regularity with which strange things happen, and Henry’s nakedness would undoubtedly draw the eye long enough for him to escape with his face relatively unseen. Funny though it may seem, there’s a clear line of truth in the explanation: given the sudden nature of his appearance, the shock of those who witness it, and Henry’s speedy retreats, it would make sense that people rarely, if ever, get a good look at his face.

The show’s explanation for Henry’s continued anonymity is subtle, but it corrects a plot hole from the 2009 movie. It works as it’s an understated but logical way of explaining the finer details of Henry’s life and the ways in which his time travel presents to the wider world. Through Steven Moffat’s writing, The Time Traveler’s Wife has already achieved the simple but impressive task of answering one of the questions left hanging by the movie adaptation.