LOST: Thanks, brother.

6.01 / 6.02: "LA X"

LOST REALITIES.

I'm gonna change up my timeline terminology here. Instead of Reality1 and Reality2, I'm gonna go with LOST1 and LOST2, and L1 and L2. LOST1 is the reality that we've been watching for the past 5 seasons, where Oceanic 815 is knocked out of the sky by a spike in the Swan station's EM energy. LOST2 is the reality that we're watching unfold in season 6, in which Oceanic 815 lands safely at LAX and the Island sinks to the bottom of the sea by 2004.

Maybe in this season's storytelling, L2 will catch up to L1. That is, we'll get the L1 2007 story told day by day, but the L2 stories will skip to show us significant moments from 2004 to 2007 and ultimately reunite everyone in 2007.

DESMOND.

Zany question... Is Jack the only one on the plane in L2 who sees and talks to Desmond? Is Desmond a Hurley-like phantom friend? That would make a kind of sense to me. After all, of all the LOST players, Desmond is the one who's had some experience with his consciousness giving the finger to the spacetime continuum and its physical so-called laws, right?

2/5/10. Desmond does not have a ring on his right hand. Can't see his left. He's reading something by Salman Rushdie. Altho he tells Jack, "The stewardess said it was empty," when he explains about taking the aisle seat, we never see anyone interact with him. When the flight attendant responds to Jack's ping (they ask if there's a doctor on board), she does NOT acknowledge Desmond's presence next to him.

OK, let's say Desmond is not a phantom (which, I guess, is at least as likely as his being a phantom =). What's he been up to in a world without the Island? He calls Jack "Brother," something he picked up during his stay at the monastery. In LOST1, the chief of this monastery is/was associated with Eloise Hawking, and the monastery benefited from generous donations from Charles Widmore (in exchange for a supply of their liquor—McCutcheon's?). It's on the day that Desmond is ejected from the monastery that he first meets Widmore's daughter, Penny. They fall in love.

He seems to be in all-around good shape and spirits. I'd say he won Widmore's round-the-world race, took Widmore's money, and then married his Penny. Does anyone remember seeing a wedding ring?

2/14/10. I went back and looked for the shot of Desmond when he gets up to let Jack into the window seat. I didn't think of checking out his hands then and only thought of this chance later. Turns out, he IS sporting some bling on his ring finger. Sure, it might just be a Claddagh ring, but I don't think they'd prop him with a ring lightly, y'know? Now the question is, do we know if Desmond made an honest woman out of Penny in LOST1? Did we see a wedding ring on him in 2007—can anyone tell me? If he does have a ring in LOST1, then that's a possible bit of circumstantial evidence for Desmond zipping over to LOST2 from LOST1. If he does NOT have a ring in LOST1, then that's evidence against that idea, and supporting the idea that this is LOST2's Desmond and that he's married to someone in that reality (Penny? Libby?).

2/15/10. Just went zipping thru the beginning of "316," the episode in which Eloise introduces the Losties to the Lamppost, and Desmond's totally got the bling on his left ring finger. We see him spread his hands out on his thighs when he leans forward to take in the pendulum and map on the floor. Again, I'm gonna assume that he's sporting a wedding ring and nothing less, altho, it's almost not important. What's important is that he's got a ring in 2007 in LOST1 and in 2004 in LOST2, signifying... what? To my mind, that the two Desmonds are not definitely not the same man. =) Last we saw of Brother Desmond in LOST1, he was being rolled into surgery, right? Maybe he's unconscious in post-op while the Dogen plays Operation with Sayid in the Quake Temple, eh? =)

This scenario implies at least one very important thing... Eloise and Charles make it off the Island just before or sometime after the Incident. I'm assuming that the Incident is the immediate or eventual cause of the sinking of the Island. Remember, Richard knocks Eloise out to protect her very shortly before the Losties go to the Swan, and Charles has a quick heart-to-heart with little Ben in his recovery tent in the jungle soon after he's saved in the Temple.

Their survival implies the possibility of their children Daniel and Penelope being born and living lives similar to their counterparts in L1. Daniel's research and technology may have been developed in L2 without Desmond's time-travelling help.

Admittedly, that is a lot to imply based on one word, "Brother." But I believe it follows.

Thing is. In my vision of how an alternate universe story works, you've gotta have someone who knows or feels that things are off, wrong, or different. And ideally, that things in this off-brand reality are not as good, or fair, or right, as they could be. For most of our Lost friends, I think that's the case. Rose is still sick, and has lied to Bernard about it after visiting the Aussie healer. Sawyer is his usual self. Locke is paralyzed and frustrated. Jack likely still has unresolve daddy issues and an ex-wife. Charlie's been arrested. Kate is on the run. Claire is in LA to give her child up for adoption. The only ones whom we've seen who appear to be better off in L2 are Sayid, who's to be reunited with Nadia, Boone, who won't be killed by a falling plane, Hurley, self-proclaimed luckiest man in the world, and alas, Desmond.

Desmond's life could very well be brilliant in L2, making his story-driven fate in L2 all the more tragic. Cuz I'm certain it will be up to him to obliterate this reality in favor of one in which 815 crashes, due to his not pushing the button in time in the subterranean hatch he's lived in for three years.

So not fair.

But maybe in L2 he's discovered that he can't have a child, while in L1, after years on the Island, he and Penelope have Charlie.

Something to think about regarding whether Jack and Desmond have met before by 2004 in L2. Maybe Desmond was already more of a self-made man by the time he proposes to Penny, and he doesn't need to prove his worth by winning her father's money, and never raced around the world, and so, never trained for it. So, maybe he's right, and they never met doing stadiums in L.A. in L2. Maybe Jack's sense of deja vu is spillover from his life in LOST1. Maybe all deja vu in either world is like that. Deja views.

THE SUNKEN ISLAND.

Do we think that the Island, even underwater, is still possessed of all its weird energy? I'm not sure. I mean, if you were gonna send underwater robots into that location in the Pacific, would they find the Island, or is it still inside its own "snowglobe" dimension, with its magic 315 bearing entrance, just at the bottom of the ocean? My impression, since the camera just dropped out of the plane and into the water, is that the snowglobe was shattered, a LOST-logical result of detonating an H-bomb on top of the Swan, donchathink?

But... maybe not. Camera moves don't necessarily MEAN anything. Maybe it's still in its pocket dimension.

Still, remember the Lamppost? Developed by the DI to find the Island in the first place, and it succeeded, otherwise, there never would've been a truce and a Dharmaville for Sawyer and Jack to sneakily join and eventually cause the Incident. That Lamppost station is still out there, beneath that chapel in Los Angeles. So, if there ARE exotic energies that might be used for time travel or reality splitting, merging, or crossing over, it would be detectable there. So so, if there IS a Desmond walking around in L2 with flashes across realities to how things went down in the first reality, and even tho they seem pretty frickin crappy, the Losties' lives on the Island are actually better or more fulfilling than there hohum ones in L2, maybe he'll get the band back together, find the Island, or a place with similar energies, and "fix" things.

HAPPY ENDING?

So, we've got these two realities chugging along, three years apart thru our televisional windows. I'm hoping for one of two things storytelling-wise this season.

1. LOST2 will catch up with LOST1 over the course of this season, that we will see three years of the lives of our friends in LOST2 and just days or weeks of LOST1, and that eventually, they will match up in 2007 (or later). At this point both realities will team up, in concert or by chance, to create a new or somehow collapsed reality with a happily ever after.

2. We will see events transpire in LOST2 that will get us to a point before Jack radios Widmore's freighter, but sadly, after Charlie dies in the Looking Glass. At this point, LOST2 will reach across and mess with LOST1 to effect a happily ever after.

What I think really needs to happen is for Penny's people to find the Losties before Widmore's people. For the Others to repel the mercs, and for EVERYONE (who wants to be rescued) to be rescued in 2004 and not just the Oceanic Six.

Well, everyone, or no one, which would mean Jack would have to convince the Losties that staying on the Island is preferable to being rescued by the wrong people. That's what Locke wanted. Without the mercs on the Island, Locke could then ascend to leader of the Others and usher in a benevolent golden age on the Island. Right? Riiiiight.

Of course, who knows what Esau would be doing in that situation... Hrmm... Maybe demon baby Aaron could wish him away to the cornfield, his home.

I'm still clinging to the prophecy about Aaron and Desmond's final vision of Charlie's death. The Aaron prohpecy: that if Claire does not raise him, he will become, or there will be, a Big Bad. So, baby Aaron can't leave the Island as part of the Oceanic Six, and we need for Claire to be OK, and not running around, dead or alive, as a puppet of some Island force, whether it's Jacob, Esau, or the Island itself. So, she's gotta not be blown up by a merc RPG in a New Otherton bungalow. The Charlie vision: that if Charlie dies the way he ultimately does in the Looking Glass, Claire and Aaron will board a helicopter and safely leave the Island.

If someone knows that either the Aaron prophecy or the Charlie vision has been debunked somewhere, somehow, please please please tell me!

Keep on keepin on~