Russian Doll: 7 Big Questions We're Left With
5. Are There Other Timelines?
Nadia explains to Alan that there are multiple timelines. She demonstrates this by cutting open a rotting orange to reveal its perfect, juicy orange interior.
She says: “Time is relative to your experience. We’ve been experiencing time differently in these loops, but [the orange] tells us that somewhere, linear time as we used to understand it still exists.” The rotten layer of the orange represents their time, whilst the juicy inside represents linear time.
Every time Alan and Nadia die, they are essentially spawning into a new timeline and moving further and further away from the once they both knew when they were alive.
When they set out to save each other, they’re both pulled into separate timelines so the other person doesn’t know they’re about to be saved. This makes it more challenging and realistic for the other.
But does this mean that Alan and Nadia belong in different timelines originally, and their deaths allowed them to exist in the same one in order to figure everything out together? Does everyone exist in the same timeline in death, and how many timelines even are there anyway?