Initial Thoughts: The Variable
100 days of Obama, 100 episodes of Lost. And they both just keep getting better…. Thank you Mr President for slamming the door shut on the conversation right at 9:00 so we didn’t miss one second of Lost. That’s pretty awesome.
What is NOT awesome is that we lost Dan. That sucks hard. Yeah, yeah, I understand why but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept. But I love that from the looks of next week Dan’s torch has been passed to Jack. Jack starts reemerging as the leader.
1. What an incredibly hard decision to make. Do they really want to prevent the plane from crashing? Why on earth would Kate want the chain of events to be different? Jack just likes to fix things but I can’t see why he is so hot to stop the plane from crashing. I’m not convinced that they will change the future though.
2. So Dan tells Jack that they are really not supposed to be there. I think that Jack and the others *are* supposed to be there and Mrs Hawkin is right, just like she sends Dan back to the island to be shot (by her) because that is correct chain of events.
3. Mrs Hawkin comes to Dan while he’s a boy with tears in her eyes because she knows that she is setting Dan on the course of events for his life that will ultimately lead to her shooting him. She even tells him she has to keep him on her path.
4. I also love Mrs H’s reaction when Penny asks if Ben is her son, “Good Lord No!”
5. Every one of the Losites has their jumpsuit on except for Juliet. She is wearing her red shirt. I hope they don’t sacrifice Juliet to get them all back to current time. I thought that Dan would be the one to stay behind with the bomb in order for the others to get back, but now I’m thinking it might be Juliet and her love for Jack and Sawyer. She’ll want to save them.
6. Loved that we saw several scenes this week from a different angle that we’ve seen before.
7. I think that Dr Chang believes Dan and he ends up sending all the women and children off of the island. So when Dan tells Miles that he will “see” why he told Dr Chang the truth, Miles will see why his dad really sent them off of the island so long ago (and not because he didn’t care about them).
8. I’m not convinced that Mrs Hawkin didn’t have something to do with Teresa going into her “coma.” She wanted to make sure that Dan stayed on his life course and Teresa was definitely a distraction from that. She does warn him that any women in his life will end up “terribly hurt.”
9. Great new nicknames for Dan from Sawyer “Twitchy” and “HG Wells.” Too bad he won’t be around for them to stick.
10. I would love for the island to *heal* Dan but I don’t see that they will write that into the story. Dead is dead afterall, right? Except for Locke, and Christian, and Richard, and Jacob, and….
11. The magazine on Dan’s couch is a “Wired” magazine and the title is “The Impossible Gets Real.” Sounds like a little “wink, wink” from the writers of Lost to the fans of the show.
12. I think that Widmore cares at least somewhat about Dan. He helps to fund his research and then comes to Dan personally to ask him to go to the island. He sends Naomi to talk to the others but comes to Dan himself.
13. Juliet gives Kate the fence code yet Sawyer immediately forgives her. First, I think that Juliet gives her the code because Sawyer calls Kate, “freckles.” As soon as he says it Juliet gets this look on her face then tells Kate that “it’s over here anyway.” She knows Sawyer still loves Kate (excuse me while I go barf after typing that). I think Sawyer knows that he messed up with Juliet but I think he also does love her.
14. Looks like Dan has mommy issues. The only one so far that isn’t on dysfunction junction with their dad. Sure, his dad is a control freak, but Dan doesn’t even know that Widmore is his dad so it doesn’t count.
15. I can’t wait to see what is in Hurley’s guitar case. I doubt it’s a guitar.
16. Dan thinks that they are the variables and that they can change their destiny. But can they? Seems like everything that has been happening is exactly what is supposed to happen. I guess if they can then Jack will be the one that would do it.
17. Why did Mrs Hawkin come to the hospital to see Des? I don’t believe that she doesn’t know what is going to happen next. She does know and there is a reason that she came there. I was worried that she was going to steal little Charlie and send him to the island as a way to get Des back there. But it doesn’t appear that she did, thank goodness. And Des’ promise to Penny seems a little too prophetic… about him not leaving her again.
April 30th, 2009 at 12:25 am
Wow, what an exciting show. Looks like Dan should have kept the tie on. He takes it off finally and next thing we know, he’s dead. Too bad. I liked Dan, he and Hurley are two of the nicest people there.
I’m wondering if Hawking and maybe Widmore have tried to change things in time already and found out themselves that you can’t change what happened. Or maybe they tried and things got worse each time they tried. The actress the got for the younger Hawking who talked with Dan when he was playing the piano was great, she really sounded like a younger version of her.
So Jack’s got Dan’s notebook and he’s going to try out Dan’s plan. Kind of scary, does Jack understand all the advanced math and physics that’s written in Dan’s notebook? Also, if they do change things and the 815 doesn’t crash, none of them will ever get to know each other. They’ll just get off the plane in LA and go their seperate ways. Kate will go to jail, Claire will give up her baby, Charlie will continue to take drugs, Locke will go on with his sad life, Rose will die from her illness, who knows what’ll happen to Desmond because I take it the Swan station won’t be there so he may never get back to Penny and the list goes on and on.
Talking about that guitar case. I at first thought Hurley was bringing a guitar to Charlie who they’d find alive or with Christain in the cabin when they returned. But yes, now I’m wondering what may be in it as well. Hurley doesn’t seem to want to let go of it. Hurely’s been having regular conversations with the dead, who know what they told him and warned him about and what precautions to take.
Well, still rolling ideas around in my head. Can’t wait to see where it all leads to.
April 30th, 2009 at 12:37 am
Seems like we know that Dan records a video with Chang at some point, so my guess is that he is not dead . . . but that he WILL be looking for a bulletproof tie at some point.
Perhaps:
-Alpert takes him into the temple and gives him the Benipulation treatment.
-The island heals him.
-Ellie was using paintballs . . . filled with blood.
We have a growing list of people who have survived gunshots on this show.
Good thing she did not throw a knife at him or shoot him with a flaming arrow.
Time will tell.
April 30th, 2009 at 12:44 am
I loved this episode, but hated to see Dan go.
I forgot about the guitar case until you mentioned it.
I don’t want to see them prevent the plane from landing on the island – then what? They end the show with the plane landing in L.A. and Jack glances at Kate and none of them know each other? Christiand is no longer a ghost, Ben continues his book club, Rose has cancer, Locke is in a wheel chair?
I’m glad Eloise is not my Mom.
April 30th, 2009 at 1:04 am
SKID: You’re right, the list does go on of the people we’ve seen shot or seemed to be killed and then they’re back again. Though it did look as if Dan died. Of course, Ben (the kid), looked dead at the end of the show Sayid shot him. We know Dan at some point has to build that funky room under the church (The Lamp Post).
April 30th, 2009 at 4:11 am
We actually did learn some stuff during this show, things we suspected or were wondering about. First that Dan is the son of both Hawking and Widmore. No wonder she was mad at him for having a child (Penny) with a woman off the island. We also found out that Widmore was the one who put the plane on the bottom of that trench.
I’m not so sure if Hawking time travels, maybe she knows what she knows from Dan. Maybe it’s also why she no longer knows what’s going to happen next when she talks to Penny because she caught up to the present (the point where Dan’s knowledge of future events ended).
By the way, who wanted to see what would happen if Dan shot Richard? Richard didn’t seem to be the least bit afraid at having a loaded gun pointed at him. What Richard is, is definitely something the writers are going to have to explain to us sooner or later. I don’t think he’s a ghost because he shot Keamy.
April 30th, 2009 at 6:09 am
I had *guarded* hope that Richard would take Dan to the Temple to be healed. I was thinking about the Comic Con video as well and wondered when it could have been shot. We hear the baby crying in the video so it’s before Chang sends the children off of the island. Could Dan be healed and become……. Jacob? Or, they use his body as a manifestation for Jacob? That would be too creepy for me and I’d be extremely disappointed in the writers but just throwing it out there.
April 30th, 2009 at 8:47 am
I thought the “Desmond Hume is my constant” comment in Dan’s notebook was supposed to be explained this season. Well, now Dan is dead and we still have no answer. What gives?
I agree with everyone that this isn’t the last we’ll see of Dan. In addition to the above suggestions, I’m also thinking we’ll see him in a flashback at some point. There’s a lot about his reasearch that hasn’t yet been explained.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:17 am
I knew Penny and Farraday were related. I’m so excited that i was right with that theory and not just crazy. BUt now i wonder how old daniel is supposed to be because wouldnt he be older than charlotte which would put him one the island possibly. Right?
April 30th, 2009 at 11:31 am
I still don’t want to believe that Faraday is dead….check out Richard Alpert’s reaction when Ellie shoots him…..he is not happy…I still think RA and the Others can save Dan….I sure hope so…I love that character!!!
April 30th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I dont think he’s dead. I think they will keep him alive till at least the end of the season. I dont think thehy will heal him though. I think he will just be there shot and in pain but alive.
April 30th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Here’s a thought. Ellie shoots Dan because she thinks he’s a threat to Richard. But Dan’s last words he identifies himself as Ellie’s son which means he’s an Other. So they just might go to extreme measures to bring him back especially since they know he had come there to tell them something important. How often does someone from the future come around to tell you something? Well, for Richard, it’d be his 3rd time…lol.
If this season doesn’t get any awards I’ll be pretty disappointed. But SF shows and movies don’t do well in getting awards. Take the movie Blade Runner. Many experts think it should have received several awards, but got none. The costumes in that movie were exceptional, but the award for best costumes went to some Roman time movie I don’t even remember the name of (like togas are original costumes…lol). By the way, the guy who plays Oldham was in Blade Runner too, that dude sure makes it around, doesn’t he…lol.
April 30th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Rose is back! Unfortunately, it’s on NBC’s new cop show, Southland. And it’s just a minor roll, so hopefully it doesn’t mean she’s done with LOST.
I was hoping she and Bernard would show up in the finale but they’re not in the cast list. However, there is a girl cast as “young Juliet,” so maybe we’ll get a back-story there. It looks like they’re gonna bring in everyone, (as expected) including Bram, Ilana, and Caesar, for the finale in two weeks.
May 1st, 2009 at 2:09 am
Just one question: How come Ricard didnt seem to remember Daniel (they met 20 years ago when Daniel was helping him defuse the bomb)? Is it possible that Ricard would start a new memory every once a while?
May 1st, 2009 at 4:42 am
Tn: I’m not sure if Richard did or didn’t recognize Dan. He really didn’t get much time to talk with Dan before Ellie shot him. He was trying mostly to get Dan to put down the gun. Richard knew some of the people he met in 1954 were with the DI, at least one of them, Sawyer. So he may have recognized Dan, but didn’t have time to go any further before Dan was shot.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:45 am
Hey, what if Ellie just got back from talking with Jacob and Jacob told her she needed to shoot Dan when she got back to camp and that’s why she shot him right when she saw him?
May 1st, 2009 at 7:56 am
I totally was worried Eloise would try to steal Charlie too! Haha this show has made me distrust anyone lurking around children.
Help me remember — regarding Sawyer and the love triangle, did call Kate “Freckles” at all in the convo where he was telling her how much he loves Juliet? If so, to me that would make it just a nickname and not carrying as much weight as Juliet thought it did… Hope, hope!
I have a whole theory that Eloise didn’t actually know she would shoot Dan when she told him to go back to the island — I think that sending back Kate, Jack, et al, was the “variable” that caused her to tell Penny she didn’t know what would happen next. She sent them back in time not knowing how it would affect things — as it happened, Daniel saw their photo and hopped the sub from Ann Arbor, and things went from there. If that’s the case, I’m expecting her to suddenly have new memories pop into her head, a la Desmond after encountering Daniel in the past. What do you think? Any other good ideas about why Lady Omnipotence suddenly doesn’t know what’s going on?
May 1st, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I hope in season 6, we get a Richard-centric episode. How sweet would that be?
May 1st, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Foffman: They have to do something about Richard. You don’t just dump a seemingly immortal man on us and don’t explain him somehow. Even old smokey they gave us some kind of explaination for, showing he lives in/beneath the temple and is part of some old religion.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:56 pm
hey guys, i was just thinking about the whole rose bernard thing and the previous lost trends. remember in season 2 where they did the episode called “the other 48 days” which focused on what happened to the back of the plane over the duration that they been there. Do you rekon its possible that they may do something like this for rose and bernard and the others that just randomly vanished, in the begining of season 6 or sumthing. Maybe rose and bernard and the others havnt just been sittin there playing happy campers… maybe theyve had a really integral story line, theyve been explorin or sumthin… maybe the temple??? i just rekon it would be stupid to cast them out now, whats the point n keepin them all this time if they arnt even central to the story? i just rekon theres more to their story than what everyone is expectin… i rekon the writers are gonna use them and the others to explain alot of stuff about the island perhaps??? who knows???!!! just speculatin
qualty ep this week, gonna miss dan if he is dead! BIG TIME!!
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:58 am
colin: You may be right. I can’t see them just dropping those 2 without telling us what happens to them. Someone suggested that they may become Adam and Eve in an earlier post. The bodies Jack and them found at the caves. During the time jumps, Sawyer and them never went to the caves but went from the beach to the Orchid and back to the beach. Maybe for some reason, they stopped time jumping with the rest and got stuck in 1954.
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Sadly, I don’t think we can count on the ‘comic-con video’ theory to keep dan around. theres an interview with lindelof and cuse on lostpedia, and at one point damon says “I think some people believe they hear Faraday’s voice in the Comic-Con experience”. I took that to mean it wasn’t daniel after all. Of course, they might just be misleading us on purpose.
May 3rd, 2009 at 12:56 am
Definitely a great episode…so much happened!! Very sad to see Dan go, but obv that chain of events had to occur. I believe the reason why we had Desmond in that episode is because he is the variable (not Dan and not any of the other losties). He was the very first person to ever time travel, and he has the ability to see the future. I think that Ellie went to see him in the hospital because she knows that now that Dan is gone, Desmond is the only chance of changing the past and rectfying the chain of events that occured on the island that shouldn’t have. Desmond and Dan have had the ‘constant’ connection which made them both special in that way, but now that Dan is gone, its up to Desmond to change things. When Ellie told Desmond in the church that the island wasn’t finished with him yet, I believe that was our clue that Desmond still has a big stake in what happens there and how everything will play out.
Also, the whole theory about if they could change things, they’d end up back on the plane…I believe that this is plausible, and if it did happen, it wouldn’t erase all of the experiences they had on the island. Just like Miles keeps saying…they are in their present, even though what happened, happened. So if they do travel back to the future…to the exact moment when they were on the plane, it wouldn’t take away all of the experiences that they had on the island.
The whole point of this island is that it is helping all of these characters to change. So if they end up back on the plane, its true that they’ll be back in the situations they were initially in, but they’ll also have the knowledge and experience of their time on the island to help them. They’ll be different people and therefore will have the ability to change their course…to make better choices.
I think that is the whole point of the show in a way. The island needs these people to be there in order to accomplish certain things, but in return, it is allowing them a second chance…it is allowing them to become different and better people.
May 3rd, 2009 at 9:52 am
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