Lost Episode 11: Happily Ever After

Before I talk about this episode, one thing I just want to say about this season is that I love how the Lost writers are bringing back so many characters from past seasons who played even just minor roles.  Obviously it was wonderful to see Charlie and Daniel Faraday and Eloise Hawking, but it was also really cool to see George Minkowski come back.  He was the guy in “The Constant” who helped Desmond realize what was happening to him, and here he is helping Desmond again.  I’m looking forward to seeing who else is going to pop up throughout the rest of the episodes.

What I found most fascinating and what I think is probably the best starting point to talk about this episode is Desmond’s conversation with Eloise Hawking/Widmore.  She clearly (as usual) knows more than anyone else does about what’s going on but refuses to tell anyone (as always).  She doesn’t want Desmond to know about Penny and lies to him about why he should stop trying to find her by trying to convince him that he has “the perfect life.”  However as Charlie noticed before, Desmond is not completely happy with his life.  There is something missing.  But she doesn’t what him to see this.  Why?

Here’s what I think:  both she and Charles Widmore must have both still been on the island in their early lives and then must have had to leave for some reason, just like Ben and his father did.  I wonder at what point this was when they all left…they were still on the Island when Juliet blew up the jughead.  Their leaving must have happened right afterwards.  And if that’s so that would mean that Eloise still shoots and kills her son and receives his notebook which would explain two things:

1.      Why she seems to know much more than everyone else does.  If she has that notebook, that means that she knows basically what happened/happens to Daniel.  (Which also maybe why she says to Desmond (but about Charlie) “What happened, happened”)

2.      Why she is so determined not to let Desmond find out Penny and as a consequence, about the “real timeline.”  She knows what happens in that real timeline—she kills her son.  I don’t think she wants people to know/ remember this.  This would also explain why she pushed Daniel into music and not physics as we learned she did last season.  She wants nothing to do with that other timeline.

She tells Desmond that what he is doing by searching for Penny “is in fact a violation.”  A violation of what exactly?  Of how the timelines are supposed to work.  The timelines are not supposed to “converge,” she wants them to remain parallel so they never intersect and the people from one timeline never know of the events or people from the other timeline.  But, unfortunately for her, she doesn’t know that her son has already begun to figure out about the other timeline; they have already started to come together.

She never counted on her son seeing Charlotte at the museum (who, by the way, is eating chocolate just like she was talking about when she died) which causes him to start to have premonitions about that other timeline.  After Daniel tells Desmond about meeting Charlotte, he says, “What if this wasn’t supposed to be our life, what if for some reason we changed things?”  And Daniel Widmore/Faraday is right—this wasn’t supposed to be their life, but I don’t think this means that this isn’t the life that they want.  Why would he want that other timeline to happen in which both him and Charlotte die?  I think what he and what Desmond are eventually aiming for is that all these characters will keep existing in this alternate timeline, but will also remember the events of the “real” timeline.  This alternate timeline is the better timeline for most of our characters (really except for Sun, but hopefully she’ll live).  And once Desmond, Charlie, and all of our characters are able to find their loves, it will be the better timeline for them too.  Eloise tells Desmond, that he “isn’t ready yet” when he asks her why he can't see the list.  But I don’t think he’s the one that’s not ready—she isn’t.

I love how Charlie is the one to turn Desmond towards Penny—just how he was instrumental, in an indirect way, in bringing them together in the real timeline, he is very important here as well.  That scene underwater was brilliant.  But Charlie isn’t completely right in what he says to Desmond.  He says that, “This doesn’t matter, none of it matters” and that “none of its real” which is exactly what us, as the audience has been thinking this whole time.  But I think we learn by the end of the episode that it does matter a whole lot.  I think this timeline is the one that’s going to be the one to last for all of our characters.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the other one, but I think this timeline will be the one we see at the end of the show.  However, it will be this timeline with all of our characters memories still intact.  They will know what happened on the island.

So what is the mission that Charles Widmore has for Desmond in the real timeline?  He tells him that he is going to have to make a sacrifice or else, as he has stated before, Penny, yourself and everyone else will be gone forever.  This mission/sacrifice has something to do with setting off another “electromagnetic event.”  I think it must have something to do with keeping MIB on the Island.  We know that he can’t pass through electromagnetic fields so maybe somehow Desmond is going to have to set one off around the island?  I also think it really will involve a sacrifice for Desmond, I think he’s going to have to give up Penny and little Charlie and die.  But what I don’t think Widmore realizes is that there is an alternate timeline where Desmond can still live, “Happily Ever After.”

Some other points:

• Desmond is always being trapped inside of things:  hatches, MRI machines, cabins with strange electromagnetic equipment
• What is going to happen if MIB makes it off the island?
• Charles Widmore’s office had a picture of the scales on the wall
• Lots of people have been hit on the head this season
• One other thing about what Eloise Hawking says.  When she first meets Desmond, I’m pretty sure she said, “It’s a travesty we haven’t met before.”  She should have used to word “tragedy” not “travesty”...but maybe she really did mean to word “travesty”? I have to think about that more...