Episode 11: Happily Ever After
Desmond
Allison: Widmore takes Desmond back to the Island. Widmore tells Desmond that “the island isn’t finished with you yet.” I have a feeling that he is going to use Desmond for something where he will use Penny and Desmond Jr. as leverage.
The generator test
Jenny: Widmore wants to use Desmond as the guinea pig for the test. It looks like he’s going to travel through time.
Allison: The test made Desmond flash sideways, which I guess Widmore was testing, if the coils could change history. I guess that sacrifice that Widmore was talking about was that he would not be with Penny? Or that he will work for Widmore?
Desmond’s flash sideways
Jenny: Desmond works for Widmore, who believes that Desmond is “someone I can trust to do the job right.” Because Desmond has no family (according to Widmore—but what about Penny?), Widmore thinks that Desmond has all the time in the world to do any favor he asks of him.
Allison: Widmore asks Desmond to “babysit” Charlie, the bass player of Drive Shaft. So Desmond is not with Penny, and is not in any relationship. Desmond “babysat” Charlie when he was having vision on the island that Charlie was going to die. Charlie recounts his slide with death to Desmond and describes this woman, who he believed was his true love. Is this Claire?
The car crash
Jenny: Charlie grabs onto the steering wheel, and Desmond accidentally drives right into the water. Just like in season three, Desmond manages to escape but Charlie is trapped inside. When Desmond looks back at Charlie, Charlie holds up his hand against the window as if to say goodbye, just like he did when he wrote on his hand, “Not Penny’s boat.” This time, Desmond steps in to save him.
Allison: Right when Desmond is babysitting him, Desmond sees that he is going to die, except maybe this time Charlie is going to live?
Desmond in the hospital
Allison: Desmond has more hallucinations during his MRI, his son now has some crazy desire to see Charlie. He sees Jack, who remembers him.
Jenny: I’m sort of confused right now. Why is it that only Desmond is able to make the connections between his island life and the alternate reality? He can recall events that happened on the island. And why is it that he knows about Penny and his son, but no one else does? And while I’m thinking of questions, why can Jack and Desmond recognize that they met on the plane, but other survivors bump into each other but never notice they were on flight 815 together.
Allison: I think that because Desmond has already dealt with some explosion of electromagnitivity he is reacting different than others, I’m wondering why Charlie knows so much about Penny.
Mrs. Widmore
Allison: THAT is Eloise, Daniel Faraday’s mother and a genius of the island. She was one of the Others with Charles until he was banned from the island. In the rest of the show he’s been Daniel Faraday, and she was always Eloise Hawking, but now I guess that they are Widmores?
Back to the test
Jenny: Desmond was only out for a few seconds. Was he being brainwashed during that time? Now, he’s up for doing anything Widmore wants.
Allison: He also just gets up and walks away with Sayid. Weird.
Desmond and Penny
Allison: Daniel is describing his love at first sight to Charlotte, the woman on the island, in this reality he is not a physicist, but a musician. He is confused because he doesn’t think he should be living this life, and he thinks that Desmond is as well.
Jenny: Daniel and Desmond are in love with people they haven’t met. At least the women they love are the same as the ones they loved on the island.
Desmond meets Penny when she’s running in a stadium–where have we seen a stadium stair-running scene like this before?
Allison: Last season, when Faraday and the whole Island were flying through time and people were dying, he said they had to make a connection with someone. Desmond was dying, because he had the most common symptom, a nose bleed. He made a connection which was, in that case, Penny in order to stop flying through time. The connection he made then was with a simple phone call. In this episode, Desmond made the connection with Penny, through a handshake, a connection he apparently wasn’t supposed to make, according to Eloise. This connection stopped his flash sideways and he returned to the island.
Desmond:
Allison: I think Desmond will be the person who connects the flash sideways to the present.
Jenny: Desmond is a constant who doesn’t really change when switching between the timelines. In season four, Daniel wrote in his journal, “If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.” I just wish I could figure out what exactly that role meant. I guess everyone needs a constant to connect themselves from their alternate reality back to the island?
Jenny Hottle can be reached for comment at [email protected]
Allison Walczyk cna be reached for comment at [email protected]