Clear Explanations of the Time Travel Timelines in the ‘Mirage’ Movie

The Butterfly Effect — that is, if you make even a small change to a past event, it brings a major turn of events in the future. The new timelines shown in the movie were created due to the interaction between a girl in the future and a boy from the past.

TIMELINE 1:

In 1989, a seventy-two-hour electric storm occurs, and a small boy called Nico looks out of the window and witnesses a vicious scene in his neighbor’s (Angel Prieto) house.

He goes inside and notices the dead body of Prieto’s wife (Hilda Weiss), who was accidentally stabbed by Prieto’s secret partner Clara. Noticing Prieto holding a knife, Nico runs away but gets hit by a car on the road by accident.

After Prieto gets arrested, he reveals to the police that before he got caught, he planned to bury the dead body beneath his butcher-house. After three months in prison, he commits suicide.

Aitor is Clara’s son and Nico’s bestfriend. After some years, he meets Vera on a train, who slips and falls over him. Somehow they both became close friends.

One day, Aitor introduces Vera to his friend David, who later becomes Vera’s husband. David abandons his current girlfriend to marry Vera, then settles with her in the house Nico once lived in. Vera gives up her dream to become a surgeon after giving birth to Gloria.

On 9th November 2014 (25 years after Nico’s death), another electrical storm occurs. Vera and David discover an old television that was previously used by Nico.

At night, Vera wakes up and notices that the television is turned on. She sees a small boy who is trying to fix the TV connection (which happened moments before Nico heard noises from the window).

The storm has connected the TV from 2014 to 1989. Vera warns Nico not to go out. He listens and gets saved. This change in event creates a second timeline.

TIMELINE 2:

Niko goes inside Prieto’s house and hides under his bed. He observes Angel putting his wife’s body in a suitcase. Niko picks up Clara’s watch from the floor and puts it in his pocket.

He reports about Prieto and the woman from the future to his mother and the police, who of course understand that the small boy is trying to make up a story for covering up his breaking into the watch.

When Nico conversed with Vera in 1989, he noticed a railway station board behind her. After many years, Nico goes to the station every day hoping that one day he will meet Vera again.

And finally, he does.

He gets inside the train and sits opposite Vera (instead of Aitor), who slips and falls over him instead of Aitor. Nico and Vera fall in love and get married. They don’t have a baby, so Vera becomes a surgeon.

In due course, on 9th November 2014, the same storm that occurred in T1 occurred here in T2 and something unexpected happened. Vera wakes up in her hospital to a new reality (remember that she fainted in T1 after saving Nico? She wakes up here).

Veera’s consciousness from Timeline 1 gets transferred to Vera in Timeline 2. Vera is told that she is a doctor and not a nurse. Vera does not know David until he becomes a patient of hers. David marries his girlfriend so Gloria was never born.

She approaches Inspector Leyra (Nico) and tells him the whole story which is impossible for anyone to believe in. Niko realizes that Vera has forgotten her present life due to the timeline disruption. He doesn’t know how to tell her the truth so he plans to help her to find out the truth by herself.

He directs Vera to a hotel room; he does this to let Vera know that her husband in T1 would not have been true to his wife. Prieto and Clara are summoned by the cops to be interrogated.

Nico reveals that he was the child back then who reported about Prieto. He says that the tests on the bones will be the proof to arrest them both.

When Vera reaches the hospital, David gets exposed for cheating on his wife. Since he works in the bank, she asks him to give her information about Nico. She is shocked to learn that Nico is none other than Inspector Leyra.

Nico tells her that he prevented her from meeting David and Aitor so that he can be with her and that it is just a matter of time before they can carry on with their lives as partners.

Though Vera doesn’t need David anymore, she still cannot let go of her daughter, Gloria. So she insists Nico talk to his younger self and create a new timeline where he does not grow up with an obsession for Vera. She then falls off the balcony knowing that he would do what she asked.

Before the storm ends, Nico sets up the television and reaches out to himself from 1989.

This interaction takes place after child Nico complains to the cop, comes back home, and sits in front of the television eagerly waiting for the connection with the women from the future to happen again.

But she doesn’t come back, instead, he converses with adult Nico who persuades him to let go of his quest to find the woman.

TIMELINE 3:

We are not shown what the discussion between the younger Nico and the older Nico is, but he provides himself with enough instruction to convince himself to never run into Vera.

When the right time comes, things will happen as it’s supposed to. His younger self listens and doesn’t get obsessed with Vera.

In the 3rd timeline, Nico becomes a cop. He has not yet met Vera, so she is married to David and has a child. At first, Vera thinks that she is back to her original world, but this is soon proven wrong because Prieto is not arrested but is living with Clara and Aitor. T3 is a combination of T1 and T2.

Vera also checks that David has been cheating on her in this third timeline. Veera now has mixed memories of both T1 and T2. She checks and finds that her husband is cheating on her. She then calls the cops to report Hilda’s body under the butcher's house to get Prieto arrested.

Here she meets Inspector Leyra. They’ll begin a fresh relationship along with Gloria. The film finishes with Vera telling Nico “You know me, it's just that it hasn’t happened yet”. Though Nico doesn’t understand at first, he smiles at her as he realizes that she is the woman from the future.

Viewers can now presume that they both got together and began their fresh love life.

Why is there no age gap between Nico and Vera?

In 2014, Vera is thirty-five years old. In 1989, Nico is eight years old. When Vera wakes up in another timeline (in the year 2014), she will still be thirty-five years old, Nico will be grown up and be thirty-three years old in the year 2014.

In the climax, when Nico makes up his mind to alter his past, why doesn’t he appear on the television even before Vera interacts with child Nico?

If it happened like that, then the future love life of Vera and Nico would not exist!