“Tomorrow” starts in the newly-added year 2017, where Cole is stranded in Chechnya after a botched attempt to splinter him to 2043 after the explosion in 2015.
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After stumbling through town, he sees Cassie on a TV screen, asking for anyone who is immune to come to Baltimore to be studied.
2043: Katrina addresses the rumor of the cure to the plague in Project Splinter – there’s a cure for the 2033 strain – three mutations removed from anything around today. “He’s lying to give his people hope,” she says, “so that his obsession to find a cure can continue.” She tells her people that their mission to retrieve Cole from his current timelost position is paramount.
Over to Project Spearhead, Ramse goes to try to get Elena and their son out of the facility before Splinter, presumably, plans to attack.
2041: Cole and Ramse, out on their own, are wandering in the woods with too little gear. It’s a quiet scene, with the two merely having a chat, longing to go to Florida – until they’re interrupted by a gunshot in the vicinity. They find a group of six hunters and their fresh kill. As they move in on the hunters – it jumps forward to them in the Splinter facility, captured by the same men.
2017: Cole tries to push through a throng of people, and is finally taken by two UN representatives, as he shouts that he’s immune. A US soldier is waiting for him on the other side of the fence, ready to take him back to the states, but she won’t tell him why.
2043: Whitley goes to Spearhead to talk to his father at the project to plea for his cooperation with Splinter. Elsewhere in the compound, Colonel Foster has taken Ramse, handcuffed him, and left him locked in a lab with his family. Elena starts trying to break him out.
2017: Cole is in an American vehicle, chatting with the soldier who says they’re “the lucky ones.” He’s back stateside, it seems.
2043: Katrina and Foster are sitting in his office, and she tells him “I’m not here to bargain with you, I’m here to give you one last chance.”
She tells Foster she didn’t send Ramse, and she just wants Foster to see the machine to convince him. She “will have [his] core, whether you will give it to me or I must take it.” They seem at an impasse.
2041: Cole is being tortured and interrogated about how he and Ramse found the Splinter facility. Katrina finally comes in and stops the soldiers. “Your name is Cole? I’ve been waiting for you,” she tells him.
2017: Cole and the soldier have arrived at the CDC facility in Baltimore. Jennifer Goines is outside the facility preaching crazily to the assembled masses. The way she’s talking, she seems to want to assemble an “army” of “daughters.” Cole and Cassie reunite and hug.
2043: Back to Katrina and Foster’s conversation, they discuss their time underground. “We would sneak upstairs and peek at the stars,” she remembers. You can see how these two might be the best of friends, if they weren’t worst enemies. The pleasantries end, however, with Katrina taking out a handgun and shooting Foster point blank. He bleeds out, quickly. “Goodbye, Jonathan, for now.”
Outside the Spearhead compound, two guards are killed by a third: Whitley’s father. He lets the Splinter troops in – apparently his son convinced him pretty well! Elena manages to pick the handcuffs and just as they’re opening the door, the assault begins.
2041: Cole and Ramse hear the recording Cassie made and sent through time to the eventual recipient Katrina for the first time. “Fate has chosen you, Mr. Cole.” She shows him the time machine, calling it their salvation, and warning him that the virus will continue to mutate, eventually affecting even the apparently immune. She lays out his mission, and we continue to hear her voiceover while we jump back to 2043 in visuals, and the Splinter troops mercilessly kill basically everyone in Project Spearhead. It’s a massacre – they have surprise on their side, but it’s not without losses for Splinter – including Whitley’s father, who only just joined their cause. Back in 41, Cole rejects Katrina’s plea for help with a succinct “Go to Hell.”
2017: “I thought we stopped them in Chechnya,” Cole says, and Cassie said she thought it was over at that point, too. “Here we are and it’s just like you said it would be,” she tells him. She admits that the cure is impossible, but she had to be part of the team trying. She only gets out that “a lot has happened in the past two years, between you and me,” before she collapses, apparently succumbing to the virus.
2043: Katrina looks upon the Spearhead core, and the many, many dead bodies of those who tried to protect that project. She calls back to inform her partners that they have the core.
Skipping back to Splinter, they’re lowering the new core into place. She acknowledges that Foster was the only person who could possibly have found a cure, and now their work must press on.
Ramse and Elena are talking elsewhere in the facility, and she insists that Foster had in fact cured the full virus, including current strains, and tries to make him realize that just as Foster would do anything for his project, so too would Katrina. It places just enough doubt in Ramse’s (and the viewers’) mind.
Back to Katrina, she takes something hidden out of her pocket – indeed, it appears to be the newest strain, also cured. She burns the paper, the only proof left, steely-eyed. Splinter powers back up, with the core successfully in place, and she smiles and sighs in relief. Woah, she actually just got rid of any cure in the future.
2017: Cole holds Cassie in his arms, and manages to wake her – she doesn’t seem to remember that they’ve been talking. “It’s you, James. The Red Forest: did you find it? Oh no, you don’t know yet.” She explains that she wants to tell him everything, but she can’t change the path he’s on – ahhhh, time travel and paradoxes. She gives him a sheet of paper, an address, and why she brought him to this facility. “You’re going to find the answers you’re looking for – keep going. You can, you will.” It’s a very emotional scene, and we see just how much Cole and Cassie have grown to care for each other. She dies in his arms, her last words are “See you soon.” After closing her eyes and kissing her on the forehead, Cole sits, and cries.
2043: Katrina is trying to power on the machine, and it finally does.
2017: Cole, despaired, sits next to Cassie’s dead body – he Splinters back.
2043: Cole, at least, arrives back, with Katrina ready to greet him. “I watched it happen all over again. 2017. The Plague. I lost her.”
2041: Cole takes out the guard, frees Ramse, and says they’re leaving. Ramse is trying to convince Cole that the right thing to do is stay and give Katrina the benefit of the doubt. “You gotta take that shot. You need this.” He purposefully gets them recaptured.
2043: Ramse and Cole talk for the first time since his return. “You know what she did, right?” Ramse tells Cole the truth, that Katrina murdered half of Spearhead and they had the cure – the real cure. Cole simply says, “The mission’s all that matters now.” The two confront each other – it’s a perfect juxtaposition to the scene we just saw from two years back. This time, Cole is telling Ramse that he can’t stop. “I watched the world die. Everyone. I watched her die.” Ramse’s son and Cole’s love for Cassie has all but destroyed their brotherhood. It hurts almost as much as watching Cassie die in Cole’s arms.
And that’s it – the episode ends with a literal punch to the face from Ramse to Cole, and a figurative punch to the guts from the writers to the viewers.
