Warning! This post contains spoilers for Netflix’s Time Cut.

Quinn’s letter to Summer in Time Cut is a “cannon event” that determines the future trajectory of his story. In its one-and-a-half-hour runtime, Netflix’s Time Cut shifts back and forth between two years: 2003 and 2024. While 2024 seemingly represents the “present day” in the movie’s story, 2003 is the past. The movie’s opening arc gives a glimpse of how a serial killer murdered four high school students in 2003 and then jumps ahead to 2024 to highlight how the event rippled into the future.

Time Cut‘s time travel narrative begins when a character from 2024, named Lucy, ends up in 2003, giving her the opportunity to change the future and save her sister, Summer, from the serial killer. In the film’s climactic moments, she, her sister, and their newfound friend, Quinn, realize that Quinn was the killer all along. As they put together all the pieces of the overarching puzzle, they realize Quinn’s crimes were a consequence of one event that involved him giving a letter to Summer in 2003.

Quinn Confessed His Love For Summer In The Letter He Gave To Her At The Party

To Quinn’s Dismay, Summer Rejected Him

The original 2003 timeline from Time Cut’s opening moments reveals that Quinn had given a letter to Summer in which he had confessed his feelings. He poured his heart out in the letter, hoping Summer would reciprocate his feelings. Sadly, to his dismay, Summer was grappling with her own feelings and complexities towards understanding herself. She was starting to realize she was in love with her best friend, Emmy, but struggling to come out of the closet.

Owing to this, instead of considering Quinn’s proposal, she told him she could never love him like that. Quinn was bullied throughout high school, and there were times when Summer was a bystander when his seniors picked on him. He had already grown resentful towards many of his schoolmates and became even more isolated after Summer’s rejection.

How Quinn’s Letter Contributed To His Future Sweetly Slasher Motivations

Quinn’s Hate For Summer & Her Friends Consumed Him

After Summer rejected him, the letter Quinn had written to her became a reminder for him of how everyone mistreated him in school. As a result, his hatred towards Summer and her friends grew gradually. Over the years, Quinn continued pursuing his passion for time travel and physics to ultimately design a time machine.

Using the time machine, he traveled back in time and punished those who tormented him in school. He first targeted Summer’s closest friends and took them out one by one. He then went for Summer and ruthlessly killed her because she rejected his letter. To ensure he did not face any legal consequences for his actions in Time Cut as the Sweetly Slasher, Quinn used his time machine to disappear through time.