When English teacher Jake Epping first steps into a time portal hidden in a Maine diner, his goal is to save an American president. By the end of the series’ premiere episode, “The Rabbit Hole,” he learns a much harder lesson: changing the past is possible, but it always comes at a terrible price.
This opening chapter of the Hulu miniseries, based on the Stephen King novel and starring James Franco, masterfully sets up a story that is part conspiracy thriller, part period piece, and part a tragic story about good intentions gone wrong. It moves from the personal story of a broken man to an impossible mission that could change the world. The episode builds the rules of its world and the high cost of breaking them.
The Mission: Stop JFK’s Assassination
Jake’s life in 2016 is unremarkable. He is a recently divorced high school English teacher in Lisbon, Maine, feeling stuck and uninspired. His friend, Al Templeton, owns a local diner. After a mysterious incident where Al appears to age years in just a few minutes, Jake discovers Al’s secret: a closet in the diner that acts as a portal to October 21, 1960.
Al, now dying of cancer he believes was caused by his time travel attempts, reveals a lifelong obsession. He has tried and failed to stay in the past long enough to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Al is convinced that saving Kennedy would stop the Vietnam War and change history for the better. With his own health failing, he gives Jake the mission, along with his research, money, and a set of fake identification papers.
Before he fully commits, Jake needs proof that history can be changed. Al has him carve his initials into a sapling in 1960. When Jake returns to the present, he finds the fully grown tree still bears the marks, proving that actions in the past have a permanent effect.
Al explains the core rules of the portal: “Every trip through the closet leads back to the exact same moment on October 21, 1960. No matter how long you stay, only two minutes pass in the present. And going through the door again erases any changes made on previous trips”.
Al’s specific instruction for Jake’s first mission is not to stop the assassination immediately, but to investigate. He wants Jake to confirm whether Lee Harvey Oswald was also responsible for an earlier, failed assassination attempt on General Edwin Walker. If Oswald acted alone in shooting at Walker, Al believes it confirms he acted alone in killing Kennedy.
The Past Pushes Back
Armed with Al’s notes and a plan, Jake travels through the “rabbit hole”. He gets a period-appropriate haircut and suit, buys a classic car, and uses Al’s knowledge of past sports scores to place winning bets for money. His journey to Texas, however, is quickly met with resistance. The series establishes a key theme: the past does not want to be changed.
The first major sign of this resistance happens when Jake, feeling lonely, tries to call his father in Chicago from a payphone. The call is filled with static and fails. Moments later, a car crashes into the phone booth, killing the driver. In a surreal and terrifying moment, the dying driver turns to Jake and says, “You shouldn’t be here”.
As Al had warned him in a flashback: “The past doesn’t want to be changed. If you do something that really messes with the past, the past messes with you”.
This “pushback” takes many forms. While surveilling a man named George de Mohrenschildt, a friend of Oswald’s who may have CIA ties, Jake faces a series of near-misses. He is almost burned, barely avoids a falling ceiling fixture, and is constantly interrupted while trying to listen to a crucial conversation.
The most devastating pushback occurs when Jake returns to the boarding house where he is staying. He finds it engulfed in flames. All of Al’s meticulous research notes are destroyed in the fire. Even worse, the friendly young son of the landlady, who had dreams of joining the army, is killed in the blaze. Horrified and feeling responsible, Jake decides the mission is too dangerous. He abandons the goal of saving Kennedy and begins driving back to Maine to return to his own time.
A Personal Test: Saving Harry Dunning’s Family
On his drive back, feeling like a failure, Jake remembers a story from his own time. One of his adult education students, Harry Dunning, once wrote a powerful essay about the Halloween night in 1960 when his father murdered his mother and siblings with a hammer. Harry survived, but was left physically and emotionally scarred.
Jake realizes he is near Holden, Kentucky, where the tragedy is about to happen. He decides that if he cannot change a global event, perhaps he can do one small, good thing. He can save Harry’s family. This decision shifts the episode’s focus from a grand historical conspiracy to an intimate, personal tragedy.
The episode’s final moments show Jake watching Frank Dunning, Harry’s father. He sees the man’s violent nature firsthand. Jake’s choice to intervene sets the stage for the next episode and teaches him the core moral conflict of the series. While he may be able to prevent one horror, his actions will have unexpected and potentially disastrous consequences. As the episode ends, it makes clear that this story is not just about heroic time travel, but about the awful and unpredictable price of rewriting time.
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Where to Watch and Series Background
The eight-episode miniseries 11.22.63 first premiered on Hulu on February 15, 2016. The entire series is currently available for streaming on Netflix. It can also be purchased on digital platforms like Amazon Video, Apple TV, and Fandango At Home.
The series was developed by Bridget Carpenter and executive produced by J.J. Abrams and Stephen King. James Franco stars as Jake Epping and also served as a producer. The cast includes Chris Cooper as Al Templeton, Sarah Gadon as Sadie Dunhill, and features Josh Duhamel as the menacing Frank Dunning.
The show is adapted from King’s 2011 bestselling novel of the same name. King has said the idea for the story came to him as early as the 1970s, but he felt he needed more research skill and life experience to tackle the historical subject matter effectively.
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