Hapily Ever After

I don’t have the words to express the way I feel about this episode. Desmond ALWAYS brings it. And LOST…it has been brought! I just keep sputtering. I am going to take a walk, have some juice, collect my thoughts and then try to engage in an intelligent conversation about this episode. Right now, words fail me.

Summary

Episodes like Happily Ever After is precisely why this show is, in my words, off the chain. Epic at times. Am I over stating it? Maybe. But let me tell you why. Desmond’s presence in this series was genius. He is the hero without always seeing the “costume”. Jack, good guy, it’s clear. It’s overt. But Desmond part in this has always been the dark horse. His previous episode, The Constant, was a turning point into the timeline and fate vs. destiny arch of the show. And here again, at the end, we see the pieces coming together. Chills when Charlie transforms to a different place and time and shows his hand with the message “Not Penny’s boat.” Chills when Desmond asks for the manifest of the Oceanic Flight 815 and crazy stare as he says that he has to show them “something”. There’s not enough episodes for him to collect them all?!? To get them where?!? What is the significance of the timeline in relation to the island?!? AHHHH!! Let’s take this piece-by-piece and perhaps we can make it all make sense.

Connections

So many but to be expected in a Desmond episode. Many times the characters, things said and experiences overlap. George Minikowski was Desmond’s driver. George was the Communications Officer on the freighter that Charles Widmore sent to get Benjamin Linus. He began suffering the effects of time travel and eventually died because he could not get his mind and body back to the same point in time. We see a white rabbit, named Angstrom after a novelist who wrote books with Rabbit in the title and centered around themes of life, death and redemption. In the flash sideways, Charles and Eloise are married. Charles has a relationship with his son Daniel, who is now a musician. Daniel knows about Penny and Penny has a relationship with Eloise, since she was invited to the party. The luggage carousel was 4 and the numbers were on the MRI machine as well as the board at the airport. Charlie and Desmond go to Jax’s Bar. Charles freely offers Desmond his MacCutcheon scotch and says he’s worth the 60-year-old scotch, which he specifically said he wasn’t in the other timeline. There is a model of Libby’s boat that Desmond used to sail around the world in Widmore’s office. The painting in the background of Widmore’s office was of the scales, evenly balanced, with black stones on the left and white stones on the right. Eloise says, “What ever happened, happened”, to Desmond as she did in the previous timeline. Daniel says, “We need to talk,” to Desmond as he did in the previous timeline. The other connections are that Daniel remembered setting off the bomb, he had a connection with Charlotte at the museum and Charlie had a connection with Claire on the plane.

Questions

Widmore – So is he bad? I thought he was there to exploit the EM power of the island. Seems like he just wants to reset the timeline and remove the flash sideways. So if island Widmore knows that, why would he try to get Desmond to try and change it? So he doesn’t have a grandson. He has a wife, a son, a daughter. I’m not sure what is motivating island Widmore. Widmore seems to have the life he wants in the flash sideways.

Desmond – What is the sacrifice he must make? Is it that Penny lives with their son and he can never be with them? Or could it be death? Not sure what his cryptic smile meant and perhaps he knows more than Widmore thinks.

WTF – What the frick is going on?!? Although I applaud the episode for the WTF moments as well as giving us more Desmond and what seems to be answers, I am still confused as ever with all the stray pieces. Stay with me now:

The Flash Sideways are what occurred once the bomb went off. It is not the result of either Jacob not touching people or the SM getting off the island. It is happening in real time on another dimension of time. Juliet saying it worked is her being dead and seeing the Flash Sideways, the same way when Desmond was near death, he saw the current 2007 timeline which includes the island. Desmond will try to contact all the people on Oceanic 815 and they will either have to choose to live in the new timeline or exist in the other one. I don’t know if they all have to decide of just some of them? But without knowing all the details, how can you really choose? Charlie can choose to return to the other timeline and experience life with Claire, but he is dead. Is loving and losing more important then not finding her at all? How does SM and Jacob fit into this? 5 more episodes. I am holding out hope that this all will make sense.

Eloise - Who is orchestrating all this? Eloise spoke about the rules and she obviously knows about the alternate timeline and has made a choice to stay in the current one. But do the others then affect your reality if they choose to make a switch? Of course because they are all interconnected. So do you shift your life even though it could mean bad things and death for someone else? I am reminded of Doggen. If the flash sideways was his life and then he meets Jacob after the accident and is sent to the island where he eventually dies. Making the flash sideways the before and the island the after. How many times can you choose again?

Ben - At some point it seemed as though him and Widmore were on the same level. But Ben is now in the dark and Widmore has more answers. It kind of makes Ben's presence in all this irrelevant the past seasons. And that worries me because I hate to think we will get an ending that is not closely linked to the very beginning. At least the major pieces like Ben and Walt. It even seems as though we drifted from Jacob and SM's importance in this episode. So I hope they bring it all back together. Somehow!

Conclusion

The only hint for next week’s episode is that we will probably get Hurley’s flash sideways and hopefully more information about Libby. She is the one most wish to learn more about, after Richard. I am going to sit back and enjoy my final days of Spring Break. Wherever you are I hope you are relaxing too. Until next week, take care. C-ya!