Back to the Future 4 – Episode 2 – The Search For Marty – Tom Holland – (Short Fan Film 2026)

THE SEARCH FOR MARTY

The ticking of the clock was the first thing I noticed.

Not the loud kind—the kind that demands attention—but the quiet, steady rhythm that creeps into your thoughts when the rest of the world is silent. Tick. Tick. Tick. It echoed through the old Hill Valley house like a heartbeat that refused to stop.

I was staring at the ceiling when it happened.

The knock.

Three sharp taps at the front door, perfectly spaced, like someone who knew exactly how long to wait between seconds.

My name is Marty McFly Jr.
And my father disappeared in 1999.

THE PACKAGE

I hadn’t heard from him in years. No calls. No postcards. No cryptic messages written in impossible handwriting—nothing. People told me to move on. Said time had swallowed him like it swallows everyone eventually.

They were wrong.

Because that night, when I opened the door, there was no delivery driver. No neighbor. Just a small metal case sitting on the porch, humming softly, warm to the touch.

Inside was a device I had never seen before—and somehow had always known.

A time capsule.

And inside it… a hologram.

The light flickered, and suddenly my father stood in front of me, older, thinner, eyes full of urgency.

“Hey, kid,” he said. “If you’re seeing this… it means I couldn’t make it back.”

My heart stopped.

“I don’t have much time,” he continued. “Something’s gone wrong. Real wrong. The timeline is collapsing in on itself. If you want answers—if you want to find me—you need to go to the docks.”

The message ended.

I stood there shaking, the future humming in my hands.

DOC BROWN

There was only one person alive who could explain any of this.

Dr. Emmett L. Brown.

The man who had turned time into a highway and destiny into a suggestion.

When I arrived at his house, Doc didn’t look surprised to see me. That scared me more than anything.

“So,” he said softly, adjusting his glasses, “it’s finally begun.”

Upstairs, among shelves filled with strange devices and impossible relics, Doc showed me something that rewired my understanding of reality.

A letter.

Dated 1999.

Written in my handwriting.

“You gave me this,” Doc said.

“I’ve never been here before,” I protested.

Doc smiled sadly. “Not yet.”

THE COLLAPSE

Doc explained it slowly—because he knew my brain was already on overload.

Time, he said, wasn’t breaking.

It was folding.

Events that were never supposed to intersect had begun bleeding into each other. Technologies that should have existed… never did. Flying cars. Hover cities. Clean energy revolutions.

“Somewhere,” Doc said, “a pivotal genius gave up. A single choice rippled outward and the future… stalled.”

I laughed nervously. “Doc, 2015 already came and went. No hoverboards.”

Doc reached into his bag.

And pulled one out.

“This,” he said, “is proof that the future still exists. It’s just… lost.”

1885 AND CLARA

That night, Doc finally told me the truth about Clara.

After 1885, they hadn’t settled immediately. They traveled. Everywhere. Everywhen.

Rome at its peak.
The Wright brothers’ first flight.
The birth and death of civilizations.

They were careful—always careful—not to interfere.

Until Clara got sick.

Doc’s voice broke as he spoke about searching through centuries for a cure. Medicine advanced beyond imagination. Humanity fled Earth. The world ended and restarted in different forms.

But Clara never recovered.

“So we went home,” Doc whispered. “To 1910.”

She died there.

And something inside Doc Brown died with her.

THE DECISION

The next morning, the sun rose over Hill Valley like it always had—oblivious to the fact that time itself was unraveling.

In the warehouse behind Doc’s house sat the future’s last hope.

A new time machine.

Powered by Mr. Fusion—a piece of the future that never arrived.

“Marty,” Doc said seriously, “you cannot interfere with past events.”

“I just want to find my dad.”

“That may be more dangerous than changing history.”

I clenched my fist around the photograph I’d carried my whole life—me, my mom, my dad. Frozen in time.

“I’m ready,” I said.

1999

The jump felt wrong.

Not violent—unstable.

The world snapped into place around me, and suddenly I was standing at the edge of Hill Valley… twenty-five years earlier.

Payphones. CRT monitors. The hum of a world on the brink of digital awakening.

And somewhere in this year… my father vanished.

I followed the clues quietly, just like Doc warned. No interference. No attention.

Until I saw him.

My dad.

Older than I remembered. Nervous. Talking to a man in a dark suit—someone who didn’t belong.

A man holding a device that pulsed with the same energy as the time capsule.

The timeline wasn’t just broken.

It was being hunted.

THE TRUTH

I learned the truth too late.

My father hadn’t been lost.

He had been protecting time.

Someone—or something—had discovered how to weaponize temporal collapse. To erase futures. To delete entire possibilities.

And my dad had tried to stop it.

By disappearing.

By becoming a ghost in history.

When our eyes finally met, across the chaos of collapsing time, he smiled.

“You made it,” he said.

Then the world tore itself apart.

THE FINAL JUMP

Doc arrived seconds before everything unraveled.

“There’s only one way to fix this,” he shouted. “We have to restore the future that never happened!”

We jumped—not forward.

But sideways.

Into the timeline that should have been.

Flying cities. Hover highways. A world where science never gave up.

And there—older, scarred, alive—stood my father.

The cost was high.

To save time, someone had to stay behind.

Dad stepped forward.

“Somebody has to guard the crossroads,” he said.

I tried to stop him.

He shook his head. “That’s my job.”

EPILOGUE

The timeline stabilized.

The future breathed again.

Doc retired—finally—leaving the universe intact.

And sometimes, when the clock ticks too loudly at night, I swear I see a flash of light at the docks.

Time hasn’t forgotten us.

It’s just waiting.