Bill & Ted’s Retcon Adventures: The Do-it-Later Retroactive Solution

Abstract

<p>The Bill & Ted film series has always employed a unique narrative device yet to be discussed in detail. In the series' first two films, the titular characters use a “do it later” approach through time travel, which I call “retroactive solution”, to solve the narrative problems at the respective climaxes. It has the same retroactive nature as the narrative device of retroactive continuity, or retcon, which is an inevitable but problematic plot device that facilitates reboots and sequels. The third, presumably final, film, Bill and Ted Face the Music (2020), would inadvertently pit these two narrative devices against each other and create a paradox. Through a series of analyses employing analytical philosophies of time travel and historicization, this paper synthesizes the two narrative devices, temporal paradoxes, Capitalist credit economies, and personal “mid-life crises” into the Bill & Ted series. In the process, it illuminates the usefulness of the time-travel genre for narratological case studies and cultural commentaries.<br></p>