If there’s one (for lack of a better word) constant on Lost, it’s main characters with serious daddy issues. Whether it’s a father stealing a child’s kidney, running off for years on end, or just living life in a drunken haze, fathers on Lost have been villified to no end.
But on tonight’s episode of Lost, The Variable, we met a (again, for lack of a better word) variable to the forumla. Meet Daniel Faraday. He’s a thirty-something physicist and professor at Oxford with possible moral and ethical issues when it comes to human experimentation. He’s travelled through time, likes redheads and long walks through the jungle. He has possible mental issues (but no one’s perfect). He wants to make the island world a better place.
Oh, and he has mommy issues.
I thought when we found out back in season one when Locke’s father conned him out of his kidney that that was the coldest thing one person could do to their offspring.
But now that we’ve seen more of Eloise Hawking’s backstory, where she raises her son to be a genius at physics, then takes away all his interests to get him to concentrate on his gifts before sending him to an island where she knows he’ll travel back through time only to be shot by her, I’m left thinking one thing: Locke got off easy.
Still, if the two ‘sides’ on Lost are aligned in the form of Eloise vs. one-time partner Charles Widmore, I’d rather be on Hawking’s side.
We know (and finally got it confirmed from the horse’s mouth) that Widmore faked the plane crash and sent a boatload of mercenaries to kill every person on the island.
On the other hand, while Eloise sent her son back to the island (where she knew she would end up shooting him), she’s sent people there to prevent catastrophic incidents from occurring.
It’s looking like younger Eloise is about to have her hands full, as Jack and Kate are about to pick up Daniel’s mission of preventing one particular catastrophic incident from happening.
We’ll find out in the next few weeks whether or not they succeed. I have a feeling that they might “succeed” and have an effect, but it won’t really change anything. In his short monologue before storming the Others’ camp, Daniel hypothesided that preventing the impending accident would lead to a chain of events that would keep Oceanic Flight 815 from crashing. Somehow, I get the feeling that won’t happen. Oceanic 815 had problems before Desmond didn’t push the button. While Faraday was correct that human free will is the variable to the constants of time, who’s to say that he’s not counting on the free will of Jacob, who may be the one pulling all the strings here.
It’s enough to make my head hurt and go Faraday-level crazy.
What did you think?
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