How did Cisco mess up the timeline by saving the Dominator from Agent Smith back in 1951?
In Legends of Tomorrow, s2e7, named Invasion! after vibing to the spaceship of the Dominators and talking with one of them, Cisco somewhat lamented in the following conversation with Nate:
What if, in using our powers to make the world better, we actually end up destroying it?
Dude, I get it.
Barry screwed up. Yeah, so did we.
Back in 1951.
We messed with time when we freed the Dominator.
Who's now coming to kill us.
So, Cisco thought he messed up the timeline by saving the dominator back in 51 from the hands of Agent Smith as they were now coming to kill them.
I could not comprehend this scenario.
The Dominators came in 50s to assess the extent of threat from the metahumans due to JSA and for some reasons departed.
They would eventually return to assess the status of the threat with the rise of metas after the particle-accelerator explosion.
The point is that their return has nothing to do with the event of Cisco and Felicity & Legends saving the Dominator back in 51.
So, how did Cisco by saving the dominator mess up the time? Why did he think his action was responsible for their return?
Won't the Dominators still come back due to the recent rise of metas irrespective of whether or not Cisco and co. saved a Dominator or not due to the rise of metas?
I'm, in a word, failing to see the reason of Cisco worrying and holding him responsible for their return to "kill" them.
Best Answer
It was hard to follow because they showed it from a point of view where the timeline had already been affected. Basically, Cisco is the reason the Dominators were able to return.
Something they didn't explicitly say, but that they implied (maybe the writers forgot to mention it in all of the mayhem that was happening), was that the Dominator Cisco saved was the Dominator that was leading the invasion. It's something you have to really pay close attention to in order to see it, but you can tell for a couple of reasons. The most noticeable (and still not that easy to spot) is that the voice of the Dominator that Cisco saved is the same voice of the Dominator leader that killed the president in the Flash episode of the crossover. It's also shown in the LoT episode that this Dominator is calling the shots, telling them that he is the one who plans to kill the metahumans. Essentially, this is the Dominator who is invading, and he has an army to help him do it.
As I said before, the really confusing part is that the whole scenario is shown from a perspective that Cisco's changes to the timeline have already happened. When Barry changed the timeline, there was a noticeable change because everything prior to that was shown from a pre-flashpoint perspective. This, however, is shown from a point of view AFTER Cisco changed the timeline. When Cisco went back in time and saved the Dominator, he was the reason the Dominator was able to come back in 2016. If he had let the Dominator die, that Dominator would not exist in 2016 to start an invasion. Here's the tricky part: Cisco went back in time because of the invasion, but the invasion was only able to happen because Cisco went back in time. It's a stable time loop, similar to how Cisco created the new Flash suit because he saw it in the newspaper article, but the only reason it was in the article was because he created it. It's self fulfilling. So the reason Cisco is responsible for the invasion is because he saved the Dominator who started it. They may be there for Barry, but Cisco is the reason they were able to return in the first place
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