“The island isn’t done with you yet.” – Charles Widmore to Desmond
At the end of “The Package,” we learned that the package was a person, Desmond, and not an object. To kick things off this week, Desmond’s father-in-law, bitter enemy, and chief rival (or so it seems) to Not Locke/Smoke Monster Charles Widmore (Alan Dale) tells a disoriented Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick), “I’ve brought you back to the island.”
Now that’s a fine how d’you do, don’t you think? Desmond attacks and, when restrained by Widmore’s goons, cries, “Take me back! Take me back!”
Widmore replies, “I can’t take you back. The island isn’t done with you yet.”
How about a fine how d’you don’t? Widmore wants to see if Desmond, the only person in the world to survive a “catastrophic electromagnetic event,” can survive one again. It makes you wonder if that’s akin to taking someone who has survived a direct lightning strike and having lightning hit them again to see if they’re special?
The ironic twists that we’ve come to expect from the flash sideways don’t disappoint, as Widmore is Desmond’s boss and seemingly devoted friend and mentor. Desmond, now Widmore’s right hand man, is sent on a “trivial” errand to babysit our old and dear and departed friend Charlie (Dominic Monagham), who has just been arrested for heroin possession and needs to be revived in time for a big deal charity event (featuring Drive Shaft, yeah!).
Desmond and Charlie share a drink, and Charlie explains that he saw the true face of love on the flight from Sydney, which may or may not have anything to do with the heroin that is stuck in his throat. Desmond goads Charlie into leaving with him, and then Desmond says one of the more interesting lines in a season full of them:
“Is any of this a choice, brother?”
That strikes to the heart of what this show is about, what role fate plays versus free will, fundamental and opposing forces that have been debated for ages, and played out here in a spooky, at times meandering, but typically thoroughly entertaining, intriguing, and suspenseful little sci fi/action/adventure/drama (how’s that for a description?).
Shortly after, one of creepier sequences in Lost history goes down: Charlie forces Desmond to plunge their car into the harbor, and as Desmond is trying to save the addled Brit from drowning, Charlie puts his hand up against the glass of his passenger seat window. This hearkens to the scene in which Charlie found something of redemption in his “initial” death, but there’s more: a mysterious message, “NOT PENNY’S BOAT,” flashes on Charlie’s hand several times.
It seems that Charlie was trying to show Desmond… something, and Desmond felt it like a wallop. The grander implication may well be that some people in the flash sideways have some sort of “connection” between the two worlds, or realities. Additionally, the flashes of light, time travel, and time/space jumps that marked a number of episodes late last season (including the season-ending nuke) are now being brought back into focus.
Which is why it makes sense (or Lost sense, if you like) that Eloise Hawking (Fionnula Flanagan) shows up in the form of Eloise Widmore. Eloise has always been something of a Dungeon Master-type character, knowing far more about the interaction between the island and the world and time and place travel than all others. So it didn’t feel totally out of place for her to drop a “whatever it is you think you’re looking for, don’t!” speech on our befuddled Desmond.
Another creepy yet somewhat revealing conversation between Desmond and Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) takes place, who is now conveniently a Widmore as well (in addition to being a musician!) in which “feeling something” is the topic du jour. The feeling that comes across with not-scientist Faraday is this: he feels that he set off a nuclear bomb that he should not have.
This fundamentally shifts the entire flash sideways debate as it looks like that instead of an alternate reality that could reflect a) a relatively happy ending for our heroes or b) the final outcome of the “main storyline,” we may well be headed for another outcome entirely. And that, aside from all other things, makes sense, doesn’t it?
What un-befuddles Desmond is meeting Penny in the flash sideways (Faraday, her half-brother, hooks this up). Upon waking up back in the crazy torture electromagnetic shack, he is all guns blazing to help Widmore with his mission. Of course, then the newly “dark” Sayid (Naveen Andrews) shows up with a gun and leads Desmond away, so there are more adventures in store.
Where’s this all headed? Does it matter much when it’s this much of a head spinning crazy rollercoaster?
More thoughts on “Happily Ever After”:
- Ever since we met him down in the hatch kicking off Season Two, I’ve always been a huge fan of Desmond. His earnestness and humanity have helped to “ground” some of the most science fiction-y storylines that Lost has to offer.
- Check out the appallingly crappy safety measures that Widmore’s team takes, where a random dude gets fried while looking for “loose contact.” I would not be super amped to be a flunky on Team Widmore after that, for starters.
- I dig when Desmond drops a “brother.”
- Beautiful touch that Widmore gladly shares the very same 60-year-old MacCutcheon scotch with Desmond in the flash sideways that he cruelly used as an object lesson to lord over a man he believed to be leagues underneath the position to be worth of his daughter Penny (Sonya Walger) some seasons back now.
- Some other nice touches: Charlie wearing the same outfit and hipster sandals he wore on the original Oceanic flight, and Jack (Matthew Fox) showing up at the hospital where Desmond and Charlie are brought to.
- “It’s about time.” – Eloise Widmore / Hawking
- I love that Desmond meets Penny while she’s training at an empty stadium, presumably the same one that Desmond is training at for his “world race” when he bumps into Jack during a Season Two flashback.
From Around the Web: Lost, “Happily Ever After”
- A.V. Squad: Much as he did when he time-traveled, and much as he did when Eloise spoke to him about destiny in “Flashes Before Your Eyes,” Desmond now appears to be moving his consciousness back-and-forth from The Island to elsewhere. Moreover, Desmond wakes up knowing what Island Widmore was talking about when he warned Desmond that he’d have to make a choice and a sacrifice to save everything they both held dear. Desmond now says he understands; but what does he understand?
- TV Squad: Parallels between alpha- and beta- were running rampant throughout this episode. Fisher Stevens even returned in the beta-verse, to serve as Desmond’s guide as he did once before, when Desmond was trapped in time. We got beta-appearances by Charlie, Daniel Faraday, Charles Widmore and even Eloise Hawking. Every encounter was a further step toward confusion and understanding.
- Kulturblog: In LA-X, and at LAX, Desmond interacts with Hurley and Claire. As Desmond tells Claire that he thinks she’s having a boy, I’m pretty sure we can see Cyndy, the flight attendant (and, on the island, former Other and newly recruited member of the Black Team) wheeling her luggage.
- TV with Alan Sepinwall: Desmond is “special.” Desmond knew the universe wanted Charlie dead well before the universe finally won that battle. Desmond can travel back and forth through his own lifetime, “Quantum Leap”-style. Desmond can survive the time travel sickness because he has Penny as his constant, and can alter the timeline when no one else can. He is, in fact, cool enough that for the first time in forever my “Lost” gag reflex didn’t rise up when a character was offered an explanation and declined.
Some stats and info about Lost, “Happily Ever After”
TV SHOW – Lost
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 6, Episode 11
AIRED ON – April 6th, 2010
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – ABC/Hulu
GENRE – Drama, Adventure Shows, Science Fiction
CREATED BY – J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber, Damon Lindelof
CAST – Jorge Garcia, Josh Holloway, Junjin Kim, Evangeline Lilly, Terry O’Quinn, Naveen Andrews, Matthew Fox, Daniel Dae Kim, Emilie de Ravin, Michael Emerson, Henry Ian Cusick, Dominic Monaghan, Harold Perineau, Ken Leung, Elizabth Mitchell, Nestor Carbonell, Jeff Fahey
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.