Charlie Pace – Flash Addict
At the moment he was trying to swallow his heroin stash in the airplane lavatory, the turbulence that originally spelled doom for 815 in the original timeline hit, and Charlie choked. In that moment, he had visions of a blonde woman (Claire, of course) whom he had an intense but unexplained love for. He saw glimpses of the Island timeline — no electromagnetic bombardment necessary.
For Charlie, near-death experiences appear to be the trigger for his flashes. For Faraday, it was simply seeing someone he recognized , but shouldn’t have.
Daniel Widmore/Faraday – The Idea Man
Daniel tells Desmond he saw a blue-eyed redhead working at the location his party was held, and we can only assume he refers to Charlotte. Seeing her triggered a flash to the Island timeline, enveloping him in the love he felt for her.
Faraday-X couldn’t explain it, but the musician woke up and scrawled out a complex diagram explaining the nature of time and the flashes. Without any quantum mechanics background, he somehow created a diagram with highly-advanced equations, abilities only his Island self had.
Despite that, Faraday-X appears to have some ideas on just what is going on, and how to put the flash triggers into practice.
George Minkowski – The Guide
When last we saw George, the scientist was a babbling, incoherent mess in the freighter control room while his consciousness repeatedly flashed throughout time with increasingly frequency up until he died. We’d learned he’d gotten a little too close to the Island once the freighter had arrived, and whatever EM radiation he’d been exposed to caused his brain to become “unstuck in time.” (Which apparently isn’t healthy.)
In the X timeline , George serves as the man who knows everyone and can get you anything you want or need. Much more than a slick hustler / limo driver, he serves as Desmond’s guide of sorts while in the X timeline. I’d like to go back and watch the prior episodes with George to see if he made any references to the events in tonight’s episode, but my feeling is that George-X knows quite a bit more about what’s going on than he’s letting on (that’s not saying he’s up to anything nefarious; I just think he’s well-accustomed with the flashes and alternate timelines).
Eloise Widmore/Hawking – Timecop
Last but most certainly not least, Mrs. Eloise Widmore. In the X timeline, both Charles and Ellie made it off the Island (if they were ever there in the first place) and are married. Eloise, as she intimated when Desmond first met her a while back, is clearly someone who thinks everything should be in its right place, from the proper placement of a butter knife at the table settings to whatever events happened in the past and will happen in the future.
Her (self-imposed?) role as course corrector of the timeline dictates she prevent Desmond from messing around with the X-timeline, as the damage has already been done. Her goal is to protect what happened, paraphrasing Faraday’s theory on time, that “whatever happened, happened.” Desmond’s attempts to alter the X reality and get in contact with Penny are a “violation,” in her terms. Perhaps she believes that the Jughead detonation, while directly at odds with that goal, has already happened and can’t be changed now. All she can do is try and ensure the current X timeline holds steady, past, present and future.
When she tells Desmond he’s “not ready yet” to be making any changes, it begs the question as to why she is protecting THIS timeline. Is it truly because she wants to keep things stable, or are her motives more selfish? She clearly recognizes Desmond when she first sees him, and thus I extrapolate she knows exactly what is going on in the X and Island timelines.
Is it because the X timeline has given her an intact family? She’s married to Charles and has her son alive again. If her aims are not selfish, then what is going to make Desmond “ready?” Maybe I’m reaching and she’s just inferring Desmond needs a talking-to from Faraday before he can start altering things. For less-than-stable reasons, I’m a bit worried for Desmond’s future. When Widmore tries to explain “The Test” to a struggling Desmond, he indicates Hume will need to make a sacrifice before all is said and done. Does that means he’ll have to give up Penny and his son and stay in the X timeline once his “work” is finished? For the moment, at least, an unaware Desmond is ready to plow ahead with that work full speed ahead.
While tonight certainly gives us some much-needed direction and purpose for the flash-sidewayses going forward, the obvious question remains: what the hell is going on?!. If you’re still finishing these episodes with a headache, I whipped up a handy diagram to help you make sense of the timelines we’ve seen on the show and just how Desmond relates to them.
See? It’s just that simple!
is X timeline what happens if MiB gets off the island?
I wondered who Penny’s mum is???? Half sister? Meaning she and Farraday (why is his last name Farraday?) share a Dad, Widmore, but who is her Mum????!!!!
Jeff, your conceptualizations of all this are so far over my head, my head spins!! Like I said last week, I have given up trying to figure it all out, and am riding out the rest of the season…Minkowski’s “whatever they were called in Season three?” or was it four when Desmnd is the constant, have been all but forgotten…Darn, I should have watched all the prior seasons before this one started, so I could “keep up”.
Thanks for a great read, as always!!!
timecop! thats funny. well done.
any one else catch it when charlie was first talking about his flash, and he saw a woman in cuffs? thought it was a clever inside joke the writer’s made to the real life relationship with evangeline lily.