Of course it would've, it's happened to many other shows too. Shows don't get greenlit based on how far into the future they can see with the story. They'd have pitched the idea about the "Control the past, control the future" plotline, but they wouldn't have said "And here's will it'll be by the second season!".
The reason I attack these kind of plotlines is because they're almost always the one that lead to a sharp, uninteresting, decline in quality.
