I knew it would be Charlie who was doomed. Claire’s too important for her baby, and besides, Charlie is growing as a person and rising above his drug addict past, which means it’s time for him to die. Too bad, though. He’s a cute little twit.
I think cmyk’s theory is a pretty good one. The world is ending, and Dharma knows it and is trying to change it, even if they have to keep going back to try again over and over. Desmond has lived it already. How many times? Is this the first time around for the Lostaways? My problem is this: If time reset itself when Desmond turned the key, then presumably he lived everything up until that point over again. How, then, does he know what’s coming after the hatch explosion (Locke’s speech, Charlie’s death)? Also, why should the key reset time? It’s only necessary to use it once the button-pusher stops pushing, right? But if Des dropped dead and couldn’t push the button, then he couldn’t use the key and couldn’t reset things… and Dharma (and the universe as we know it) would be screwed. Bad planning on Dharma’s part?
Fantastic episode, though. Finally getting some of the feel of the first season back, where I yell at the TV when a commercial comes to interrupt the story.
Crap, how’d you know that was me? Don’t tell the police, they’ve been hanging around asking questions and eating donuts at me.
Damn. Now I’m hungry for waffles…
That does seem to be a developing pattern, doesn’t it. Boy, if I were on the island, I’d damn sure find a way to fight personal growth. That character-building stuff can be lethal.
Indeed they are! I can’t wait for the episode addressing the apparent contradiction: how can they be both invisible and pink? The suspense is killing me! (No spoilers please!!!)
I agree with the idea the world is going to end soon and the Others are trying to prevent it. I think all the Others know the future in some way, maybe because they are from the future? Or keep reliving the past like Desmond. That explains a lot of how they know so much about everyone, and maybe they pushed the Losties to be on the plane by interfering with events in their lives because they needed certain people, like Jack the spinal surgeon to come to them.
Maybe the island itself is in its own time. It seems like time travels more slowly there than in the real world. Maybe that is why all the supplies they get are so super up to date, like the washer and dryer. Maybe soon they will get new supplies that have some kind of manufacture date on them and the losties will figure out they are from the future? It also explains why they seemed to know the plane was going to crash there at some point, like they had been practicing for it. If time in the Real World is different than theirs, they might not be able to tell from their end when exactly the plane will crash, just that at some point it will happen. That could also be why they want kids so much, they send them to Real Time and Real World for a while for some reason, maybe to train them, and then send them back to the island. But they would have aged a lot then. So my prediction is that we will find out that the kids they took are grown up now, they were sent to Real World and then came back aged. The Others need to watch for some indication that they have succeeded in changing the past in order to save the world.
I agree that the Others are trying to figure out a way to alter history or the future and having a hard time because fate or whatever keeps intervening somehow. I don’t know how many times Desmond has lived his past or if he is still living his past. He seemed to know what was going to happen to him when he met Jack in the ampitheatre while they were both running the stairs, but then in the hatch he didn’t know he was coming. Maybe the time switch messes up your memories, when Locke smashed the computer in the hatch it brought back the memory and he realized he was supposed to turn the key?
I think the jewelry lady in the flashback is one of the Others too.
I think Desmond really did time travel and not just hallucinate. That’s why his clothes were off and not Locke’s or Echo’s (like the Terminator, as others have pointed out.) A friend of mine also noticed that they did not play the flashback sound effect (that swooshy noise) at the beginning of his flashback like they did with everyone else’s.
I think we will see Desmond’s scientist friend again. He is the only one Desmond talked about time travel with. Maybe after he goes missing his friend starts to think about it with Penny and they look for him.
That is an interesting idea that the key resets time to a certain point. Otherwise maybe it is some kind of huge signal that can cross the time barrier so that a contact in Real Time can see it and know something went wrong?
Sorry this post is so disjointed and rambly. So is my head after watching this episode!
Maybe all of the Others are time-trippers and now Desmond has joined them.
All of them have been through what Desmond has been through. That’s why they seem so uncaring about other people…sure, I’ve just killed Steve but he’ll be back soon enough. It’s not as important as grabbing a surgeon to fix my boss or grabbing A Magic Kid.
Say it as often as you like! I totally believed in his love for Penny, and hers for him, and their pain broke my heart. This hasn’t happened for me on TV since Buffy and Angel.
I didn’t read the posts to this thread yet, but that had to be The… Worst… Episode… Ever. Terrible. If it hadn’t been for the really good wine my friends brought over, that would’ve been a complete waste of an evening.
I do believe they are talking about the time when Charlie and Ethan struggled in the jungle over a pregnant Claire. Claire ended up missing and Charlie ended up strung up in a tree…dead or at least near death. Some Losties came to save him.
That was a horrible re-telling of the event but hopefully jogs your memory
Good point, though, about Charlie already having died. If Desmond remembers the football game wrongly, perhaps he remembers Charlie’s death wrongly.
But wait…Desmond wasn’t “around” yet for the tree-strung-Charlie episode, was he?
Ethan kidnapped Charlie and pregnant Claire, and hanged Charlie from a tree for Jack and Kate (and whoever else was chasing them) to find, while he kept running with Claire. They cut him down and he was dead but Jack kept beating the hell out of Charlie’s chest until his heart started beating again. Can’t give you an episode number, sorry, but that’s more or less what happened.
I totally disagree. I think this episode was very well done, and not only as a singular episode. I also think it will end up being crucial to the whole premise of the show. I really think time travel or the idea of trying to change one’s past and or future are at the heart of everything, and the recurring theme of fate vs. free will is especially apparent now. The characters are lost in their lives and they all have things they would change about their pasts, will they get that chance?
I think it is much more important than the whole Kate / Jack / Sawyer love triangle stuff, as much as I enjoy that aspect of the show, these kinds of episodes get to the heart of the plot much more, I think.
When Desmond was talking with Penn’s father in his office, what was on the wall hanging? (I neglected to record the ep. myself) There was definitely a polar bear. There was some letters at the top that disappeared as the camera angled down. Did anyone catch it? Is it significant?
