Daniel has returned to the island in 1977 - that is, the Daniel we know, who lost his love Charlotte, and understands better than most the possibilities and limitations of time travel. Nonetheless, he has a daring plan - do something that will prevent "the incident" that made the "Hatch" a necessity, which in turn will allow Flight 815 not to fall out of the sky, and instead make it safely to L.A.
Kate and Jack agree to help him - a good thing, too, because Hurley or Miles might have known enough to stop Daniel, if they had had any time to think about it. If Daniel had succeeded in changing the past, that would mean that Kate and Jack and all Losties would never have been on the island in the first place. So Kate and Jack are supporting Daniel in his plan without realizing the consequences.
But of course Daniel's plan can't succeed - because, if it did, then we would suddenly be shifted to a completely different story, off the island, in which Kate would probably be in prison and Jack would be practicing medicine in Los Angles. So the only real question is, what would stop Daniel?
The solution is heartbreaking but elegant. Daniel needs the help of his mother, Eloise, young and on the island with the hostiles in 1977. Eloise, as we know, is Ms. Hawking (and it turns out, as many viewers also have guessed, Charles Widmore is his father). Daniel waves a gun to Richard, who tells him Eloise isn't there, but a shot rings out and Daniel is killed - a shot fired by Eloise.
With his last breath, Daniel asks Eloise how she could have sent him, her son, back to the island, knowing that she as her younger self would kill him in 1977? The younger Eloise of course has no answer, because she could at that point in her life have had no knowledge of what the adult Daniel looked and sounded like.
But from that moment on, she will carry the memory of having killed a man who said he was her son. And she soon enough will realize that that wild man on island was indeed her son. So, why, as Daniel asked, did she get him to go back?
The only answer is that making or keeping things in the island the way she thought those things should be was more important to her than her son's life. Cold, cold, indeed.
By the way, there's nothing paradoxical in this result - as there would have been if, say, Daniel had been the one who killed his mother, before she conceived him. That event would have thrown Lost right into the teeth of the perennial grandfather/grandmother paradox, which can just as effectively occur if the time traveler does something to prevent his mother from being his mother.
But the coming attractions, if I saw them correctly, seem to be showing Jack now trying to do what Daniel Faraday was trying to do - stop the events which led to 815 crashing - and that would lead to paradox about as profound as it gets...
Two other points -
1. Daniel may not be dead, which would make Eloise not as cold as I said above. After all, young Ben survived his wound in healing Hostile hands...
2. I would've have liked to have seen a little more about what Daniel did and learned in Ann Arbor...
==============
PS ... did you see the little flashes in the commercials, with the tag "What did you see?" Keep staying tuned - those are little previews of my friend Rob Sawyer's "Flash Forward," which will likely be following Lost on ABC next season...
10-min podcast review of Lost 5.14
More Lost - see : The Richard-Locke Compass Time Travel Loop ...
and Lost Returns in 5 Dimensions and 5.3: The Loops, The Bomb ... 5.4: A Saving Skip Back in Time ... 5.5 Two Time Loops and Mind Benders ... 5.6 A Lot of Questions ... 5.7 Bentham and Ben ... 5.8 True Love Ways ... 5.9 Two Times and a Baby ... 5.10 The Impossible Cannot Happen ... 5.11 Clockwork Perfect Time Travel ... 5.12: Ben v. Charles, and Locke' Slave ... 5.13: Lost Meets Star Wars and the Sixth Sense ... The Problem with Baby Aaron and the Return of the Oceanic Six
The Plot to Save Socrates
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
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more about The Plot to Save Socrates...
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7 comments:
So, does it mean that there are no real "variables" after all? Or, rather, they have no decisive influence whatsoever in the outcome of things? Nothing can be changed? Great episode; I just hope Dan isn´t dead.
Now, why do you think there was so much emphasis on the Wired magazine on Dan´s place?
Now, I'm thinking that the Losties will definitely try to follow Daniel's plan, which is probably the "Incident" that required the button to be pressed. What do you guys say?
They seemed to have gone to great lengths to tell us nothing could be changed (Hawking to Desmond when he tried to save the guy in the store, Desmond to Charlie, regarding Charlie's death,and Daniel has said it too, although he may have waffled a bit on that!)
I don't think Jack is thinking this through, and I think either Kate will pursuade him to leave well enough alone or the Losties in the future..our current... will have a big role in stopping Jack. Of course Bernard and Rose could always show up and be heros! lol
Excellent analysis, White Bear.
Kid Entropy - I think Desmond, in concert with Faraday, could change the past to change the present. Otherwise, nothing can be changed.
nick - Yeah, I think Jack will definitely try to pick up Faraday's plan, and all that will do is indeed cause the "incident" to happen (which will confirm the timeline).
What if Richard takes Dan to the Temple and saves him? I mean, it probably wouldn´t be too difficult for jack and kate to convince young (but not 1954-young) Eloise that Dan is her soon! I feel, just like Paul does, that there are certain elements that need to be explained: more precisely, what did Dan do back in Ann Arbor, which kinds of experiments, that led him to believe things could be actually changed! Hey, maybe he even had physics and general geek discussions with Gerald and Karen DeGroot!
You know I've always wanted to see a paradox actually unfold. If String Theory is correct, then it should be possible to change past events and create a totally different future. However, this different future would be a paradoxical state only to the time travelers themselves. Everyone else would be completely unaware because they would be continuing into the future like normal, that is unless there is a delay through time. A ripple effect that Ray Bradbury suggested in A Sound of Thunder.
I mean, what if we've already seen the paradox unfold? Remember how Desmond got delayed to begin with and thus caused the incident that brought down Flight 815? Perhaps 815 crashing was the paradox? Maybe it was supposed to have never crashed? So that would make Jack's thinking curious, he thinks that he is doing something to stop it, but instead what he will do is create a larger paradox. If Flight 815 should have never crashed, then they should not be present in 1977 to begin with, so there by causing an event to happen then, could cause a destabilization of the space/time continuum so profoundly that a more devastating event will occur later? Or, the point was for them to try and stop their own crash. Did I sound like Doc Brown there for a minute?
I think the next 3 episodes are going to be very interesting. More than likely this is the "incident" we have heard the doctor speak off in the tapes, but maybe it isn't? We'll find out in 3 weeks.
Just don't get anzy and press any buttons in the meantime, especially the one on your TV on Wednesday night!
Time Travel... Don't ya just love it!!! My head REALLY hurts now!!!
I'm also sure that Jack will actually cause the incident in attempting to stop it... I'm also really curious to know what Eloise's true reasons were for sending her son back???
And... Why, if Widmore has close connections with Eloise and has always had a desire to return, has he never gone back to the Island himself??? He did tell Ben that the island 'wouldn't let him (Ben) return'... Why??? And why hasn't he tried after hearing about Ben's return???
And when will we ever get any explanations for Richard Alpert??? And, did Richard & Daniel ever meet, as Daniel seemed to recognise him before being shot???
Too many questions as always!!!
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