Namaste!

Hello Everyone and welcome to my blog. I have been obsessed with Lost for quite some time now and thought it was only appropriate to just start my very own blog about it instead of relying on others!

So, since it's late in the game I'll just do a quick recap of the episodes so far (which you can go click through on the archives.) My plan for this blog is to watch the episode, jot down the major themes I notice throughout, recap them here, and then add my theories, predictions, and connections these theories have to the past to help everyone remember anything important they may have forgotten. (Since I'm a huge nerd.)

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Episode 5 -- The Constant

This one was certainly a doozey! ... One of the best episodes of the series I think, and certainly more of a "game changer" than the Season 3 finale (I think). This one will have to be a bit different since the time travel thing made things a bit more confusing.

Helicopter, 2004: Desmond gets disoriented and wakes up in the Royal Scots Regiment in 1996, when he jumps back he doesn't remember where he is or who anyone is, including Sayid, but sees his picture of Penny and calms down.

Freighter, 2004: new guy named Keamy who sort of looks like a murderer, tells Frank he shouldn't have brought them there.

Military Base, 1996: Des goes to call Penny after remembering her picture from 2004.

Freighter, 2004: In the sick bay Sayid and Des meet a man who is strapped down to a bed and says, "You have it, too."

Beach, 2004: Daniel tells Jack and Juliet that their perception of time on the island is different than time experienced off the island and that if Frank doesn't stick to the bearings he gave him there could be "side effects."

Freighter, 2004: Sayid notices that they left at dusk, but now it's midday. He trades Frank his gun for the phone and calls Jack to tell him what's going on. Daniel asks if Des was exposed to radiation or electromagnetic energy. The doctor examines Des.

Phone booth, 1996: Penny doesn't want to talk to Des.

Freighter, 2004: Des tells Daniel it's 1996 and he's supposed to be on the base. Daniel tells Des to take the train to Oxford and find his 1996 self.

Oxford, 1996: After some convincing, Des gets Daniel to believe what he says. It took the statement, "I know about Eloise," to do it. Daniel says you can't change the future. Daniel doesn't protect his head from the radiation (foreshadowing?). He says your consciousness travels to the future.

Freighter, 2004: The guy in bed is the infamous Minkowski, former communications office. He tells Des that Penny used to call sometimes and they were forbidden to answer (by her dad, perhaps?)

Daniel's office, 1996: Eloise (the mouse) died because her brain short circuited from time traveling and now having a constant to help her differentiate between past, present, and future. Daniel doesn't know if this will happen to Des, but suggests he find himself a constant.

Freighter, 2004: Des realizes he has to call Penny and make her his constant. Someone left the door open in the sick bay, to which Minkowski says, "you must have a friend on this boat."

Auction Hall, 1996: Charles Widmore bids on the journal from the Black Rock! What?! He later gives Des Penny's new address.

Freighter, 2004: Minkowski says the time travel started when he and his friend Brandon were bored and started heading for the island. Now Brandon is dead, after having the same thing happen to him. Minkowski jumps out, starts to regain consciousness, and dies saying, "I can't get back."

Penny's flat, 1996: Des convinces Penny to let him in, and tells her she has to give him her phone number because he needs to call her in 8 years. Finally she does so.

Freighter, 2004: Desmond remembers Penny's phone number, Sayid, of course, fixes the phone because he's badass that way, and Des calls her. She answers and they have their tear inducing conversation in which Des tells her he's been on an island (he remembers where he is! ). She says she knows about it island and has been looking for him for 3 years. Des thanks Sayid, who he know remembers, as well.

Beach, 2004: Daniel flips through his journal to find a page that says, "If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume is my constant."

I don't even know where to start with this episode. I thought it was huge! The time travel introduces an entirely new aspect to everything we've seen so far and all that is to come. For me, it gave me the idea that perhaps Ben has time traveled and is, in fact, his own man on the boat.

The fact that Hanso's family owned the Black Rock is also important, as is Widmore's connection to it. Are Penny and her dad warring over finding the island first? Does Charles Widmore know that Desmond is there? When Daniel was picked to go to the island did he remember his meeting with Desmond from 1996 and know that he would be there?

Now, this is my theory of why Ben might be his own man on the boat:

BEN is Ben's Man on the Boat!

1. People time travel (so that means it could happen to anyone)
2. Time traveling appears to be a "side-effect" of coming and going from the island (it seems to be the case that Ben has left the island because of his passports, etc, but even if he hasn't, he came to the island when he was a child. Could the time travel have started for him then. Is that why he decided to join with the others?)
3. If Ben has/does time travel he could have found out about the people on the boat a long time ago and, thus, would have known for quite some time who they are and what they were planning to do.
4. If that is the case, it would follow that he would do everything in his power to stop them from coming, i.e. blocking transmissions, etc.
5. It would also make sense that he knows about things in the future beyond the boat people arriving, and his exploits with Sayid are also attempts to stop things from happening in the future (or at least stave them off, since it is not possible to change the future.)

(Aside: The sometimes mentioned idea of "saving the world" that the DHARMA people talked about could have been related to figuring out a way to change the future)

6. If Ben has known bits and pieces of the future, he may have known that Jack would arrive to operate on him. He may have known that Locke would blow up the submarine, making it a safe bet for him to make such a deal with Jack in the first place (knowing that he wouldn't be able to get off the island in the sub anyway.)
7. He knows enough about the future to not mind biding his time being dragged around with Locke and beat up once in a while.

1 comment:

Conolly's brother said...

the island is/or on the edge of a wormhole! ya, i don't know exactly what that means...but im confident thats the answer.