What do you think about closed loops (Luna IV Act VIII Spoilers)

I've been having this question for a while now ever since I finished nod krai quest and I can't stop thinking about it .

First of all I know how the loop works but I can't help but question how was colombina born , where did her lullaby originate from considering the fact that she herself sung that lullaby for her newborn self , where did the cycle even begin from and who was the catalyst that allowed the cycle to even start ?

Did the traveler has something to do with it considering he's a descender who can change fates and she would've disintegrated if he didn't meet her? , but then again she was the one that guided him to her . Am I supposed to just accept the loop for what it is and move on ?
I don't really know how to think about this situation .
It's the same thing that happened with the spaceship keys and it's frying my brain everytime I try to think about it .
How do you guys feel about this situation ?

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Commentaires

tyjz73_2026-01-18 22:51

Columbina gave birth to herself, and sung the lullaby to herself. It's a bootstrap paradox.

Bootstrap paradoxes don't make sense if we think of time as linear, but they're perfectly fine if we use another concept of how time flows. We know time in Teyvat is cyclical anyway (besides it having its own rules), so there's no need to dwell on it too much.

The same thing happened in "A Space and Time for You," where three keys existed at one point in time.

slayer589x2026-01-18 23:06

I guess it's just hard for me to wrap my head about stories that don't have an origin point .
And I guess she was able to escape that cycle by changing her fate using the descender and the world formula.

Costyn172026-01-19 02:05

Maybe this could help you accept it and move on.

Let's say there is an original timeline where Columbina creates a time loop.

A run of the time loop has 2 different Columbina in it, that have their own different memories.

Time loop runs.

Columbina 0 goes back in time, makes changes that affect her own past, creating a new Columbina 1, then dies in the past.

Time loop runs again.

Columbina 1 goes back in time, makes changes that affect her own past, creating a new Columbina 2, then dies in the past.

Eventually after who knows how many loops:

Columbina X goes back in time, makes changes that affect her own past, creating a new Columbina Y, then dies in the past.

The changes made by Columbina X are finally enough for Columbina Y to find the final answer.

Time loop runs again.

Columbina Y goes back in time, makes changes that DON'T affect her own past, creating a new Columbina Z, then dies in the past and gets reborn in the future.

Columbina Z has perfectly matching memories with Columbina Y because the final changes aren't affecting her past anymore.

From this point, no matter how many times you run the loop, Columbina's memories are the same for both of them.

And because this is real time travel, not Irminsul, it affects everyone's memories, including the Traveler.

So, an original timeline that answers all your questions could exist, but nobody knows about it. (Maybe just Istaroth and other beings with powers like her if her powers at that good, but that's a discussion for the future)

slayer589x2026-01-19 08:19

Ok but how would she create her own time loop without having the time loop giving her the decision to create a time loop . After all if the time loop didn't exist at first then all the things that affected her and made her jump into the moon gate wouldn't happen and thus the loop wouldn't start .

Also how would she even find this "final answer" if the loop suggest that all it's events gets repeated in the exact same way everytime , hence the name "time loop" .

Costyn172026-01-19 16:02

I see you missed the point of the explanation. The point was to not think too much about how the loop started in the first place because nobody remembers that so we can't know.

It can be any other reason that forced Columbina to open the moon gate for the first time, it doesn't have to be Dottore. In a Nod Krai without Kuuvahki, we wouldn't even have Rerier being able to resurrect, so maybe originally Columbina didn't know what the moon gate really is and that's how she tried to leave and ended up going back in time.

Again, the point is that we can't know how it went.

As for the time loop, that's not exactly how it works. The events can be changed if something creates an inconsistency inside the loop. Usually, the inconsistency is someone aware of the loop, but in this case, the inconsistency is Columbina's time travel and changing her own past.

Maybe it would be easier to understand if we say we have 2 time loops? Loop 1 is Columbina from being born until opening the moon gate, loop 2 is Columbina from opening the moon gate until dying in the past.

What Columbina does in Loop 2 changes what Columbina does in Loop 1 and in return, what Columbina does in Loop 1 changes what Columbina does in Loop 2, so the loops keep changing each other until Columbina can reach her goal of being reborn in the future, and when she does that, the loops no longer change because Columbina reached her goal, so she no longer has a reason to act differently from previous loops.

slayer589x2026-01-19 17:07

So what you're saying is it was a straight line representing her origins then something happened that made her create a circle representing the loop we had and due to the information she had in the circle she was able to be reborn and no she's back in a straight line again , did I get that right ?

I want to ask a question though , we know that the traveler is a variable and because he's a descender he is able to change others fate . Did he have a hand in any way shape or form in changing colombinas fate ? Or was everything she did preordained and bound to happen anyway ?

Costyn172026-01-19 17:51

Again, this is just a way to think about it to make it make sense. Just speculation. Trying to guess how things would go without the Traveler present is already innacurate before time travel and time loops get involved.

But, if the Traveler isn't there, even if Columbina would still manage to do it, there would likely be more people who die in the process.

PrismaticGouda2026-01-18 23:08

The film "Arrival" does the same thing. Just go with it. 😁

TheSherman5002026-01-18 23:19

Closed loops are probably the overall best way to treat time travel.

slayer589x2026-01-19 08:08

Why do you think so ?

AsterJ2026-01-19 00:11

I'm 100% fine with closed loops. People freak out about a future that must be consistent with the past but we take it for granted that we already have a past that's consistent with the present and no one's worried. As to how that geometry can arise you can assume it happens from outside the timeline like an extra-dimensional god or some chaotic event.

darealwill2026-01-19 07:31

The answer to how she was born INITIALLY is actually in her character story. The other comments are mentioning the closed loop theory and the bootstrap paradox, which is true due to her body being spread across Nod Krai six thousand years ago, but how she was born (aka the catalyst you mentioned) was being born from the primordial sea.

slayer589x2026-01-19 08:23

Ok so she was born via the primordial sea , are you suggesting that she created another version of herself using kuuvahki?

darealwill2026-01-19 08:28

No what I am trying to say is that the cause of the time paradox is her being born in the primordial sea. There would be no time paradox without columbina being born there first

slayer589x2026-01-19 08:43

Yes but the time paradox won't exist without her jumping into the moon gate , and she wouldn't jump into the moon gate if her future self didn't affect her past self to be able to do so . My main question here is when and how did that time paradox start .

darealwill2026-01-19 08:47

You answered your own question. The time paradox started when she jumped into the gate. And she would not have been able to jump into the gate if she wasn’t born from the primordial sea 500 years ago. There is a graphic that someone created that very nicely puts this into perspective. I highly recommend you check it out! I’ll link it in a reply

darealwill2026-01-19 08:51

[heres the link](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Lore/s/WgTzyzRlYS)

slayer589x2026-01-19 09:43

No what i meant was that if she hadn't met the traveler and had a change in character then she wouldn't have even attempted to sacrifice herself by jumping into the moon gate for them .
But the thing here is she wouldn't have met the traveler without her future self sending them to her and thus makes the time loop having no point of origin because everything that happened affected her decision and every decision she made was because of the existence of the time loop .

The biggest example is her lullaby , it doesn't have an origin . She knew about it from when she was born which we later know that she sung it to her past self from the future and thus the cycle continues .

darealwill2026-01-19 14:29

Her lullaby was technically her past self singing to her future self. And I think the best way to think about this is just inserting the fact that the traveler is a descender into the equation. They can change the world’s fate, and you can say that them meeting columbina initially is was sparked her to go on this quest. On this quest, she was able to manipulate the past in such a way that all of the effects of her actions technically always existed during the events of the Luna Arc. This explains the origin of Luonnotar, and you are right in saying that this wouldn’t have happened without the traveler present, but since this isn’t what the game shows then it makes if really confusing when you brink in the what if scenarios.

I hope this helps. But check out the reddit post I linked above. I really think it explains what I have said better.