Lost: Sent Between Worlds

By Dan Birlew | Posted April 6, 2010 in Television | 5 Comments »

So… wow. There’s a lot to chew on from this new episode in which time-traveling Desmond Hume is sent into another reality by Charles Widmore. Not only was the episode heavily referential to Desmond’s entire life, but also featured several great character cameos. Pointing them all out could take days.

Plus there’s just the fact that it’s very difficult to explain just what exactly happened on this episode with any amount of certainty. Throughout Lost, Desmond has been “The Constant.” In the Island universe he fell in love with Penny Widmore. Desperate to please her father, Charles, Desmond approached him in his office to ask for Penny’s hand in marriage. In the Island universe, Charles belittled Desmond. By way of example, he held up a 60-year old bottle of MacCutcheon whiskey and told Desmond that he wasn’t good enough to drink it. Despondent, Desmond eventually broke up with Penny and broke her heart.

Determined to prove himself to Widmore, Desmond entered in a sailboat race that Charles was holding. During that race he fell into a storm and arrived at the Island. There he was immediately drafted into service in the Swan station, inputting the Numbers into a computer to “save the world” every 108 minutes by discharging a pocket of elecromagnetic energy beneath the site. When one day he failed to input the Numbers in time, the Swan released a pulse that knocked Flight 815 out of the sky. When the survivors discovered Desmond in the Swan, he left. He swam back out to his sailing boat and got drunk. When the survivors found him on the boat, he decided to return to the hatch. There he found that John Locke had lost his faith in the Island and had refused to push the button. The station was about to explode, so Desmond told everyone to get out so that he could turn the failsafe key. He was engulfed in the explosion…

…only Desmond didn’t die.

Instead he time-traveled backward in his own life. He was still with Penny, and also conscious of his time on the Island. He determined to change history and ask Penny to marry him. But he was intercepted by a most peculiar kind of time-cop; a jewelry store owner named Eloise Hawking who knew that Desmond was conscious of his future and trying to avoid it. She convinced him that his destiny lie on the Island. So he broke up with Penny as he was meant to, and joined the Scottish Army.

Desmond then returned to the present (2004). He woke up on the Island, naked in the jungle. After regaining his senses, and a few more bouts of drinking, he began revealing to Charlie Pace that he had seen flashes of the future, and that those flashes were telling him that Charlie was going to die. Charlie determined to die on his own terms, and so he and Desmond swam down to the submerged Looking Glass station in the waters just off the Island. There Charlie deactivated a jamming device that was preventing the survivors from contacting a freighter out at sea. A call came through from Penny, who revealed that she was not on the freighter. But when one-eyed Mikhail Bakunin detonated a grenade outside the station, Charlie drown. In his last moments, Charlie wrote a message for Desmond on his hand, that the freighter was “NOT PENNY’S BOAT.”

Desmond took this message back to the survivors, who were already beginning to have their doubts about the people from the freighter, which included Daniel Faraday and red-haired Charlotte Lewis. But the survivors were determined to leave the Island nonetheless, and Desmond too. Riding out to the freighter in a helicopter, Desmond experienced sudden time travel back to 1996, during his time in the Scottish Royal Army. The quick trips back and forward caused him to forget being on the Island and become aggressively confused. On the freighter he met George Minkowski, who was also flashing through his own life. George eventually died of a brain hemorrhage, and it seemed Desmond was headed for the same fate. Daniel Faraday suggested that during his next trip to the past, he go to Oxford University and contact him. Desmond did so, and the Daniel in 1996 realized that time-travel was possible. 1996 Daniel suggested that Desmond find an anchor, a constant in both time periods. Desmond contacted Penny in 1996 and told her he would call her on a specific date in eight years. The next time Desmond returned to the freighter, he called Penny. The contact with her stopped his time-traveling before he suffered a brain hemorage.

When Ben Linus moved the Island, Desmond was onboard the helicopter with the Oceanic Six. When the helicopter ran out of gas and crashed, they floated adrift until a large ship found them. The ship was Penny’s, and the two were happily reunited. While the Oceanic Six went back to the world, Desmond stayed with Penny for three years, and the two had a son which he named Charlie.

Because Daniel Faraday contacted Desmond when the Island was flashing through various time periods, he suddenly had a memory of the event. Responding to what Faraday asked of him, he went to London to see Charles Widmore and ask him where he could find Faraday’s mother. Widmore gave Desmond the address on the condition that afterward, he take Penny and disappear. Desmond went to LA to tell Eloise that everyone on the Island needs her help. As he and Penny prepared to leave on their yacht, Desmond was shot by Ben. The bug-eyed bastard then aimed at Penny. But seeing little Charlie onboard, he just couldn’t do it. Desmond tackled Ben, beat him silly, and threw him into the water. Desmond was later saved at a hospital…

…where Charles Widmore was waiting. Obviously he and his team kept Desmond drugged, took him from the hospital, and brought him back to the Island on the sub. They used the equipment at the Hydra Station to set up a huge electromagnetic coil for the purposes of “testing” whether Desmond could still withstand a blast, and he did. But the blast sent him into a very different place, one which we’ve been witnessing all season long; the “Sideways” universe where for some reason the Island is miles underwater and Flight 815 doesn’t crash.

As with his previous time-displacement, Desmond’s conscious is what traveled, à la Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five. Only this time he didn’t retain his memories of his life in the Island universe. In the sideways universe he’s got what he always wanted; the approval of Charles Widmore. In fact, he’s Widmore’s number one man, traveling the world on business for Old Baldy. And his driver is none other than George Minkowski, who still managed to find employment under Widmore in this topsy-turvy world. In the sideways universe Desmond is of great value to Widmore, and not even the old man’s 60 year old MacCutcheon whiskey is too good for him.

BTW, did you notice that painting on the wall of Widmore’s office? The paintings in Widmore’s various offices have been fairly controversial in their painting and symbolism, including several canvases that Widmore apparently bought from Claire’s baby-daddy. But in the sideways universe the painting on Widmore’s wall is even weirder; it depicts a scale with a white rock and a black rock… just like the one we saw in the seaside cave where the Man in Black took Sawyer in this season’s episode “The Substitute.” Perhaps this is a clue that sideways Widmore is somehow conscious of everything that’s happened in the Island universe?

Desmond’s mission in the sideways universe was directly tied to Flight 815. He was to pick up Charlie Pace, fresh from his embarrassing choking incident on the plane that led to a possession charge and imprisonment. But Charlie wasn’t ready to go with Desmond, and eventually explained that during his near-death experience he saw a blond-haired blue eyed woman (possibly Claire?) and fell in love. Now, without her in the sideways universe, he has nothing to live for. That’s why he crashed the car and tried to kill himself again. Him putting his hand on the window was just enough to remind Desmond of his own other-life, and seeing Charlie in a similar drowning situation.

When Desmond was given the MRI in the hospital, the electromagnetic waves of the device triggered the conscious that had traveled within him, causing him to recall more memories of his life and love with Penny. Pretty funny chase scene in the hospital, eh? After escaping from Desmond at the hospital, who knows what hi-jinx sideways-Charlie will get into next?

Desmond went to the Widmore residence to break the news to Eloise, who goes by the name Widmore in this universe. Apparently Charles having an illegitimate daughter with another woman wasn’t enough to call off their marriage. But when Desmond heard that Penny would be attending the party, his demands for information brought Eloise to alarm. She told Desmond not to pursue Penny, that he already had the perfect life and the approval of Charles Widmore, and that he wasn’t “ready yet.”

After Desmond returned to his limo, he was approached by Daniel Faraday, who because his mom and dad are still together goes by the name “Daniel Widmore.” Daniel spent his life pursuing music instead of physics, but after seeing a beautiful redhead at the nearby museum (Charlotte Lewis, whom Daniel fell in love with in the Island universe) he had a vision of time-travel mechanics from his other life and realizes that he may be responsible for the nuclear detonation that caused everyone’s lives to veer from what they were supposed to be. How ironic that Daniel doesn’t understand that he was already dead by that point anyway.

Daniel’s story prompted Desmond to seek out Penny, who was jogging stairs at the same stadium where Desmond first met Jack while training for Widmore’s sailboat race. Only Penny’s name wasn’t Widmore, it was Milton; which might be a reference to author John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost. The most obvious connotation is that Penny is meant to represent the paradise that Desmond lost in the sideways universe. Meeting her, and touching her hand, “sent” Desmond back to the Island universe. A few seconds later he woke up, asked Penny on a date, and then returned to his limo… where he asked Minkowski to get him the passenger manifest of Flight 815. Through his shared experience with Charlie he’s realized that there’s a connection between the passengers on the flight, and now he wants to see if he can trigger the same thing in them that he and Charlie experienced. It may be the only way to avert the “false” sideways universe and get back to the “true” Island universe, where the Man in Black must be prevented from leaving the Island. I suppose that future episodes will show Desmond acting as the Constant for all the Flight 815 passengers in the sideways world, bringing them together to undo what has been done.

Meanwhile, in the Island universe, Desmond is still just a “package” being taken back and forth by Widmore and the Man in Black, who dispatched Sayid to kidnap Desmond at the end.

Tags: Lost

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