We are getting alarmingly close to the end of this season and I already know that I will very much miss this show. At least we know that it’ll be back soon enough. Speaking of things that are back soon, just as we thought we lost Hinata to Granville’s scheming, we see her again at the start of this episode, but in what looks to be a memory of her old life before she came to this world. 

We finally learn about what Hinata did to become the person she is in this world. Of course, Shizue’s influence played a big part in it, but she had become someone who didn’t love herself back in the old world. Her parents’ relationship soured when her father lost his job and he started being abusive towards her mother. Reaching a boiling point in this problem, she pushed him off a cliff. It’s not quite clear if this is a metaphor or if she herself physically pushed him off a cliff to kill him, but I’m leaning towards the latter. She feels the guilt of this in the new world and that has motivated her to become a defender of justice here, but it doesn’t seem like it’s enough to make the trauma go away. Of course it isn’t, you can’t hide from it by putting layers on top of it, you need to face it head on. And it looks like there might still be time for Hinata to do so because even though she got shot through the heart – and Gran’s to blame – she still hears Chloe’s voice calling out for her.

Alright this is where things get funky and I will have to reiterate that I do not like the concept of time travel one little bit, so I’m hesitant to see where this is going to go. Chloe has absorbed Hinata’s consciousness into herself with her skill “Unlimited imprisonment” before teleporting the two of them back in time to 2000 years before the present timeline. And it seems like this isn’t the first time Chloe has been here. She also has a “time traveler” skill. And yeah I’m already confused. So the spirit that entered Chloe’s body all the way back in season 1 was her own spirit from the future. Every time she dies, her spirit returns to her body in the present time. It makes her memories about her previous life quite hazy but she basically has a similar ability to Subaru from Re:Zero. On top of that, her time travel ability doesn’t activate when she herself dies, but when Hinata dies. I am confused about how all of this works. 

So in Chloe’s previous loop, Rimuru managed to save Tempest before the otherworlders killed Shion and thus he never became a demon lord. Instead he died fighting against the Eastern Empire after which Veldora was released from his seal and killed the entire Eastern Empire. We learn that Rimuru and Hinata have both died in every single loop except this one, where Rimuru is still alive when Hinata died. We learn that Chloe is the hero Chronoa who has been doing this 2000 year loop repeatedly. The only reason she hasn’t fully gone insane is because each time she barely retains memories from previous loops with the exception of the most recent one. 

In this loop, her plan is to save Luminus and Nightrose before Veldora can kill everyone. But if her hope is that the most recent loop is the one in which things will go well, then doesn’t that contradict the fact that Hinata already died in this loop and they are in a new loop. This is why I hate time travel. Either way, Chloe and Hinata spend some time in Nightrose while they await the appearance of Veldora. It doesn’t seem like her warnings are doing much to prevent the chaos and destruction. She then explains everything to Luminus and the two become fast friends again.

We learn a few things from here that were questions until now. We learn who Chronoa really is and we also learn why Luminus is so obsessed with her. We also learn why she jumped out to protect Chloe. The two have been friends since 2000 years ago. The hero that protected the world was a combination of Chloe and Hinata working together as the hero Chronoa. We also learn here why Chloe knew about Leon and Leon has been looking for Chloe. It sounds like Leon is also an otherworlder and he might have been Chloe’s brother in the other world. 

This was a lot to take in and it might be the first time since I started watching this series that I’m a little bit turned off by what is happening. My biggest problem with timeloop stories and time travel in general is that it makes it feel like so many of what has already happened and what is yet to happen doesn’t truly matter because at some point the person doing the loops will just return to where they were. The only time I enjoyed a regressor story like this was in my recent read of Omniscient Reader, but mainly because it fits into the larger narrative of that world much better and a big part of the early story is the main character trying to prevent the regression of another character because he is worried what it will do for him when the regressor regresses. That sentence makes sense, I promise you. With this episode done, we’re going to get at least one more episode about Chloe’s past and hopefully we get a few more answers. In an ideal world we get to a point where we complete this current loop all the way back up until the current day timeline, Hinata gets saved and then the power disappears in some way. The big question we are left with is who is this person that kills Hinata and Rimuru in every timeloop. My money is on Yuuki or – hear me out – Chronoa herself in some strange way. It looks like in each loop, Chronoa’s body and Chloe’s body are two separate entities. We don’t know why Chronoa was frozen in Luminus’ basement. Perhaps Chronoa dies at some point in the timeline or perhaps she cannot stay conscious while Chloe is summoned to this world. My crackpot theory is that Hinata will inhabit this body since her current body is completely destroyed by Granville’s attack. We’ve seen just little enough of Chronoa in the modern timeline that this theory could still check out, but I also admit it’s pretty far-fetched. Either way, despite some of my reservations, I’m still looking forward to what the rest of this season has to offer, so please join me again next week as we continue into Chronoa’s background. Thanks for reading!