Rachel McAdams’ Accidental Time Travel Movie Series Explained

Rachel McAdams has appeared in at least four different time travel movies. However, her character is never the one who travels through time.

Rachel McAdams has bizarrely starred in a series of movies that all involve the concept of time travel. Unlike a regular film series or franchise, there is no connecting tissue between these movies, except for the presence of Rachel McAdams and her time-traveling love interest. Unfortunately, in every single one of the movies involved in this accidental series, McAdams’ characters never get the chance to travel through time themselves; they are always pigeonholed into the role of the time traveler’s lover.

Born in Canada in 1978, Rachel McAdams broke into stardom in 2004 with back-to-back roles as Regina George in the seminal high-school comedy Mean Girls and as heiress Allie Hamilton in the Nicholas Sparks adaptation The Notebook. Since then, McAdams has appeared in a litany of romantic comedies alongside critically acclaimed dramas like the Best Picture-winning Spotlight, which was based on a true story. But, disappointingly, even in the more fantastical movies she appears in, McAdams is often relegated to a more down-to-earth role as the main character’s love interest.

Related: How Does Time Travel Work in The Time Traveler’s Wife?

Rachel McAdams Has Been A Time Travel Love Interest 4 Times

Rachel McAdams has played the love interest of a time traveler on four separate occasions. The first time was as Clare Abshire, the titular role in Robert Schwentke’s 2009 drama The Time Traveler’s Wife. The film follows Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana), a man that involuntarily travels through time which causes obvious problems in his marriage to Clare. The second occasion came two years later in Woody Allen’s Best Original Screenplay Oscar-winning romantic comedy Midnight in Paris. Here, McAdams plays Inez, the dismissive and materialistic fiancée to Owen Wilson’s screenwriter, who mysteriously travels back to the 1920s when the clock strikes midnight during his holiday to Paris.

Another two years later, in 2013, came the romantic comedy About Time, directed by Love Actually’s Richard Curtis. Rachel McAdams portrays Mary, an American book publisher and love interest to Domhnall Gleeson’s Tim. In About Time, the men in Tim’s family have the unique ability to travel back in time to moments in their past and can use this ability to change their lives. So naturally, Tim uses his power to woo McAdams’ character, though, after an unsuccessful fling with Margot Robbie’s Charlotte.

McAdams’ last time travel movie, to date, arrived in the form of Scott Derrickson’s Doctor Strange in 2016. She plays Christine Palmer, a surgeon and former love interest of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Stephen Strange. During the movie’s climax, Strange defeats Dormammu with an infinite time loop, thanks to the Time Stone hidden within the Eye of Agamotto.

Doctor Strange 2 Finally Broke A Rachel McAdams Pattern (Sort Of)

While not a time travel movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness did at least break the previous four movies’ pattern of snubbing Rachel McAdams by placing her firmly on the sidelines. In the sequel, a variant of Christine Palmer joins the titular hero and America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) in navigating multiple dimensions. So while Rachel McAdams still has not had the chance to play a time-traveling character herself, at least one version of Christine Palmer got to explore the multiverse.

More: Every Way To Travel The MCU’s Multiverse