How does time travel work in the show? (Spoilers until S2E5)

Time travel media usually go one of two routes:

1. Bootstrap paradox or causal loop. Going to the past changes the future, which can create a resolved or unresolved time loop. Think Back to the Future, Dark, Tenet or Russian Doll.

2. Multiverse/Parallel Universe/Split Timelines. You can change things in the past, but it doesn't affect the timeline the traveler originated from. MCU has really run with this notion, but Sliding Doors comes to mind for me too.

(There's many other examples of course, but these are the more popular ideas explored that involve directly affecting the future.)

What if Outer Range is combining the two ideas?

This isn't an incredibly fleshed out idea, but I'm starting to wonder if these characters are accessing an ability to see or experience multiple possibilites? Granted, I haven't seen the final 2 episodes of the season 2 (trying to patiently wait to do so with my partner) but can't get this idea out of my head.

When Joy and Royal are in the hospital, you see both instances of his younger self kill his father play out in his mind. The reality where he accidentally shot his father, and the reality where he purposely does it. If it was simply multiple universes, I would think they'd explain the change by implying that one reality is shifting to a different one because Joy changed his past. Or have him remember the one we see Joy change, and not the other. But they show both simultaneously. It could be that it's shifting, or they could be showing us that Joy's action brought that possibility into reality and now both have actually happened and it's fucking with Royal's head.

The other big question I have has to do with why the hole spits them out at certain times. There's no rhyme or reason to it. The show hasn't explained what rules this time hole follows. Why does it send them to (seemingly) arbitrary points in time? If it's arbitrary, why do most of the travellers seem to fall to significant points in time?

What if coming into contact with the fluid or mineral helps them go, or see, what they subconsciously desire? Royal wants to get away from the consequence of killing his father, and so falls to a time where none of the family who could pin him for the murder exist. Joy has such a longing to see her wife and child again, and ends up only 3 days out from her disappearance. S1 Royal jumps back into the hole after ending up in a future where he's dead (but Autumn's there too - did the hole take him there because her energy pushed him in?), and ends up almost EXACTLY when he left.

Maybe I should finish the season....