Lilo invokes Time Travel in order to keep herself from humiliating herself in front of Keoni.
In the midst of a very windy day, an experiment pod blows across the street and is picked up by a dog. The dog takes it home and drops it in its water dish, activating 228. 228 blasts a fireball from his mouth, causing the entire house to melt into nothing. Gantu's ship computer alerts of the activation, but Gantu is fast asleep and Reuben decides not to wake him up and tell him about the experiment.
Nani is about to start a new job at the nearby resort, and Lilo gives her a good luck charm made out of garbage. Lilo and Stitch decide to visit Nani at the resort, but Stitch smells a cousin nearby. Just as soon as he can say anything, however, 228 dashes past and knocks Lilo into a mud puddle. As Stitch gives chase to 228, Keoni happens upon Lilo and asks why she's lying in the mud. Lilo makes an excuse about practicing for a "mud-themed hula", and Keoni awkwardly excuses himself. Stitch successfully catches 228, but Lilo feels she can't face Keoni ever again.
Back at home, Lilo wishes she could go back in time to fix her mistake when Pleakley accidentally lets slip that Jumba has actually invented a time machine in the form of a surfboard. However, Jumba warns Lilo not to use it, as time travel can create a butterfly effect and cause unintended consequences. Needless to say,note Lilo ignores his advice and goes back in time with Stitch to noon of that day.
At the hotel, Lilo avoids falling in the mud this time around and Keoni invites her out for shave ice. However, the new timeline causes complications for Stitch in his pursuit of 228, who uses his powers to melt the entire hotel building before Stitch can capture him. This causes Nani to get fired, and Lilo decides to go back in time again and prevent the hotel from melting. This time, however, the duo have a plan — Stitch will use the rooftops to catch 228 as he did in the first, original timeline. Unfortunately, Stitch jumps onto a tree that was being cut down, and it falls down onto Officer Kahiko's police car. Lilo and Stitch make another plan (from inside a jail cell) and go back in time once more.
This time around, Lilo tries to take a more casual approach with Keoni, leaning her arm on a tree and startling a butterfly. The butterfly gets eaten by a fish, and the fish gets carried off by a bird. The bird drops the fish onto a cruise ship's windshield, which startles the captain into accidentally pressing a big green "set course for the nearest hotel and crash into it" button.note Lilo and Stitch go back in time once more, but Stitch accidentally knocks 228 into the ocean, who melts the ocean floor with his breath and causes a tsunami.
Next time, they accidentally go far into the future to find a barren post-apocalyptic wasteland, before turning around toward their intended time. This time around, they finally capture 228 without Lilo falling in the mud and without the hotel being destroyed. They've accomplished their mission... or so they think. A feather lands on Stitch, who blows it off, it floats over to a coconut stand, causing a coconut to fall off.note The coconut lands on the tee at a nearby golf course, and an old man hits the coconut all the way across the island until it hits Gantu's ship, waking him up. Reuben informs Gantu of the activated experiment, who then storms toward Lilo's house to capture it.
Gantu lifts up the house's roof and demands 228. Lilo and Stitch realize that they must have messed up the timeline again, as Gantu never showed up before. Before they have any time to think, 228 melts their entire house, allowing Gantu to capture the experiment with ease. What's worse, is that the time machine has also been melted, and Nani lost her job again (because Gantu destroyed the hotel looking for 228)!
Just when hope is lost, Jumba from the post-apocalyptic future arrives on a brand new time machine surfboard. He says that the only way to fix the timeline and prevent the Bad Future from happening is to go back in time and let everything happen exactly as it originally did. Lilo ends up falling in the mud just as before and humiliates herself in front of Keoni, but the timeline is finally safe. Nani comes home (with her job intact for once) and comforts Lilo with advice not to live in the past. Keoni knocks on the door and invites Lilo out to a movie, and it turns out she didn't humiliate herself in the first place. Meanwhile, 228 finds his one true place at an aluminum recycling plant.
Experiments who appeared or were mentioned in this episode:
- Melty (X-228): This episode's Monster of the Week; a small red dragon-like creature who is designed to melt inorganic objects with his blue fire-like energy breath.
- Reuben (X-625): Lets Gantu sleep despite Melty's activation. In one timeline, though, Gantu wakes up and 625 mentions the activation, leading Gantu to go after the experiment. At the end of the episode, he reveals he used Gantu's laser to etch a tattagraph of himself on Gantu's patookie.
Tropes featured in this episode include:
- An Aesop: Learn to live in the present, or you may lose sight of the future.
- Bad Future: Lilo and Stitch accidentally visit the future at some point, and it doesn't look pretty. It's a barren wasteland where the nearby hotel has been replaced with a prison. Oddly enough, an adult Mertle is shown on a billboard as some kind of authoritarian dictator.
- Brutal Honesty: When Lilo blames herself for messing up the timeline due to not wanting to embarrass herself in front of Keoni, Stitch says "Yes, your fault".
- Butterfly of Doom: Every time Lilo does anything but fall in the mud in front of Keoni, something ends up going wrong one way or another. At one point, one timeline has Lilo accidentally disturb a literal butterfly, which sets off a mild tsunami. Ultimately, the only way to keep anything bad from happening is to fall in the mud.
- Character Catchphrase: Stitch shouts "Cowabunga!" every time they use the time machine. Every. Single. Time.
- Hope Spot: At one point, Lilo manages to avoid having an embarrassing encounter with Keoni, while Stitch successfully catches the experiment. They assume that their time travel finally worked and go home. Then a butterfly effect leads to Gantu waking up...
- Never the Selves Shall Meet: Jumba installed a paradox inhibitor on the time machine to prevent its users from meeting past selves. The users would basically rewind time. Lilo and Stitch once forgot to use the inhibitor and met their past selves but no disaster seems to have happened from it.
- Saying Too Much: Pleakley ends up being an Unwitting Instigator of Doom by letting slip that Jumba invented a Time Machine.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Future Jumba visits with his own Time Surfer and fills our heroes in the on the details. Seeing so much bad happen in the future leads Lilo to realize she's been so fixated on the past that it nearly destroyed the future. So she and Stitch go back one time to make sure her falling in the mud happens without a hitch.
- You Don't Want to Know: Future Jumba tells Lilo and Stitch not to ask what happened to Pleakley in the Bad Future.
