tinyblob.com

Even if you didn’t read the synopsis before watching this episode, the little Desmond-reveal should’ve made it fairly obvious that this episode would revolve around my fellow countryman. The title “happily ever after” of course reminds us of Desmond and Penny’s wonderful reunion, and their time spent hiding from Whidmore and yachting around the world. Seems that they were happy enough to procreate, but it quickly came to an end. Desmond suddenly gains a memory from the island, goes to see Eloise, gets shot by Ben and then apparently kidnapped by Charles Whidmore!

Desmond’s incessant “Penny! Penny!” reminded me of “Waaaaalt! WAAAAALT!”, we’ve had enough of that – thank you very much. But it was nice to see Whidmore get a smack in the head.

We get another mention of schedules, how long have people been planning these events? If events are so important why are they being rushed now? Can they afford to make mistakes, really?

We’re seeing a white bunny again, did they bring it with them? Does that reinforce my idea that Whidmores crew is actually Dharma? Re-creating the experiments that they used to do on the island. Who else would know that all of these devices were here, how they worked, and how to test them? Bringing a bunny is just the icing on the cake. A bunny who was spared by an accidental human test – awesome, they have a death ray, one that doesn’t phase Whidmore in the slightest, and Jin doesn’t seem to be as keen on saving Desmond as I thought he might be!

Interesting point. They ask Desmond if he has metal on him, and Whidmore replies “course he doesn’t, you idiot”. Why is the guy an idiot? Simply because they searched him before? At this point we’re curious as to why they’d even include those lines in the script if they weren’t important.

Amazing smackdown by Whidmore. Desmond asks “what the bloody hell do you know about sacrifice?” and Whidmore replies that his son died for the sake of the island, Penny hates him and he hasn’t even met his grandson. His point made and an important comment for us: his son died on the island. We all guessed that Faraday was his son, but I guess it’s confirmed now. Even though when I first watched this I got all excited about Charlie possibly being his son, silly me.

So what they’re basically doing is sticking Desmond inside a electromagnetic emitter, to re-create the events of the Swan hatch being destroyed. They need to make sure he can survive it – but we don’t know why. Easy assumption is that whatever the energy under the island is, he’s going to end up being exposed to it a second time, in order to achieve something. Desmond is our Dr Manhattan, it seems.

I think that a lot of viewers will have been asking “has he moved into the flash-sideways?” as soon as we saw him in the airport. Especially seeing as he appeared to “vanish” from the plane at the beginning of the series, and because we’ve seen him time travel before. I’ve written several times now about unconsciousness allowing our Losties to see themselves in this flash-sideways, and the question I was asking myself in this scene was “is he seeing himself in the flash-sideways?”. I liked the “I’m not a big fan of surprises” line – life on the island must’ve been hell for you then Desmond!

Minkowski (aka The Plague) waiting at the airport. I don’t think that his presence is important in any way.

Desmond words for Whidmore, as if we didn’t expect it. They seem to really like each other, despite the ominous music. We learn that Whidmores son (Faraday) is a classical musician, who’s combining his music with some rock for an event hosted by Whidmore’s wife (who we correctly assume to be Eloise Hawking). The rock part will of course be performed by Driveshaft, whose bassist (Charlie) has been arrested. Whidmore wants Desmond to fix this. Desmond appears to be a “get things done” type chap in Whidmores company. You’ve got to wonder how dirty his hands get, since we’ve got to at least suspect that Whidmore is into some bad stuff. I like that Whidmore suggests that his wife will “destroy him”. I like seeing the MacCutcheon whisky pop up again, accompanied by “nothing’s too good for you”. Everything is backwards in this timeline for Desmond. Since Whidmore made a point of saying it wasn’t good enough for Desmond before.

Telling line from Desmond: “Well I’ve got a great job, lots of money, get to travel the world.. Why wouldn’t I be happy?”. That’s fairly obvious to us, because it was his main character concept on the island – he was utterly in love. The only thing stopping him from going back to his soul mate was _saving_the_world_. But he desperately needed to be back with her, and his love for her kept him going. So now we’ve got flipside Desmond, who has everything he could want – except love.

At this point I’m thinking back to the idea that this flash-sideways world is like some stereotypical genie wish. That Desmond has had some kind of reward, which had a bad side. He got Whidmore to like him, but lost Penny. Suggesting that the only reason Whidmore didn’t like him was because of Penny.

Not to stray from the topic, but it’s impossible to mention genie’s without reminding everyone that there’s till a good chance that Smokey is actually a Genie/Djinni. Some kind of free-willed creature who can become smokey, lives in an isolated place, and likes to try to influence humans towards evil. Just putting it out there..

Anyway.

Charlie points out, much to my enjoyment, that while he was unconscious on the plane he saw Claire, and felt like he was in love with her. Suggesting that while he was unconscious he could see the normal reality. I’m now utterly convinced that I’m on track with that theory.

I enjoyed Charlie launching the car into the water, reminded me of the scene in Fight Club where they lets the car zoom down the motorway. We get to see our first proper flash-sideways -> “real life” vision, Demond remembering the Not Penny’s Boat moment. Does this shake up my unconsciousness theory? He’s clearly not unconscious.. But I guess he’s fairly close to it. Not sure. Regardless, he’s seeing an event from our timeline.

Here we return back to the “do you have any metal objects” line from the beginning of the episode, and things become clearer. This scene is lifted right out of an episode of the Sopranos, telling Desmond not to press the panic button because they’d just have to start again.

He has further visions of Penny while in the machine, something to do with the electromagnet?

Another telling line, from Charlie: “none of this matters”. It does seem like all of “this” is some kind of pocket dimension, like they’re not really in it, like it’s in their minds. Charlie is deciding that it doesn’t matter, that only the “real” existence matters – because he has (or had) something better there.

When Desmond introduces himself to Eloise, it’s clear that she knows who he is. But she’s always seemed to know what’s going on. When we first met her in Desmonds time-travelling bit it was like she was some kind of “time cop”. But now here she is, living out her life, but knows who Desmond is. How? Why? She’s not angry about Driveshaft not making it, and seems like she’s trying to get rid of Desmond. Whidmore gave the impression that she’d be very angry about it – so we have to wonder why not.

Note that Penny is referred to as Penny Milton, not Penny Whidmore. Why is that?

Eloise: “I want you to stop. Someone has clearly affected the way you see things, this is a serious problem – it is, in fact, a violation”. This sounds like something incredibly ominous. As if she’s about to quote the prime directive. As if she IS some kind of “time cop”. It also reminds us of the truces and rules we’ve seen elsewhere. She continues to say “I don’t know why you’re looking for anything, you have the perfect life, on top of it you’ve managed to attain the thing you’ve wanted more than anything: my husbands approval”. Going back to the “reward” stuff I mentioned before.

We know something that could find out what Desmond desired, Smokey. This whole thing could be some kind of illusion that he’s living, a test by Smokey. Judgement. Is this the “end of days”? Is it connected to the sacrifice he has to make? Is it a sacrifice like Dogan, not being able to see his son again? Does he have to lose Penny?

Faraday woke up (from unconsciousness) and knew some extreme equations. He remembered things to do with the explosion. When he was last around.. He talks about changing things, he wonders if this reality is because he set off a nuke and changed everything. Which might be the case. I wrote about diverging timelines near the beginning of the season, perhaps Faraday is reinforcing those points.

Desmond goes to meet Penny in a stadium, where she’s running. I was just sitting waiting for her to say that she was there training for a boat race (and still think she’ll say that at some point). But when he shakes her hand he apparently blacks out. Remember – Penny is his constant. I guarantee we’ll be returning to that concept!

So back in the real timeline, Desmond understand what is going on and wants to help. What changed? Is it because he witnessed the flash sideways unconsciously? Perhaps that’s NOT Desmond anymore? Perhaps he just realised there’s something bigger going on? I’m guessing it’s the first, I’m guessing he saw himself.

Ninja Sayid appears, and Desmond appears to go with him willingly, after a moment to think about it. I wonder why.. Maybe he’s just interested to see what will happen, maybe he just didn’t know what else to do.

The episode ends with Desmond asking Eugene Belford for the passenger manifest from flight 815. He wants to show them something.. Is it that he wants to show them what they’d see if they were unconscious? I wonder..