"This is the butterfly effect I was talking about."note
Written by: Josh Hale Flalkov
In his newest attempt to open the Wumpan Puzzle Box, Dark Spyro takes advantage of Eruptor needing to find info about the Wumpa Islands for his assignment and suggests that they use Jet-Vac's time remote to travel back to the time when Crash Bandicoot was in Skylands and ask him questions about the islands (as well as the puzzle box). But while they're in the past, they accidentally bring Crash with them to the future, which has now ended up being a wasteland ruled by an unlikely ruler.
This episode provides examples of:
- An Aesop: Shortcuts are often late-cuts.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Spyro's three main concerns for the new future the trio's in is that they have no sunlight, no academy, and presumably no vending machines.
- Bad Future: Without Crash Bandicoot being present to take Kaossandra's spell book away from Kaos, Glumshanks was able to get his hands on it and get powered up and rise up to enact revenge on Kaos and his mother and then take over Skylands as its emperor.
- Foreshadowing: When Eruptor and Spyro bring up the Time Disruptor to Crash, he says that that's something his sister Coco would love due to her being a Gadgeteer Genius. She would then join her brother and the Skylanders in the final battle in the final episode.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Glumshanks, who became the Emperor of Skylands with the help of the spell book.
- Metaphorgotten: Eruptor tries to use parables to explain the dangers of messing with time, but he ends up mixing up what he's trying to say. At the end, when the characters in the alternate timeline are also confused about it, Spyro starts explaining it like this as well.
- Plot Hole: The Skylanders somehow got to Kaos and Chompy Mage without noticing that Crash was missing. Not only that, the reason the Skylanders even got there was because of Spyro's idolization of Crash, and Crash was taken from his time before said idolization got out of hand, meaning there would be different circumstances and that the same scenario in "Crash Landing" with the Skylanders and the villains encountering each other shouldn't even have happened.
- Rule of Three: When Spyro asks Crash about Wumpan Puzzle Boxes, the latter asks if it's about "Wumpan Puzzle Boxes" three times, emphasizing each of the three words before answering that he's never heard of them.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: For Eruptor at least, as Spyro got what he was after. After the long journey the two went through of ending up in another timeline and having to fix it, he never got the chance to ask Crash any questions about the Wumpa Islands, and so is gonna flunk his assignment.
- Time Travel Episode: Dark Spyro and Eruptor travel to the time when Crash Bandicoot was in Skylands to ask him questions, but ends up taking him with them to the future, thus creating a bad one.
- Took a Level in Dumbass: The Crash Bandicoot in this episode is a lot more reminiscent of his personality in the games, being more crazy and ditzy, compared to how he was in "Crash Landing" where he got Adaptational Intelligence.
- Ungrateful Bastard: One of Glumshanks' first actions when he became more powerful was to get revenge on not only Kaos, but also Kaossandra, despite the fact that when we have seen them together in the show, she's shown to be nothing but kind to him, as long as Kaos wasn't present.
- Visual Calculus: As Dark Spyro realizes his plan by taking advantage of Eruptor's predicament, numbers and calculations appear around him even though what he plans doesn't involve numbers at all.Dark Spyro: Man, I am really good at math.
