Killing Time: Calculating the Variables on "Lost"

A mother's love or the icy logic of a woman doomed to know how events will unfold?

Last night's 100th episode of Lost ("The Variable"), written by Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis, forced the audience to see the strained relationship between Daniel Faraday and his mother Eloise Hawking in a very different light.

Providing the audience with the first scenes of the duo together, this week's installment cast a light on Daniel's complex backstory, giving us a glimpse into his childhood, his time at Oxford with doomed lover/lab assistant Theresa, and his memory loss... as well as revealing what many of us have suspected for some time now: Daniel Faraday's true parentage.

So what did I think of this week's episode of Lost? Put on your Dharma jumpsuit, grab your journal, turn off the pylons, and let's discuss the 100th episode of Lost, "The Variable."

Daniel Faraday. I was beyond thrilled to see Faraday back in the mix this week, having arrived back on the island after a stint doing research at Dharma HQ in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The reason for his sudden return? A fax showing the new Dharma recruits--namely Jack, Kate, and Hurley--posing for that photograph which keeps seeming to pop up all over the place. Arriving via the sub, Faraday tells Jack that Eloise had made a mistake: this isn't their destiny. In fact, Faraday wants to undo everything from happening: prevent the release of electromagnetic energy at the Swan... which will prevent them from concreting the structure and devising the pressing of the button every 108 minutes... which Desmond would then never have to press... which means that he won't ever fail to press the button that one time... which means that Oceanic Flight 815 won't ever crash on the island. (Whew.)

How utterly heartbreaking was the scene where Faraday tells Young Charlotte that she needs to leave the island with her mother? Repeating Charlotte's dying words ("I'm not supposed to have chocolate before dinner"), Young Charlotte receives the message that she was always meant to have from the "scary man." And she does leave the island but in doing so she will return in the future, regardless of how much Faraday would seek to alter the timeline and save her life. Some deaths can't be prevented.

In fact, Faraday has now changed his opinion about their relationship to the past; whereas before he claimed that they couldn't change anything (whatever happened will still happen), he now believes that they are the variables in the equation. Their free will can alter events. He can save Charlotte and get her off the island, he can prevent the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 from ever arriving on the island, he can change his destiny... Except that he can't. After escaping the Barracks, Daniel arrives at the hostile's camp and demands to see Eloise but is rebuffed by Richard Alpert, following a moment of frisson between the two of them in which Richard seems to recognize Daniel (from their 1954 encounter with Jughead)... and then Faraday is shot by Ellie herself. Just why did Richard lie about Ellie not being there? And why did Ellie shoot even though Richard had the situation under control?

So is Daniel Faraday dead? It certainly seems that way. I'm not sure how that jibes with the infamous Comic-Con video, in which Daniel Faraday compels Pierre Chang to film a message that predicts the destruction of the Dharma Initiative during The Purge and is a call to arms to reform the Dharma Initiative, thanks to some knowledge from the future. Given that this event had to take place after Faraday's encounter with Chang at The Orchid (which, yes, did take place after his return from Ann Arbor and not before). So does it mean that Faraday somehow manages to survive Ellie's gunshot? Is there time for Richard to take Faraday to The Temple to be healed, just as he did Benjamin Linus? Hmmm... Or is it curtains for Faraday after all? (I'm thinking he's a goner.)

We now know just what happened to his memory and why he was so visibly shaken by the footage of the faked crash site of Oceanic Flight 815. Before testing his experiment on Theresa (and sending her consciousness reeling through time), he tested it on himself, causing his short-term memory to become jumbled. And yet there's a sense that he's also able to recall future events as well, realizing just what significance the crash will have. And, as predicted by Widmore and Eloise, the island does heal him, allowing him to realign his consciousness, exert control of his memory, and regain the ability to calculate complex equations.

Eloise Hawking. Aristotle in his "Poetics" mentions the Greek word hamartia, which isn't easily defined in English. It means something akin to sin, often ascribed to an error in judgment, a tragic flaw within a character's makeup that leads to their downfall. Watching last night's episode of Lost, I was struck by the notion that Eloise Hawking is trapped by her own hamartia: the second she picked up that gun and shot Daniel Faraday in the back.

Eloise has known since 1977 that she would kill her son and yet everything that she has done to push Daniel towards his destiny has been a series of actions to propel him towards his inevitable death at her hands. She's always known that he would end up on that island and formed him into the very person he needed to be in order to get there, with full knowledge of the harm she would inevitably cause him. Is it a sacrifice, as Widmore tells her? Is it an inevitable end to Daniel's life, one that can't be stopped, just as the man with the red sneakers will die regardless of whether she prevents his death? Why does her belief in inexorable fate counteract that of Daniel's belief in free will? Is it that the variables can change but the outcome is always the same?

Charles Widmore. We now know for certain that Widmore was behind the faked crash of Oceanic Flight 815 and that he is Daniel Faraday's father (a hunch many of us had after learning that he was bankrolling Faraday's research and knew Ellie on the island). I'm still unclear as to why Daniel's last name is Faraday and not either Hawking or Widmore but I absolutely loved the scene between Faraday and Widmore when the latter visits an addled Faraday and offers him an assignment: to be part of his research team and travel to the island. I'm still not clear what Widmore and Eloise's endgame is: to ensure that everything that has happened does come to pass? That everything plays out the way it always has? That 1977 happens as it always has? Widmore claims that he sacrificed his relationship with Penny just as Eloise will sacrifice their son. Are they both so cold-hearted that the lives of their children are as disposable as paper dolls? Or do their lives matter less in comparison to that of the greater good?

Penny and Desmond. I'm thrilled that Desmond managed to survive Ben's shooting and wasn't a "casualty" as Eloise predicted. His survival marks the first time that Eloise doesn't know what will happen next, a twist that leaves her visibly shaken. Could it be that Faraday was wrong: they're not the variables but Desmond himself is The Variable? After all, Faraday was able to send a message to the future Desmond on the island. We know that Desmond is special and has played a role in Eloise's machinations but what if his continued presence on the chess board has unforeseen consequences?

Jughead. There's no way for Jack and Kate to be able to detonate Jughead and prevent The Incident from occurring. If they did somehow manage to prevent this event, it would create a divergent timeline where they never arrived on the island; but they do arrive on the island because they have to travel back to 1977 in order to be a part of these very events. As I've indicated before, they are not there to prevent these events from occurring but to ensure that they do... before they are returned to the present day. The Incident will occur, The Purge will occur, and the crash will occur as well.

It's not that they can't change the past, it's that they can't change the future: the outcome will always remain the same. The variables might change but the two sides of the equation will always balance out in the end. Sometimes you just have to push a little harder to get them to line up the way they should.

What did you think of this week's episode? Is Faraday dead or will he live to write in his journal another day? (And how shocking was Ellie's murder of Faraday?) Were you surprised by the reveal about Daniel's parentage? Just what does Eloise Hawking want? And how on earth will the castaways return to their rightful time? Discuss.

Next week on Lost ("Follow the Leader"), Jack and Kate find themselves at odds over the direction they must take to save the castaways; Locke solidifies his role as the leader of The Others; suspicion falls on Sawyer and Juliet from the Dharma Initiative.