[Lord of Fire]

Originally Posted by Golden Dream

10/10, Amazing episode, everything was spot on. I loved noticing all the little changes to the opening too.

I wonder how Okabe will stop his newer past self from killing Kurisu with his master plan. I'm just a little confused. Wouldn't stopping Okabe #2 with him knowing create some sort of paradox of not making present-him go the second time? (And thus erasing his memories?) So I guess he must trick both Okabes. Also, when Okabe #2 "killed" Kirisu, she was already faking it from the very beginning somehow? Maybe present Okabe switches the knife to a plastic one or something. Ahh, my brain hurts. This makes me really excited for the finale!!

I think there will only be one other Okabe when he arrives a second time. Remember, he went back physically with Suzuha's time machine (as evidenced with him still having Kurisu's blood on his lab coat), as opposed to all the other time traveling he's done so far, where he only transfered his memories into an already existing body in an alternate timeline. So, I think his very existence in that specific time period will be erased by the time he redoes his trip again, leaving only Past Okabe and an alive Kurisu.

Edit; By this reasoning, doesn't that mean Kurisu is actually alive during the entirety of this world line making this already the Steins Gate? (But I guess they didn't stop WW3 yet though....or did they? Why would Suzuha still be here?) This is where I get confused too. If all this isn't true, are there multiple world lines for her actual death? Sorry, I probably sound really confusing with all these questions and what-not.

Kurisu only dies in the beta timeline, the one Okabe's currently in. Maybe she also dies in the Alpha timeline (the one where Mayuri kept dying), but it's also possible that she merely gets abducted and forced to work for SERN, but we don't actually see this, so we can only speculate.

Anyway, WWIII happens when she dies (and her father makes it to Russia with her papers in hand), so if Okabe can keep her alive in this timeline AND prevent her father from taking Kurisu's papers with him, he'll succeed and enter the Steins Gate timeline, where WWIII doesn't happen, SERN remains unaware of Okabe's existence, Kurisu (and probably Mayuri) will stay alive and he'll be the one creating the first true time machine over the course of years (unless he changes his mind later and stops working on it).