If the size of the post-thud headache is a reliable metric in evaluating the quality of an episode, “The Variable” may take top prize for Season 5. Jen and I are still trying to sort out the possibilities and impossibilities presented tonight. The man who preached emphatically that you can’t change the past finally returns, now emphatic that you can. Even our characters recognize the insanity of undoing everything that’s happened (essentially erasing the entirety of “LOST” to date). But just as Daniel Faraday gets rolling, he’s shot dead. By his mom. A mother who knew, in 2007, that he was sending his memory-addled son to that very fate.
My theory, such as it is? Faraday’s Jughead plan was doomed to failure, and will ultimately not change anything. But his death, his mother’s sacrifice, will instead be the key, the real “incident” that sets everything else in motion.
Why is Faraday wrong? Because he ended up telling Charlotte to leave the island, even though he didn’t want to, thereby closing the loop on one of his own “whatever happened, happened” moments. Because his supposedly radical conclusion — that people, and free will, are the key variables — is undercut by the fact that we’ve been shown that the meddling of our Losties in 1957 and 1977 were always part of the island’s history. And because, I think, we see him realize, with his last breath, what his mother was up to. He was never meant to go to the island to be healed or to save anyone. He simply had to die.
He simply had to die… for the first time. I’m struck by Eloise Hawking’s conversation with Penny, where she says with an obvious sense of wonder, “For the first time in a long time, I don’t know what’s going to happen next.” And she later tells Charles Widmore about sacrifice, about how she sent her son to the island knowing full well he would be killed (by her). Sacrificing her son, it seems, was something she only just barely found the strength to do. Something she’d never done before, which somehow allowed her to always know the future.
Yes, it’s still an attempt to change history, or change destiny, and I’m still not convinced it can be done. But if I ever suspected that Widmore and Hawking were playing at a wholly different level than any of the other characters, I’m convinced of it now. I only hope that whatever Hawking wants to change, it’s not erasing everything we’ve spent the last five years dissecting. That might be a bold move for the end of Season 5, but one that would ultimately be disheartening.
No question, the big questions raised in “The Variable” are worthy of a long conversation. But character wise, story wise, plot wise, it was… merely a good episode. One of those “set up” or “bridge” episodes, if you’ll pardon the expression. It brought a mix of reveals and confirmations, as we suspected Widmore might be Faraday’s father, and that Widmore planted the fake wreckage (meaning Miles’ chat with the dead guy in “Some Like It Hoth” was a fake out). The dramatic stakes were raised, once again via the separation of our Losties into two groups. We see things spiraling out of control, Faraday’s “four hour” countdown conveniently making the rest of the season a near real-time experience.
I was mostly disappointed in Faraday’s story. It simply felt rushed. We flew through his life, from his youth (torn away from the piano) to his graduation, through his experiments and expulsion from Oxford, to deciding to getting on the freighter. Theresa was but a mere blip, and the whole “Memento”-esque memory condition seemed awkwardly shoehorned in. (We did get our hint last season, though, via his memory test with Charlotte.) I mean, this is not the first time we’ve had an intriguing character with some key knowledge and connections… who ends up dying just when their significance begins to emerge (and at the end of a paint-by-numbers flashback episode).
Jen doesn’t want Faraday to be dead, but frankly, he better be. Another Ben-like resurrection at this point would be downright comical. I’d like to think we’ll still learn more about Faraday and his experiments (perhaps in flashbacks for Hawking or Widmore). His still unexplained tears at the sight of the fake wreckage suggests to me that, in true “Constant” fashion, a part of Miles’ scrambled brain was already in touch with his future self.
Notes and Notions:
- Jaters rejoice? Sawyer asks “Freckles” to come with him to the beach to start over, and Juliet immediately gives up the code to the sonic fence. Sawyer asks if Juliet still has his back, and her response is only to ask if he’s got her back. If they’re going to go back down that path, I only hope they save it for Season 6.
- I liked how young piano-playing Faraday told his mother that he could “make time.” Or how he, back on the island, knew when Dr. Chang would arrive at The Orchid, “right on time.”
- We still haven’t seen Jack’s “moment,” but it was amusing how he noted that it was lucky he was a janitor when they suddenly needed the keys to the gun safe. As one of our listeners noted weeks ago, maybe that was always Sawyer’s plan.
- Speaking of moments, Jack’s little speech to Kate about hers was pretty anvilicious. We know the both of them have yet to fulfill some grand plan, but to have that spelled out so melodramatically was jarring.
- Tonight brought a great reminder that some of our Losties spent some time in the 1950s, with Hurley’s line, “Like, Fonzie time?”
- Sawyer’s still got it in the nickname department. “Twitchy” suits frantic Faraday just fine. Bonus points for the straight-faced delivery of the line, “Your mother is an Other?”
- Not to be outdone, Miles tells Faraday, “I thought you’d gotten rich inventing the DVD or something.”
- Any numerologists want to sort out the significance of 141717?
- Locations: Oxford was, again, St. Andrew’s in downtown Honolulu. The Indian restaurant where Daniel got his notebook was Grand Cafe on Pauahi St. Can’t place the “Marina Medical Center.”
We definitely need help untangling this 100th episode of “LOST.” Please comment below, e-mail lost@hawaiiup.com, or call the LostLine at (808) 356-0127.
Yea, I definitely agree that the Comic Con video will be a huge topic of discussion coming out of this episode. Clearly at the time that he was shot by Eloise he hadn’t been there with Chang to film the video. Chang didn’t believe him. So either he lives or the Comic Con video is inaccurate which has never happened before. Maybe the island brings him back to life just like so many others, but I somehow doubt it. I’ll look forward to Ryan and Jen’s thoughts on this.
also, with the Richard can die point. Think about this too, in “The Man Behind The Curtain”, when the Purge occurs, Richard wears a gas mask too, so he either can die or wants others to think he can, same with Elle saving him tonight.
@ John Fischer – Daniel is crazy before the freighter because of what his experiments did to Theresa?
Another question, just how did Daniel know that in XX hours the Dharma folks would unleash this energy? If he is dead before than happens, how can he know? Clearly his mother never told him about her island life?
As many times as I’ve gone back to watch earlier episodes in earliers seasons of this show, never have I wanted to do that more than I do right now…There were a lot of things from a lot of prior episodes that told tonight’s story. It just sucks that I have to get up in the morning and go to work, so I can’t do that!!!!
For a show that has so many daddy issues, this has got to be the mother of all mommy issues.
And while I know the question has been asked before, now I’m really curious to know about when young Charles and young Ellie parted ways – could it be because he was cheating on her with Penny’s mom, whoever that is?
As for the theory side of the story, I’m wondering if Daniel’s death means that all “variables” will unwittingly be constants? From where I’m standing, I don’t see where they’ve actually changed any of the past – it just seems to me that even when he was acting as a variable, Daniel still became a constant in the equation of the island’s history, ensuring that what happened, happened. He still spoke to young Charlotte, coming off as a crazy man, he still got shot by his mom. The thought that even in their grandest efforts to change the future by changing the past, the events of the past will still happen, it’s almost depressing – it means that our Losties will be stuck in this time loop forever, always trying to change the future, and always failing.
Right now, though, it does look to me like Dr. Chang may actually have ordered an evacuation of some kind, though – Charlotte, Miles, their mothers, Daniel and Ellie did leave the island at some point, and I’m wondering if this was the reason why.
Widmore told Faraday that the island would cure him, for what’s that worth.
Anyone else notice that when Daniel talked to little Charlotte he caught her eating chocolate – and she was taken aback, saying she wasn’t supposed to eat chocolate before dinner? That was one of the things adult Charlotte said right before she died. It seemed like delusional babbling of a dying woman at the time, but now we know she was remembering meeting Daniel the first time. Pretty cool.
So much for my idea that the shadow people were behind the faked crash!
Poor Daniel, and I thought Ben’s dad was cruel.
Why did Eloise suddenly decide that Daniel had to devote himself exclusively to science? Did future Daniel visit her at that time?
The tragic nature of his death reminded me of Charlie, and again it was all for nothing. What purpose did their deaths have?
Who didn’t tear up when Daniel asked his mom if he would finally be proud of him? What a heartbreaking scene.
We now know that this means they always were back in 1977, so does that mean Ben remembers them?
About Hawking’s coldness : Ummm…. you know you’re going to kill your son one day. And that you’ll be doing a lot of manipulating to make sure it happens. I think it makes a lot of sense to try to remain as cold and distant as you can so that you can actually go through with it all.
About the Comic Con video : Faraday understands time travel. What if he went off to Ann Arbor and actually returned in time when the video will be made? He does all he needs to do, like make a video, and then returns to the 70’s. He takes the sub to the island and gets shot by mom. No problem. I really don’t think they’ll use the Temple. That’d seem a bit lame after seeing the same trick just being done for Ben. Maybe the Temple process takes a bit of time and Ben is undergoing the ordeal right now… so it’s unavailable to Faraday anyway.
great episode. It’s clear that when Desmond turned the key to explode the hatch he set off Juggead, this completing Dan’s plan. But there has to be a bigger picture. We need to get out of that 70’s show and get to Lock and Sun to find it out. And that will happen in the season finale right before the final thud.
Carol, I think Ben remembering them would depend on whether they left that time b4 the incident and how much of his past b4 he got shot he will remember. It seems they will be gone within the next 4 hours and Ben as of this moment is still with the Hostiles. Anyway, another gr8 episode of Lost and wherever it goes from here, I am along for the ride.
Ben remembers his dad, and I think he’ll forget getting shot, but I think he remembers Julliet, and he knew everything about Sawyer when he met him.
There were a lot of great reveals in this episode. Though I still find Daniel very frustrating for never giving out enough information. Hopefully his notebook will help everyone left behind.
The real question now is if there are really “variables”, or if what happens, happens.
I look forward to reading the blog tomorrow and seeing what you all have to say.
Knives – Don’t give up now, you are so close to the end. Plus in the preview we see that Sayid is coming back!
Michael281 nailed it.
I’m not done.
I’m just crushed.
I can’t even type man, its like. Damn…
PS
I totally hyperventilated when I saw Sayid in the preview… Oh man, where has he been, where is he going… and oh shoot! I love LOST.
I dont think Dan is dead because of the comic-con video, and when Sayid shot Ben at the end of He’s Our You everyone thought he was dead too so there precedence.
After view the Comic Con video again, if Daniel had gone to Dr. Chang before visiting the meeting at Sawyer’s, how could he have convinced Chang of the crazy ideas of the Internet, GW Bush is president, and the most shocking thing…that he is going to die in only a few hours?? In the episode tonight, when Chang asks Miles if it is true that he is his son, and MIles refuses the claim, Chang things Daniel is nuts…how could this change so quickly? As for the voice in the video, it is Daniel…it just doesn’t seem plausible.
My exact words were “Eff you writers!”
I guess that means I’m pretty convinced that he’s dead.
The writers were a little…squirrly about the comic-con video actually being cannon in the interview that was just posted on lostpedia.com. It didn’t sound to me like it was cannon. They danced around words like “promotional material”.
Another great episode!
The two weeks was rough!
I am loving getting more and more pieces to this puzzle!
I think that with Widmore, Eloise, Ben fighting..
Jacob is going to put his foot down!
He has let people time and time again mess up the island..and I think he is going to fix it once and for all!
Team Jacob:
Christian
Locke
Richard
Its really hard to place people on teams..but we will see after next weeks episode who stands where.
If Jack ever wanted to know what his destiny was..now is the time..
Now that Jack has no “Locke” or no “Faraday” only his journal, I am hoping the island has given him the tools to do what he needs to do. His fellow 815ers is all he has..they need to come together and do the “right” thing!
Will he find his purpose..and NOT destroy the hatch..
or
Will he want to land safely in L.A..
Once again faced with the decision to leave the Island…I hope Jack doesn’t make the same mistake twice!
P.S
I am reminded of the great quote from Spider Man:
“With great power, comes great responsibility”
-Uncle Ben
The island is very special..is there anyone responsible enough to harness and understand the power of the island?
Didn’t expect that ending. But certainly the Comic Con video will be topic of conversation. But what if Dan has traveled back into time multiple times and perhaps this is his last trek back? He says that this is their present and that he (and the otehrs that went back in time) can die in that present. So, what if the video shown at Comic Con was indeed Dan (have they ever confirmed that it was actually him?) making that video as a backup plan in case he failed further in the past to stop “the incident?” And if that is the case, then what if the 2007 people, in particular Bram and Illana, etc. actually have the machine created by Dan to get them (Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Juliet, Hurley, and maybe Miles – though I don’t think he’ll go back) to the future? Food for thought, at least.
Jack, now thinking that destiny may not be destiny may now be shaken out of his funk and do something rather than let things happen as he watches it happen.
2007 seems to be where the known future ends, as Eloise admits that for the first time she doesn’t know what will happen. It would appear that sets up the end of the time loop and is the place where perhaps the record starts playing the remainder of the song, so to speak.
Will have to watch the episode again to really get all of the nuances though. I did find it odd how Eloise reacted when she told Dan he had to go back to the island to get “better.” Guess that reaction makes sense knowing that her younger self will shoot her son.
The way this episode ended really bothered me.
Why did they feel a need to arm themselves to go talk to the Hostiles? Saywer and Kate didn’t need guns when they took little Ben to the Hostiles a few episodes ago. And Richard has always been pretty reasonable to deal with so why hold a gun to the guy’s head in front of all his people? He’s not like dealing with Ben and you’re just asking to get shot by doing that. It seemed really out of character for Dan to walk up into that camp all commando style especially since both Richard and Eloise would probably remember him if he just walked up unarmed and said, “Hey, I’m the guy who helped you with the H-bomb 20-something years ago and we need to talk about something important.” That would be more logical and it would fit with Dan’s academic (non-violent) personality.
I guess they needed to provide some reason for Eloise to shoot Dan, but the way it played out really seemed to be forced and uncharacteristic for Dan. Sloppy, lazy writing IMHO. Maybe I’m just being petty, but it really ruined the episode for me.
Oh, Daniel, we hardly knew ye! I think this Daniel is dead, but there is a little boy Daniel running around somewhere else in 1977.
I never liked plot resolutions that make previous seasons mean absolutely nothing…we all remember the infamous “the whole series of Dallas was nothing more than Bobby Ewing’s dream” cheat. If they succeed in blowing up Jughead and keeping the Swan Hatch from ever being built, thus preventing 815 from crashing, I will be very disappointed. If this is what the Universe has to do to “course correct” itself, then what has been the point?
If 815 lands in LA at the end of Season 6, then Locke will still be in a wheelchair, Shannon and Boone will still be bickering, Rose will still have cancer, Kate will go to jail, Charlie will still be a drug addict (but a LIVE drug addict), Sawyer will still be a conman, Hurley will still be crazy over the numbers, Claire will give Aaron up for adoption, and on and on.
Of course other things would not have happened either: would Desmond be on the Island? Would Juliet be on the Island? Would the purge have happened? Daniel’s new theory opens up a lot more possiblities, but I hope the writers don’t throw us all over a cliff with a lame one.
Oh…I LOVE Farady….even if he was a little extra “twitchy” this episode….and now he is gone…I loved seeing him go up to baby Charlotte who is not supposed to have Chocolate before dinner, I loved watching him tell Chang that Miles was his son, I loved watching him in his final moments piece together that his dear mom knows she will kill him by sending him back….
When he said, “Someone could die” I was really hoping they were gonna “off” Kate. I have been watching a lot of old episodes during this two week hiatus and she annoys me more the second time around. I am so glad we have Juliette to represent and intelligent, strong female on the show. Kate won’t want to not have 815 crash because she has a sweet life now – when she should be in prison for killing like a million people including her dear old step dad. This will surely cause conflict in the next few episodes.
Great show- we got to see some Penny/Desmond love action and some back story on Faraday…and little kid Charlotte and little kid Daniel…
I kept waiting for the “I am the father” reveal from Chuckie…they really drew that one out.
Thanks for the podcast…always a pleasure!
Knives..hang in there…at least you don’t have a mother who sends you back in time to meet your own death…caused by her own hands…
Something is bothering me about Daniel’s journal. I get that Jack or the others may have it after Daniel’s death… but how did a photocopy of it wind up in Ben’s old office at the Hydra station in 2007 for Cesar to find.
@msredhd: Well 2007 is 30 years in the future…so the journal could end up there any number of ways.
I loved this episode, but I’m afraid my brain is fried.
“The Variable” was a mixed bag for me. I loved the fact that they gave us some clarity about how the all the time-travel stuff works (or at least, they tried to). But I kept expecting bigger twists than they gave us. The music and editing kept acting as if the characters were saying shocking things. So Widmore faked the crash–evidence pointed pretty clearly to that, though I still had doubts. But we knew Eloise was Dan’s mother, and had guessed Widmore was his father. I felt like Eloise’s killing her son was forecast a bit, once Dan started waving a gun around. But then, at the very end, Daniel says “I’m your son”…and THUD??? Maybe Eloise was shocked to hear it, but were we? Shocked Daniel was dead, sure, but that’s not the same thing.
Sigh.
I do appreciate that now we see some of where things are heading. Jack’s group is going to be trying to bring about Daniel’s plans, so as to affect a kind of Back to the Future thing, where all the ’77ers just kind of fade away because they were never there. All is back to the way it should have been. But I agree with the comments above which point out that things weren’t that great for them before the crash; would going back be such a good thing? Granted, they’re pretty much all killers now, to one degree or another. That would be nice to have off your conscience. But I’m interested to see who pushes back against the attempt to enact Daniel’s plans. The New Others, maybe.
Mikey-Maybe Daniel WAS asking to be shot.
Faraday’s dead, but he’s not gone. For the first time, a character has explicitly stated that the entire history of Lost can be undone. No incident, no crash of 815, no endless cycle of suffering. It all comes down to the possibility of change vs predetermined fate. And now it seems sleeping Jack is finally going to wake up and try to act upon Daniel’s recorded knowledge that would be “hard to explain to a physicist” in the hope of setting everything straight again. In my opinion. Jack may succeed in getting his people back to their proper time frame, but only by sacrificing himself and becoming Jacob while at the same time setting a doomsday clock in motion that can only be stopped by changing the past.
@Briand
Yes. We’ve entertained other possibilities, but the way you put it, it does seem clear that Desmond’s turning of the failsafe key might very well have detonated Jughead thus fulfilling Daniels’s plan to annihilate the exotic energy source. What does it mean that the island persists after this event or Kelvin’s comment that turning the key would make “it all go away?”
Finally, I have to throw in a few sour words about the Comic Con video. Unless parts of the master plan will open our eyes in time, this seems like another breakdown. Spend the extra time to properly integrate these supplementals into the story or don’t do them at all.
Your mother’s an other!
So Daniel got shot, is he dead? I have no idea but then again a few weeks ago Ben was shot by Sayid. Did Ben die, no. I guess we wait until next week for what’s next.
I don’t understand why exploding the H-bomb over the Swan station is going to fix things as opposed to not drilling at all in the spot.
@helen …. i think he is dead, he looked dead… and that could be why Eloise was upset and started to say to charles that she sent him back knowing full well…. but it is lost so anything is possible… he did say any of us can die 2 mins before he got shot but maybe he was even supposed to get shot….
i am not a huge dan fan… im not a dan hater either but this episode was def worthy of the 100 ep. marker… it was EPIC… so many reveals that we had been waiting for… jack has started to become more like the old jack we kinda maybe loved and def liked…
Wow. I thought I’d come on here and read a lot of negative reviews….
Unfortunately, for me, this was the worst episode of the season and in my bottom 10 of all time. Bad acting and poor scenes sunk it for me.
While I like the actor who plays (played?) Daniel, I REALLY thought the crying, sniffling, sad act was horrendous. It reminded me of the scene a few episodes back, where Daniel was whimpering over the vanished Charlotte and muttering, “I can’t…I won’t…I can’t.” At the time I thought that it was a real low point for acting on the show, and lo and behold, this week we got a full episode of it. It seriously grated on my nerves, even more so than “WALT!”
Other bits…
The flashbacks on Daniel’s life seemed disjointed and unconvincing, particularly his relationship with his mother which lacked any chemistry or familial bond.
Jack’s conversation with Kate, about her purpose on the island, was entirely weird and out of place.
Why would whimpy Daniel traipse into the Others’ camp with a gun and demand to see his mother? Completely unbelievable and out of character. Daniel met Richard 20 years earlier…why didn’t he think to work THAT angle?
The shootout with Radzinski and his men was awful, and by “awful”, I mean standard TV show fare, which bothers me because I’m so used to LOST being anything but standard TV fare. This scene reminded me of something like the A Team or Dukes of Hazzard. Hmm, let’s see…everyone take aim 15-20 feet away from one another and shoot lots of bullets without anyone dying. Oh, and then let’s resort to the cliche “shoot-the-barrel” trick, which won’t hurt anyone but will explode and provide 10 seconds of cover to hop in an UNPROTECTED jeep that provides a quick getaway. (Seriously, LOST has all these writers, and THIS is the best they can come up with?)
Jack patches up Daniel by the sonic fence with medical gauze. Maybe I missed something, but where did he get that? I know he’s a doctor and all, so maybe he’d been storing it in his shoe this whole time.
Oh, and Radzinski and his “posse” barge into Sawyer’s house. I can’t see that ever happening to the “head of security,” at least not by a pencil-neck like Radzinski (albeit a hothead pencil-neck). This is the same doofus that Jin shoved up against a wall when looking for the plane, and here he goes all Rambo on us??
This episode wasn’t all bad, though. Daniel died, so we won’t have to hear any more of that horrible cry/whimper from him in the future (or the past).
(My apologies to Jeremy Davies…good actor, but not his best work.)
I liked that Daniel told Chang that Miles was his grown son. And Daniel telling Miles that he hoped that Chang would do what he was supposed to do…..I now believe that Chang had his young family sent away to make certain that they were safe.
John Fisher, maybe the reason Widmore had to make the off island trips was because Ellie was banished for killing Daniel. That could explain how she is off the island.
I was very happy to see Des ok but there is just something too un-nerving about the “Penny, I’ll never leave you” speech coming here. I am worried about him. He clearly has a major role to play and I fear that we might have another “Charlie” death.
Really liked the episode but hated this particular death.
Did anyone notice when Kate deactivated the sonic barrier that she hesitated before she went through it. She allowed Dan to go first, as If she didn’t trust Juliet with the deactivation code. HMMM Just an observation.
I thought this season started like a great roller coaster. But currently I feel there’s too many characters and the stories are too spread out and complicated. It’s like the movie, “Back to the Future II”. Hopefully the writers know where this is going.
And in typical LOST style, Chang tells the maintenance workers the Orchid holds the power for “time travel”. And when Daniel tells him he’s from the future, Chang cops an attitude like, “you’re full of sh-t.” Give me a break.
Why (in two instances) was Daniel branishing a pistol like a gunslinger? He caused all the gunplay and his own death. Give me a break.
There was some good information presented, but was for me, was the worst episode of the season.
cat:
“I was very happy to see Des ok but there is just something too un-nerving about the “Penny, I’ll never leave you†speech coming here. I am worried about him. He clearly has a major role to play and I fear that we might have another “Charlie†death.”
That whole scene bothered me also. Desmond keeps promising Penny that he’ll never leave her, yet he has been told that the island isn’t done with him. I’m just as much afraid for Penny. What if she leaves him by somehow dying. I’m not sure how that could happen since the guy who wanted her dead is off on the island.
Why it doesn’t seem that Daniel can be dead:
In the most recent comic-con video, Pierre Chang is warning the viewers about the impeding disaster and Daniel is heard operating the camera. Last night, Chang did not believe Daniel yet about what was going to happen. So doesn’t Daniel still have to be alive to be operating the camera in that clip?
If Daniel is dead why did we see “If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be MY constant” in The Constant?
I think the possibility of an 815 reboot is intriguing. It will ultimately divide the survivors into two camps. One group that want to set time right and undo all the terrible things that happened on the island. And the other group wants to keep their second chances the Island gave them.
Jack can save Clair, Charlie and EVERYONE that died in the plane crash. Doctor Jack would love that. Hurley too, would be able to find redemption for the people he killed in the balcony collapse by saving the lives of everyone on 815. And certainly, Sayid would be better off if Ben never came into his life
But Kate, Sawyer and Locke wouldn’t want time reset. Ben will be torn, it is his destiny to set time right, but wouldn’t be special after the reset. But perhaps his daughter would live and he could undo that tragedy.
Desmond could save Charlie, but then would he son Charlie ever be born? Are the events on the Island what ultimately brought him and Penny together?
Also, it would be interesting if the reset happened, but wasn’t supposed to. So next season everyone one would get off the plane unharmed, but ultimately would be drawn back to the Island to start the process over again.
I’ve been thinking about the Comic Con video. From the time that Daniel first approached Chang till the time he left with Jack and Kate a few hours had passed. Perhaps he convinced him and Sawyer and he filmed the video. Now we see that Sawyer is in deep trouble. Perhaps his way out is to tell Radzinsky to take him to Chang who will explain that he is from the future and that there is a disaster impending. That may be the way that Sawyer, Juliet et al. escape from the clutches of Radzinsky and the gang.
meh… the episode itself wasn’t bad. however, i don’t like where the story seems to be going. jack might be used to things being “insane” but i was hoping that they’d tie up the 1977 stuff sooner than later (like last night, maybe).
i have an outside theory that the purpose of Eloise pushing her son so hard was to prepare him to go back in time and PREVENT her from shooting him. the more i think about it, the “sacrifice” theory makes a little more sense, but i can’t see what the purpose of sacrificing faraday is. he didn’t do anything important other than help the freighter people find the correct bearing to the island. if that was his purpose, than Widmore and company are no better people than evil Ben.
unless he was meant to stop the “incident”, but just failed.
Did you guys notice the weird commercials during the break?? They are commercials similar to the Hanso Project ones. If you do a search on the web for “What did you see?” and Lost. You get the following website:
TheMosaicCollective.com
And this website is owned by ABC.com. It asks you a question about what you saw and your email.
Raul From Wayne,NJ
Did anyone else think it was weird how lacksidasical Sawyer & Juliet were in getting ready to leave the island? Why were they taking so much time and getting so much stuff together? Was the motor pool so far away they wouldn’t have heard all the gun fire and the giant explosion?
While I loved learning more about Faraday, it did kind of seem all for nothing and the notion of a well thought out story on the island really took a back seat to the “set up” work of getting the lostees moving again and getting Faraday killed off. I really wanted to love this episode, but perhaps expected too much out of it because, like many have mentioned, it just seemed disjointed and uncharacteristic at times.
Everyone,
I think this blog is great because it’s currently showing both ends of the spectrum with regards to how this episode faired. It’s great to see how different people felt about this episode. I’m somewhere in the middle.
As much as i really like hearing all the important things that Daniel had to say, he didn’t really reveal that much and it was a bit disappointing. I’m assuming we’ll get more when they riffle through his journal throughout the rest of this season.
I agree that the Comicon video seems to hold less cannon than it does after this episode. One theory that few on this blog have mentioned is the “time-loop” theory. there is a huge theory about this posted on: http://timelooptheory.com//the_timeline.html
This is a very flawed theory (as you’ll read); however, i am starting to agree with the notion that time is looping for some people (perhaps only Faraday and possibly Alpert) Maybe the answer to the Comicon video is that time is looping from one particular point and the reason why Hawking doesn’t know what’s going to happen post-2007 is because of the time loop. Perhaps the video was just one instance where Faraday was trying to succeed with his plan but failed again? The time loop seems to be the missing piece to the puzzle.
but, as some have mentioned, it will SERIOUSLY disappoint me if Daniel’s plan works…the 815’ers landing safely. that will be the ending i dread the most.
One other thought too…this episode seriously shifted the focus of the story. What about the Egyptian stuff? how does the smoke monster work into the story? According to this “time-Loop” theory the monster is DESTINTY “course-correcting” the fate of the island. That may be true but it’s way too much fiction and too little science, which is what this episode was entirely about. There seems to be too much disconnect now between science and fantasy. Perhaps this is the who point. there have been a lot of references to black/white, science/faith as well as other opposites.
So i guess it’s all in what you believe.
hope you guys can see where i’m going with this.
Great show R/J…love this blog!
So who else thinks that Daniel is going to be revived “Ben in the temple style”? He can’t die, because he needs to film the video with Chang.
Also, I loved the bit where Myles denied him being Chang’s son… Very cool, creepy scene.
the commercial for “The Mosaic Collective” i believe is a promo for a new show called “Flash Forward” written by David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, Blade) and Brannon Braga (Enterprise, Threshold). Here’s a web entry describing it:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3i2b46d200e6140dd0b1b9a24746901e29
It’s Jennifer (former hater of Season 5). LOST has redeemed itself. I thought this episode was FANTASTIC! It had all the components of the LOST I love: mystery and wonder, questions answered, but mind-tossing, thought-provoking questions left for later analysis, great writing with attention to the characters we have come to know.
I’m left this morning wanting to dissect this episode and its every detail. But what I keep coming back to is:
This episode might have been titled The Variable, but it’s core message is that no matter what the variable, everything remains Constant.