blogs

With "Happily Ever After," most stories come to "The End." But not LOST. We still have seven hours left, many miles to go, and many mysteries to solve. For Desmond, though, and possibly for the audience, something huge has happened. For all intents and purposes, happily ever after has arrived. As Charlie and later Daniel informed us, none of "this" matters. And the things that do matter? Like love? They're settled, quite possibly sealed for all time.

Which brings me to an interesting conversation I had with a friend in vocational ministry yesterday morning over Instant Messenger:

Him: Soooooo confused... Now Des is making our "Sideways" actually something else entirely? And I have NO clue what's making him so passive and agreeable to Widmore AND psycho Sayid.

Me: You should have a clue, as it's called Faith. Desmond's glimpsed something that has caused him to believe that no matter what, things are going to turn out beautifully. So he's amenable to just about anything. He knows what matters, and that the path to it may change but most of the events will remain the same. And that even if things don't turn out beautifully for him (as in, if he has to sacrifice himself), he can still save it for those who matter to him. He quite possibly has also realized that maybe death is not the end; perhaps just a transfer of consciousness. And the sideways world was always going to be "something else," as in, most likely - the way things come to be, or a merge with island events.

Him: Yeah - just didn't love the episode. It was cool, building, building, and then... no clue what happened.

Does that describe you this morning? Then let's take a deeper look and see if we can clear things up. What I find fascinating is how the story keeps evolving to higher planes of meaning and meaningfulness. We get the love theme right on the heels of the faith theme and after the hope motif has been so prevalent for so long. In some ways, LOST has reminded us in its journey of the same journey the Apostle Paul takes us on in 1 Corinthians 13:13 about the only things that "remain" or endure or matter - faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these? Love…

I also spoke yesterday in person and online with several people who missed a lot of the cool stuff because they got caught up in the soap opera of Widmore family relations, forcing their brain to focus on that instead of the more important stuff. So it bears mentioning before we get started that…

Original timeline: Charles Widmore and Eloise Hawking, leaders of the Others, had a son, Daniel. He was apparently conceived on the island, but we don't know if he was born on it. Eloise raised him on her own off-island, giving him the last name Faraday, and pushing him from his love of piano into physics, for which he was equally gifted. Charles also fathered Penny with a non-Other, which is part of what got him exiled from the Island when Ben found out about it. Penny was raised with the name Widmore, though she apparently lived separate from him while knowing him in London. Daniel died on the island while time-traveling, and his own mother, not knowing who he was, shot him in the back. But it was only the possibility of reversing this fate that convinced Ellie to show the time-skipping 1977 Losties where to find Jughead. Note: what seemed to confuse most of my friends and set them down the wrong path was Widmore's early line this week about "my son died on this island." They assumed that meant Charlie rather than Daniel, and had that in their heads the whole time, apparently forgetting the episode where we learned Daniel was Widmore's son, too. So, just to clarify: Charlie is not related to the Widmores.

New timeline: Whether Charles and Eloise were ever on the island is uncertain. What is certain is that he has left behind that life for the comforts of rich-person life in LA, while she still carries an air of the mysterious, the destined, the omniscient. I assume this tells us she did indeed live on the Island once upon a time, and given the painting of the black-and-white balanced scales in his office, he did too. In this timeline, these two still gave rise to Daniel, and they married, meaning this time Daniel gets the surname Widmore… but Penny does not. It is unclear whether Penny was sired by Charles before or after his marriage to Eloise. Either way, she has the last name of Milton (as in, the author of Paradise Lost?). Daniel and Penny are half-siblings in both timelines, but they take turns with the last name Widmore, which is but another example of the "identity" crisis we have on this show, with people having names, surnames, or nicknames that belie their true identities. But I'm so glad Daniel rocks the skinny tie look in both timelines.

Up to speed with the day of their lives now? Good, just one more thing to cover before we chronicle the events of Tuesday night… fear. I had another conversation yesterday with another LOST fan:

Her: I have this fear that wakes me in the middle of the night that in six more weeks I'm gonna be even MORE Lost! LOL!

Me: Your fear of being even more Lost when it's over is just slightly different from mine. I actually fear that everything's going to be so clear when it's over (ala The Sixth Sense or something) that it would all have been so painfully obvious all along if I had just looked at it right / been a tad more smart.

And that, Dear Reader, is why I put myself through this ringer every week. And you thought I did it for you, didn't you? Aw, that's cute… But Desmond I am not.

On the Island

"I can't take you back. The Island isn't done with you yet." - Charles Widmore to Desmond Hume

We pick up right where we left off last episode, when "The Package," a.k.a. Desmond, was brought from the sub to the infirmary. Everyone's favorite character Zoe is standing over him. This is when we get the first of three hints in this episode that Desmond Hume makes a very nice Christ figure:

1)      He's been unconscious for THREE DAYS since taking a wound to the chest. And I'm also thinking of the sign of Jonah - also fulfilled by Christ - where he came up out of the belly of the great… submarine. We know Charles was at the hospital the night after Des got shot by Ben (and didn't die thanks to the Theory of the Can of Magic Green Beans in the grocery bag he was carrying). Apparently Charles kidnapped Desmond from that hospital and got his team assembled (wow, that was fast, for a guy who was in London that morning when Ben called him telling him he was about to return the daughter-killing favor, and who scoffed when Ben told him he would be going back to the Island that same day) lickety-split.

2)      He's going to be asked to make a SACRIFICE that will do no less than pretty much save everyone from either death, or never-having-existed. It's still unclear which, or whether Lost is making the point that these are the same thing.

3)      The brooch that Ellie wears in the Sideverse. Once upon a time it was an ouroboros, a symbol of cyclicality, never-endingness, re-creation. That was no accident. I can't imagine her jewelry this time is an accident either. We get a shot of her ring when she resets the butter knife. I didn't get a good look at it but it looked something like a bug's eye or a beehive - a bunch of cells globbed together. Her earrings were prevalent, too, looking to me like forming crystals. But it's the pins on her chest that got my attention again. These symbols that look like asterisks with two of the lines extended further than others look very much a NATAL CROSS, representative of the Bethlehem Star and symbolizing the announcement of the arrival of the Savior.

So, is Desmond the Messiah of LOST? It's always kinda felt like it with his uniqueness, "special"-ness, and that cool long hair and beard he had back in his island days (anyone else missing those?). Not sure what this does to the "What lies in the shadow of the statue? / He who will save us all" riddle, though.

In any case, Desmond is put into a contraption that reminded me a lot of scenes from Jurassic Park and The Lost World, all the way down to the unfortunately-killed workman, Simmons (question: why does Widmore ask to look under the sheet at this guy's dead body? He already knew who it was and how he died. This seemed so pointless and unnecessary that it can't be pointless and unnecessary). Widmore has also bumped up this electromagnetism test a day ahead of schedule, just like Zoe bumped his kidnapping-Jin plans up previously. Good news for Angstrom (Angstroms are units of length used in, among other things, the measurement of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation) the white rabbit, though, who doesn't have to go through the same thing Simmons did. Always fun to see a white rabbit pop up in this show, though.

Desmond is being put through this test, Widmore says, because Charles has to be certain that the only man ever to survive such a catastrophic electromagnetic event can do it again. Is he telling the truth? Is he gambling with Desmond's life? Yes to the first, not really to the second, says I. Charles seems legitimately surprised by the side effects of an agreeable Desmond when it's over. I don't think he expected Desmond to side-flash and figure out the meaning of life during his "few seconds" of unconsciousness. And I think he is 99.99% sure Desmond will survive this procedure based on his information, but he's going to be extra careful and not leave anything to chance given the stakes ("if he can't do it again, we all die"). Apparently his task of sacrifice for Desmond is going to involve him going deep into the bowels of the Orchid or some other hot spot beneath the Island.

About all the experiences Desmond has during his couple seconds of unconsciousness, it reminds me a lot of the plot of one of the books that Locke once checked out on the bookshelf in the Swan Hatch - Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (sometimes also titled An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge). The book is known for its "irregular timeline" and twist ending. As a man is about to be hanged from the gallows, it appears that the rope breaks, he falls to freedom into the river (has an odd experience underwater), escapes (and seems to have superhuman abilities of perception), and makes a journey home to his lost love. Only thing is, he experienced all these things in his mind within the mere second it took for him to fall through the gallows and for the rope to actually snap his neck. Kinda sounds a lot like what Desmond is going through…

Nevertheless, Desmond emerges with a "when do we start?" attitude, and Zoe's mind can only assume "that thing fried your brain." Is that so, Desmond smiles. To which she's about to hit him with a gut punch of reality with, "Whatever. Doesn't change the fact that you're gonna…" …and then Dark Sayid arrives on the scene to kidnap his old pal Desmond. What was Zoe going to say? That Des was going to die as part of the sacrifice/job Widmore has for him to do? Seems like a pretty callous thing to tell someone so pointedly, even for stinky Zoe. I was glad that Sayid made her consider her own death at the tip of his gun before making her run away in shame.

Sayid says he has no time to explain, but these people are dangerous. Apparently he thinks that will be enough based on his old friendship with Des. And… it is. But not for reasons Sayid anticipates.

But… is Widmore really dangerous? Every week I grow less convinced of his malice and selfish motives. He reminds Desmond he has sacrificed plenty, including suffering the death of his son, his estranged relationship with his daughter, and not even having seen his grandson. He would really prefer, though, that these people not just "be gone, forever," just like he told Jin last week that those they love would "cease to exist." Apparently, if the Man in Black escapes, some sort of reboot will happen - maybe like The Construct from the Matrix completely whiting-out - where none of the consciousness-jumping universes are there anymore? The question then would be why the MIB would want to go live there in complete nothingness / nobodiness. Unless in his freed state he is something of a Creator god, and would have free reign to fashion a world in his own image…

The Side-Verse

"I've seen something real. I've seen the truth." - Charlie Pace, to Desmond Hume

The story this time starts when Desmond goes unconscious from the electromagnetism, and his consciousness jumps to the Sideverse through the clouds 815 flew through and into the LAX baggage claim area via his reflection in the screen. Oddly enough, though 815 has landed (at gate 8 and at 10:42 a.m.), it does not show on the board as having arrived, or with a bag claim area. Hurley informs Desmond that they are at claim 4. Oceanic flights from Guam and Seoul arrived just before 815. ;-)

We learn, however, that the important part of this story started much earlier, when Charlie - thinking Kate's Marshall had pegged him as carrying drugs - went into the bathroom to swallow the evidence, just as the flight flew over the submerged island and hit turbulence. He choked, and was dying. His near-death vision did not involve his life flashing before his eyes… at least not that he recognized as such. His picture of "dying" was of Claire. To him, this beautiful blonde woman seemed like Love welcoming him into the afterlife, bringing him up from the "dark" and the "abyss" into which he had thought he was sliding. However, his sense of always having known and being with this woman suggests more to me that what his dying consciousness was experiencing was nearly a jump through the looking glass to another universe where Charlie Pace exists (in this case, the Island, where he was with Claire). In any case, he's so simultaneously shaken and confident from what he has seen that he fears nothing - death, oncoming traffic, least of all the end of his musical career or disappointing the Widmores by not showing at their benefit concert. All he wants to do is make converts. Only thing is, "choice" still applies, and the road to "showing" people what you mean is a bit tricky. In fact, you have to be kinda willing to get close to what you would define as death to "get it." Is this why so many who end up on the Island do so in vehicular crashes, and/or from "blacking out?" Is it a place you have to arrive at through near-death, through dream, through unconsciousness? Is this why "it's a bumpy ride" and "you're going to want to be knocked out"?

Desmond meets Charlie's muse Claire at baggage claim, and somehow knows she's having a boy. Later, she herself will somehow know his name is Aaron. Seems like it would have been so much easier if Claire had just accepted a ride from this nice man in his fancy limo instead of going through that whole scary mess with gun-toting Kate. Thing is, she got what she needed, and where she needed to go. The obvious or easier road, remember, is not always the right one.

George Minkowski, once a fellow time-sickness sufferer with Desmond (but alas, poor George had no Constant - or knowledge he needed one - to save him in time like Desmond did). George was the freighter's communications officer. Here, he's still in Widmore's employ, as the company's limo driver. He's good at his job, too, having lots of connections, knowing all the destinations, offering services but knowing when to back off. It was interesting that they never once mentioned his last name. Guess they didn't want to make it too easy for all of us to figure out who he was?

George was quick to notice that Desmond is not married. This Desmond Hume has worked for Charles Widmore long enough to be trusted as his "top lackey," as Charlie puts it. Widmore gushes his appreciation and McCutchen scotch for Des, but when Desmond is nearly killed, well, he can't be inconvenienced with that if it means Ellie's going to be angry at Charles that the rock star didn't make it to the concert. But, this jerkiness is the very thing that sends Des to a face-to-face meeting with Eloise, and from there, to meeting Daniel, and from there, to meeting Penny. Even the uncomfortable and the unfriendly has its purpose.

Widmore envies Desmond's unattached life of hard work and luxury. Something's missing, though Desmond tries to agree that he's a "blessed" man. Is Desmond having another déjà vu moment as he looks at the sails of the model boat in Widmore's office while Charles makes the phone call about getting Charlie out of jail? Is this boat perhaps a scale model of a boat he knows? It didn't look like the Elizabeth or the Black Rock… When Widmore toasts, "A drink to celebrate your indispensability" it's a mirror opposite of the solo drink he took to illustrate Desmond's worthlessness in our original timeline, one that cut deeply but helped send Desmond on the path which he needed to travel.

Desmond's task for the day is quite simply to babysit Charlie and deliver him to Ellie's charity benefit (would have liked to have known the charity in question) where Daniel is the featured performer and has had the wacky idea of combining classical piano with Drive Shaft's modern rock sound. Far out, man. But this doesn't really matter. It's all just a construct to provide reasons for Desmond to cross paths with and meet those he meets, and for them to provide him with crucial information.

Desmond's meetings with Charlie and Daniel both start with these two key characters coming into Desmond's lives through reflective surfaces - Charlie through the door of the courthouse, Daniel through the limo's tinted window. The reflections are happening so often now they're getting harder to keep track of. Each of these characters also starts their conversation with Desmond with question about love. Charlie wants to know if Desmond is happy / has ever been in love, while Daniel wants to know if Des believes in love at first sight. He has just seen Charlotte for the first time, eating chocolate (ha! Take that "I'm not allowed to have chocolate before dinner") on break at her museum.

And at this point I have to ask - what's with all the love? Love has clearly become huge. It sure sounded like Daniel has decided that Love is the key, Love is the anomaly (which fits with things I have written before about dovetails with the plots of the Matrix and Harry Potter stories). And apparently going for coffee together is a big key to unlocking love. The three men in this episode sure all seemed to be on muse-finding quests where nothing else mattered but finding the truth of their Lady Loves. Was Kate's recognition of Jack back at LAX even a heart-twinge of sorts? Suddenly I'm wondering… is LOST going to have the cheesy ending where Sawyer-Juliet, Desmond-Penny, Daniel-Charlotte, Charlie-Claire, Jack-Kate all going to end up having coffee together? Maybe Hurley and Libby, too? Will Sayid-Nadia, Jin-Sun, Charles-Ellie, Richard-Isabella, Locke-Helen join them? What about Ben and Ilana? Any love blooming there out of her gracious act of accepting him? Goodness, we've spent so much time on mysteries, time travel, good vs. evil, gameplay, and even who Kate would end up with… is this going to end up all about the love?

But I digress. Back to Daniel - so inspired by his red-headed muse and the feeling that he had always and will always love her, he can't sleep at night and wakes up to draw a complete quantum physics diagram in his journal that he doesn't understand. One of the phrases written on the page read, "Real space, imaginary time." This sounds to me like a definition of what's going on since the bomb went off, and what the show is possibly suggesting about life and death - that our consciousness can leap to another universe, one that is very much real, physical, tangible, but which can be experienced as if a lifetime were lived there within the span of essentially the blink of an eye in the original. Daniel's brilliant brain has been set into motion wondering if he ever in some other universe released such a large amount of energy such as via an atomic bomb that lives were altered in the hopes of preventing a catastrophic event. That's quite a leap to get to, but he's made it, and he doesn't sound so sure that it was the right thing, even though at least in his current life he never got shot in the back by his own mother (unless of course that fateful day is somehow coming to his Los Angeles self). In any case, he senses a fellow person with a sense of love and destiny in this man who has asked after his half-sister, so he tells Desmond where Penny may be found (which again is a mirroring of past events - she's the one running the stadium steps, and he goes to see her there).

His experiences with Charlie (who was wearing his DS ring) were even more revealing. After their drink in the Aussie bar (I liked that it had a picture of a kangaroo over the entrance) across from the courthouse, Charlie goes with Desmond because Desmond presents a scenario that Charlie says, "Doesn't sound like much of a choice." Of course, he probably means it in the exact opposite way to how most of us would take it. Most of us would probably think the cushy hotel room vs. losing your music career is the way to go. I'm not sure that's what Charlie's getting at though, as he's well down the "none of this matters" road by now. He wants more of this death stuff so he can meet this blonde bombshell of his again. So he throws the idea of free will / choice (which Desmond had cited as a truth more real than Charlie's visions) right back on Desmond. You can see what I want to show you, man… or you can get out of the car. And with that…

…Desmond Hume and Charlie Pace are underwater, separated by a pane of glass… again. And Charlie's hand to the window is the trigger that starts Desmond's brain bringing back up the memories of his other life, the one where he had found love.

Desmond's still not a convert, though. He must journey through Jack's hospital (by the way, I loved how Dr. Jack started to clue in just a bit more when he saw Desmond and was like, "So... I'm here, and you're here, and you're telling me a THIRD guy from our plane from Sydney is also in the hospital at this very moment? Okay, something's weird...") and several annoying tests first, so that he can rule out "hallunication" and move on to belief. Appropriate that the magnetics of the MRI machine cause a beautiful montage to surface for Desmond, where he sees Charlie's hand… his first meeting Penny at the monastery… their first kiss… the birth of Little Charlie… happy times with Little Charlie and Penny… He's having flash visions within a flash vision (just how many levels of this are possible?). I also loved how the MRI technician told Des he'd "need the button." Nice little homage to our days in the Hatch. I'm guessing when Desmond says, "What? Button?" that the guy had just caused another memory trigger to fire off in Desmond's head. When Desmond finds Charlie running through the hospital in his old black and white checkered vans and a dressing gown, he comes to realize that Charlie didn't write anything on his hand, Charlie doesn't know who Penny is… this must be real, not a trick. And Charlie's suggestion is that Desmond quit worrying about him, and get on with worrying about his own quest.

That brings him to his meeting with Ellie, which might be the strangest one of all. She knows something. She doesn't recognize him at first, but when he says his name, a look of horror passes over her face before she composes herself. She couldn't be more understanding ("whatever happened, happened") about the missing rock star (after all, rock stars provide a degree of "unpredictability," don't they, she says. In scientific terms you might refer to them as the "radicals" of a system). But the minute Desmond asks about Penny, she's back to her old self from the time Desmond met her in London - no, no, no, you stop this right now, you don't go down this path! In fact, the way she talks to him as if questioning why he would look for anything when he has such a great life and the "one thing" he's ever wanted (Widmore's approval) smacked so much of Smokey-type language and the creepy idea that they may have constructed this life for him that I was glad Daniel - a radical musician in his own right - showed up to get Desmond back on point.

He has a meet-cute with Penny in the stadium. It was a tad unbelievable to me because I don't think any woman on her own at night in Los Angeles is going to be that accepting of a conversation and handshake from a stranger. But perhaps she had just as funny a feeling about him as he was having about her. She takes his hand (a telling sign, given what we covered last week about those who have NOT taken the MIB's hand), but that causes him to faint, go momentarily unconscious, triggering a flash. She finds this absolutely adorable, this charming man who faints on touching her hand when she's far from looking her scrubbed-up best, and she's all too giggly to accept a date. Desmond smiles and exhales, and as he tells George, yes, he has found what he's looking for.

All in all it was a rough but rewarding day in LA for Desmond Hume. He had a swig of Scotch before noon, another drink in the bar before lunch, and another drink in the limo before happy hour. Then he's going for coffee at night. Sounds kinda… backwards, doesn't it?

We close with Desmond having an idea to "show" his fellow 815ers something… kinda like Charlie "showed" him? Is he ready to spread the gospel of his newfound truth-in-love? Does he recognize how all of them are connected, and will continually keep meeting in LA, which is something we all speculated about at the end of Season Five when the bomb went off? George can get him the 815 manifest. All he needs is the passenger list (not the crew, apparently). Will Desmond be visiting them all? How? When? What does he want to show them? I'm almost wondering if he wasn't ticketed on that flight, but somehow just "flashed in" to it, and that maybe he will point out to folks like Jack, Hurley, Claire, etc., hey, I'm not on this manifest. So how did you see me on the plane? Don't you think that's strange?

Checking in on Q & A

From now to the end of the series in this space, we'll be taking notes on how the show is doing in answering the questions we posed at the midpoint of Season Six in this blog

Answered

"Why was Desmond physically okay (though he could glimpse the future), but not a shred of his clothes survived the hatch implosion? Conversely, why did Juliet die (though she could glimpse... what? The Side-Verse?), and all her clothes remained intact?"

We now know that there is something totally unique about Desmond that he is the only known person to survive such huge electromagnetic events. What's more, they cause his consciousness to skip around to alternate realities. Not sure why he still has his clothes after this one, though.

"Was Desmond really on 815, or just in Jack's imagination?"

He was really there. Whether he boarded the plane in Sydney or simply flashed into it, though, is potentially another question.

"Who was Jacob referring to when he told Hurley, ‘Someone is coming to the island. I need you to help them find it.' Was it Widmore?"

I'm going with almost certainly yes.

Expanded Upon

"Did the bomb work as they hoped, or didn't it? If it did, how will the show go on? Will the characters know each other?"

…and…

"What IS the Side-Verse story?"

We got more confirmation that this set the events of the Sideverse into being, and that yes, the characters' paths will continue to cross, and they will have vague recollections of each other (and sometimes not very vague at all). And love may be the ticket to finding out about how their lives were supposed to be, and putting them back together.

"Why ‘God help us all' if the O6 plus Ben plus Locke don't all get back to the island?"

Charles and Ellie know what is at stake. Widmore seems to have prepared for a long time to make this journey when necessary, so that he can prevent a scenario in which everyone ceases to exist. It reminds me of the hieroglyphs that appeared in the Swan that some believe read, "to cause to die." Perhaps this is most assuredly what would have happened if the Swan hatch were allowed to completely implode without the failsafe being turned - the cork that is the island would have blown off, the MIB escaped, the evil let out, and the world be voided into chaos. So perhaps the Swan folks really were "saving the world" all along by venting off the pressure by pushing that button.

Possibly New Insights / Theories

Why did Sun crash with Ajira 316 in 2007, and not get flashed out into 1977 like Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid?

This had nothing to do with this week's "Happily Ever After" episode, I'm just thinking that maybe it was because she's not the "Kwon" candidate, but Jin is. This works for me… except to explain why Kate flashed out if she's not a candidate.

Posed

What do the shots of people's eyes at the starts of scenes mean?

We yet again started with an example of someone's eye opening as our first shot of the episode. These instances almost always signal someone waking up, or coming out of deep thought, or unconsciousness. Now that levels of unconsciousness and mirrors seem to be the paths between worlds, we can ask whether every instance of someone's eye opening was them flashing in from a separate reality somewhere. We know Jack blacked out each time he came to the Island, and he probably flashed in both times.

Why wasn't Jin's infertility a factor in last week's episode?

We missed this one until I realized it later. In the original story, if Sun conceived off-island, the baby couldn't have been Jin's, as he had been found infertile. Well, in the new timeline, she conceived off-island. So is her pregnancy his doing? It's not unbelievable to think Sun might have several of these "boyfriends." Or perhaps in this timeline Jin was never touched by Jacob, which could have been a contributing factor to his off-island infertility, such that Jacob could cure it when Jin got to the island, perhaps for the very reason that Ji Yeon could be conceived there (perhaps imbuing her with special abilities like some of the other children who have been born or conceived there).

Is it all a game?

I should have listed this originally, because it's been my working model for months now. And there are still elements of higher powers moving their specialized pieces into place. You have those who can see the future. Those who can commune with the dead. Those who commit, those who run. Those who believe, those who question. Like the pieces on the chess board, each has their part in setting up for the victory…

"Enlighten me." - Desmond, to Charlie