The Peripheral ending was complicated - Spoilers

I was waiting for the next episode before critiquing the current state of events. Best guess is she basically made a copy of herself (and everyone else) in that new stub. That new one is now untraceable by the RI. Deleted herself out of the old stub by asking the black dude to kill her. ETA: should of been a head shot to destroy the thing (maybe bacteria???) in her brain that contained the information stolen from the RI in an earlier episode.

Right. So there were 2 of her. One was killed.

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But she created a stub, a duplicate offshoot of her world, that is unknown to the future. That version of her used a peripheral at the end, and is alive.

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That’s what I figured. Which means she is doing exactly what the “bad guys” were doing. Creating an additional world to use as they see fit while killing off others in a different world for reasons as they see fit.

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found an article on Cnet that kind of explained things.

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That article really does not do a good job of explaining. Especially what the creation of a new stub means and the killing of Flynne. I see a lot of mistakes that make it even more confusing than it need be.
Everyone here seems to have the basic premise right.
Flynne killed herself in the original stub but not in the new branch she created. There would now be 2 Flynnes with the stolen RI information. In that new one, that particular Flynne knew everything that the original Flynne knew. I am assuming that means the new stub has the same access to the London 2099 peripheral. Not entirely sure that makes logical sense in a multiverse but whatever. I could envision there being an unresolvable issue if both attempted to access the peripheral at the same time. Obviously not an issue since 1 Flynne is all that is left in this stub branch.

Agreed! The headsets are produced in the stub and the story really didn't expand on how they are linked. It would have been interesting if the headset was linked specifically to the stub user and unique peripheral. But that clearly isn't the case from the start with Flynne jumping in her brother's during the early heist episode.

I found it odd the coordinate tracker was an old timepiece, although an interesting artistic choice.

Taken to the extreme, Flynne could have created a multitude of new untraceable stubs and in doing so created an army of Flynne and families to fight Cherise/Lev. Just needed access to more peripherals to link to.

I'm not suggesting the show will go that route, just an extreme direction they could have gone that popped in my head. No random number generator needed as each peripheral unit is matched to a unique headset. Or vice versa being a headset can be set to control a unique peripheral. At least that is how the show has it established.

Won't happen because the I'm fairly certain in the last episode (haptic drift) Flynne clearly created only 1 new offshoot of the 2032 stub.

That looks about right. The way I saw it, she basically created a copy of the current 2032 stub (your green circle). The show displayed this when she touches the screen in that episode. Meaning 2 Flynnes now have the stolen info in her head and knowledge of what the hell is going on; continuation of the one RI created and one Flynne created. Her deal with Connor was to kill the Flynne in the RI 2032 stub so no one could get the information. Leaving Flynne and family to go about the business of destroying the RI, etc.

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It still goes back to how did Flynne actually reboot. The original stub was created years before. So would she be creating a stub off a stub?

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Yes, because she was dead in the original timeline. The new stub has all her current memories. Hence the saved game and respawn terminology.

I think the actual creation is some simple intervention that changes history, creating an alternate timeline. Why doesn’t a new stub get created every single time information is communicated back to the past? Plot simplification is my guess. I think that would be too messy for the show to manage.

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There would now be 2 Flynnes with the stolen RI information. In that new one, that particular Flynne knew everything that the original Flynne knew.

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This is the part that doesn’t make sense logically. The only version of Flynne that should have the RI information is the version that actually broke into the RI. The information was “downloaded” biologically to her brain.

If that version of Flynne died, how does another version still have that info? Does that other version somehow share her memories of time in the peripheral too? This certainly seems to be the case based on her popping back into the future after dying.

The stubs are essentially described as alternate universes/timelines that sprout at the moment of their creation. So whichever version of Flynne that exists at the moment the new stub splits off should not have any of the current Flynne’s memories past that point - with the exception of events that play out exactly the same. But, of course, “new” Flynne’s experiences couldn’t play out exactly the same because that would mean Cherise knows exactly where she is and we are right back where we started.

I don’t know, right now it doesn’t make much sense. It’s one of three things:

1. The show is playing fast and loose with “rules” of time travel and is thus creating some major plot holes.
2. There is some yet-to-be-seen-onscreen mechanism for transferring consciousness to a stub.
3. The 2099 folks describing the stubs don’t actually know the “rules” as well as they seem to think (or they’re lying).

I guess there’s a fourth option where “New Flynne” isn’t actually “Flynne Prime” at all. It could be that Flynne transferred her story to the new Stub, and “New Flynne” spent a fair amount of time spent off-screen accepting the realities of apocalyptic futures, time travel, etc. before going to 2099 to meet with the inspector. But that would not explain how she would have the RI data, if she does actually have it.

ETA: Or, as someone suggested, the new stub sprouted from her stub right before Connor shot her. That would actually explain everything. For some reason I was under the impression that the new stub was created with a far earlier “split” point but maybe I imagined that.