(If you don’t watch LOST, these posts will be torturous to you. I apologize in advance. Just skip them and come back later, when I will try to make it up to you.)
My brother Jordan and I are back to discuss a few things related to episode 11 of LOST’s final season, “Happily Ever After”.
(Jordan’s thoughts will be the ones in blue)
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Season 6, Episode 11, “Happily Ever After”
My 10 biggest Observations/Questions/Thoughts
1. The Alt world. Well, now we know it’s not the show’s epilogue. It appears to be another universe that exists at the same time as our original. Daniel “Widmore” believes it exists because of the bomb he blew up, and that’s what we think too, but it’s just a guess. Is that your guess too?
Yes. A tad anti-climactic maybe, but it makes sense, I think.
I guess seeing Charlotte triggered this memory for Daniel. And hey look, he’s a musician now. More on this in a minute.
2. The bridge between the worlds is…love? “Mind-blowing, conscious-altering love” as Charlie Pace puts it. And perhaps the other bridge is electromagnetism? That seems to be a bridge for Desmond to travel between worlds. But for everyone else, it’s love and love alone that bridges these gaps. Is your Sap-meter going off, or are you cool with where this seems to be headed?
Well the love aspect affects Desmond as well, when he touches Penny’s hand he is seemingly transferred back to the OT. However, I don’t think that it is love per se that really bridges the gap. I think that love is more like the reason that makes the Losties want to bridge the gap. It seems to me that unconsciousness in one timeline bridges the gap to the other. I can’t really explain it very well, but it is my best guess at the moment.
See, I think the point is that love is so big and amazing that it is bigger than just the world we live in, or something like that. And yes, I hope Erica is reading to score some brownie points.
3. Timing. It seems to be critical in both universes. On the island, Widmore keeps harping about the fact that everything is off schedule. In Alt-world Eloise Hawking lets Desmond know he’s “not ready yet”. Not ready for what? to meet Penny? to know he exists in another universe? Are Eloise and Charles Widmore on the same schedule, and is that why they’re both flustered about it?
Yes this is very mysterious to me. Is it because Eloise knows how things are going to play out? Has she lived through this before and she is able to remember what happened last time? Widmore and Eloise seem to have a lot more knowledge than us still.
4. Yeah, I think Eloise is crucial to all of this. Maybe more so than we realize. What if she took a deal from Smokey years back? Surely he would have offered her a life where she doesn’t shoot her son and he grows up to be the musician he always wanted to be. Is this alt-timeline something she’s created and now she’s fighting to keep it from being destroyed by Desmond?
Yeah, she seems to know everything. Not sure how, but maybe Jacob gave her some kind of gift like the one he gave Richard. Maybe she has all the knowledge that her previous selves had. Maybe I sound like a loon. Either way, she seems to be aware of both timelines.
5. Is it near death experiences that can bridge the gap also? Charlie almost dies and sees visions of Claire. Desmond sees “Not Penny’s Boat” in the water, but that probably was due to the fact that the scene was so similar, not because he was close to losing his life.It does remind me of Juliet right before she died though. In those lats few moments did her consciousness realize the existence of the other universe as well? Maybe that’s why she said it worked, because she traveled there in her head, drinking coffee with Sawyer.
Sounds about right to me. Not sure if its being near death or being knocked unconcious or what. But there is something there.
6. Remember choose Your Own Adventure? Seems as though someone has fabricated another ending for our LOSTies in this alt-world, but it’s not all roses. I don’t know what Desmond’s end game is, but will our characters be able to choose which existence they want to live in? If Desmond makes them all aware of both, do they get to choose?
I highly doubt it. Seems more likely to me that they will work together to bridge the timelines and eliminate the alternate one. But is that even possible? Can you just get rid of a timeline and everything that has occurred in it? Is it important that the island is under water? Are they going to try to raise it, or scuba down to it? Why did Eloise want them to get back to the island in the OT? Did she know what they were going to do? Daniel in OT wanted desperately to change the past, now it seems like he wants to get it back to the way it was. Still so many questions to be answered.
7. I kinda think there’s been too many hospitals scenes at this point to ignore. Either something big happened at the hospital in the past that will explain things, or more likely, something is about to happen there. In the alt-world Jack works there, Charlie is there, Desmond just was there, Sayid is visiting his brother there, Claire is gonna deliver there, and Jin is about to take Sun there with her gunshot wound. Who’s next to need medical help? Is Hurley gonna show up this week looking for gastric bypass?
Hah, yeah it does seem like something is going to happen there. Maybe Desmond will try to gather them all toghether in the hospital and deliver his message to them all at once instead of one at a time.
8. Desmond is not amused that Charles wants him to make a sacrifice before they put him in the box. But once he comes back from the flash, Desmond is ready to go. Was this Widmore’s plan all along? To get Desmond motivated by showing him this other universe? Or is Widmore just trying to test Desmond out for the mission he has for him to destroy Smokey? Or maybe the two are interconnected?
They might be connected. I feel like Charles was just trying to see if Desmond would live though. Tina Fey, I mean Zoe seemed surprised that Desmond had changed his mind so willingly. She didn’t seem aware of what Desmond went through. This doesn’t mean that Charles doesn’t know about it, but he didn’t seem to make any comments that would make you think he knew about it either.
9. What about smokey? For a long time now we thought he was our biggest problem, but suddenly knowing two universes exist, how am I supposed to care about a smoke monster? Got me thinking about love, which the writers showed us this week has more power than anything else in our world since it transcends it. Perhaps love not only bridges worlds, but perhaps it will be what keeps Smokey from escaping. Jacob described Smokey as “hell, malevolence, evil…” kinda sounds like the exact opposite of love to me. Not sure how that’s gonna keep Smokey trapped, but I think it will be a key.
I am confused about this as well. Does Smokey have anything to do with the alternate timeline or is he only concerned with the original one. The island is underwater in the OT, and he can’t travel over water, so where is he? Maybe he was destroyed in the alternate one. It would be kind of cool if Smokey won in the end, I can’t see that happening, but it would be cool.
I don’t know…I think I’m a happy ending guy. Can’t see the smoke winning and being okay with that.
10. Even with all this new perspective, lots of questions remain, and some new ones were even created. If Desmond isn’t attached to anyone in the alt-world, why was he wearing a wedding ring on the plane when he sat next to Jack? Why is Penny’s last name Milton, other than the fact that it’s a shout-out to the author of Paradise Lost? What is the “something” that Desmond is going to show to the 815ers in the alt-world…is he going to bring them all near death to show them love too? Who is responsible for this alt-world where characters have the things they seem to want most…was it a creation of the nuke, or of a creator?
I think the wedding ring might have been a mistake, but I’m not sure about that. We were never told who Penny’s mom was, so we can now assume that Penny’s mother’s last name is Milton. Definitely a nod to Paradise Lost. I think the ‘something’ that Desmond is going to show the Losties is the original timeline that he believes they should be living in. I liked when Eloise used the term ‘violation’ when talking to Desmond. There are obviously some set of rules out there that Eloise is privy to and we are not. And where there are rules, there is someone that wrote them.
Yeah, I agree that her saying that Desmond snooping is a “violation” is a key piece of evidence. Hopefully we find out why this week.
Oh, and you know what? It took us 4 years, but when Desmond and Jack run into each other in the hospital in the alt-world it proved a prediction true that Desmond made in the first episode of Season 2.
He finally saw Jack “in another life, brotha”.
Ahh, the circle of life.
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Programming note: no new LOST episode next week (4/20). Episodes 13, 14, 15, and 16 will air on 4/27, 5/4, 5/11, and 5/18 and then the 2-hour finale will air 5 days later on Sunday night May 23rd.
UPDATE: New LOST on 4/20, no LOST on 4/27.
But tonight…Episode 12, “Everybody Loves Hugo” (just 8 7 hours of LOST left)