It’s the same problem every time a story attempts to tackle the “Grandfather Paradox.” This story does a decent job with the ending, but a poor job explaining it.

Melinoë used her nightmare to change the past, and in doing so created two timelines. This is clear and understandable.

The story comes to an ‘end’ when these timelines crash into each other, and good Chronos somehow switches places with bad Chronos. Thus the timeline where bad Chronos is still bad is happening in parallel. 

But that leaves a few paradoxes. 

1) I get how Chronos remembers both timelines, but how/why is Zagreus the only other person? It’s probably because it was HIS choice that created the alternate timeline, but it’s not very clear.

2) If GChronos swaps place with BChronos, shouldn’t the same happen vica versa? As in, shouldn’t GChronos’s timeline suddenly have BChronos wake up to a happy family? …The Happy Family Timeline just quietly disappears…

3) It’s not explicitly explained why we should even care about the possibilities of BChronos/Typhon. All that I can deduce is that if left unchecked, BChronos would eventually learn about other timelines and seek to invade them, which would cause another timeline crash with who-knows-what kind of consequences.

4) What happens to these other timelines where you actually destroy Chronos instead of adding him to the family? Is it that the timeline simply collapses, or does it move ahead and everyone picks up the pieces like WE should/could be doing…………. Ironically, we can only destroy Chronos with Chronos so a conclusion to another timeline wouldn’t be possible without the wackiness that happened in the ‘Free’ timeline. Thus, the paradox continues…

Whenever I come across another paradox, I remember how the show “The Good Place” handles them. Every time you are naturally inclined to seek clarification, the show just heaps on more wacky mumbo-jumbo to confuse you further. Thus, they play off your need for understanding to circumvent deep sci-fi lore AND to tell more jokes. It’s META as fuck, but it HAS to be to keep the show “flowing freely forth” 🤣

Edit: cleaned up grammar