Happily Ever After

Highlights:

Widmore Dr. Manhattan's Desmond into the airport after 815 lands.

He meets Claire, gets in a Limo driven by Minkowski, and meets up with his boss, Charles Widmore.

The two of them are chummy, and share a shot of that famous Whiskey.

He picks up Charlie as a favor to Mrs. Widmore, and Charlie rambles on about seeing a vision of love. He describes Claire in the moment of almost dying. He then grabs Desmond's wheel and forces their car into the water.


Desmond saves Charlie, but only after he pounds his hand on the window. Desmond gets a vision of "Not Penny's Boat", and then wakes up in the hospital.

He asks to see Charlie, but is put in an MRI machine due to his fucked-up time travel-ridden brain. He has several visions of Penny and their life together, and finds Charlie to ask about her.

Charlie acknowledges that Desmond has seen what he was talking about earlier, and that he needs to find Penny. He runs away.

Desmond goes to the Widmore household to apologize for Charlie, and Eloise is married to Charles!

She says Charlie was supposed to play with her son, but she is not mad. Desmond hears Penny's name on the list, and Eloise freaks out. She tells him not to pursue whatever he is looking for because he is not ready.

Defeated, Desmond begins to leave until he is approached by.....

God, it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes.
Lord, I miss Daniel. Oh, I miss him so much
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal?
Your eyes have died, but you see more than I.
Daniel, you're a star in the face of the sky.

Yes, it is Daniel. Widmore, though, not Faraday, in this universe. And those are legit Elton John lyrics, people. The rest of the lyrics talk about him leaving on a plane... too bad he was on the freighter or it would have been creepy.

Daniel tells him that he had a dream about Charlotte in the same way Charlie did about Claire. He also shows him an equation he wrote after he dreamed about it. He tells him he is not a physicist. He tells Desmond that he has a feeling they all lived different lives and changed it by setting off a bomb.


He then tells Desmond that Penny is his half sister, and tells him where to meet her.

Desmond finds her at that Fateful Stadium as she works out, and invites her for a coffee. She says yes.

He flashes back to the island. Widmore explains they had to see if he could survive another Electromagnetic Anomaly in order to save everyone from "hell". Desmond tells Widmore he is compliant, and follows Zoe to who-knows-where.

Sayid kills a henchman and tells Zoe to run. He tells Desmond there isn't much time and to come with him.

In a daze, Desmond does as he is told.

He flashes back and asks Minkowski for a list of the plane's manifest.

Special/Key Moments:

Daniel!!!

Eloise!!!

Minkowski!!!

Did you notice the painting on Widmore's wall of a scale with a white stone and a black stone? I did.

Eloise tells Desmond that he has everything he wants: Widmore's approval, a good job, a purpose. Then she quotes her son and says Whatever Happens, Happens. She says that whatever he thinks he is doing or looking for, that he should stop. She says that what he is doing, this knowledge, is a violation. She still knows something, but I don't know what it is. And I don't know how.

I liked that Widmore's machine and box looked a lot like the opening scene of Jurassic Park. "Shoot her!"

The graphics of Desmond in the box were very Watchmen.

I like that Jack is always in the background of every hospital scene, just another day at the office.


I liked Charlie's purpose in this episode, but I still don't like him. He is annoying as hell.

I liked seeing Penny work out. It wasn't very believable, but then again I work out and I'm not necessarily in shape either.


Theories/ Questions/ Speculations:

Penny has a different last name. It seems that Daniel and her have switched places. Is she the estranged child, the Claire to Christian, as Daniel is the Jack to Widmore?

How powerful is Eloise? She knows everything.... both in the original time line when she helps Ben and friends get back to the island, when she is in Desmond's temporal displacement episodes, and also now in the Flash Sideways universe. Is she some sort of gatekeeper of time and space? Is she the Oracle from the Matrix? It wouldn't surprise me if she said something like "What's really gonna cook your noodle, is would you have done anything if I hadn't said anything about the vase?" Or something like that.


Widmore asks Desmond to help him, and ultimately make a sacrifice. Desmond asks Widmore what he knows about sacrifice. Widmore retorts with the fact that his own daughter hates him, he hasn't seen his grandchild, and let his own son die for the sake of the island. It makes me wonder if he knew about Desmond all along through Eloise and Faraday's journal. It makes me wonder if he pushed him away and tried to buy him off to make him try that much harder to win his approval. I think he set up that race just for Desmond, I think he made all of this conflict himself so that Desmond would be in this place, this state of mind, and be physically and temporally perfect for what he needs done on the island.

But what is that, exactly? Does Desmond need to be able to withstand an electromagnetic blast so powerful it will wipe out and eventually kill the Smoke Monster? Will he be the kamakasi pilot for the epic ending battle scene of this series? Or does Widmore know even more about Desmond's temporal abilities, and needs him to help the people in the flash sideways collide with the memories of their former selves on the island? Maybe it is both? I have no idea, really.

And when Desmond tells Claire that he bets her baby is a boy, is it because he still has his memories from the island, but isn't sure why? Or is it part of his visions that he had in season 3? Or is it that Desmond just has a little bit of clairvoyance that is exaggerated by his encounters on the island?

Charlie describes seeing Claire when almost dying. Desmond sees "Not Penny's Boat" when almost drowning, but gets visions of Penny when in the MRI machine. Daniel then tells Desmond that he felt he already knew Charlotte just after looking at her. Does having a near-death-experience make your memory of the island more vivid? It is clear that Jack and Sun have seen something in their reflections, if not physical evidence of another "them".

Jorge Garcia argued that being near death causes the two worlds to collide more heavily in his podcast. He said that when Juliet is about to die (for the second time, ugh), she talks to Sawyer about going out for coffee. She says that they can go dutch, and speaks to him as if they have just met. Is this evidence of the flash sideways world coming together with her consciousness? When her ghost spoke to Miles and said "It worked", was that her speaking from the flash sideways worl, seeing the alternate universe with her very eyes? I believe that it is. I believe that the island is catching up more rapidly now, and everyone is feeling the effects.

On a similar note, this reminds me a lot of a movie called The Jacket starring the very underrated Adrien Brody. He travels back in time, much like Desmond, although it only happens when he is put in a straight jacket in a morgue cabinet. He is in an insane asylum and is undergoing some experimental treatment. Jack meets his doctors and love interest when they are much younger, and tries to solve his own death. He gets enough evidence, but realizes when he slips on some ice, that his death was an accident and not from foul play. His last request is to be put into the morgue cabinet in the Jacket, so he can go back in time via temporal displacement. He wakes up in an alternate universe that he helped create after his present-self dies. He lives on in this alternate reality where he helped his love interest follow her dreams and keep her mother alive. He continues to live this life as if nothing ever happened.


I think that this is what will happen at the end of LOST. I think that the sacrifice Widmore is asking him to make is the ultimate sacrifice of his own life. I think that he realizes that he can escape into this new life after meeting Penny and Daniel, and that is why he is so compliant upon his return. When this happens, don't let me say I Told You So.