“ | Niylah: "Where does it lead?" Raven: "Everywhere." |
” |
— about the Anomaly [src] |
The Temporal Anomaly, often shortened to the Anomaly, (also called the Bridge) is a wormhole and a transit system that connects Sanctum, Skyring, Bardo, Nakara, Etherea, and Earth in the Milky Way Galaxy, while there are countless worlds in the Universe connected by the Anomaly.
History[]
The Anomaly was discovered by Mission Team Alpha. It appears to be controlled by an alien artifact called the Anomaly Stone. Gabriel Santiago has been studying the Anomaly for 150 years. It is also on the planets Skyring and Bardo. After traveling through the Anomaly, Gabriel suggests that the Anomaly's presence on planets selected for the Eligius III mission is not a coincidence and suspects that the alien race that originally created it may have been using the Anomaly to find a new home.
Bill Cadogan, the leader of the Second Dawn, had first discovered the Anomaly Stone on Earth, in the South American country of Peru, where he found it in a secret observatory beneath the Temple of the Sun in Machu Picchu. Cadogan spent ten years before the Nuclear Apocalypse and two years after it trying to get the Stone to work without success. However, Becca Franko was able to figure out the code for Bardo using the Flame and Cadogan eventually led the Disciples through the Anomaly to there. At some point after, the Earth Anomaly Stone was buried under the bunker's floor, presumably by Azgeda, resulting in Wonkru not finding it when they occupy the bunker.
Overview[]
In "The Old Man and the Anomaly", it is revealed that the radio signals get absorbed by the Anomaly and retranslates in The Verge, where it's possible to pick them up in endless, repeating waves. It is also revealed that the Anomaly does the same as the Red Sun and that the Anomaly has similar effects on plants, only it's "constant and weirder". The Anomaly gets into people's minds, causing them to hear things and hallucinate, sometimes their darkest fear, their deepest desire, and both at once.
In "The Blood of Sanctum", it is revealed that the Anomaly is controlled by a mysterious, ancient artifact of an alien origin, known as the Anomaly Stone.
In "From the Ashes," Bellamy's kidnappers from Bardo show the ability to control the Anomaly through unknown means, closing it behind them in an effort to prevent pursuit.
In "The Garden," Hope Diyoza explains that the Anomaly is a transit system which she refers to as the Bridge. The one on Sanctum leads to Skyring while the one on Skyring leads to Bardo. From a recording of Becca Franko, Gabriel Santiago learns that the time dilation effect comes from the mission planets' proximity to a black hole. The healing of Octavia's arm also appears to be related to the Anomaly or the time dilation from passing through it to Skyring as Octavia's arm was back to normal when she emerged from the Anomaly on Skyring. Though Hope lost her memories after the Anomaly vanished on Sanctum, she regains and keeps them after returning through it to Skyring. Its also mentioned that the Disciples' helmets allow anyone wearing them to keep their memories after passing through the Anomaly.
In "Hesperides," Raven learns from the HUD on a dead Disciple's armor that the Anomaly is a wormhole leading "everywhere" and between six different worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy within a network. One of the planets is offline, but the Disciple armor offers the codes for the Anomaly Stone to direct the Anomaly to each planet. Its also shown that when the Disciples activate the Anomaly between Bardo and Skyring, it remains open on shore for five minutes before returning to normal. During this time, it is possible to pass through the Anomaly to Bardo by entering it on the Skyring side without need for entering a code into the Anomaly Stone.
In "Welcome to Bardo," Levitt reveals that a side effect of traveling through the Anomaly to a slower time dilated planet is that the person traveling through the Anomaly loses all memory from the moment that they first left which is why Octavia's memories were gone upon her return to Sanctum. The Disciple helmets shield against this effect. The expansion of the Anomaly in "The Blood of Sanctum" appears to have restored Octavia's lost memories similar to how Hope traveling back to Skyring restored her own memories.
As seen in "The Blood of Sanctum," "The Garden," "Hesperides" and "Etherea," planets with an actively open Anomaly will react with some form of expansion or movement in response to a code being entered rather than simply appearing nearby. On Skyring, the Anomaly rises from or at least expands out of the lake for five minutes before returning to normal. On Etherea, it descends from the mountaintop on which it is located to somewhere far below and users must jump off of the mountain and into it. On Sanctum, entering a biometric code caused the Anomaly to expand to encompass the location of the Anomaly Stone to release the person pulled through it.
In "A Sort of Homecoming," a Disciple reveals to Gaia that a closing Anomaly portal will default to the planetary origin of the user's DNA. As a result, after the Disciple shuts down the Sanctum Anomaly Stone, the closing portal takes him and Gaia to Earth.
In "The Last War," when the Judge mentions that countless civilizations have failed the Test and were wiped out completely, it indicates that there are countless worlds in the Universe that are connected by the Anomaly.
Known Planets[]
This is a list of known planets/moons in the Milky Way Galaxy that are connected by the Anomaly.
Temporal Flare[]
A temporal flare seems to be a green light source in the sky that shoots out other green flares that burn, destroy, or "petrify" anything they touch.
In "The Gospel of Josephine", Gabriel (posing as Xavier) notices a Temporal Flare nearby. He tosses Charmaine Diyoza a rope and tells her and Octavia Blake to get out and run. Diyoza gets out, but she realizes that Octavia has no time. She tells her she will return. Octavia submerges herself in the quicksand-like substance and survives the Temporal Flare with only damage to a hand that was left exposed. Diyoza manages to dig Octavia out and they run after Gabriel/Xavier.
In "The Old Man and the Anomaly," after entering the Anomaly itself, Octavia returns mysteriously cured of the damage inflicted by the Temporal Flare.
In "The Garden," it's revealed that when Octavia entered the Anomaly, she was transported to Skyring with her hand restored to normal.
Throughout the Series[]
In Sanctum, the Anomaly makes its first appearance, as Raven and Jordan see it from Eligius IV towards Alpha, mistaking it for a pole.
In The Old Man and the Anomaly, Gabriel Santiago, Charmaine Diyoza, and Octavia Blake begins make their way to the Anomaly, before encountering it. After they're looking at the Anomaly, Diyoza, who begins to hallucinate her unborn, future daughter, walks into the Anomaly, with Octavia following her. Both Octavia and Diyoza went into the Anomaly, and after 2 seconds, Octavia comes out of the Anomaly.
In The Blood of Sanctum, Gabriel, Bellamy, Octavia, and Echo, begins investigating the Anomaly. Gabriel shows them an extraterrestrial artifact, known as the Anomaly Stone, and explains to them about it. They begin to activate it, causing the Anomaly to expand. After their tent gets caught in the Anomaly, Hope Diyoza emerges and appears to them, saying that an enemy has her mother, before injecting Octavia with a locator tag, causing Octavia to disappear into a green mist as the Anomaly returns to its normal state.
In From the Ashes, it's revealed that while under the influence of the Blood of Sanctum, Jordan Green experienced visions related to the Anomaly. Russell Lightbourne admits that he too experienced this and built Sanctum in the shape of the Anomaly as a result. However, Russell gave up on trying to figure out the mystery of the Anomaly a hundred years before and feels that it is now Jordan's job.
At the same time, Bellamy is abducted by people from Bardo who came through the Anomaly and manage to remain invisible. At the same time, Hope Diyoza shows no memory which Gabriel notes is the same thing that happened to Octavia. Gabriel realizes that for whatever reason, Hope could only keep her memory while they were surrounded by the Anomaly. Like Octavia, Hope has symbols from the Anomaly Stone, though different ones and a drawing of the Anomaly in her arm with the message to trust Bellamy. Bellamy's kidnappers drag him towards the Anomaly, chased by Gabriel, Hope and Echo. Echo manages to kill three of the kidnappers who are shown to be human and to have orders to kill Hope on sight but to capture Gabriel and Echo alive. They also have the same tattoos as Hope.
After the death of three of the kidnappers, Gabriel notes that the Anomaly is getting quieter and realizes that it is closing, suggesting that the people they are chasing can control the Anomaly. Echo realizes that it might mean that the kidnappers are taking Bellamy through and don't want them to follow. With the Anomaly closing, Gabriel warns that if they go through, they must go through together as being even seconds apart could separate the three by months. Holding hands, Gabriel, Hope and Echo jump into the Anomaly which closes seconds later.
In The Garden, in a flashback, Octavia emerges from the Anomaly underwater on Skyring after following Charmaine Diyoza through and discovers her arm is healed. Though Octavia traveled through seconds after Diyoza, she has arrived three months later. Octavia spends the next six years trying to reach the Anomaly to return to Sanctum despite Diyoza's warnings that it is too deep underwater for Octavia to survive the dive. After Diyoza destroys a suit belonging to a dead Disciple, Octavia sends a message in a bottle through for Bellamy. Four years later, the Anomaly expands on shore and several Disciples emerge, having received the message on Bardo. The Disciples place helmets upon Octavia and Diyoza so that they will retain their memories and when Hope emerges from hiding, the Anomaly is back to normal and the Disciples, Octavia and Diyoza are gone.
In the present, Hope, Gabriel and Echo emerge from the Anomaly on Skyring centuries after Hope left due to the time dilation. Hope explains that the Disciples traveled to Skyring before going on to Bardo through the Bridge as she calls the Anomaly. Though Hope has the code needed to go to Bardo, it has been washed off, stranding them on the planet. Hope explains that the Anomaly is a transit system between planets, leading from Sanctum to Skyring and then onto Bardo. With Skyring being used as a prison planet by the Disciples, Hope states that they will have to wait five years for the Disciples to return for the current prisoner Orlando so that they can follow them to Bardo. Hope also explains that the code Octavia entered was Hope's biometric signature which was pulled through while Hope injected Octavia with a locator tag which sent her through the Anomaly.
After uncovering the corpse of Doctor Colin Benson, one of Mission Team Beta, Gabriel reviews his Memory Drive and learns that Colin, a quantum physicist, was studying the Anomaly and the Anomaly Stone. From a recording of Doctor Becca Franco, Gabriel learns that the time dilation comes from Skyring's proximity to a black hole. Colin eventually discovered the code to activate the Anomaly, causing it to expand upon the shore. However, Orlando destroys Gabriel's computer before they can write down the code to use.
In Hesperides, a few months after the abduction of Octavia and Diyoza, two Disciples bring Dev to Skyring through the Anomaly to serve a ten year sentence for being an unbeliever. Forming a bond with Hope, Dev trains her for when the Disciples return for him in ten years so that they can travel to Bardo and rescue Octavia and Diyoza. However, when the time comes, Hope's hesitance to kill leads to Dev's death. Donning one of the Disciple's armor, Hope enters the Anomaly to rescue her mother and Octavia.
In the present, Gabriel, Hope and Echo are forced to wait five years for the Disciples to return for Orlando who warns that the Disciples will send more men given what had happened with Dev. Orlando is eventually convinced to train the three who ambush the five Disciples that emerge from the Anomaly when the time is up. With only five minutes before the Anomaly returns to normal, the three quickly don Disciple armor and travel through the Anomaly to rescue their friends. However, Echo kills the Disciples and leaves Orlando behind, refusing to trust him amongst his own people.
On Sanctum, Clarke is confronted by a group of Disciples who demand her surrender and confuse her when they call the Anomaly the bridge. Using the armor of one of the Disciples, Raven learns that the Anomaly is a wormhole going "everywhere." After dispatching the Disciples, Raven leads Jordan Green, Niylah, Gaia and Nathan Miller to the Anomaly which now takes the form of a small swirling portal on Sanctum within the Anomaly Stone room. Using the star map in the armor, Raven inputs the code for one of the other planets and all but Gaia pass through. Once they are gone, a previously-unseen Disciple inputs a code into the Anomaly Stone that deactivates it and drags Gaia through the Anomaly with him as it closes.
Rather than emerging on Skyring as they intended, Clarke's group emerges on Nakara with the Anomaly closing behind them. With no sign of an Anomaly Stone to reach a new destination, the group is left stranded on the planet with no way off.
In Welcome to Bardo, Octavia and Diyoza arrive on Bardo through the Anomaly. Hope later comes through and rescues Octavia with the help of Disciple scientist Levitt who has grown sympathetic to Octavia. Levitt helps reopen the Anomaly to Sanctum, but warns that traveling to a slower time dilated planet will cause Octavia to lose all memory of everything that she has experienced since she entered the Anomaly on Sanctum. With Hope needing to hold onto her armor's helmet, Levitt uses a device left behind by the native Bardoans to get Hope's biometric code and tattoo it on Octavia's back so that she can pull Hope back through the Anomaly at a later time. Once the Anomaly is open, Octavia returns through it to Sanctum, arriving moments after she first left with no memory of her time on either Skyring or Bardo.
After Hope is captured trying to rescue her mother, she reluctantly agrees to inject Octavia with a locator tag so that she will be sent back to Bardo for interrogation on Clarke. When Octavia enters Hope's biometric code, she vanishes on Bardo and reappears on Sanctum where Hope injects Octavia with the tag. Once Hope is gone, Anders sends through Captain Meredith's group, warning that the time dilation will prevent him from sending help if something goes wrong. Octavia appears on Bardo through the Anomaly and is taken for treatment for her injuries. Later, Bellamy arrives on Bardo, but overpowers his captors, demanding Octavia's release. Octavia promises to tell Anders all she knows about Clarke if he sends Bellamy back to Sanctum and Anders reopens the Anomaly. However, a surviving Disciple detonates a grenade and when the explosion clears, both Bellamy and the Anomaly have vanished.
In the present, Gabriel, Hope and Echo arrive on Bardo through the Anomaly disguised as Disciples. Hope kills all of the Disciples gathered in the Anomaly Stone room and they set out to rescue their friends before the guard changes in 30 minutes.
In Nakara, after rescuing Diyoza, Echo, Hope, Gabriel and Octavia intend to return through the Anomaly to Sanctum but are warned off by Levitt due to the Stone room being too heavily guarded. Instead, he directs them to head for the surface.
On Nakara, Clarke's group uses the HUD on Raven's armor to track down the Anomaly Stone inside of what turns out to be an organic creature. Under attack by smaller creatures, Raven uses the symbol found on a Disciple corpse to locate the correct planet on the star map. After entering the code into the Anomaly Stone, the Anomaly appears nearby, scaring off the attacking creatures, and the group enters it to rescue their friends on Bardo.
In The Queen's Gambit, as the Disciple code-breaking team works on the Stone, the Anomaly opens from Nakara and Clarke's group emerges.
In Anaconda, in a flashback, Becca Franko is able to figure out the code for Bardo using the Flame. The Anomaly appears in the middle of Bill Cadogan's lab in the Second Dawn Bunker, but Becca later closes it out of fear that Cadogan will throw her through the Anomaly. After Becca's execution and the split of the cult, Cadogan leads his remaining followers, through the Anomaly to Bardo, where they became the ancestors to the Disciples.
In Etherea, Levitt discovers from a Disciple's memory that Bellamy survived the grenade explosion and, along with Conductor Doucette, was blown backwards through the open Anomaly instead.
In flashbacks, Bellamy emerges from the Anomaly on Etherea with an injured Doucette, quickly spotting the glow of the Anomaly atop a nearby mountain. After forming a reluctant alliance, the two men begin working together to climb the mountain and reach the Anomaly to leave in a journey that takes at least two months due to a long-lasting snowstorm stranding them in a cave. Climbing a sheer cliff face, Doucette falls and, hanging from a rope, tells Bellamy to let him go as he wrote down the code Bellamy would need. Bellamy refuses and saves Doucette. Reaching the Stone together, Doucette enters the code for Bardo, causing the Anomaly to descend from the mountaintop to somewhere far below. With no other choice, Bellamy and Doucette take a literal leap of faith off of the mountain into the Anomaly and emerge safely in the Stone room on Bardo.
In A Sort of Homecoming, Clarke's group emerges from the Anomaly in the Second Dawn Bunker on Earth where Cadgoan uses the Disciples' nanotracking technology to send himself back through to Bardo. Gaia appears and explains that when the Disciple shut down the Sanctum Anomaly Stone and dragged her through, the closing portal had defaulted to the planetary origin of their DNA -- Earth -- and taken them there. Discovering that the Earth has regenerated from the Second Nuclear Apocalypse, Clarke smashes the Disciple's helmet and decides that the group will remain on Earth rather than going back to Sanctum.
Later, Sheidheda arrives through the Anomaly to get Madi Griffin. After mortally wounding Gabriel and being beaten by Indra and Gaia, the Dark Commander stabs himself with the same locator device blade Hope was forced to use on Octavia, sending himself back to Bardo. Madi later uses the same blade to send herself to Bardo to protect her loved ones. Once Madi is gone, the Anomaly reopens in the bunker, delivering a bomb.
In The Dying of the Light, Clarke and Octavia try to use the nano tags left behind by Sheidheda to travel to Bardo, but realize that someone must activate the transport on the other end for them. Levitt eventually tricks the Stone Conductor into doing so, but the Disciples have moved the Anomaly from the Stone room to the more strategically advantageous location of the oxygen farm. As a result, Clarke and Octavia emerge from the Anomaly surrounded by dozens of Disciples and are captured.
At the same time, with Emori severely injured, Raven, Murphy and Jackson desperately search for the Anomaly Stone in the bunker in order to transport Emori back to Sanctum for treatment. The three discover it buried under the floor of the rec room beneath an Azgeda symbol. With Jackson performing CPR on Emori after her heart stops, Murphy uncovers enough of the Stone for Raven to see the code for Sanctum using the Disciple helmet. Raven enters the code and the Stone shoots up out of the floor and resumes levitating. The Anomaly opens nearby and Murphy, Raven and Jackson rush through it with Emori on a gurney, planning to return to save their other friends later.
In The Last War, Raven leads the Eligius prisoners back to the bunker through the Anomaly to rescue the others. Afterwards, the group returns to Sanctum for reinforcements before heading to Bardo to distract the Disciples while Clarke, Echo and Raven attempt to stop Cadogan.
After humanity achieves Transcendence, Clarke, the only one left behind, uses a Disciple helmet to travel through the Anomaly back to Sanctum and then to Earth with Picasso.
Appearances[]
Season Six | |
---|---|
Episode | Appearance Status |
Sanctum | Appears |
Red Sun Rising | Absent |
The Children of Gabriel | Absent |
The Face Behind the Glass | Absent |
The Gospel of Josephine | Absent |
Memento Mori | Absent |
Nevermind | Absent |
The Old Man and the Anomaly | Appears |
What You Take With You | Absent |
Matryoshka | Absent |
Ashes to Ashes | Absent |
Adjustment Protocol | Absent |
The Blood of Sanctum | Appears |
Season Seven | |
---|---|
Episode | Appearance Status |
From the Ashes | Appears |
The Garden | Appears |
False Gods | Absent |
Hesperides | Appears |
Welcome to Bardo | Appears |
Nakara | Appears |
The Queen's Gambit | Appears |
Anaconda | Appears |
The Flock | Absent |
A Little Sacrifice | Absent |
Etherea | Appears |
The Stranger | Appears |
Blood Giant | Appears |
A Sort of Homecoming | Appears |
The Dying of the Light | Appears |
The Last War | Appears |
Notes and Trivia[]
- The Anomaly was focused on in Season Seven.
- According to Gabriel Santiago, the Anomaly is in the shape of a logarithmic spiral.
- Jordan Green called the 'Green Light' at first an Aurora because of its resemblance to one despite the Anomaly not being one.
- Charmaine Diyoza is the first shown person to walk into the Anomaly.
- Octavia Blake was the second shown person to walk into the Anomaly and the first known person who walked out of the Anomaly.
- Hope Diyoza is the second person to walk out of the Anomaly - Hope was born on a different planet and grew up at the age of 20, before coming back on Alpha, due to the time dilation.
- According to Becca Franko, the Eligius mission planets are in close proximity to a black hole which would explain the time dilation. Time slows down the closer an object is to a black hole, meaning that a matter of seconds can pass for that object while centuries pass for rest of the universe. The closer the object is, the greater the time dilation.
- Becca states that Beta was further out from the black hole than the other planets, explaining why time would run faster there.
Gallery[]
See Also[]
Locations |
---|
The Ark |
Government & Science Station • Agro Station • Alpha Station • Arrow Station • Factory Station • Hydra Station Mecha Station • Prison Station • Tesla Station • Flint Station • Orchid Station |
Earth |
Delinquents' Camp • Tondc • Mount Weather • Arkadia • Becca's Island • Polis • Second Dawn Bunker Shallow Valley • Temporal Anomaly |
Eligius IV |
Gagarin (Eligius IV transport dropship) |
Sanctum |
Sanctum (The Palace, The Reactor, Tavern, Machine Shop, School, Jail, Medical Library, Farmhouse) Outer Fields/Greenhouses • Offering Grove • The Verge • C.O.G. Territory • Temporal Anomaly Gagarin (Eligius IV transport dropship) |
Skyring |
Wooden Cabin • The Lake • Temporal Anomaly |
Bardo |
Underground Shelter • Stone Room • Temporal Anomaly |
Nakara |
Temporal Anomaly |
Etherea |
The Mountain • Wall of Unanswered Prayers • Cave of Ascent • Temporal Anomaly |