Did anyone else think of “death comes in 3’s” and how there are never more than 3 Jess’s alive on the boat at one time? isn’t it a ghost ship too?

The fact that there were multiple seagulls dead means that the deaths/loop happened prior to the seagulls????

Maybe she died and not her son?????

I have to watch it again now.

There are essentially two different interpretations out there regarding the time loop in Triangle: that there are two, different intersecting loops where things unfold slightly differently (such as when Jess-1 prevents Jess-2 from killing Hemsworth,) and the interpretation that there’s one big, long time loop and we follow “our” Jess through only a part of that time loop while seeing glimpses of/clues to what’s going on in the other loops that we don’t see in their entirety.

I’m inclined to believe the latter theory as it places the taxi cab choice at the center of the massive loop, and thus, presents Jess with the opportunity to break the loop should she choose to.

The movie tries very hard to make us believe that part of the loop is ‘Jess waking from deep slumber on Triangle boat,’ but I think that’s actually where the loop begins. Here’s how I think the loop works for one, singular Jess:

CYCLE 1:
Jess wakes up on Triangle, groggy and all foggy from a nightmare she can’t really remember.
Triangle capsizes, removing Heather from the picture.
Triangle “survivors” board Aeolus.
Jess, while experiencing déjà vu, doesn’t really know what’s going on yet.
Everyone dies at the hands of the Jess-es further in the loop.
Jess fires back at the masked killer (another Jess further in the loop), wounding the masked killer
Jess gets the upper hand in her fight with the masked killer (another Jess further down the loop) and pushes masked killer into the sea.
Jess messes with a record player and then sees the Triangle “survivors” off the side of the Aeolus, now on the opposite side from her arrival.

CYCLE 2:
Jess, trying to figure out what’s what, sneaks around in the periphery, setting up some key moments (like the finding of her keys, for example,) that were a mystery in Cycle 1. She also accidentally spikes the Hemsworth.
In this cycle, Jess is figuring out that she’s in a time loop and is trying to save all the “survivors” from the Triangle.
Jess THINKS she’s at least broken SOMETHING in the loop, as she prevents the Cycle 2 Jess from finger-killing the Hemsworth in the banquet hall. Cycle 2 Jess runs off (we’ll get to her later,) and the Hemsworth dies anyway.
Jess sees Wife crawling away from her, to her death amongst other stabbed versions of herself, indicating that she hasn’t really broken ANYTHING in the loop. WE—the audience sees—but the Jess we’re following along here doesn’t—that this masked killer, once unmasked, does indeed have a head wound.
Jess sees another Jess beat an unmasked killer Jess to death. ‘Another Jess’ throws dead unmasked killer Jess overboard, launching another loop—this time, with the Triangle “survivors” boarding from the original side of the Aeolus.

CYCLE 3:
This is the cycle where Jess realizes fully that she’s in a time loop and that (according to instructions from prior versions of herself,) that the only way to break it is to kill all the Triangle “survivors” and reset the loop.
This is where Jess dons the burlap mask and goes all psycho killer.
Jess – in the burlap mask but not with head wound from gunshot, tells a recently arrived “innocent” Jess to kill all of them, as it’s the only way, before going overboard. She wakes up on the beach, kicking off the center point of the infinity loop, and another cycle.

CYCLE 4: the fulcrum of the infinity loop—and Jess’ chance to stop the loop.
Jess runs home to see Dress Jess smacking her autistic son and verbally abusing him.
Jess kills Dress Jess, puts her in duffle bag, and races off with autistic son.
Seagull splats dead on car window.
Jess tosses seagull into pile of dead seagulls, indicating that we’re not in the real world, but still in the loop.
Jess, trying to calm her autistic son down, crashes car into semi, killing (or more accurately, “killing”) her autistic son.
Cab driver shows up next to entirely uninjured Jess. Tells Jess that she can’t save her son. Asks where she wants to go—the harbor.
Cab driver (really cementing the Greek mythos here,) assures Jess that he’ll keep the meter running and she promises to come back. This is hysterical and sad for two reasons: Jess has no intention of coming back. And, considering that she’s not giving up on her autistic son back, she’ll most assuredly be back in some form!
Jess walks down the pier to the Triangle and boards the boat, beginning the next cycle. While we don’t know ALL of the details of the next three cycles, I’ll list out what we DO know or can infer.

CYCLE 5:
While we don’t know ALL of the details of the next three cycles, I’ll list out what we DO know or can infer.
Inference: Jess knows the true nature of what’s what here. We see her sleeping on the beach and in the cab to the marina, so “sleep” doesn’t make her forget the time loop. Only the TOTAL RESET or the COMPLETE JOURNEY through the time loop resets it.
Inference: Jess either doesn’t sleep or doesn’t forget the details from the prior 4 cycles. The scene in the banquet hall is key here. This Jess knows that a “past” version of herself will keep her from killing the Hemsworth.
Inference: Jess runs off into the ship to do her thing. This most likely includes dragging Hemsworth’s body to the deck and tossing him overboard.
Jess kills the unmasked killer Jess and throws her overboard, kicking off the next cycle.

CYCLE 6:
We don’t really know, honestly. In the movie, we see from “our” Jess’ point of view through the first 4 cycles and get snippets of cycles 5 and 8 because those are the snippets “our” Jess sees.

CYCLE 7:
We don’t know except the following:
Jess gets shot in the head during another masked killing spree by another “innocent” Jess.
Jess gets killed and thrown overboard by that same “innocent” Jess.
This ends the cycle and restarts the infinity loop of Jess waking up from the nightmare she can’t remember.

What’s terrific about the structure of the infinity loop is that it provides two different sides of the loop (one where she has déjà vu feelings and one where she has full prior knowledge of the nature of this trap,) and it gives her an opportunity to break the loop with the cab driver. I also appreciate how the cab driver is friendly, even convivial to Jess. This is not God-as-judge. This is about Jess accepting her fate, her guilt, and then moving on from there. That Jess can’t or won’t do that makes it the “boulder up a hill” trap that it is. It’s HER continued fault that she’s repeating this horror over and over and over again. It’s HER choice to keep on with it. And—implied—she’s dooming mediocre to genuinely nice people to repeat it over and over and over again WITH her.

I do think that the interpretation that Jess killed herself and her son in a car crash on the way to the marina at 8:17 is correct. And I do think she smacked and verbally abused her son prior to that, fueling her guilt and remorse. I don’t think that she killed her son at the house post-abuse (I love Mellissa George, but she weighs 80 pounds wet. There’s no way that she’d have enough strength in a smack to kill her son—and I don’t think the movie is trying to make her out to be a child killer here.)

As for the “survivors” of the Triangle after it capsized, it’s also a reasonable assumption that Gone Girl actually survived and the rest of them died around 11ish (whatever time they say in the movie.) Since almost none of this movie takes place in the “real world,” I wonder if Jess—upon initially dying—went to the marina as the only aspect of the “real world” we see in the movie, and as a result, sucked in most of the other passengers into this Hell of her own making. In effect, she’s punishing innocent people through eternity in a futile attempt to save her son. Deep, cool stuff here. Should have made George a massive star.

Yes Tim. Why yes it is.