It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sci-fi story in possession of a time travel plot will eventually bring up Hitler. More specifically, the question of whether you would kill baby Hitler if you could go back in time. It’s a deceptively simple idea that provokes a series of thorny moral dilemmas the longer you think about it. Would killing baby Hitler mean you eliminate a monster, preventing the deaths of millions, or does the murder of a child make you the monster? Is it fair to condemn an infant for the potential actions of their future self? What if you went through with it, only for someone worse to take his place?
The intricacies of this premise have long spurred Hollywood imaginations. The 2002 Twilight Zone episode Cradle of Darkness, in which a time traveler (Katherine Heigl) kills baby Hitler, ends with a bleak twist; the family’s terrified housemaid (Jillian Fargey) swaps out the infant with another, the implication being that he grows up to follow the exact same path. And while baby murder might not sound like obvious fodder for comedy, Avengers: Endgame took a shot at it in 2019, with Rhodey (Don Cheadle) bringing up the group’s newfound time-travel tech, then trailing off as he mimics strangling a baby Thanos. Even Tom Hanks has considered the conundrum, telling CNN in 2015, “I am going to vote the pro-going-back-in-time-killing-Hitler ticket.”
