LOST: The Equation

One of last season's best episodes was "The Constant", featuring the character of Desmond Hume. I guess it's only fitting that the best episode of the season so far is "The Variable", featuring Daniel Faraday, who we learn is Desmond's (half) brother-in-law (we don't know who Penny's mother is, so I'm guessing that Daniel and Penny are only half-siblings). "The Variable" sets up the last three episodes of Season 5, potentially sets up a new spin on time travel in the LOSTverse, and reinforces the dichotomy between destiny and free will by both showing us a character who has converted from a believer in destiny to a believer in free will, if only because it will help bring back his lost love, and a character who believes in destiny so strongly that she is willing to sacrifice something very precious to her for the sake of her beliefs.

Daniel's return at the end of "Some Like It Hoth" was an event I had been looking forward to since Sawyer told Jack that Daniel had left the DHARMA Initiative. Of the three new regulars introduced in Season 4, he was by far my favorite, and I have been looking forward to a Daniel episode ever since his notebook revealed that Desmond would be his constant in "The Constant". Although not all our questions about Daniel have been answered (what was he doing in Ann Arbor?), his first full (and probably last) flashback episode certainly shed a lot of light on him, even when some answers about his past were purposely kept vague (my theory on why he was crying about the remains of Oceanic 815: his mind had been warped by his experiments, and his future consciousness was telling him to be sad because he would become friends with the passengers, but his present consciousness didn't know they were actually alive).

His return to the Island was marked by a very different outlook on the time-displaced characters' ability to alter the timeline. In the beginning of the season, he established the idea that they were helpless to change anything, because anything they do in the past is what already happened (I don't know why, but I find this so easy to grasp, but I am almost incapable of explaining it). However, he now believes that he can change the events of the Island to prevent Oceanic 815 from crashing. Why does he want to do this? To save the life of Charlotte Lewis. Personally, I really hope that this isn't the case; I don't personally believe in destiny, but at the same time (1) I think that if time travel were real, this is how it would work (the past is the way it is, and if someone were to go back in time, it is not as if they are creating a new timeline in which they appear in the past, which is distinct from the "original" timeline in which they didn't appear; they ALWAYS showed up in the past), and (2) so far on the show, various things have come to pass BECAUSE the characters tried to alter history. When Sayid and Jack tried to prevent young Ben from growing up into evil adult Ben, they caused a chain reaction that directly created evil Ben. And Daniel did exactly what he swore he wouldn't do; he told young Charlotte to leave the island and never return in an effort to save her life. Never mind that his warning was the VERY REASON she chose to return.

And then there was Daniel's fate. He died in an effort to alter time. I am very upset that he is dead (as I said, between him, Charlotte, and Miles, he was by far my favorite), but the events of his death spoke volumes about how much people like Eloise Hawking believe in the necessity and existence of destiny. She encouraged him to go back to the Island knowing that she herself would be the one to kill him. Now that's devotion. Daniel tried to convince the other characters that humans are variables in the "equation" of life, but so far, it seems that the exercise of "free will" only leads back to the path of destiny. Then again, Eloise Hawking pointed out to Desmond that if something changes the path, the universe "course corrects", and even though Charlie eventually died, Desmond delayed it. Maybe Desmond can fulfill Daniel's hopes after all...

Up next: A leaf on the wind becomes a monster of a Doll...