Lost: They Shoot Physicists, Don’t They?

First, let me wish Lost a happy 100th (episode) birthday.  Who knew when Jack first opened his eye on the beaches of the Island that we’d be here today.  And if the first season didn’t make your head explode, keeping track of all of the time travel and paradoxes in this season will!  Boy, I bet Joop is smoking his pipe and laughing at all of us now, huh?  Ah but I’m getting ahead of myself as always.

This week is our first Daniel-centric episode, filled with flashbacks throughout his life.  We see his mother, Eloise “Ellie” Hawking, stop her young son from playing the piano so he can focus on his studies.  You see “destiny” means doing what other people make you do.  We see Daniel’s graduation from Oxford and his mother’s poor treatment of Theresa–Daniel’s lover, lab assistant, and future comatose patient.  And then we see the familiar scene of Daniel crying when he learns that Oceanic 815 (or rather the fake one) is found at the bottom of the ocean.  He is comforted by Charles Widmore (who was also Daniel’s research benefactor) and given a job to go to the Island, which as you know is where we first meet Daniel.  But as an added push, Eloise convinces Daniel that he must go to the Island so he can be healed–he ran his brain scanning experiments on himself–and continue his important research.

There’s the back story.  In 1977, Daniel steps out of the submarine.  He returned because he was surprised that Jack and the others are there . . . in fact, they shouldn’t be there and he says his mother was wrong in thinking they needed to be there.  As Jack and the other Oceanics caucus in Sawyer’s house, Daniel heads with Miles to the Orchid Station, where Daniel warns Dr. Chang about the dangerous drilling going on at the soon-to-be Swan Station.  Daniel reveals that he’s from the future and that an “incident” is going to happen in only a few hours.  Even after Daniel tells Dr. Chang that the adult Miles in front of him is his then-infant son, Dr. Chang won’t hear it and heads off.

Daniel still thinks he can stop the Swan Station and in turn stop the chain of events that led to all of them coming to the Island.  But he needs to see his mother, who (cue the trumpet music) is Ellie and part of the Hostiles.  Jack and Kate help Daniel escape from Dharmaville (after a cool shoot out and an explosion), while Sawyer and the Oceanics get into their own trouble.  Eventually, Daniel makes his way into the Hostile’s camp, demands at gunpoint to see Ellie, and then Ellie shoots him in the back.  As Daniel lies there dying, he realizes it is his mother who shot him and that she knew all along that she would do it.

Our B-storyline features Desmond and Penelope in the hospital after Ben shot him.  Eloise shows up to comfort Penelope and leaves knowing that Desmond is going to be fine.  Of course Charles Widmore greets her outside of the hospital and she is distraught because she knows what became of Daniel when he returned to the Island and she is terrified because for the first time in a long time she does not know what is coming next.  Plus she slaps Widmore for reminding her that he’s Daniel’s father.

Since Daniel tells Jack that he and the other survivors are the variables in this cosmic equation, I think the Oceanics can still change the future that Daniel could not.  Here’s my theory: Ben was not supposed to turn the frozen wheel at the end of last season.  Ben is a variable and, therefore, his actions caused a massive self-correction that required all of the time jumping so that the Oceanics would go back in time and reset the conditions that would allow Locke to arrive at the Island in 2007 (“present day Lost”).  But at the same time, Ben’s actions were pre-ordained so that the Oceanics were always back in 1977, Sayid always shot Ben, and Ellie always shot Daniel.  Only once the Oceanics have set everything in motion for the 1977 Incident, will everything be in place, they will all return to the Island in 2007, and the end game (whatever that is) can happen.  Charles, Eloise, Ben, and the Shadow Statue Clan have all been acting toward this point, which I suspect we’ll see in the final season of Lost.

In other words, everything we’ve seen so far has just been geeky sci-fi, paradox theory, mythology, prelude, for the actual story that will come in Season Six.  That or I’m totally wrong.

Season 5, Episode 14: The Variable (originally aired April 29, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out The One Where They All Turn Out to Be Related by Robin Reed.

For more on Lost, click here.

Wednesdays, 9/8c on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC