Daniel Faraday wasn’t around on Lost as long as Charlie Pace was, but the nervous scientist’s death was almost as devastating as the British rocker’s. In fact, this whole episode provided a heartbreaking portrait of Faraday, from his struggle to win his mother’s approval to the loss of his brilliant mind to his earnest attempts to save his friends — especially little Charlotte.
Before he died, however, Daniel set the stage for a major upheaval. During his three years in Ann Arbor, he apparently abandoned his “whatever happened, happened” theory in favor of the idea that people are variables that can affect the course of time. In the short period that he was back on the island, he did everything in his power to become a time-changing variable himself.
Daniel Goes Berserk
After telling Pierre Chang that he was from the future, a gun-toting Daniel ran around the island like a man possessed, first blowing the castaways' cover with the Dharma Initiative and then getting himself blown away by his own mother. But which one of his theories is correct? Was his always meant to return to the island to die, or did he change his own destiny?
And do the rest of castaways have the power to change their destinies? Will Daniel’s plan to stop the construction of the hatch work? And if it does, where will that leave the time travelers? If they change the course of events that leads to their plane crash, then they’ll change the course of events that put them in the 1970s in the first place. Could they negate their very existence?
Hawking’s Choice
Eloise Hawking told Penelope that Desmond was a “casualty in a conflict bigger than him.” She and Widmore — and Benjamin Linus — seem to be working for some higher power, but who or what is it? “It’s my job to keep you on your path,” she told young Daniel. Who or what could be strong enough to force a mother to send her son to his death by her own hand?
As viewers learned this week, Faraday is not only Hawking’s son, but also Widmore’s. However, that slap Hawking gave Widmore would seem to indicate that she feels a stronger claim over Daniel than he does. But they weren’t the only couple facing conflict this week. Juliet’s face said it all when she heard Sawyer call Kate “Freckles,” and Desmond should know better than to promise Penelope that he’ll never leave her.
Promises like that never bode well on Lost. All of the castaways are in trouble, but can Daniel’s plan help them get out of it? And maybe even bring him back to life by reversing their circumstances? And who else will die before everyone gets back on the right path?
