Intersesting.......reminds me of that Doctor Who episode when the tardis exploded

the only way he could help Rory was if he did what his future self did.

Man Franklin needs to be put on leash I swear!

Onslaught saga and bringing Valeria back to life, this kid has no boundaries!

Maybe he learned to do it from the  Askani. Cable and Rachel did that on a couple of occasions.   

Frankling Richards is above the omega level mutant, and he is a reality warper, and also his sister is helping him, and he said that she is already smarter than her dad, I am pretty sure that they made sure that nothing happened.

Maybe its just a fragment of his power thats leaking out and warning him about a future battle he'll have. seeing as how Franklin's more comfortable meeting a supposed future version of himself so thats what his powers took the form of.

There is a Russian physicist named Igor Novikov who came up with a theory (Novikov self-consistency principle) which in part deals with the idea of altering time. The view in most fiction seems to always deal with a fluid present-centric view of time. (ie: Now is the most important time and anything can be changed). In Novikov's theory, time is set and 'now' isn't any more important then the past or the future since any time you pick is someone's present/past/future. So the idea as it pertains to the Fantastic Four would be that future Franklin's existence in the present doesn't change his future because this is always how the timeline existed. He knows to go back and help his past self because he remembers the event from when he was a child. The information that he receives as a child and later shares with his younger self has a consistent timeline. It's just that the timeline for that information is a circle rather then a straight line. (Novikov referred to items or information with circular timelines as Jinn's). It's consistent but it's just not how we normally view time. Where time is relative a static self-consistent timeline makes more sense to me.

I look at Marvel's approach must like I do DBZ. When trunks came back and saved Goku his timeline still existed as is. He had only created a divergent time line in which the present cast continued in. As far as Franklin/Val's actions go, they'll never matter...period. As we all no tomorrow never comes in Big Two comics. Change is bad for business.

When I saw grown up Franklin take down celestials & resurrect galactus... man that kids is strong I wonder if he will ever one day take down the Living tribunal

How is this older version of Franklin able to reveal all of this to young Franklin without creating an alternate reality?

Because he came from an alternate timeline into 616.

Not only that, but how is he able to travel back in time, influence the events of the past, and manage to do that without altering any of the timeline in his own universe, whatsoever?

Because he's not traveling into his past, he's traveling into the past of another universe

Additionally, does this mean that if this older version of Franklin had never traveled into the past, that Franklin never would have learned to unlock his powers?

Most likely no, Old Franklin most likely activated his powers thanks to a period of extreme duress, and by coming to the main universe, this Franklin will be able to achieve his full potential earlier.

The observation of time travel in the Marvel Universe is actually incorrect. Take the Age Of Apocalypse for example. Sugar Man and Dark Beast had been taken from their relative present in the skewered AoA timeline and dropped into the 616 in the past around the time Legion would have first encountered past versions of Xavier, Magneto and Gabriel. So both those characters were left in the past, completely. That should have by your reasoning destroyed the current Marvel Universe correct? But it didn't, and it didn't even create a new paradigm either. That is because time isn't linear, only human perception of it is. Past, future, right now is the same difference as for as chronos is concerned. The event of Dark Beast and Sugar Man had already happened, as had their personal effects on the pasts future and present now, like the Morlocks, the Mutant Massacre, Genosha, ect. and had always been. It was only that we the reader were now becoming aware of this, or for comparison, " the world isn't becoming a worse place, it's that the veil is slowly sliding back and people are now seeing more of the picture, the darkness illuminated. " I'm making light of that for two reasons concerning F4/FF. One is because that is the way Hickman writes everything. We see details now that will later be explained to have happened because said event, be that time travel effects or otherwise. Either way they always were, it's not we're now looking at an alternate reality as opposed to the one we saw issues earlier. Same goes for the Blackbeard thing (and Thing, literally). That isn't something that came into being, Ben always was Blackbeard, and Blackbeard was always Ben, and this had always happened (and side noting this isn't new news either, that's been a piece of F4 trivia since before Hickman and highlighted in other books already). The assumption/confusion that what your looking at is a different timeline is the error in the equation (I've noticed since there's been a few time travel threads, the one you linked is wrong as well BTW, that there seems to be a running notion that time travel the nature of time travel is a solidly established fact, and that stated mechanic doesn't include contemporary quantum mechanics, much less proir?).

The time-travel theories only boggles the mind the more your think about it.

All it does is create paradoxes and constant shifts in the timelines....

I mean after all those travels, I doubt we can count how many times Earth-616 altered and those are what, 500th copies of the characters ?

It is kinda hard to keep track of all this. As for guys like Franklin and Superboy-Prime....they can create one big mess.

All I know is, these two books are amazing. Why do we need to know the subtle nuances and under tones. Who cares if the time line is messed up? The FF and Fantastic Four rock! Hickman has knocked it out of the park with these two books. The stuff with Val, Franklin, Johnny, and Doom alone make this book number #1! Then there's the big stuff with Mr. Fantastic. The Reed stuff alone is money too. Why does everything need to be defined now? I think we need to let things play out and see how they end. Then we can question the timeline being altered.

@JonesDeini said:

I look at Marvel's approach must like I do DBZ. When trunks came back and saved Goku his timeline still existed as is. He had only created a divergent time line in which the present cast continued in. As far as Franklin/Val's actions go, they'll never matter...period. As we all no tomorrow never comes in Big Two comics. Change is bad for business.

Yah to me it looks likes the DBZ rule here. They came to a past to make a divergent reality where Reed doesn't die (like how Trunk made a reality where Goku didn't die). Although it is interesting to note that Future Franklin/Val were able to observe multiple possible timeliness and came up with the best case scenario. So I would assume they have already taken any negative effect into account, the whole FF run was so precisely planned by the Franklin/Val from future that I would assume that they taken the negative part into account.

To me the interesting part is if future Franklin/Val are aware of what present Val did to doom (or more precisely gave), and if that is still part of their larger plan or if that is a huge divergent from their master plan. It be really cool if it was part of their plan, and during a future crisis Doom comes to everyone's rescue...... or more likely he will just invade the earth lol.

Who cares that issue was awesome... Besides Franklin can literally do anything so it doesn't really matter does it?

franklin has been the most powerful earth born cosmic being for a long time its just everyone over looked that fact because he's just a child.but what everyone fail to realize is that he's this powerful as a child and will only get more powerful.its no surprise that his future self or what i believe is a figment of powerful imagination is guiding him along.i see this as a more powerful version of his ability as tattle-tale i.e . being able to see future events and naturally seeing the most proable future plus add in his astral projection and it makes sense that he would guide himself because no else on his power level can

I think him coming back was part of the timeline that made it all possible in the first place. They reference that 616 Reed was the only one that chose to leave the Council for his family, and the adult Franklin was the result of that decision. I believe that Franklin is an older version of Franklin from the same time line, not an adult Franklin from an alternate reality (as is usually the case with time travelers). After all, they had Nathaniel, an expert time traveler, and Valeria, a super genius, to help plan the whole thing and avert disaster and ensure their future.

My question is - is 616 Reed the last Reed in the multiverse like his father is the last of the Nathaniel's?

O_o

That's why all these stories with "Omega" level characters give me hives. They function as one-shot "Deus Ex Machina" plot devices, but to incorporate them into the daily lives of the characters creates a lot more problems than it solves. The X-Men have done this ad nauseum with Phoenix, and it seems like half their roster are Omegas. What does it really add to the story? I guess it's good for getting a writer out of a jam if he's in a corner or something.

Still, this story with future Franklin was outstanding. Now, hopefully, we won't ever see him again.

Theres actually an arc of X-factor that deals with the EXACT same thing (Layla Miller having gone back in time and gives her memories to herself), except Dr. Doom invented a device allowing for a timeline to be changed sans paradox. So if that's what happened here, it would make total sense

He didn't change the timeline because this isn't DC comics. Marvel wants to keep their mainstream line (616) in tact. When they want a NEW universe they create a seperate universe all it's own. Like the "Ultimate Universe" DC on the other hand has a character go back in time and change their mainstream universe in order to sell comics and say it's so new readers can follow along altho some titles are not really changed at all......................like Green Lantern and Batman...............................yes this is a dig at how shitty I think DC's new 52 revamp is. But DC is taking a note from Marvel and creating their own Ultimate line, and no it's not called "ALLSTAR" they gave up on that, they are calling it................Earth 2.

@DATNIGGA: Or One Above all......

Basically If Franklin is beyond an omega level mutant or toke down a celestial he can do anything even break the laws of time traveling

Why's he white with a black outline??

Long live Valeria Richards!

I'm pretty sure an earlier issue of FF or F4 had Franklin and Valeria's reality disappearing as the wave came from the changes they made in the past

Trust me, it gets easier.

@EpicMeltDown: uhhhh....huh

My guess is that its a stable time loop where the older version of Franklin visits his past self in order to save the world. When the current Franklin grows up, he, in turn, goes back to his own childhood.

So the future that Frankin creates isn't an alternate timeline, but the correct, 'true', one. His actions didn't make a new or diverging history, but rather maintains the time-space continuum. If Franklin HADN'T travelled to the past, then we would have seen a new alternate timeline.

Alternately, it could be that Franklin's powers are just so entirely powerful that he's able to change the past without creating a different timeline.