At first I understood the confederate timeline and it's past to be a separate time completely which would mean that Guinan could not have know what happened to (our) Rios. After reading some posts, I'm wondering if the past of the confederate timeline is supposed to be the prime timeline but with a change made by Q, causing the time timeline to branch off. However, the confederate La Sirena comes into existence as part of the confederate branch and is shown to be borgified in the prime timeline but the regular La Sirena is also shown in the last episode as part of the grid (after the cancelled auto destruct). How do we now have two La Sirenas? If the timeline is fixed then where did the confederate La Sirena come from? Surely the confederate timeline must have happened at least once? Why did Elnor need to be brought back to life if he died in the confederate timeline that no longer exists? Is his dead body still aboard the borgified confederate ship? Q took them out of The Stargazer when the countdown was complete and returns them when there are 3 seconds left so did Elnor ever actually die? If Q pulled them out of The Stargazer when the countdown was complete but then returned them when 3 seconds remained, does that mean that at one point there was two Jurattis but then that time was redone and there was only one? Same for Rios, he was there for the last 3 seconds but then he wasn't? If there was no completed self destruct causing Q to send them to the confederate timeline, then how do they still have the results of the timeline change and time travel? If Rios was always supposed to stay in the past, as suggested by the La Mariposas cargo in episode 1, why did Q seem surprised by his choice? Why did Picard not expect Guinan to recognise him in the past if that was the Prime timeline? We know Guinan said she pretended not to know Picard but why was Picard not surprised too if it was the Prime timeline? Why was Raffi brought back to The Stargazer when she was on a different ship when the auto destruct was ordered? To be clear, I'm not trying to nitpick here. I just want to better understand the show.
The Confederate Le Sirena went back to the past and was then taken by Jurati to start her own Borg sect. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't in the center of that starburst ship of theirs. Nut it existed for around 400 years. When the timeline was reset, the prime La Sirena was exactly where it was when last we saw it. Q "snapped" everyone but Jurati and Rios back to the original timeline, just not all in the same places (Raffi on the Stargazer instead of the Excelsior). This allowed for the "surprise, gift" of Elnor to be done the way we saw. Just as much a story driven thing, so we the audience could be surprised as well (assuming you didn't know what Q had in mind).
It was all a test/lesson by Q, so it doesn't have to make any more sense than "All Good Things" did. I assume for example that Jurati's Borg Queen is now the Borg Queen, without erasing every prior Borg adventure because magic.
The second idea you presented, where the Confederate universe is an altered Prime universe, is what’s been depicted this season. Q altered the timeline to create the Confederate universe so that he could teach a lesson to Picard, and in part ensure the Federation’s future comes to pass, to give the end of his life some meaning, or greater purpose. Trans-temporally speaking, the temporary change, and transportation/transformation of the unchanged Prime Picard, Raffi, Rios, Seven and Elnor into the form of their Confederate counterparts had all already taken place, in a way, when the season premiere began. The finale demonstrates it was a predestination loop by having Picard mention the bullet holes, and Guinan mention that the photo of Rios and Teresa had always been there. The Confederate universe is now a “dead timeline,” created by a time travel experience that temporarily altered the Prime universe. The Borg Queen that merged with Agnes, and the Confederate La Sirena are the only survivors of that dead timeline. This is exactly like the conception of Sela, Tasha’s daughter in TNG’s Yesterday’s Enterprise. There Tasha Yar was still alive in the at-the-time-altered Prime universe and survived after traveling back into the shared past of the Prime universe, even while erasing her native/altered universe. Yes, there were two versions of Agnes on the bridge of the Stargazer at the end of the premiere, the one merged with the Borg Queen, and one unchanged by the trip, but it didn’t last long. And I think Elnor died, and needed to be brought back, for the same reason there aren’t two versions of Agnes that continued to exist, and a version of Rios that never left. When Q took them away from the self destruct he didn’t just pluck their consciousnesses and place them inside their altered Confederate selves, they became them wholly, and their original physical selves ceased to be. And they still have the results of the time travel because there are ramifications for unaltering a changed timeline, as I just mentioned, exactly like what happened with an alternate Tasha and Sela’s conception in Yesterday’s Enterprise. Q is a very very powerful, but he’s not omniscient, and even he doesn’t know everything that will happen. He engineered this all, and it would make sense he knew the broad strokes ahead of time, but it’s the randomness and chaos of choice that in part makes him so fascinated with humanity to begin with. Because they traveled to 2024 from the altered Prime future of the Confederacy, it was still a forgone conclusion. It’s been explained by Picard S02’s co-show runner Terry Matalas right after the S02E04 Watcher, the timeline’s quantum state after the the timeline was altered made the Confederation a forgone conclusion until Picard and the crew fixed things/complete their part in the story. Even though they travel to 3 days before the initial alteration, in a way it was already altered once, before they traveled back to 2024. So it’s because they came from the Confederacy future that it’s the timeline that’s inevitable, until they set things right, and alter the quantum state of 2024 to go towards the Federation future we know and love. And Guinan didn’t really say or indicate that she was pretending she didn’t remember Time’s Arrow when they met in 2024, she didn’t have those experiences at that point. It was in 2400, in the premiere, that Guinan was keeping something from Picard when he came to visit her, that’s what she meant by pointing out the photo of Rios & Teresa that was up in the bar already. In the both the premiere and finale’s year 2400 Guinan had all of memories, both of meeting Picard and Data in San Francisco in the 1800s, and meeting him in the at-the-time-altered 2024. That one I have no clue on. I didn’t get the feeling you were nitpicking or trashing it at all, and I think earnest questions are always a good thing. Temporal mechanics are a real headache, but I think that as presented this season it is internally consistent, and consistent with several past instances of time travel in Trek.
Terry Matalas has endorsed the reading that the original Borg still exist, and have had the same history they’ve always had, and Jurati’s Borg, born from the BQ of a dead timeline, have existed alongside/separately from the Borg we’re all familiar with.
Well, doesn't that render the whole thing a bit pointless. I'm gonna hope Jurati represents all Borg, until they conclusively show otherwise.
That makes sense. Then Juranti's Borg could assert full control. Perhaps Juranti was partially responsible for the "Unimatrix Zero" debacle but that created evidence that the primary Queen was still too strong.
Actually when the timeline was restored, the Confederation La Sirena vanished, and Jurati spent the next few centuries floating towards Borg space on pure momentum. And she happened to arrive just as the other Borg queen was taking her last breaths at the hands of future Janeway. According to moi.
This is exactly what I read into it. With that space/time anomaly at their disposal, Jurati's Borg co-op may have been hiding outside the universe for the most part, or at least in a place they wouldn't grab the attention of the "real" Borg.
I think all is of this makes a lot of sense. After the events of Endgame in VOY perhaps the Borg is in such disarray that Agnes and her Borg are able to bring in its remnants/survivors. Perhaps Jurati had an unseen hand in the creation of the Unimatrix Zero shared space, created intentionally to use the mutation to foster freethinking/rebellion? And perhaps Jurati’s Borg joined with the Borg Cooperative that Chakotay advocated for in Unity. Their desire to remain a collective of their own, but rejection of the traditional Borg path of dominance and violence, makes them seem like a perfect match for the “Universe of Sevens” that the merged Agnes/Borg Queen was determined to create with offers of assistance, aid, and cooperation. Edited to add: I think Borg/Jurati’s final message to Seven & Raffi (aside from the message about two Renées etc.), hinted at her forthcoming 400 year existence alongside the traditional Borg and our old familiar monomaniacal BQ (as played by Alice Krige & Susanna Thompson):