Adrian Veidt and timescales

Published December 4, 2019 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi guys,

I was amused to hear the suggestion that my middle name should begin with D. It would be a fine name.

My substantive point of this email is pondering the days experienced by Veidt on Europa. There was a suggestion I heard from Lindelof that time isn’t working the same way on the HBO podcast.

I have a suspicion that the writers room may be using Jupiter itself to determine days rather than Europa as that moon doesn’t rotate as it completes an orbit of the planet in 85 hours. Jupiter itself takes 12 years to orbit the sun. Neither of those are particularly useful in fitting with our story.

However Jupiter takes about ten hours to complete one rotation (a day). If the Europa bubble is reflecting that pattern while using 365 days to equal a year then six years on Europa would be the equivalent of around two and a half years on Earth.

That would mean that it would be 2014 or early 2015 when we see the trial completed. That gives enough time for Veidt to travel from Europa to Earth, crash in the Clark’s farmland and be picked up by Lady Trieu. If it was Veidt that crash landed that is.

It’s an ugly logic in my opinion and doesn’t please my sense of how time should work on Europa. But it’s the only way I can fit Veidt returning to Earth is having ten hours days.

The alternative explanation for the Lindelof comment is that the Veidt storyline is completely contained on Europa and he doesn’t interact with the main story. I can’t see that pleasing a lot of fans and it is difficult to see how that pays off thematically.

This has been niggling me for a while and am looking forward to seeing how they answer this question.

Regards

John “D” Lish

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