Paper Girls season 1, episode 8 recap: It B Over

At the end of the last episode of Paper Girls, it seemed like all hope was lost. The Old Watch knew where the paper girls were and there was nowhere left to run, which is a perfect setup going into a season finale.

Paper Girls Season 1 Episode 8 recap – A last ditch attempt…

Tiff learns that walkie-talkies can be used across time. Since the other half of her walkie-talkie set is still in1988, that means that there might be a chance to get in contact with somebody to bring them home.

Unfortunately, calling out only results in the voice of episode 1 Mac. The girls appear to be stuck in some kind of time loop with no way to keep things from happening because they have essentially already happened.

Meanwhile, KJ and Mac are approached by Prioress and Grand Father, who offer to return the girls to their rightful time period and wipe their memories of everything that’s happened.  Mac initially agrees, not wanting to know that there is a countdown on her life.

KJ however, pushes back against the idea. Her pitch is that they go even further into the future, and find a cure to save Mac’s life.

Grand Father explains that this isn’t possible. Using the analogy of a mix tape, he explains that the STF is rewriting and rewriting different parts of history.

Just like a tape that is worn too much, if they don’t stop the STF, then the timeline (and thus the entire universe) will snap. The timeline has to be preserved exactly as it is in order to keep the universe safe.

Everything that has happened has to have happened, and everything that will happen has to happen. KJ doesn’t buy the explanation though.

With a rousing speech she advocates for everyone being given a choice and the existence of free will, something that usually comes up eventually in all time travel stories. Mac switches sides and rejects the offer to have her mind wiped, leaving Grand Father and The Old Watch no choice but to do things the hard way.

The hard way, it turns out, involves a dinosaur. Grand Father has a pet man-eating dinosaur.

Poor Larry is eaten alive, sacrificing himself for the girls, much in the same way that Adult Erin did earlier in the series. Juniper and Older Tiff are captured as well, but Tiff leaves a note for Older Tiff to discover once her mind is wiped, “You will invent time travel.”

The four girls are rounded up and taken by the Old Watch to have their memories erased. However, Prioress makes a face upon hearing Tiff’s full name for the first time.

Paper Girls Season 1 Episode 8 recap – Prioress’s decision…

As the girls wait for their minds to be erased, they get a quiet moment alone to reflect on their world and how it all seemed so different just a few days ago before time travel, running into older versions of themselves, and warring factions. Prioress suddenly appears and demands that Tiff come with her.

The girls refuse to be split up, so Prioress is forced to take all of them along. She reveals that Tiff will be instrumental in creating time travel in the future but wants current Tiff to make a different choice and keep time travel from happening.

The way that Prioress sees it, the only way to truly end the Time War is to create a situation where it never even happened in the first place. Prioress tries to send the four girls through a time-fold in a pod, which is obviously frowned upon by the rest of the Old Watch.

This results in a shootout leaving at least one member of the Old Watch dead, and Prioress with a fatal wound. Erin hurries out of the pod with another batch of the repair bugs that healed her at the beginning of the season.

She uses the bugs to try and save Prioress, but in the process, the pod leaves, taking Mac and KJ to an unknown time period. Prioress manages to get another pod set up and sends Erin and Tiff off in a second pod moments before Grand Father is able to stop them.

Tiff and Erin find themselves in a new time period, with no idea where Mac and KJ have gone. It turns out that the didn’t travel to the future to meet up with adult Tiff as planned, but are instead, further back in the past than they’ve ever been.

Tiff and Erin find themselves somewhere in the mid 1970s, as the episode closes out and the season as well.

Paper Girls Season 1 Episode 8 recap – In Conclusion…

It’s an increasingly frustrating problem in the era of streaming television for a series to end on a cliffhanger, only to be canceled with no hope of ever getting to see a season two. Because full seasons of a show are released at once to support a binge model of TV watching, the end of the season has to be finished before the first episode is even seen by the audience.

Paper Girls is, unfortunately, just the next show on an ever-growing list that will have to remain forever unfinished. It’s not just the 1970s time jump that we’ll never see a conclusion to.

There have been plenty of unanswered questions throughout the series, clearly hoping for another season. Why did Mac’s stepmother visit her grave?

What is fully adult Tiff like? Will the timeline change mean that Adult Erin might return?

Where did KJ and Mac’s pod end up on the timeline? We only know a little bit about the STF, we could have a whole season just exploring that organization.

But we can’t judge a show by what it’s not or what it could have been. What we have is these eight episodes.

Paper Girls got some pushback during its early promotions for being viewed as a Stranger Things knockoff. But it’s clearly something impressive that can stand all on its own.

Sure there are kids on bikes and some sci-fi plot elements, but Paper Girls takes things in an entirely new direction. It has its own identity as a show.

And for the show that we had, it ended up being a really enjoyable one. The four characters we followed across the show felt real and fully fleshed out.

They complimented each other spectacularly. Some of the best moments in this sci-fi action time travel show included both a dinosaur, a giant robot, and just scenes of the four girls sitting alone together and talking.

It’s a shame that we won’t get a season two of the series. There’s always a possibility that it could get revived somewhere else, but there was never a good chance of that happening and it becomes increasingly less likely each day.

However, for fans who wish they could spend a little more time in the world of Paper Girls there is the award-winning comic book series that is worth digging into.

Let us know your thoughts of Paper Girls season 1 episode 8 in the comments below!

You can watch Paper Girls season 1, only on Amazon Prime Video!