11.22.63 Episode 1 recap revisited: Jake realizes that history can be altered

Episode 1 of 11.22.63 builds the foundation for the kind world the viewers are going to witness and the base rules that will unravel its consequences ahead. By the time we reach the end of the hour, Jake Epping, an English teacher of the 21st century, has crossed over the boundary of traveling back in time with the intent of changing one of the most defining moments of the last century- the murder of President John F. Kennedy.

What starts as a noble journey to a time portal soon becomes a moral and existential burden. Jake's personal life starts to intervene, leading to a chain of alterations orchestrated by him. Each journey of Jake resets the timeline, erasing prior changes. These are the mechanical means that ground the story and raise the stakes, and the fact that changing history can be done and that it can have some unexpected results.

Read on to know the full recap of 11.22.63 episode 1.

Here is the complete recap of 11.22.63 episode 1

The episode starts strangely with an old man telling a Halloween story from his childhood about trick or treating, before the night his father killed his family with a hammer. This is Harry Dunning, who is a student in Jake’s adult creative writing class. The start lets us know 11.22.63 is not going to romanticize the past. It treats history like something extremely personal and brutal and defined by isolated incidents that echo throughout lives.

Jake’s routine existence is then outlined rapidly. We get to know that he is newly divorced, emotionally lost, and stumped artistically. His friend is Al Templeton, the owner of the nearby diner that sells astonishingly cheap burgers. When Jake signs the divorce papers, Al comes out of the diner’s back room and seems transformed into his more old self. That stunning change brings Jake to Al’s house, where Al discloses the reason for his abrupt sickness and aging. Instead of explaining things, Al shows Jake a door in the diner that leads to 1960.

Jake’s first journey down the “rabbit hole” is short but disturbing. The world of 1960 seems perfect at first, with clean streets, smiling faces, but it is shattered by the figure of an enigmatic stranger who keeps telling Jake that he shouldn't be here. Jake returns to the present, shaken, where Al informs him of the rules of time travel and his lifelong fixation on stopping JFK’s assassination.

Eventually, Al sends Jake on a dry run to investigate whether Lee Harvey Oswald shot at Gen. Edwin Walker in 1963 and confirm Oswald as Kennedy’s assassin.

This is how 11.22.63 episode 1 ends

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The final stretch of the episode is just how antagonistic the past is. Jake’s efforts to cash in on what he knows about the future nearly get him killed, and he has to flee town. There, he experiences racism on a personal level, and just manages to survive near-fatal “accidents” apparently orchestrated by history itself.

The episode concludes on a chilling moral note. Jake rescues Harry Dunning’s family from their killer, averting one tragedy. Yet this act brings about another disastrous result, leading one to wonder if any change can really be “good.” 11.22.63 end makes its claim clear that this isn’t just a story about heroism, it’s about the awful price of rewriting time.

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