Desmond's Loophole

[NMaudlin]

Previously on LOST

"DESMOND: I'll take it.

MS. HAWKING: [surprised] I'm sorry?

DESMOND: It's perfect. I'll take it.

MS. HAWKING: No you won't. Give me the ring. Give it here.

DESMOND: I don't understand.

MS. HAWKING: This is wrong. You don't buy the ring. You have second thoughts; you walk right out that door. So, come on, let's have it.

DESMOND: I don't know what you're on about.

MS. HAWKING: You don't buy the ring, Desmond.

DESMOND: How do you know my name?

MS. HAWKING: Well, I know your name as well as I know that you that don't ask Penny to marry you. In fact, you break her heart. Well, breaking her heart is, of course, what drives you in a few short years from now to enter that sailing race -- to prove her father wrong -- which brings you to the island where you spend the next 3 years of your life entering numbers into the computer until you are forced to turn that failsafe key. And if you don't do those things, Desmond David Hume, every single one of us is dead. So give me that sodding ring."
-Flashes Before Your Eyes

"FARADAY: Oh! Oh! Whoa! Whoa. Don't shoot.

MAN: [Scottish accent, filtered voice] Then you'd best explain why you've been bangin' on my door for the last 20 minutes, brother.

FARADAY: [Sighs] Desmond.

DESMOND: [Lowering the gun slightly] Are you him?

FARADAY: "Him"? Who?

DESMOND: My replacement.

FARADAY: No, I'm not.

[Desmond points the gun back at Faraday.]

FARADAY: I'm not. I'm not. I'm...

DESMOND: Do I know you?

FARADAY: Yeah... in a way. But listen, that's not important. What is important, Desmond, is what I'm about to say to you. I need you to listen. You're the only person who can help us because, Desmond... the rules... the rules don't apply to you. You're special. You're uniquely and miraculously special."
-Because You Left

"DESMOND: Penny...Penny, answer. Answer, Penny.

PENNY: Des, where are you?

DESMOND: I'm...I'm on a boat. Um...I've been on an island, and--- Oh, my god, Penny. Is that really you?

PENNY: Yeah! Yes, it's me!

DESMOND: You believe me? You still care about me?

PENNY: Des, I've been looking for you for the past three years. I know about the island. I've been researching---(static)---and then when I spoke to your friend Charlie, that's when I knew you were still alive. That's when I knew I wasn't crazy. Des, are you still there!?

DESMOND: Yes, yes, I'm here! I'm still here, can you hear me?

PENNY: Yeah, yeah, that's better.

DESMOND: I love you, Penny. I've always loved you. I'm so sorry. I love you!

PENNY: I love you too.

DESMOND: I don't know where I am, but--

PENNY: I'll find you, Des--"
-The Constant

"JACK: No. You're done keeping me on this Island.

[Locke cocks the barrel]

LOCKE: I will kill you if I have to.

JACK: Then do it, John.

KATE: Jack.

[Locke pauses, and then lowers the gun]

LOCKE: Jack. You're not supposed to do this."
-Through the Looking Glass

"PENNY: Throw them a rope! Take them 'round to the stern!

DESMOND: Penny? Penny! Penny!

[Sighs]

[laughs]

[laughs]

PENNY: Are you okay?

DESMOND: (Chuckles) I'm--I'm fine. (Whispers) I'm fine. (Normal voice) H--how did you find me?

PENNY: Your phone call... I have a tracking station. (Sniffles)

DESMOND: I love you, Penny... and I'll never leave you again."
-There's No Place Like Home

"KATE: I have to go. He's gonna be wondering where I am...

[Jack grabs her]

JACK: We were not supposed to leave.

KATE: Yes, we were.

[She releases herself]

KATE: Goodbye, Jack.

[She heads for her car]

JACK: We have to go back, Kate.

[She gets in her car and drives away]

JACK: We have to go back!!

[A plane takes off over Jack's head]"
-Through the Looking Glass

"FARADAY: Yeah... in a way. But listen, that's not important. What is important, Desmond, is what I'm about to say to you. I need you to listen. You're the only person who can help us because, Desmond... the rules... the rules don't apply to you. You're special. You're uniquely and miraculously special.

DESMOND: What are you talking about?

[A high-pitched buzzing begins and Faraday looks at the sky. He pants.]

FARADAY: Okay, listen to me. Listen! If the helicopter somehow made it off the Island, if you got home--

DESMOND: What helicopter? What are you talking about?!

[As Faraday speaks, the humming gets louder.]

FARADAY: Listen, I need you to listen, or people are gonna die. My name is Daniel Faraday, and right now me and everyone else you left behind--we're in serious danger. You're the only person who can help us. I need you to go back to Oxford University. Go back to where we met.

[The humming is now loud rumbling, and the bright light is enveloping everything.]

FARADAY: I need you to go there and find my mother. Her name is--

[The rumbling stops. In a bed, Desmond mutters. A lamp clicks on. Desmond pants awake and looks over at his bed-partner.]

PENNY: Are you all right?

DESMOND: [Softly] I was on the Island.

[Desmond continues panting.]

DESMOND: I was on the Island.

PENNY: You've been off the Island for three years now.

[She kisses him on the shoulder.]

PENNY: You're safe now. It was just a dream.

DESMOND: It wasn't a dream, Pen.

[Desmond looks at her solemnly, then whispers:]

DESMOND: It was a memory."
-Because You Left

"MS. HAWKING: Uh, no, but your husband does. I'm Eloise Hawking, and I believe it's my son's fault that Desmond has been shot.

PENNY: Your son is Benjamin Linus?

MS. HAWKING: [Scoffs] Good lord, no. My son is Daniel Faraday."
-The Variable

"FARADAY: Jack. How did you get back here?

JACK: Faraday? What the--

FARADAY: How did you do it?

JACK: Whoa.

FARADAY: How did you get back to the Island?

JACK: Where have you been?

FARADAY: I was--I was just at DHARMA headquarters in Ann Arbor. I was doing some research. What's more important right now... how did you get back here to 1977?

JACK: [Sighs] What's going on?

MILES: Don't look at me. I just carried his luggage.

FARADAY: Jack, how?

JACK: Uh... we were on a plane, and then there was--

FARADAY: Who told you to get on a plane?

JACK: As a matter of fact, Dan, it was your mother.

FARADAY: [Sighs] And how did she convince you, Jack? Did she tell you it was your destiny?

JACK: Yeah. That's exactly what she said.

FARADAY: Well, I got some bad news for you, Jack. You don't belong here at all. She was wrong."
-The Variable

"LOCKE: Hello, Jacob.

JACOB: Well, you found your loophole.

LOCKE: Indeed I did. And you have no idea what I've gone through to be here."
-The Incident

"MS. HAWKING: That's right. I came, Penelope, to apologize. Your husband has become a casualty in a conflict that's bigger than him, that's bigger than any of us.

PENNY: What do you mean? Is Des gonna be okay?

MS. HAWKING: I don't know. For the first time in a long time, I don't know what's going to happen next."
-The Variable

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Desmond phones Penny, which hadn't happened before.

Penny rescues the Oceanic Six, who in the original timeline supposed to be able to leave the Island. They skipped with the others and ended up in the 1977 Dharma Initiative new recruits picture.

Those left behind skipped, as they always did but now the Island persuades John to help it course correct and bring them back.

Elloise helps bring them course correct back to fix the mistake of their leaving that Desmond caused. They jump to 1977 because thats where they're supposed to be. Except Sun for reasons unknown as of now.

In doing so they bring back the corpse of John Locke, creating a loophole for MIB.

Daniel always came back to stop the Incident and get shot. But never before has he had Jack on his side. Sawyer and Juliet were happy in 1977 and in the original timeline they live out their lives there.

The events of the Incident play out creating an entirely new timeline.

So, in conclusion:

Desmond turns failsafe -> Desmond calls Penny -> Penny rescues O6 -> John turns wheel and eventually dies -> Elloise calculates a way back -> John's corpse returns -> Jack, Kate, Sayid, and Hurley return to 1977 -> Faraday is shot -> Jack continues the Plan -> JUGHEAD

L O S T

[Daniel1302]

But what makes you think that there was a "first time through" or an "original timeline?"

[Thermos]

What I think is really going on:

Desmonds visions in which he changed the past were caused by absorbing a large quantity of island electromagnetism, and as I've postulated before, Smokey is made up of the islands electromagnetism. That particular vision was used to manipulate Desmond into thinking that fate exists, yet that small changes can occur (it seems that desmond experienced the events after falling off the ladder in Pennys apartment before, yet without thinking he had time traveled). Smokey can altar peoples perceptions and uses this throughout the seasons to manipulate people. Because Desmond had those visions he "trusted" the visions of the future he saw shortly after as being representative of fates tendency. He believed, from his experience with Penny + Eloise, that he could perhaps delay Charlie's inevitable death. Eventually he sees a vision of Claire and Aaron leaving the island, which causes him to lead Charlie to his death.

Now, one might wonder how it is that Smokey is able to cause these visions of the future that manipulate desmond into creating almost the exact same situation (without the vision, for instance, the camping trip wouldn't have happened that almost ended up with a skewered charlie). Well, fortunately he's already seen everything long before it actually happens. If i'm right in thinking smokey (or a part of him) is actually in the pocket of energy building up at the swan, then as of the 70s smokey has scanned the memories of everyone near jughead. This includes memories of the Desmond escapades as relayed through Hurley's perspective. Smokey has just been acting out the plan he saw himself carry out in the memories he scanned.

This is sort of like Eloise, who, for the first time does not know what is going to happen, because she now longer has a journal recording facts about the future. Smokey, similarly, has been working off of memories of the future up until now, giving him an appearance of omniscience. Now, though, he has already passed the point in time that the memories from the 70s relate to, so barring someone from the future arriving on present day island (much taller walt?!), Smokey is "flying blind" for the first time. This is what gives Jacobs side a chance.

Those around jughead might well go through a similar process of manipulation through revisiting the past; a false reset in which every character other than our time-losties are played by smokey. He would, perhaps, instill in all of them a belief in fate/course correction/visions, and use this to misinform them (as he did with Desmond...Claire never got off the boat, but Desmonds actions did cause the events which forced John to turn the wheel, leave the island, and then return dead).
So we'll probably get the people stuck in the 70s back up to the present soon, but when they do it's likely they'll have a lot of wrong information (probably thinking Jacob, Richard, Illana, Eloise and Charles are "evil", rather than smokey, the only absolute anti-humanitarian on the show).
While Hurley might be the first to suspect the reset visions are all in his head and not to be trusted, thanks to his dave experience, it's also possible since he's learned to "believe in" his ability to talk to the dead, that he will also accept the reset's information.

I think WHH functions in an absolute way in Lost, not based on fate or course correction but Novikov's self-consistency principal. If something would cause a paradox (which seems very possible with time travelers involved, e.g. if Michael had succeeded in shooting himself then the losties wouldn't have ended up in the 77s, but they already were) then the probability of that event happening is 0. You can't change the past, but that doesn't mean the present, as the past of some future, is driven by purpose or destiny. These dogmatic ideas have all just been tools of smokey to manipulate people, who are quick to formulate religions when faced with unknowns (especially ones so traditionally associated with miracles as Smokey presents).

[NMaudlin]

In the same sense that from Desmond's perspective there was a time when the bartender got hit with a cricket bat and a time when Elloise didn't sell Desmond an engagement ring. If we accept that Desmond is uniquely and miraculously special in the sense that he can change things (though they seem to course correct regardless) then we can surmise that the events of the constant changed what was "supposed" to happen by placing Penny's boat close enough to rescue the survivors of the helicopter.

The characters offer cryptic phrases that suggest this wasn't supposed to happen as well. (ie John's "you aren't supposed to do this" and Jack's "we weren't supposed to leave" which is essentially the Island pulling them back where they belong)

[Thermos]

Why do you accept that Desmond is uniquely and miraculously special? Is it really just because Dan said it?

I do think Desmond has one VERY unique quality in his life that makes him very useful, and that is that he spent so much of his life in isolation or drunk. This allows him to interact with timetravelers, forget about it in drunkenness and not have it effect other people in the timeline because of isolation, and then later recall it at the relevent time (frankly, likely thanks to the islands electromagnetism stored inside Desmond).
Desmond almost certainly is "special" in the same way Jacob, Walt, Hurley and Miles are. It would be really frustrating if the show went different routes to try to give sci-fi explanations for these things, or if they resorted to a campy religious solution.
Most of our losties have harnessed a fair amount of the islands electromagnetism, though some clearly more than others. The effects seem to vary from person to person, but what I wonder most about is how much that is determined by Smokey. Does Miles just have smokey's scanning ability on his own, or is smokey essentially powering this ability? If that were the case, than all of the people Hurley has been talking to have been smokey, but I don't thin thats the case. I think Hurley, once on island, and once Smokey tried to manipulate him by putting some energy in him (when he made Dave appear based on a memory) Hurley "adopted" smokeys ability to create living memories of the dead. Smokey seems to be able to make apparitions based on just memories to (clearly the case with the altar boy Eko sees), but that isn't how it manifests in Hurley.

Certainly Jacob seems to be able to use the abilities he's gotten from the electromagnetism without Smokey's consent. I do think the fact that Jacob has this electromagnetism inside of him (and such control over it, unlike Eko, who just followed it around) prevents smokey from being able to kill him directly.

[NMaudlin]

Interesting thoughts Thermos but I can't buy WHH from a character standpoint.

Are we really to believe that after confirming the existence of time travelers in 1977 that Dr. Chang will still continue the Dharma Initiative and never tell anyone?

That Elloise will purposefully push her son to his death without the slightest effort to save him?

That Richard won't mention any of this to them when he meets them again after Oceanic 815's crash?

I understand the desire to have it all be logical, but a massive hallucination from Smokey is just as much a copout to the audience as it all being a dream. I believe the visions had a role in defeating WHH however, but I'll come back to that later.

[Daniel1302]

Originally Posted by NMaudlin

Interesting thoughts Thermos but I can't buy WHH from a character standpoint.

Are we really to believe that after confirming the existence of time travelers in 1977 that Dr. Chang will still continue the Dharma Initiative and never tell anyone?

That Elloise will purposefully push her son to his death without the slightest effort to save him?

That Richard won't mention any of this to them when he meets them again after Oceanic 815's crash?

I understand the desire to have it all be logical, but a massive hallucination from Smokey is just as much a copout to the audience as it all being a dream. I believe the visions had a role in defeating WHH however, but I'll come back to that later.

Yes, we are meant to believe all of this, as the show has provided evidence. In particular, re-watch "The Variable" for the evidence that Eloise always knew, from Daniel's childhood that we see, that she would eventually kill him.

[Thermos]

Yes we have already seen many things (even very early on) that indicate the "present-day" action we've seen is the future of the past we've seen. Creating doubt about whether what we've seen is the "real" past has been a bit theme on the show, and the audience is meant to question whether desmond really changed the past/future with his actions, or just was made to think he did.

We've already seen Chang, with his arm injured, mentioning the incident on video tape in season 2. Also, all of Eloise's motivations are based on a theme of circular causality (one which will ultimately be shown to be fully personified in smokey, the ultimate determinist).
While we might well see a vision of a reset, that will not be what "really" happened, rather a tool to manipulate our main characters (and the audience). You can't expect Lost to play its full hand at once, we might well spent the first 5 episodes thinking "wtf a reset?", then have them return to the "original timeline" and we'll think for the rest of the season "ok...so there are many alternate time lines?", just as the characters do.
By the end of the finale we'll be going "omfg smokey was totally playing them the whole time and we didn't even notice, yet at the same time Jacobs sacrificing himself to Ben really made Ben the one hope against Smokey without us noticing!"

I fully expect them to unveil something that we will look back on and marvel at how well it interlaces with the last 5 seasons, and Smokey as electromagnetism as "the central mystery" is the only theory I've heard so far that provides even remotely that sort of plot.

They could also do a last minute "omg maybe smokey has a point about humanity" switch too, but it's still smokey vs humanity in my book.
If humanity does end and Smokey roams free, he will absorb all the "living memories" creating a really cool sci-fi formulation of the afterlife. He is nothing more than the collective consciousness of all the perceptions he has absorbed over the years. Unclear whether "living" inside of that is heaven or hell, especially with Smokey being shown as a bad guy the whole time, but its about 1000x more interesting that Jacob being the biblical jesus/jacob/god, or smokey being created by anubis, or any other "real-world" religions explanation.

Edit: It occurs to me that one thing that they COULD do to make it more of a faux-religion is make electromagnetism the source of sentience/perspective (the existence of which is still a big mystery in science/philosophy). This could make Jacob the first "human" in that he was the first to come to the island, get some smoke in him, and become a thinking/speaking/tool using human. Then he fathered humanity by spreading this sentience around with his "touches". Smokey is the source of our perspective, but also has a sort of independent existence, almost a human overmind. This human overmind does not get along with with its fleshy counterparts.

Personally I think that sounds like a fricken awesome sci-fi story. Anubis/Esau/MysteryIslandGodThatJohnBelievesIn does not.

[NMaudlin]

@ Thermos

"Damon Lindelof: Was it really - did it really happen?

Carlton Cuse: Yeah did it really happen?

Damon Lindelof: Uh, yeah! I think it really happened. I mean -

Carlton Cuse: I think it did to.

Damon Lindelof: You know, one of the things that we've tried very rarely to do on the show is to, to play something as only having been imagined or dreamed. And you know, I'd, I would, I would say that in the global sense of things, that Desmond, back in, you know back in the, the year 1996, actually had that experience. Now, I would venture to guess that in future flashbacks of Desmond's, that they would be, treated as traditional flashbacks where he doesn't really have any awareness of his destiny, but in this particular instance, uh, we went outside the box a little.

Carlton Cuse: Right, I mean I think it's, uh, it's entirely possible he can have a traditional flashback story as well.

Damon Lindelof: Absolutely, but I think what's interesting is there are, there are certain things that happen the way that they used to happen, that he changed as a result of being in the past, that might sort of resonate over time, you know. Like getting hit in the face, instead of the bartender, or the fact that the photograph of he and Penny got take uh - got, got taken the day that he broke up with her. Maybe, maybe in a, in another incarnation there were two photographs, you know. Maybe they, maybe they've, maybe there was a two for."
-Official Lost Podcast February 20th, 2007

[NMaudlin]

Originally Posted by Daniel1302

Yes, we are meant to believe all of this, as the show has provided evidence. In particular, re-watch "The Variable" for the evidence that Eloise always knew, from Daniel's childhood that we see, that she would eventually kill him.

Absolutely, that's not what I'm debating. I'm debating whether she had a plan to change it and save Daniel. Whether she remembers Jack and Kate from her past is another issue entirely in regards to The Variable, and it would be more believable from a character perspective for me to believe she was trying to save Daniel in the end by sending back the Oceanic Six.