I agree. We’ve now had an entire season of time travel episodes, and everything has been shown to follow the what happens, happens rule. Even Desmond, who is supposed to be special in some way, hasn’t caused any changes.
The only thing I can see is that this might be the writers’ idea for their big shock ending at the end of the season. The whole season is the setup and the surprise is that you can change things after all, if you do something big like nuking the island. I kind of hope not, since it seems like a bit of a cheat.
And nobody has even considered possibility that living over the bomb (in the barracks) has caused the fertility problems? I assume the silent Others might not know about the bomb’s location, but Ben probably does, and Alpert surely does.
So, up till now, all of this has happened, right? In a “what happened, happened” sort of way? I’m just basing that on Charlotte & li’l Miles’ evacuations, but we know they both left the island before, so we can assume there was a bomb scare before as well. So this changes nothing? At least up till now?
Well, we did see Faraday go to talk to Desmond when he was manning the hatch, and then Desmond suddenly remembering the encounter years later. Of course, this can be fanwanked by saying that the island caused Desmond to forget about meeting Faraday until it was necessary for him to remember.
Not a bomb scare–a scare about the much-storied energy release incident. I predict, though, that the attempted bomb detonation is also part of what “happened.” It’s just not the reason for the evacuation.
Or, he just forgot. Lots of crazy shit was going down for Desmond on that Island. It’s not too surprising if he forgot some of it.
Or, there is something different about Desmond because of his unstuck-in-time-ed-ness, but you still can’t blatantly change the past, but can instead only do subtle things like plant suggestions in his head that, for all anyone could know, were there all along in Desmond’s head.
When was Daniel born? Is there a little Daniel running around the island or do Ellie and Charles decide to make him after they saw he existed and that means they had to make him at some point?
I’m not sure I buy this – this was during the time when he was basically in the hatch with just one other dude (and later alone) for a period of about 2 years (IIRC) without seeing another living human. Then, all of a sudden he sees one, who then disappears. I think he’d remember that, even if he thought he may have hallucinated it.
I’ll buy this, though. But what triggers the recollection?
I was picturing it like two people watching the same movie, but in two different theatres, with two different start times. One movie started at 7:00 and the other at 7:30 (but rather than a 30 minute difference think 30 years). Both are the same timeline, both have the events unfolding in real time, but they are at different places along the line. And if some new occurance happens to the people in the film at the 7:30 showing at around the 20 minute mark (7:50), it instantaneously becomes a memory for the same characters at the 7:00 showing at the 50 minute mark (7:50).
We brought this up before in an earlier thread – I suggested the same basic idea (although you stated it much more elegantly) – but it was pointed out that the timelines don’t match up. If this were to be the case, Desmond would have remembered it while he was still on the boat bringing the Oceanic “survivors” to the other island, not years later in the UK.
Yeah, I guess it depends on how you want to imagine it. I see two Desmonds.
70s Desmond (A), and Millenium edition Desmond (B). The instant Desmond A knows something Desmond B knows it (seperated by 30 years). But it’s not a memory Desmond B had, or will have had, previously to that point.
Only Desmond A will carry it as a memory through the 80s and 90s.
If you watch the episode again, you’ll realize that Ellie is pregnant. Just as she was about to jump into the water and swim to the tunnels, Whidmore stopped her and whispered something about “you shouldn’t be doing this in your condition…”
Pregnancy is the only “condition” I can think of that might make a man think a woman shouldn’t be swimming underwater, doing something strenuous, or putting herself in danger via hanging out with a big ole A-bomb.
Not that nonpregnant people should be hanging out with A-bombs either.
Agreed - Ben killed (or tried to) Locke just after that because Locke could hear Jacob. Definitely not Ben.
Anyone else notice that - for the first time ever - we could actually see Richard looking startled and confused on several occasions in this show? Always before he’s been rather closed-mouthed, and hasn’t seemed surprised by much of anything.
I’m definitely looking forward to learning wherethehell Richard came from.
Right, but my point was that from the perspective of changes to the timeline, this is the same as everyone else. There wasn’t ever a Desmond who didn’t meet Daniel during his time in the hatch, so everything is still working under “what happened, happened.”
My point was that it seemed like there *was *a Desmond who didn’t meed Daniel during his time in the hatch, since when Desmond first met Faraday in 2004 he didn’t recognize him as being a guy he saw at the hatch. I’m saying that this could be construed as evidence that Faraday changed something.
On the other hand, it could also be that what appeared to be a Desmond that didn’t meet Faraday was just a Desmond who didn’t *remember *meeting Faraday. I just find this hard to believe unless something external to Desmond caused him to forget his meeting with Faraday and then remember it at a later date.
Well, Desmond was at ground zero when he turned the failsafe key, when he flashed back in time to relive part of his life and then got dumped naked in the jungle, leaving him with visions of the future. It’s not a stretch to suggest that he might have had his brains scrambled a bit as well.