Parallels (2015) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

The building acts as a portal between parallel worlds. Polly explains that anyone inside the building will be transported to a new, random world if they return to it within exactly 36 hours. This creates a time pressure that forces the group to keep moving and prevents them from staying too long in any single world, especially hostile ones.

• 36-hour rule
• building
• portal
• parallel worlds
• time limit

Ronan reveals to Polly that he holds himself responsible for his mother's death, though the exact circumstances are not detailed in the summary. This guilt drives much of his emotional arc throughout the film and connects to his father's mysterious disappearance and the family secrets that unfold.

• Ronan
• mother death
• guilt
• family secrets

The core world is the original world where the building was constructed. Polly explains that the ball-shaped device Ronan found could only have come from this core world, suggesting it is the origin point of the building's portal technology and perhaps the protagonists' true homeland.

• core world
• building origin
• portal technology
• ball device

In the alternate Earth devastated by nuclear blasts, Tinker shows the group footage of a terrorist attack using a suitcase nuke. Ronan and Beatrix are horrified to recognize their father Alex as the perpetrator. This reveals that their father has different versions across parallel worlds, with some being morally compromised or involved in catastrophic events.

• Alex
• terrorist
• suitcase nuke
• parallel world
• alternate

Beatrix and Harry discover that in this technologically advanced world, Alex was killed in an accident and Ronan apparently never existed. This demonstrates how radically different each parallel world can be, some versions of people may never be born or may die early, creating entirely different family structures and histories.

• Ronan
• alternate world
• nonexistence
• parallel universe

Tinker takes a suitcase nuke to destroy the building as revenge, but the group returns just in time and escapes the blast. The building transports them to the next world, and they later encounter Tinker again, apparently having survived and accompanied them to the new world, though the exact mechanism of his survival is not fully explained.

• Tinker
• suitcase nuke
• survival
• transport

After Alex reveals himself from a secure elevator and explains that he and the children's mother were not born on their home world, he tells them they must find their mother, who they insist is dead, to return to the core world. He then leaves the building, abandoning them again to continue their quest, driven by his own mysterious agenda.

• Alex
• departure
• mother
• core world
• mission

Ronan finds a strange, ball-shaped device at his father's house before entering the building. Polly later identifies it as something that could only come from the core world where the building was constructed. The device appears to be a key or trigger related to the building's portal technology and their father's research.

• ball device
• core world
• portal
• Alex

At the end of the film, three different versions of Polly convene in secret, and two of them play rock-paper-scissors to decide who will accompany the group into the next world. This confirms that Polly is one of the few characters who can travel between worlds independently, leading to multiple versions of her existing across different parallel universes.

• Polly
• multiple versions
• parallel worlds
• rock-paper-scissors

Alex reveals that he and the children's mother were not born on the world they consider home. He tells Ronan and Beatrix that they must find their mother, who they believed was dead, in order to return to the core world. This implies the mother is alive in another parallel world and holds the key to their true origins.

• mother
• alive
• core world
• Alex
• origins

Captain Stone appears in both the group's original world as a police captain and in the nuclear wasteland as the leader of a settlement. This demonstrates how people in parallel worlds can hold different roles and positions, one Stone became a police officer, while another became a survivalist leader after nuclear devastation.

• Captain Stone
• duplicate
• parallel worlds
• different roles

The rock-paper-scissors scene between two versions of Polly serves as a whimsical way to decide which Polly will continue traveling with Ronan and Beatrix. It emphasizes the film's multiverse themes by showing that even decision-making becomes complicated when multiple versions of the same person exist, while adding a brief moment of levity to the tense narrative.

• rock-paper-scissors
• Polly
• ending
• multiverse