Still wondering why he hasn't leapt, we see Sam sit down on a porch and begin calling out to a piglet that had been an early plot element at the beginning of the story, yelling "piggy! suey!" The boy in the chair next to him on the porch starts to sing a very familiar tune with the words "piggy suey". After listening for a while, Sam asks the boy why he doesn't consider trying "Peggy Sue". He does, and upon realizing the boy is the young Buddy Holly, he looks at Al and smiles as Al teasingly waves goodbye as Sam begins to leap.

We see fate unfold in complex and interesting ways in all kinds of stories: In Looper, we learn that our protagonist is destined to shoot himself in order to prevent a future version of himself from traveling back, trying to kill a young boy who might grow up to be a murderous tyrant, and accidentally killing his mother, making him into that murderous tyrant to begin with. The Terminator shows us what can happen when somebody's journey back in time result in the circumstances that lead them back in time to begin with: Kyle Reese travels back in time to protect Sarah Connor, who will one day give birth to John, the man who will lift mankind out of the ashes of a war between man and machine. Having fallen in love with her in a photograph that John once gave him in order to memorize her face, Kyle ends up confessing this love for her in the past, spends one night of passion in a motel room as they go on the run, and fathers the child that will become the soldier who sends him back: John Connor.

Some stories make a concerted effort to inject creative complexity into the storylines that ultimately lead to relatively simple moments after an epic adventure...