Best method for universal animation/timeline/matinee skipping?

interesting topic, but consider it’s going to break the immersion pretty heavily.
So separate those parts:

  1. for Timeline, you can obviously set new time to the end and then play it would end right away, providing you have a event that does it.
    But all the dependent object, in your example lever and door, you have to somehow issue escape event after you skip the lever animation.

  2. for Matinee, you can also set position and stop/play. It should control the same way for imported frame/vertex animation.
    But for matinee, it might actually have player involved, ie a platform that are moving while player on it, you would need to be very carefully when handling this type of situation.

I don’t think there is a “universal” way that built-in in UE4, but you can do it regardless. Just plan it out and test it properly would be fine, there is no shortcut for this.