LOST Thoughts: Happily Ever After

Finally.

An entire freaking episode devoted to explaining the what and the why of Timeline B. This episode came at a perfect time and was perfectly acted by Desmond. I really hope from this point onward Desmond becomes an integral part of the show. He's such a fantastic actor and a fascinating character. Is he going to end up being the key to the entire show? At this point, I'd have to say, kinda, yeah.

I could recap this extremely complicated episode in all its complication, but I'm just going to assume you watched it, so here's the three sentence recap.

Des wakes up, he's really pissed to be on the island, and then to make him more mad Widmore's folks zap him with some electro-thingy ... and suddenly he's in LA, where he and Widmore exchange hugs and whisky and then he meets Charlie, and suddenly he starts to get flashes of his other life, and Faraday helps him find Penny and she is so smoking hot that he faints. He wakes up back on the island and is now ready to do whatever Widmore asks, but then Sayid jumps out of the bushes and beats some people up, so Des is all like "Okay mate, I'll go with you," ... and then suddenly he's back in LA and wants to see the manifest of flight 815 so he can "show them something."

By them, does he mean the Losties wandering around blissfully ignorant in Timeline B? That's the only possible solution right?

Okay, so... where to begin...

First off, I'd say this episode rivals 'Ab Aeterno' as the best one of Season Six. I love Desmond and Penny's love story, no matter how many times I see it. Desmond has always been a top-5 favorite character of mine, and with Faraday dead and Locke essentially dead he might be #1, especially after last night. Ben, Richard, Sawyer and Jin round out the top 5.

As far as least favorite characters, living or dead, here's my top 10: Claire, Michael, Keamy, Sun, Walt, Kate, Ana Lucia, Naomi, Charlotte, and of course good old Radzinsky. So yeah, pretty much I hate every woman character who's ever lasted more than 2 seasons.

The cameo by Daniel Faraday was excellent, perfectly acted and highly enjoyable. Especially when contrasted to Charlie's cameo, which I found annoying and way out of character. Since when is Charlie a cocky bad-ass? George Minkowski also played a small role as Desmond's limo driver - remember he was skipping through time in 'The Constant.'

Perhaps the key to this episode was when Eloise was trying to prevent Desmond from seeing Penny. She says "he's not ready yet" and it is "a violation." She says that he already has the one thing in life he wants most: Charles Widmore's approval. Apparently she doesn't know anything about Desmond, because the one thing in life he wants most has always been Penny. DUH. For someone who always thinks they know what's going on, Eloise is a little bit clueless.

So what the heck? Were Eloise and Charles working together setting up a fake Timeline B to keep everyone happy and cooperative, like the Matrix? That's what it seems like. How is it that Eloise always manages to be so dang unlikeable, even when she's trying to do the right thing? Is she trying to do the right thing, or is she protecting Timeline B for some bad reason? How does Jacob's Enemy aka Flocke tie into Timeline B? Really, that's the key question.

Because it seems to me that Timeline B is the only way of defeating the Man in Black. Otherwise why would season six have invested so much time in it and kept it going all season long with no explanation. Did Flocke create Timeline B, does he even know about it? Is he trapped in timeline B, or as Andy suggested will they trap the Monster in John Locke's Timeline B body, thus rendering him harmless and paralyzed?

Speaking of Locke, I recently saw this picture on Lostpedia.com and was freaked out.

One black eye and one white eye... That's some crazy good foreshadowing.

So when Faraday saw Charlotte in Timeline B he got flashes of "some other world," and experieced "love at first sight," or it was like he "already loved her." Then in his sleep he scribbled some sorts of advanced physics notes which led him to believe that a nuclear bomb needed to be exploded, or maybe that it already did? As these characters continue to run into each other in Timeline B, I think we're going to see more and more people 'wake up' when then encounter 'Constants." For example, when Jack goes to meet Claire about his dad's will, he's going to see Kate, and everything will click. Same thing will happen to Sawyer when he runs into Juliet at some point, and to Hurley when he finds a cheeseburger, etc. And Desmond will use the flight manifest to bring them all together and ... do ... something ...? They can't really go back to the island since it's underwater ... maybe they'll all go detonate a bomb somewhere and get sent back to Island-world and erase Timeline B from existence ... who knows ...

Backtrack a little to the start of the episode ... Widmore tells Desmond that once the experiement is over, he's going to ask him to make a sacrifice, at which Desmond gets all pissed. So what sacrifice? Something to do with those electro-magnetic-energy-pocket grid things they were showing to Jin last episode? Is Desmond the one who can kill Flocke? Maybe Desmond is like a walking sonar-fence?? But if he touches Flocke, he'll die too, so it's the only way to kill Flocke but it's also going to kill Desmond, thus the sacrifice.

Sounds like a bit of a stretch, but it must be something really important if they had Desmond locked up in the sub and refer to him as the Package. It seems like Des is the whole reason Widmore's people came to the island, and Widmore came primarily to stop Flocke, so Des has to have something to do with how to kill Flocke and/or keep him from leaving the Island.

In addition to: what is the sacrifice? I have a few other questions from this episode that I hope will be explained in some way. Why was Desmond willing to go with Sayid? How did Widmore know about Desmond's electro talent? AND How did Widmore find the island so stinking easily?? How does Eloise (in Timeline B) know so much about the Timelines, and what does she mean by violation?? Does Charles also know about the two Timelines, and is that why he shares the old MacCutcheon whiskey with him and embraces him like a son? And last but not least, where is Sayid taking Desmond and what does Flocke want him for?

Next week is a Hurley episode, and I agree with Andy, it could go one of two ways. It could either be a major step backwards and really really suck and just show Hurley's boring past and his annoying parents .... OR, it could be a primarily on-island plotline and only use the Timeline B plot to advance the idea that the characters are starting to remember the original timeline and that it has something to do with love at first sight. And since we've only got 6 episodes left until the finale, I'm going to be optimistic and offer the following prediction:

-I'm 85% sure that we will see LIBBY in next week's episode. And somehow, she will help timeB Hurley realize that there's another timeline.

I also think we'll see Michael (since he was in the preview) but it looks like he's on the island, so he's probably more of a ghost. The ABC-released summary of this episode is

"Hurley agonizes over what the group should do next, and Locke is curious about the new arrival to his camp."

So we know that Des will be led to Locke's camp, which sucks for Widmore's plans. And Hurley agonizes about ... what?whether or not to destroy the plane? whether or not to listen to Ilana? whether or not he wants to be a candidate? I don't know, but I hope we see ghost-Jacob again, because I kind of feel like I need him to explain via Hurley what the heck is going on right now.

I also think that the flash-sideways are finally going somewhere now. I thought about it a lot and realized that every character has in Timeline B what they wanted most. Jack has a chance to fix his daddy issues. Sawyer has a chance to actually be a good man. Claire has Aaron. Sayid has a chance to make Nadia happy. Desmond hasWidmore's approval. Daniel has his mothers' approval and gets to play the piano. Miles has his dad. Locke has his dad. Sun and Jin have each other. Ben has a chance to make Alex happy. Hurley is lucky instead of cursed. It's starting to make a little bit of sense.

I also think that the way the timeB sections have ended has been important, although seemingly not important. For example, Sayid just killed some people and didn't make any effort to cover up his tracks. Meaning he'll probably get arrested. Meaning it will probably be the only cops we know of, Sawyer and Miles, who arrest him. I mean that's just common sense. And Sun just got shot, which means she'll be taken to the hospital, which of course means she'll see Jack, since he's always at the hospital, and since Sun is pregnant, she'll be seeing a pregnancy doctor, which will of course be ... JULIET! Meanwhile Sawyer has Kate in custody and while he's driving her around in the cop car he goes to arrest Sayid too, and on their way to jail they'll stop by the museum so Miles can say hi to his dad who works there, but at the same time Faraday will be at the museum stalking Charlotte, and Desmond will go there too with Penny to thank Daniel for introducing them, and so basically that's 9 lostie characters all in one place, and if the Jack-Sun-Jin-Juliet team meet up with the muesem team, somehow, all we need is for Locke to have a heart attack and fellow-teacher Ben take him to the hospital, where of course Jack will be, and then everyone is together and Desmond shows them the manifest so they all decide to go to LA X, but first they pick up Hurley and Claire, and then they all fly to Sydney and who will be the pilot ... FRANK, of course... and Ilana will be there too and Richard and Widmore and anyone else I forgot, and they'll fly to Sydney together and crash onto a diferent island and the whole show starts all over ......... at least something like that will happen .... I'm pretty sure ...

Oh, one other thing ... the mirror thing.

So far in the flash-sidewayses, every single character has looked in a mirror or seen their reflection in some way, and it many cases, they've stopped and looked puzzingly at themselves like deja vu or something. Jack did it twice, once in the plane and once at his house when he noticed the apandectomy scar. Kate looked in the mirror before calling Claire; Locke looked in the mirror when debating whether or not to call Jack about the consulation; Sawyer looked in the mirror before smashing it; Sun looked in the mirror and looked very puzzles before Keamy knocked; Jin saw himself in the mirror of the freezer door; Sayid saw just half of his face reflected in the Nadia's door; Ben saw his reflection in the microwave; and Desmond's reflection was shown twice in Happily Ever After, once at the airport and once at the police station. Coincidence? I don't think so.

I don't know what to make of all the mirrors, except to guarantee that Hurley will look in the mirror at some point in Tuesday's episode.

And to conclude, one last thought on sacrifice, actually an excerpt from Desmond's season 3 episode:

Desmond: "Moriah is the mountain where Abraham was asked to kill Isaac."
Monk: "And yet God spared Isaac."
Desmond: "One might argue that God need not have asked Abraham to sacrifice his son in the first place."
Monk: "Well then it wouldn't have been much of a test, would it Brother? Perhaps you underestimate the value of sacrifice."

Hmmm... again, brilliant foreshadowing.

Okay, one further thought. This is a good one. Regarding why Desmond might be the one who can defeat the Man in Black, I stumbled upon a quote which may in fact be the key to the entire show. When Faraday is explaining to Desmond that he is special, he says: "The rules, the rules don't apply to you." At the time we assumed he was talking about the rules of time travel ... but maybe, just maybe he was referring to 'the rules.'

You know, the rules about killing Jacob and killing candidates and killing the Monster and all that stuff. We don't know exactly what the rules are or who created them or who they apply to, the fact that the rules don't apply to Desmond furthers my belief that he will be the only one who can stop and/or kill the Man in Black.

That's all for now. Go Tigers.