Lost: The Variable
By fred | April 30, 2009
(S05E14) This was the 100th episode of Lost, and with a name obviously referencing what might be the best episode of the series (so far), it was obviously going to be a special treat. But this is still Lost, and you can’t just break away and make an episode that doesn’t resemble the show or ties to whatever is and has been happening on the show and the Island ever since the pilot.
So this episode wasn’t all that special in the end, it was just another really good episode of Lost. It wasn’t a game changer, it wasn’t a new The Constant, but it was another really good episode of a show that’s never been better. And, it came with lots of answers and references to past episodes from this season the the ones before it, making it all the more exciting.
Of course, most of the answers we got this week, were not the least bit shocking, as there were pretty much all merely confirmations of what we’ve been suspected for a long time now. We suspected that Ellie was indeed Dan’s mother, and that Widmore was his father. And if I didn’t believe it myself, I know some of you out there also suspected Dan to be a time traveler himself, to have experienced the same sort of time travel Desmond did, to have one’s conscious travel through your own lifetime.
And this actually explained nicely why he was crying watching the alleged wreck of Flight 815, as well as what those memory tests he and Charlotte were doing using cards were all about. This all was a lot of fun to watch, but it also wasn’t groundbreaking.
One thing that also helped make this episode that good, is one Jeremy Davies. He’s simply brilliant, and Daniel Faraday was one of the best addition to the cast of the show since Benjamin Linus. (Side note: loved the expression on Dan’s mom when Penny thought her son was Ben! Just made me laugh.)
After all he said before, for some reason Daniel now believed he could change things, he could change the past. I would really have loved any sort of explanation as to why he changed his mind or how he thought this could work, things like he described where they erase the existing timeline/reality to replace it by a brand new one. There must have been something that made Daniel think this was possible, but he was in such a rush that he never took care to explain.
It’s really sad, because in the end we we took from this episode was simply that he was wrong, maybe he got sick and started to loose it. Because everything we witnessed so far seemed to indicate that they cannot change the past, Dan’s original explanation/theory makes perfect sense, and despite all he tried to do, he failed. He warned Charlotte, really hoping and willing to believe that he could do it, it could change things, but we all know it didn’t.
And while he was convinced he could prevent the incident from happening, he was proven wrong when his own mother shot him, thus proving that whatever happened, happened. His mother knew it all along, she knew that sending Daniel back to the Island would lead to his death, from her own hand, but she still convinced him to go back. About that, why did she do that exactly?
There had to be more than a strong belief in destiny, because as far as we know, all that it allowed Daniel to do, going back to the Island, is to die. Of course, maybe what he did also put other things in motion, maybe what he did back in Dharmaville, what he told them or what he told Richard will somehow lead to whatever actually happened. Maybe the incident wouldn’t actually have happened, or not the way it eventually did, if Daniel hadn’t been on the Island and did what he did.
One thing I would also really love an answer to : where does Daniel’s journal come from?? For a moment I thought maybe the Dan we saw here wasn’t really the one we thought, maybe his mind was from another time, maybe he lived through this already, got back to whenever he came from and wrote it down, hence why he knew everything that he knew, where and when people would be and what they would do.
Only, that doesn’t make sense. If only, because (a) he would have known to put the gun down or else his mother would shot him, and (b) there were indications of things (namely the incident) that occurred after wards. Of course, it would be also possible that Ellie took the journal and kept writing stuff in there about her experience on the Island, about the incident and all that happened, and that when she gave it to Dan as we saw, there was already lots of stuff written in there! (Or that, simply, he isn’t actually dead yet).
After all, more than once it looked like a couple of pages has been ripped off, no? Maybe she did that, she took out the part about how she shot him dead, only leaving in what would allow Daniel to come back to the Island and try to stop the incident, unaware of his unavoidable fate, his destiny, to be killed by his own mother. But then again, it begs the question: why? Why would she be ready to sacrifice her own son, to send him to his death? Surely, whatever Daniel achieved while on the Island will have consequences we don’t yet suspect…
But for now, it’s all a big mess, Jack & Kate will surely not want to signal themselves to the Others, and I’m wondering whether all they – including Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Jin, and Hurley – all they have to do might not be to stay alive for only a few more hours. It’s only hours until the incident, and maybe that will be the trigger that sends them back to the time they belong to, with Locke, Ben and Sun?
What did everybody else think?
