Desmond: “So what is it?”
Daniel: “I’m a musician. I have no idea. So I took it to a friend of mine at Caltech. He’s a math whiz. He said this is quantum mechanics. He said these equations are so advanced that only someone who’d been studying physics their entire life could have come up with them.”

• Enough teasing. Why are Charlie, Desmond and Daniel all experiencing these moments of “enlightenment” and “Oceanic feeling”? The simplest, most direct explanation is that all three characters have been exposed to massive amounts of electromagnetic energy and/or radiation. Charlie and Desmond were exposed during the Swan failsafe “detonation,” and Daniel was exposed through his experimentation.

Remember also that Jack, Sawyer, Miles, Hurley, Kate, Jin and Juliet were all present at the detonation of Jughead – an event that would have released enormous amounts of electromagnetic energy and radiation, had it worked (and what were Juliet’s dying words? “It worked.”). All of them were at ground zero. The two “flash sideways” characters who have not, so far as I remember, been similarly exposed to these energies, are Sun and Ben. But, Ben was exposed to the energy at the Wheel (and so was the real John Locke – who was also present at the Swan implosion).

What’s the significance of this? Remember the maze.

The idea of consciousness-traveling has been a part of Lost since Season 3, and back in the Rewatch column for The Constant (symmetry!) I talked about what I thought the end-game of the show might be. I discussed Daniel’s experiment with Eloise the rat, and I laid down the crazy like syrup over pancakes:

“We know that it takes high levels of exposure to electromagnetism OR radiation in order to send a person’s (or an animal’s) mind backward or forward in time. We’re told this explicitly by Daniel, and we’re shown this directly as Daniel hits his lab rat (I love that he’s named the rat after his mother – a simultaneously affectionate and insulting gesture) with his Cosmic Ray Gun.

We’re then shown how Eloise the rat is able to run a maze that she’s never encountered before – because her mind traveled forward to later in the day, at a point of time in which Daniel had already taught her how to run the maze. The rat’s mind snapped forward to a point where the rat’s body had already trained to know how to get from one end of the maze to the other without hitting any dead ends. The rat’s mind then snapped back, and it seemed to retain either the actual memory of how to run the maze, or a kind of instinctual subconscious memory. Either way, same result. The rat runs the maze with ease.

Here’s where I lay down the crazy and invite you to partake:

Ben: “I feel for you, John. I really do. You keep hitting dead ends.”

I’d like to suggest that the maze in this scene acts as a metaphor for the lives of the characters on the show – for the events that we’ve witnessed so far, up to and including the Season 5 finale. The castaways are the rats, and they’re running the figurative maze of their lives – a maze that, as every human being can attest, seems complex and fraught with dead ends to them as they move through it, but which would appear more understandable and more navigable if viewed from an elevated perspective (with hindsight, one might say).

With the detonation of Jughead in the Season 5 finale, the castaways have unleashed a massive amount of radiation – the very thing needed to send their own consciousnesses backward in time. That’s what I think is going to happen, and what has already happened before – Jack and Co’s minds are going to go hurtling backward in time, and in doing so they will retain their knowledge (probably on an instinctual, subconscious level) of what they’ve done, right or wrong, in advancing as far as we’ve seen them advance by the end of Season 5 . They’ve been trained – presumably through Jacob – to more effectively run their life-maze, and I believe that part of the Season 6 storyline will require those castaways who were present at the detonation to attempt to make different decisions this time as they run the maze of the show again.

Daniel: “These are all variables. It’s random, it’s chaotic. Every equation needs stability – something known. It’s called a constant.”

But what about “Whatever happened, happened?” Doesn’t that mean that the castaways can’t make different decisions? That’s a good question. We’ve been told, time and time again, that the past can’t be changed. But we’ve also been told that people are variables in the constant of time. If time is a river, then individual actions are like pebbles dropped in that river – each making small ripples and affecting the overall stream in minute ways that don’t arguably ‘matter’ in the greater scheme of things. But, if I understand Daniel’s reasoning correctly from the end of Season 5, if enough pebbles get dropped in a certain place, the cumulative effect of them can cause the stream to change in some way.

To put it another way: imagine that the past is a maze. Its walls are unchanging, unalterable – a physical representation of “whatever happened, happened.” The choices that a rat can make in running this maze are limited, but there are still choices – pivotal moments that can lead a rat to a dead end or to the exit. Those choices, made by individuals, are variables, and they can make the difference between successfully running the maze and becoming trapped in it forever.

Jack: “We have to go back, Kate.”

Throughout the course of the show we’ve watched as Jack has struggled with a seemingly-instinctual desire to “go back,” to “fix things.” What if this bone-deep drive comes, not just from Jack’s personality, but from the forgotten memory of having done all of this before? On a deep level – a subconscious-memory/Karmic level (depending on how you want to describe this) – Jack is aware that he’s made wrong turns, and he’s aching to put it right. He wants to go back to the beginning of the maze and start again.

Philip K. Dick’s book “VALIS,” which we discussed in the last column, talks about the concept of “anamnesis” – a word that roughly means “the loss of forgetfulness,” a state in which he remembered things that he did not know he had forgotten. This sounds very similar to the idea of remembering “past lives,” and both concepts are nifty ways to describe what the castaways may be experiencing – a feeling that this has all happened before, that they’ve forgotten something important – the looping backward of their minds into their ‘past’ bodies – a process which they may be repeating over and again……

Finally we know that the premiere episode of the final season is titeld “LA X.” I’m going to suggest that “LA X” is meant to be read as “Los Angeles 10” – suggesting that the consciousness’ of the castaways who were present at the detonation of Jughead will be hurtled back into their past bodies, giving them the knowledge of the past seasons while allowing them to use that knowledge in order to make it to the end of the figurative maze, and that this is the tenth iteration of this cycle – a cycle that greatly resembles reincarnation. Why should ‘reincarnation’ sound familiar to a Lost fan? Why, because it’s an anagram for “Canton-Rainer” – a fictional company whose logo appears in Season 5.”

To some extent (emphasis on “some”), that’s what we’re seeing now – people realizing that there’s another “world” out there, recognizing it in ways both large (ala Desmond) and small (Jack’s lingering look at a curbside Kate after the flight lands). There’s an instinctual, “déjà vu-ish” color to some of the castaways interactions in this season, and to their copious “reflective” moments in the season so far. Rather than one universe “winning” over the other, it seems more like the consciousnesses of these castaways are beginning to potentially rise and converge, creating a sense of consciousness that may be similar to Eloise the rat’s “augmented” senses in the maze. This effect seems to be happening most violently/powerfully to those people who were exposed to the highest doses of EM/radiation. Thanks to Daniel’s odd Zeta-beam contraption, the rat’s mind was sent into the “future” and came back with knowledge of how to better run its maze, and thanks to the mention of Quantum Mechanics in this episode, it now seems as if the rat’s consciousness may have experienced a blast of “potential possibilities,” which would also give it the ability to run the maze (since we might assume, in those varying possibilities, that the rat had run all the possible combinations of the maze).

As I’d stated above, this basic idea highly resembles the idea of reincarnation and “past lives” in the way that it functions (because Desmond is slipping “backward” through time when he enters the off-Island universe – meaning that either this other reality lags a few years behind ours, or that Desmond traveled through both time and space).

Daniel: “Okay. Imagine something, something terrible is about to happen. Something catastrophic, and the only way to stop it from happening is by releasing a huge amount of energy. Like setting off a nuclear bomb.”
Desmond: “You wanna set off a nuclear bomb.”
Daniel: “Just listen, what if, this, all this, what if this wasn’t suppose to be our life? What if we had some other life and for some reason, we changed things? I don’t want to set off a nuclear bomb, Mr. Hume. I think I already did.”

• So, if we’re to believe in the potential truth of what Daniel is saying, then the Jughead explosion somehow either caused the off-Island universe, or shifted it in dramatic ways. If I’m even close to right, it may be that their exposure to EM and radiation has allowed their consciousnesses to contact the Oceanic state, and this in turn gives them a sense of slight deja vu, of befuddled recognition and of knowledge that seems to come from nowhere (“His name is Aaron.” “It’s a boy.” “Because I bloody doooooo!!!”).

• Back in the Rewatch Column for Some Like It Hoth, I theorized that the Jughead detonation might function as a kind of “Black Swan” event:

Daniel returns to the Island dressed in an ominous black Swan suit. “Black Swan” is a term used to refer to highly improbable, highly unpredictable events. The term originates from the 18th century, where it was “common knowledge” that all swans were white until it was discovered that Australia (!) contained black swans. The term became used to signify an improbable event that may come to pass.

The successful alteration of history would certainly qualify as a “Black Swan” event. We’ve been told again and again how history can’t be changed. We’ve seen that “whatever happened happened.” In effect, we’ve been told its impossible. But, as The Variable is about to suggest, maybe there are black swans in Australia after all.

If Daniel’s right and the Jughead explosion did work to create a “new” timeline, then it acted in effect as a massive Black Swan event. What’s interesting to me about this, again, is the fact that Daniel, Jack and Co. created that event intentionally – they wanted to change things so that Oceanic 815 would not crash. In at least one sense they were apparently successful. And yet, despite this, Daniel is left yearning for what he “left behind” as a result of this. Again, the grass is always greener on the other side.

What will this ultimately mean, in terms of the end-game of the show? Yet again: no clue. And I don’t particularly want to speculate. It’s more fun to simply follow the multitude of breadcrumbs that the show drops throughout the episode for us to find and chew over.

• Desmond returns to the stadium where he was introduced, and we get a shot reminiscent of that Season 2 episode. The disorientation of the Season 2 stadium’s opening shot (it’s filmed so that it isn’t clear at first glance what we’re looking at and seems almost abstract) remains one of my favorite simple, individual, directorial choices on the show.

Widmore: “I’m really sorry we had to do this to you, Desmond. But, as I told you, your talent is vital to our mission. So, if you just let me explain….”
Desmond: “It’s all right. I understand.”

• What is it that Desmond understands? What has he taken away from all of this? Widmore clearly needs him for a purpose that involves the Island’s electromagnetic pockets – will that connect with whatever goal it is that Desmond seems to be moving toward?

Lost doesn’t make these easy questions to answer, because almost as soon as he’s been “enlightened”….

Sayid: “Desmond, I don’t have time to explain, but these people are extremely dangerous. We need to go, now.”
Desmond: “Aye, of course. Lead the way.”

• What just happened? Sayid showed restraint and let Zoe live after roughly and efficiently snapping the necks of her two Insurance Salesmen associates. Why? Can he not kill her because of the “rules”? Is he, despite his “dead” emotional state, still capable of mercy? I hope so, because it suggests Sayid may not be beyond redemption.

Last week I talked about Sayid’s strange condition – his cool, detached demeanor and his self-diagnosed inability to feel. Last week on Chud’s message board I’d theorized that the infection was something that might render the subconscious self more powerful that the conscious self; that would allow all the “darkness” that we keep tamped down to rise up, and result in a loss of the standard controls that keep us all in check, eventually “deadening” a person to stimuli and making them pseudo-puppets of the MiB (and this ties in nicely with the free will debate that’s been a running thread in this season’s tapestry).

For Claire, that would result in paranoia and aggressive, even murderous impulses centered around the part of her life that causes her the most fear and worry: motherhood. For Sayid, that would result in a deadening of his emotions, reducing him to the cold killer he tried to avoid being. As Citizen K, a commenter on Back to the Island put it: “I think that’s what Lost has always been about: humans fighting their own dark impulses, to better themselves. So, coming back to the infection, I don’t think it really changes you, it just takes away your choice whether or not to give in to your worst impulses or as Germans like to call it “Innerer Schweinehund” (an idiom meaning inner pigdog. I like the metaphor of a filthy beast of your own making that tries to hinder personal transcendence).”

I think that’s nicely put (and I love the German word for “inner pigdog – I’m using that at my next available opportunity). But Sayid’s apparent mercy toward Zoe, and his recognition of, and (maybe sincere, maybe faux-sincere) concern for Desmond throw that idea into doubt. Will Lost EVER tell us what’s going on with this “infection”? I’m going on record now to say that it’ll tick me off if they don’t.

• I had a terrific discussion with an impressively-intelligent fellow from Germany regarding my comparison of Sayid to a “philosophical zombie,” and I’m going to be putting that exchange up for folks to read. Check in at Back to the Island over the weekend if you’re curious.

• And what should we think about Desmond’s calm decision to follow Sayid? Is he on a “path” now that he can see clearly? Has his “enlightenment” simply made him open to anything, since he’s “destined” to end up in the same basic place no matter what he does, as he was shown in his “flashes”? Or has he come to the conclusion that the Man in Black is the “good guy” in the Island’s conflict? It’s entirely unclear, and that lack of clarity, coupled with real forward movement in the narrative, made this one of the season’s most exciting episodes for me as a viewer.

GEORGE: So, did you find what you were looking for?
DESMOND: Yes, George, I did. Corner of Melrose and Sweetzer, please.
George: “You got it. And if there is anything else I can do for you, Mr. Hume, you just name it.”

• Anyone else get a “Mr.Destiny” vibe off of Minkowski at the end there? I had the feeling that Desmond could have said “bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia,” and Minkowski wouldve obliged. Just me? That’s two characters over the course of this episode who’ve implied (directly or subtly) that this world is a kind of “wish fulfillment.” But for who? Mrs. Widmore? Everyone? And is it a trap or a reward or simply another possible life – a “past life” explained scientifically?

Desmond: “Can you get me the manifest from my fight from Sydney, Oceanic 815, just the names of the passengers?”
George: “Sure I can. Do you mind if I ask you what you need it for?”
Desmond: “I just need to show them something.”

• What is it that Desmond is going to show them? Is he going to spend an episode lightheartedly attempting to kill them all so that they’ll have the same “enlightenment” experience that he’s had (this would be hilarious)? I’m really looking forward to finding out. Thanks for your patience in waiting for the column – this episode felt so stuffed with goodness that I wanted to take the extra time to give it the attention I thought it deserved. As usual, I’m positive I’ve missed things, so please let me know what they are in the comments section. I’m always interested to read your thoughts, and I sincerely appreciate them.

Three Brief Notes:

1) As Lost heads toward its ending (Le Sigh) I’m spotlighting independent artists who’ve done Lost-inspired work that I like/admire. Last week you saw Gideon Slife’s episode-specific Lost posters. If you’re interested in checking out Gideon’s work (and you should, because it’s awesome), you can click here.

This week I’m turning the spotlight on a gentleman named Yehudi Mercado, who has created a series of character postcards featuring cartoonish takes on some of Lost’s characters. They are amazing. Here are three of them:

’d totally watch an animated Lost spinoff with these designs. You can see all of Yehudi’s cards by clicking this link. And, if you’re interested in purchasing Yehudi’s hard work and nifty visuals, you can do so here for the low, low price of $3.00 (I don’t get a cut of the sales, if you’re wondering).

2) If you know of an artist that’s created something Lost-inspired, whether for sale, just for admiring, or so bizarre that it must be remarked upon, shoot me an email at WhatIsWater@gmail.com and provide a link to their work. I’ll feature my favorite suggestions up through the end of the show. Support the creative impulse and your fellow fans!

3) If you haven’t contacted me about potentially purchasing my to-be-self-published book on Lost’s themes, philosophical, literary and pop cultural references, its characters and minutia, you can shoot me an email at WhatIsWater@gmail.com to be added to the list. You will not be bound in any way, just notified on the book’s progress, as well as where and when you can buy it. The first five people to do so will win the pleasure of knowing that they’re one of the first five people to do so. You will also become 50% more attractive to the opposite sex, by virtue of your munificence.

*****

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Widmore: “You really do have the life, son. No family, no commitments… Ah, to be free of attachments!”
Desmond: “I’m a blessed man, Sir.”

• To be free of all attachments is to lead a Monastic existence. We’ve already seen that such a life doesn’t truly agree with Desmond, as illustrated by his stint with the Brothers of the Mount Moriah Monastery. While that kind of distance is prized in Eastern Religion, it’s also arguably a way of avoiding the “real world.”

What’s interesting to me here about the off-Island universe is how it’s given Widmore the family he says was denied to him in the on-Island universe. And yet, when we see Widmore with the family he claims to wish he had, he seems envious of Desmond’s freedom. This is a pretty good (and pretty subtle) way of suggesting that for both these universes, the grass might always be a little greener on the other side.

• Desmond gets his second “reflective” moment when he approaches the LA police station where he picks up his package – one Charlie Pace.

• Charlie and Desmond’s interactions during Happily Ever After are a kind of mirrored riffing on their past Island relationship. At this point I don’t think I need to point out to you that Desmond’s attempts to keep Charlie out of trouble and get him to his concert mirror Desmond’s attempts to keep Charlie alive back in Season 3.

• The bar that Charlie and Desmond visit is named “Jax.” Why is this significant? Well, Jax is an uncommon first name – one that means “Son of Jack.”
 
Charlie: “Have you ever been in love?”
Desmond: “Thousands of times.”
Charlie: “That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about spectacular, consciousness-altering love. Do you know what that looks like?”

• To repeat my earlier question:

What is it that dissolves the boundary between the self and the other (or “Other”)? What is it that allows the self to transcend itself and connect to the Oceanic feeling according to the correspondence between Freud-dude and Romain Rolland and according to traditions like Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and a host of other belief systems? Why, that’d be Love – the emotion/sensation that’s so thoroughly discussed throughout Happily Ever After.

Consciousness-altering love: a necessary ingredient in accessing the “Oceanic” state of being and transcending the self in order to “converge” (but not the only ingredient). Let’s call this concept “The Love Snake” because it sounds dirty, makes me laugh, and involves both the emotion that’s key to piercing the figurative veil between worlds, as well as the idea of Love snaking “backward” through time and connecting consciousnesses across vast subjective distances. That connection is made possible among a very select group of people. And these people (with what might be two exceptions) all have one thing in common. And that one thing is…just a little further down in the column.

Desmond: You want to know the real truth, Pace? Right now you have a choice – you can keep on drinking, or you can come with me.”

• Is this the “real” truth? In a sense, it is. Choice, and the ability of our conscious selves to make those choices, is a large part of what makes us human, allows us to do “good” or “evil” depending on the day, the motive, the inclination.

Charlie: “Doesn’t really seem like a choice.”
Desmond: “There’s always a choice, brother.”

• Desmond’s offer to Charlie mirrors the sorts of choices that Jacob and the MiB have offered the castaways. Jacob’s choices – the choice that doesn’t seem like a choice but remains a choice in fact regardless – and the Man in Black’s choices – choices that you make freely, but which appear to invite you to isolation, to loneliness and past pain.

• This is the same Marina that Ben, Jack, Kate, Sayid and Sun meet at in Season 5 isn’t it?

• How creepy/cool were those first “flashes”? Desmond again tries to save Charlie’s life, and this time he succeeds.

MRI Technician: “Are you wearing any metal? Carrying keys or change? Any metal inside your body–pacemakers, pins, bullets, steel plate inside of your head?”
 
• And here we have the echo of Widmore’s technician, who asked Desmond the same question before placing him in the Electromagnetic Murder Box. This makes sense, since the MRI is a device that was developed out of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance research – that resonance being “a property that magnetic nuclei have in applied electromagnetic pulses.” Two electromagnetic devices in two “separate” worlds. Do they act as mechanical “constants” – sending Desmond’s mind back and forth?

Desmond: “The button?”

• No, Des. Not THE Button. A button. Nice resonance though – no pun intended.

• Lost appears to be approaching a notion of the “Afterlife” that fuses the faith of religion with the speculative realities of Quantum Mechanics. Near-death experiences seem to trigger visions of a better, happier place – perhaps a place where the consciousness travels after death or – more brain-bendingly – a place where the consciousness never truly dies at all, because (as we learned in Seasons 4 and 5), the past, the present and the future aren’t separate states. All three are happening simultaneously. If there is more than one world, then, then consciousness itself cannot die. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, and as this columnist suggests, this means a kind of pseudo-religious enternal life.

Wild, right?

These “flashes” before Desmond’s eyes also recall notions of “past lives” and reincarnation – concepts that Lost has been playing with from the get-go (Remember “Canton Rainer”? I’ll bring it up again shortly). Notice that Desmond’s flashes take him to points in time that are “past” for him, referencing the “past lives” aspect. Why is this happening? And what does it mean? We’re almost to that, so hold on….

• Jack Shephard pops up to be potentially instrumental yet again. Claire, Desmond, and (presumably) Jin and Sun have or will all converge on the hospital where Jack works. Jack’s a busy man, no?

Charlie: “None of this matters. None of this matters.”

• Does this off-Island universe “matter”? Both universes contain people who pine for something more/different/better, after all.

• I find Fionnula Flanagan intensely amusing on this show. She’s the only actor who consistently goes for full-blown theatricality in her performances, and I often find myself chuckling at her line readings. I suppose you could say that she’s miscast, or that her style’s too incongruous with the rest of the ensemble, but I wouldn’t trade her. She’s just fun to watch, flouncing about so authoritatively with that snowy sculpture of hair atop her head.

• When Desmond first met Eloise Hawking (now Eloise Widmore), she was wearing an Ouroboros pin – a symbol for eternity, for no-ending and no-beginning. Notice that she’s not wearing that here. Instead, she’s wearing two “star” pins. Is this significant? Hells yes. When we first saw her wearing the Ouroboros pin, Eloise was attempting to maintain/create a time-loop, neatly symbolized by her broach. Here, we meet her in another potential “universe,” and her broach has changed to reflect that fact: Two stars, two “universes.” And what was the song that Claire sang to Aaron, and that we heard repeated this season in truly creeptastic fashion? That’d be “Catch a Falling Star.” Is the on-Island universe “falling”? Does it need to be caught before it shatters, releasing the contents of Pandora’s Jar into Quantum Worlds?…

Eloise: “Whatever happened, happened.”

• Obviously, “whatever happened, happened” is a hugely significant piece of Lost dialogue. More interesting to me is that Eloise utters the words one episode after the Man in Black uses them.

Eloise: “Someone has clearly affected the way you see things. This is a serious problem. It is, in fact, a violation. So, whatever you’re doing, whatever it is you think you’re looking for….You need to stop looking for it.”

• Eloise Hawking/Widmore…. Mistress of Space and Time? In Flashes Before Your Eyes, Hawking was the woman who confronted Desmond when he began to violate what she considered the “natural order of things.” It was Desmond’s destiny, or so she claimed, NOT to marry Penny, and instead to sail to the Island. Changing the past, so Eloise told him, would be catastrophic and lead to terrible consequences.

Only, she also talked about the concept of “course correction,” of how the universe will act to put “right” anything that goes “wrong” according to the set course of time. The warning and this information contradict each other. Either Desmond can change the past and cause catastrophe, or the universe will “course correct.” Which is it?

This line of thought lead me to wonder about all we’ve seen of Eloise Hawking – her determination to have things happen “just so,” her willingness, however sorrowful, to doom her son to a death she’d already witnessed, had already caused. Was Daniel a sacrifice? Was that sacrifice designed to lead the castaways to create a universe where Daniel doesn’t die, where he has the musician’s life he wanted? Do Desmond’s questions threaten the stability of what she and Widmore have perhaps, somehow, engineered or at the least benefitted from?

Or is there a nobler, less selfish purpose? And has she actively caused all of this? Or is she simply somehow aware of the ‘violation’ that Desmond is committing? If so, how?

ELOISE: “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 wanted more than anything–my husband’s approval.”
DESMOND: “How do you know what I want?”
Hilarious Eloise Delivery: “Because I bloody do!”

• Again: HOW does she know what Desmond wants? And how does she know/why does she think that Widmore’s approval is what Desmond wanted more than anything? Because that’s what truly motivated Desmond’s race? A desire to be wanted, embraced, by a father figure?

“By recognizing me, the loving authority of the father enables me to be.” That’s what Freud thought, to bring the conversation back toward him for a moment, and it’s a kind of riffing on the ideas of Others and Othering, of the Hegelian dynamic that was so emphasized and underlined in Lost’s first three seasons, and which continues to be emphasized. Desmond set sail to prove his worth to Widmore, not Penny. He needed Widmore’s approval, precisely because Desmond had no sense of being without it. He had Penny, love, a roof over his head and food in his belly. But without the validation of Widmore, those things didn’t seem to matter – not ultimately.

Daniel: “As soon as I saw her, right, right in that moment, it was like, it was like I already loved her.”

• That love apparently allowed Daniel’s sense of self – his consciousness – to push through the barrier that separates his mind from what could be called Oceanic feeling, and could also more scientifically be called an awareness of “Quantum Worlds.” Lost appears to believe in Romaine Rolland’s idea of the Oceanic, but they’ve tempered Rolland’s conception with a scientific means of plausibility – a connection of consciousness through scientific means and explained via scientific concepts.

STILL-MORE HAPPILY AND EVER AFTER AFTER THE PAGEBREAK!

Happily Ever After (S6, Ep. 11)

Charlie: “Have you ever been in love?”
Desmond: “Thousands of times.”
Charlie: “That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about spectacular, consciousness-altering love. Do you know what that looks like?”

“I understand by that—quite independently of all dogma, of all Credo, of every Church organization, of every Holy Book, of all hope in a personal survival, etc.—the simple and direct fact of the sensation of the “eternal” which may very well not be eternal, but simply without perceptible limits, and in that way Oceanic…In this sense I can say that I am profoundly “religious”— without this constant state (like an underground bed of water which I feel surfacing under the bark) in any way harming my critical faculties and my freedom to exercise them—even if against the immediacy of this internal experience. Thus I carry on simultaneously, freely and smoothly, a “religious” life (in the sense of this prolonged sensation) and a life of critical reason (which is without illusion). . . .the sensation that I feel is thrust upon me as a fact. It is a contact. – Romain Rolland, Letter to Sigmund Freud, December 5, 1927

Becoming “conscious” has been a running theme of Lost from the beginning and it’s the major underlining theme of Happily Ever After, an episode that affirms the show’s call to awakening, to the search for “good being,” to the struggle toward convergence and Oceanic reunion in at least two senses of the term. I talked at length about community, communication and communion on an interpersonal level in last week’s column for The Package. This week those themes go “cosmic,” in both the spiritual and the scientific sense.

This week, some things are seemingly disproven (bye-bye, Second Snake Theory!…?) while others are seemingly clarified (Hello “Love Snake” Theory!). The entire episode feels overstuffed with detail, potential portent, and maybe-significant minutia. Writing these columns seems to get harder and more time consuming each week, either because I’m feeling compelled to pack more in as we near the end (likely) or because the show itself is packing more in as we approach our final destination (even more likely). But before we dive into Happily Ever After and its mélange of science and faith, philosophy and psychology and mysticism, let’s tackle one thing straight off the bat:

I’m an unabashed romantic – the kind of guy who thinks The Fountain is a profound meditation on grief and death, not a just a weird indie flick with a tree in a space-bubble and Hugh Jackman doing Tai Chi in Space-Silhouette (although it is that too). I loved The Constant, got a little verklempt when Juliet bit it, and am generally a big fat target upon which Lost can rain down its shameless sincerity. Happily Ever After was no exception. I know that some of you aren’t big Desmond fans, so all of the above probably falls on deaf ears (or, I guess, blind eyes, given that you’re reading this). But I’ll be honest: I loved this episode. I enjoy the questing confusion of all the Desmond-centric outings, and I enjoy the big, unselfconscious emotionalism of his relationship with Penny and her f***ed up family. I respond to it, because it’s extremely well-handled, commendably written, acted and directed. There’s a fine line between emotional and schmaltzy, and Happily Ever After firmly walks the on the correct side of that line.

Thoughts:

• Sayonara, Second Snake! My season-long theory on the “meaning” of the off-Island flashes appears to have been fatally shot in the groceries. I’m not disappointed to see it seemingly obliterated – in fact, I’m excited by the fact that I appear to have been wrong. It’s sort of amazing to me that we’ve reached this point in the final season without any real clarity about what’s going on. Some kind commenters on Back to the Island have suggested that the theory may still come into play (check the comments), but I’m at a point where I’m sort of burnt out on “trying to figure out where this is going.” I’d rather enjoy where we are, and spend this column talking about that – because “where we are” is damned fascinating. But in the interest of summing things up:

Happily Ever After suggests that what we’re seeing off-Island isn’t a cleverly-hidden denouement for the show, but instead an actual separate reality of some kind. Is it a parallel universe? A parallel timeline? A “split” universe/timeline? One of many Quantum Worlds? A “false” world created by the Man in Black’s successful escape from the Island? Is it, as one of Chud’s commenters creatively intuited, a “false” world designed to entrap the Man in Black within – a kind of newer, larger Pandora’s Island, no less a prison for it?

Hell if I know.

What I do know is this: My other wacky theory, proposed during the Rewatch, seems like it may have some unexpected new teeth. I’ll get into this a little further down. But first…

• Desmond must attack Widmore with an IV stand. Which is exactly what he should do in this situation. I mean, Widmore’s responsible – directly or indirectly – for pretty much every terrible thing that’s happened to Desmond since our favorite Scot decided (on his own, without any apparent nudging from Jacob) to set sail on the Elizabeth, Libby’s husband’s boat.

Widmore: “I can’t take you back. The Island isn’t done with you yet.”

• People like Widmore, Ben and Locke have been referring to what the Island “wants” and/or “needs” throughout the run of this show. Is the Island itself sentient in some way? Is it, as I’d previously theorized, similar to the planet Solaris of Stanislaw Lem’s novel of the same name? Or are these references to the Island the equivalent of invoking the will of “God”? How does Widmore presume to know the Island’s will, and what does that presumption indicate about him? Is he a “corrupt priest” in the same way that Ben was? Is he justifying self-interest by invoking divine guidance? It’s entirely unclear, but it’s going to become clear, and I’m going to enjoy the resonance either way, because the metaphor of Other-as-priest/congregation is so strong and enjoyable to me.

Zoe: “Charles, that test isn’t scheduled until tomorrow.”
Widmore: “I know when it’s scheduled. Get them ready now.”

• With those words, Science comes rocketing back into the narrative. Welcome back, science (albeit science of the kooky, theoretical kind)! We missed you.

• I assume that Widmore bumps the timeframe up because of Anti-Locke’s visit to Hydra Island.

• I love the weird pale box that houses Widmore’s EM equipment. One of Chud’s commenters remarked that he was expecting a Velociraptor to pop out of it, which was exactly what I thought when I saw it. And speaking of Velociraptors – did you know that there’s one stalking Michael Buble?

Widmore’s boot-licking lackey: “You don’t have any metal on you do you? Keys? Change?”
Widmore: “Of course he doesn’t, you idiot. I hate to resort to forcing this upon you, Desmond. But once it’s over I’m going to ask you to make a sacrifice. And I hope for all our sakes you’ll help me.”
Desmond: “Sacrifice? What the bloody Hell do you know about sacrifice?”
Widmore: “My son died here. For the sake of this island. Your wife – my own daughter – hates me. And I’ve never even met my grandson. But if you won’t help me, Desmond, all of it will be for nothing. Penny, your son, and everyone else, will be gone forever.”

“Never do I hesitate to look squarely at the unexpected face that every passing hour unveils to us, and to sacrifice the false images of it formed in advance, however dear they may be. In me, the love of life in general predominates over love of my own life (that, indeed, would never have sufficed to bear me up). May life herself speak! However inadequate I may be in listening to her, and in repeating her words, I shall try to record them, even if they contradict my most secret desires. In all that I write, may her will, not mine, be done!” – Romain Rolland

• Sacrifice; that’s another word deeply associated with this show. Dogen and Juliet sacrificed their happiness for the health of a loved one. Locke needed to sacrifice his father to ascend to leader of the Others. Boone “was the sacrifice that the Island demanded.” When Locke questioned Christian about dying, he was told “that’s why they call it a sacrifice.”

In other words, the show is littered in sacrifice, and that’s clearly intentional. In Happily Ever After, it appears as though there are multiple potential sacrifices at play, at odds with each other. I’ll get into these throughout the column. Two things to note here: Desmond’s sacrifice will likely be one that involves choosing “The Greater Good” (to use one of Lost’s own episode titles), and will serve to reaffirm life in the face of death (remember that the symbol Jacob used to deliver the candidate names was an ankh – the Egyptian symbol for life) in the same way that Romain Rolland describes so poetically above, but on what appears to be a “cosmic” scale. Like Dogen and Juliet, I suspect that Desmond will choose to sacrifice his own happiness in one “reality” in order to ensure the greater happiness of all – and he’ll do this because he’s now realized that if he should die another “version” of him is guaranteed to end up with the woman he loves, because he’s experienced it. He’ll choose Life with a capital-L over his own life.

• Also worth noting: This is twice that Widmore refers to life as the castaways know it “ceasing to be” or, as here, “gone forever.” It feels more and more likely that the Man in Black’s successful escape will erase at least one timeline – and perhaps all of them.

Widmore: “That man is the only person I’m aware of, in the world, who has survived a catastrophic electromagnetic event, I need to know that he can do it again, or we all die.”

• How does Widmore know that Desmond’s survived a catastrophic electromagnetic event? Based on the evidence of his consciousness jumps? Through Daniel?

• And just why is it that Widmore needs Desmond to survive such an event? Is he planning to ask Desmond to enter one of the energy pockets on the Island? That makes sense, given his interest in those pockets.

• I loved Desmond’s “Dr. Manhattan Island” scene (if you’ve seen/read Watchmen, you’ll know what I’m talking about). Widmore willingly sacrifices Desmond without any apparent hesitation, having no apparent qualms about killing his son-in-law. Again, assuming that Widmore is not simply self-interested, this underlines the notion of individual sacrifice for the greater good.

• With all this talk about, and all of these references to, consciousness, suddenly the name of Oceanic Airlines makes total, incredibly-cool sense. This realization hit me like a Dharma-brick in the face as my wife and I watched the episode on Tuesday, and got me very excited because it promises religious, scientific and philosophical explanations (depending on your chosen POV) for what happens to Desmond’s consciousness in this episode (and potentially in his past “flashes” as well). Have you heard the term “Oceanic feeling”? It’s been discussed in relation to this show before, and I was so struck by my epiphany that I did something I never do – I read Jeff Jensen’s Wednesday recap column last night after I’d finished putting this together, scanning it for references to “Oceanic feeling.” Sure enough, Jensen touches on it (which is always, selfishly, a little disappointing – it’s fun to think you’ve stumbled on something that the authors you enjoy may not have discussed), but that’s no reason not to talk about it – especially when it seems so obviously and incredibly important to the themes of consciousness running throughout this season and this episode, and ESPECIALLY because, while the estimable Mr. Jensen has name-checked the concept, he’s arguably skipped over the meat in favor of a quick mention.

• So let’s talk about this, because Romain Rolland’s concept (the term did not originate with Freud, although Freud “popularized” it in his book, Civilization and its Discontents) suddenly seems like a/the lynchpin of the season.

“Oceanic feeling” refers to a mental state in which an individual’s consciousness expands and appears to connect with something vast and profound, experiencing a feeling that has often been associated with religion and spirituality, but which Sigmund Freud (Psychologist, Cigar-enthusiast, and time-traveling companion of Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan) felt was more accurately associated with infancy (big surprise there). Freud was openly skeptical and unconvinced that this Oceanic feeling could conclusively be considered the “source of religious needs.” Despite his skepticism toward the idea however, he had tremendous respect for the man who coined the term and who originally conveyed the idea to him in a letter – Romain Rolland, French philosopher, artist and “mystic.”

It seems to me on the basis of tonight’s episode that Lost is less interested in the details of Freud’s skepticism, and much more interested in Rolland’s claim of the experience as a fact. It’s the experience of Oceanic feeling that Desmond seems to connect with on a cosmic level throughout the episode – a communication and communion (see? These themes keep resurfacing) with a plane of reality that changes Desmond profoundly and renders him willing (but willing to do what exactly?).

What I like about the notion of Oceanic feeling as Rolland describes it in general, and especially as it applies to Lost, is that while the feeling can have religious/mystical connotations, Rolland himself observes that he is conscious of the separation between that feeling of universality and rational thought. The concept, as offered by Freud’s pen pal, presents a “spiritual” experience that can exist alongside science – and in Lost’s fictional universe, may ultimately be (at least partially) explainable through science – namely, the idea of Quantum Worlds or, at the least, of “split” timelines. The Oceanic feeling as experienced by Desmond also highlights another of Lost’s major thematic preoccuptations: “good being,” in which a person confronts himself (in a manner reminiscent of the confrontation between the self and the “Other” as described by folks like Sartre) and, by discovering who he is not, is free to discover who he really is. If you’ve been reading along with these columns, I hope the above concepts make sense (or are starting to make sense) to you. If not, may I recommend you read the Rewatch Column for One of Them, as well as the Too Much Information column on “Good Being”?

The implications of this on a thematic/metaphorical level are enormous. Recall again Salman Rushdie’s “Haroun and the Sea of Stories,” which talked about the Sea as a place where all creativity and possibility are born, and which described that sea as a tapestry with interwoven threads of story (like timelines/universe).  Recall that the Island is surrounded by an ocean, and that the ocean is the symbol for Rolland’s notion of the Oceanic feeling. Does the Island then function as a “cork” in the world’s consciousness? Is the sea that surrounds the Island metaphorically meant to represent the “sea” of humanity, the ocean of global consciousness? Remember that Solaris, which I’ve theorized in past might share similarities with the Island, was a vast “conscious” ocean.

• What is it that dissolves the boundary between the self and the other (or “Other”) allowing humanity to reach a state of Oceanic feeling, according to the correspondence of Freud and Rolland, and according to many of the world’s religions (including, notably, Buddhism – the Dharma Initiative’s major “spiritual” inspiration)? What emotional state allows us to pull a Jim Morrison and Break on through to the Other(s) side, achieving a unity (a convergence, if you will) with your self and the Ocean of human consciousness, as well as a kind of intensively personal “reflective” experience? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count. More on this just a little further down.

• Once again, Hurley sends another character off in the right direction with a casual manner that belies a quiet confidence. Are these “helpful Hurley” incidents indicative of a Jacob-esque purpose in the off-Island universe? And can we really get to the end of this show without having to watch Hurley die? I sure hope so.

Desmond: “Bet it’s a boy.”

• Actually, Des, you know it’s a boy. You just don’t know that you know. At least, that’s my theory. Much more on this below.

• George Minkowski returns to the show as a Limo Driver (quite a change in careers for the man, or so it seems) responsible for getting Desmond where he needs to go. It’s nice to see Fischer Stevens back on the show (I regret that the writers strike cut the freighter storyline short), but I don’t have much to say about him – with one exception. I’ll talk about this at the end of the column.

• I’m sure you all noticed the painting of a scale in Widmore’s office – the black and white stones equally balanced. What’s it mean, if anything? Impossible to tell at this point, but remember that in Egyptian myth the scale was used to weight the worth of the human heart against the purity of a feather. Does a world in balance suggest a world in peace? Are the two “universes” we’ve watched this season symbolized by these stones? Are they themselves beginning to come unbalanced? Are we watching a kind of Dark Tower riff, in which threats to the Island result in a “weakening” of reality, threatening existence itself?

• Desmond finally gets a taste of a 60 year-old MacCutcheon’s. Great. Now I’m craving some good liquor that costs more than I make in a month.

• I’m sure all of you noticed the model of a sailboat in Widmore’s office. I’d write more about this, but what is there to say? Hey, look! Sailboat!

Widmore: “…My wife is putting together one of her charity events and uh, the boy had a crazy idea to combine classical music with modern rock. You heard of a band called Driveshaft?”

• The combination of classical music with modern rock isn’t exactly innovative – check out Silverchair’s most excellent song, “Across the Night,” for a terrific example of how this fusion can really work.

Aside from that quibble, it seems to me that this “fusion” concept hints significantly at a similar fusing of consciousnesses and of realities – something I began discussing in Season 4 of the Rewatch, and especially during the episode “The Variable” (another Desmond-centric installment). I’ll talk more about this a little further down as well.

MORE HAPPILY EVER AFTER AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!