Synopsis/Details
WHEN I COME AROUND is a Gen Z time-travel comedy about four mismatched high schoolers at a stuffy Detroit-area prep school who get zapped back to the year 1996. Zoey is a guitar-obsessed loner still grieving her musician father; Emerson is a checked-out influencer numbing himself with weed and clout-chasing; Lyla is a closeted lesbian crushed under her overbearing mother; and Josh is a brilliant, anxiety-riddled gamer who can't function without his helicopter mom. After Emerson destroys their history teacher Ms. Frost's prized vintage guitar, the group treks to a dying mall to repair it, where a freak power surge and Zoey's wish to have grown up in the 90s sends them three decades into the past. Stranded with no Wi-Fi, no phones, and no idea how to get home, they realize their only hope is the teenage version of Frost herself, who turns out to be a talented singer-songwriter on the verge of being robbed of her future.
As Josh and Emerson team up to crack the physics of "temporal resonance" with the help of a kindly teacher, Mr. Franklin, and pinpoint the exact moment a power surge can send them back, the others find unexpected freedom in the past. Lyla, away from her mother's judgment, comes out boldly and fights to start a GSA club at a school run by their future principal Starkman, who is secretly closeted himself. Zoey discovers that the school's arrogant golden boy, Dylan, is poised to steal Frost's signature song "Battle Scars" and pass it off as his own, derailing the destiny that should make Frost a star. Meanwhile, Zoey gets the chance she's longed for: to see her late father play one last show and finally tell him she loves him, righting the regret that has haunted her. Their actions build toward the single chaotic night of the Battle of the Bands, which falls at the exact hour the rift will reopen.
In the climax, Emerson exposes Dylan as a fraud with a takedown video, freeing Frost to perform her own song and reclaim her future, before the group races to the mall to make their narrow escape window. When Dylan smashes the guitar and seemingly traps them forever, Emerson improvises a fix using Zoey's father's signed CD to reopen the rift, then sacrifices his own spot to tackle Dylan so the others can get home. The payoff is sweet rather than tragic, as Emerson lived out the next 30 years in the past, grew up, and is waiting for them in the present as a wealthy physics professor. Frost is now a Grammy-winning superstar funding the school's music program, Lyla and Josh return to healthier relationships with their families, and Zoey receives a scholarship and a stage to honor her dad's music, leaving the four friends exactly where they belong.
