A Separate Reality

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• Doc Jensen provides some theorizing on why Sun’s still in 2007.
  

  THE SUN-FOR-CLAIRE SUBSTITUTION THEORY
  In which I offer an explanation for why Ajira 316 passengers Sun, Lapidus, Locke, and Ben were sent to 2007, while Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid were beamed back to 1977.

  There are many unresolved bits of business on Lost, but one that many of you are fixated with — and I know this because I get e-mails about it all the time — concerns future-flashing Desmond’s prophecy concerning the fate of Claire and Aaron. If you recall, the former accidental Island tourist said that if Charlie Pace would sacrifice his life by swimming down to the Looking-Glass Station and turning off the jamming device, then Claire and Aaron would be rescued. In fact, Des had a very specific vision about this: He said the Aussie mom and her creepy little kid would fly away in a helicopter.
  
  That didn’t happen. The conventional wisdom is that events in the Looking-Glass didn’t proceed exactly as Desmond saw them in his head, so Fate decided to take things in a different direction — like turning Claire into an Island phantom. (Allegedly.) But it occurred to me recently that Charlie’s heroism actually did yield a future in which a mother and child left the Island in a helicopter: Pregnant Sun and Baby Aaron.
  
  My theory, then, is that Desmond’s prophecy technically came true. He just got the identity of the mom wrong. And I think he got the ID wrong because the agency that gave Desmond the flashes — the Island — lied to him for the sake of motivating Charlie into a situation where he would finally just die already. What the Island wanted all along was to get Sun and Aaron away from its shores — maybe forever, but at least just for that one moment when Ben turned the frozen donkey wheel. Why? Because the Island didn’t want Sun and Aaron to do the time warp shuffle with the rest of the castaways. The same can’t be said for Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid. I think they were supposed to go back in time with Sawyer and the Left Behinders, but they threw a spanner into the works by jumping aboard Frank’s helicopter, too.
  
  Regardless, the Island now has almost everyone where/when they were always supposed to be — and where/when they were not supposed to be. Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid were beamed to 1977, because they were always supposed to be part of the Quantum Leap Crew. Meanwhile, Locke, Ben, Sun, Aaron, and Frank are not in 1977, because they were never meant to go back in time. Locke was supposed to turn the wheel and leave the Island. Ben was supposed to be removed from the Island by the freighter mercenaries. Sun and Aaron were supposed to have been transported off the Island in a chopper flown by Lapidus. Only the Mother/Child/Pilot portion of the plan came to pass. But Ben and Locke required some course-correction.
  
  Notice that I said that almost everyone is where/when they’re supposed to be. Desmond was also on the chopper, and as Eloise Hawking said in ”316,” the Island is not yet done with him. Perhaps the former future-flasher was also never supposed to leave. Maybe he was. But he wasn’t on Ajira 316, because unlike the other castaways, Desmond didn’t come to the Island via airplane. Again, according to Eloise, the Island has a thing for symmetry; remember, she told Jack that the conditions of Oceanic 815 had to be replicated as much as possible in order to avoid unpredictable consequences. My guess is that when we see Desmond on the Island again — whether it’s in 2007 or 1977 — it will be via shipwreck, not airplane crash. [EW]

• I enjoyed the synopsis of tonight’s episode up on Lostpedia.

  Flashback
  Sayid kills a chicken.
  Sayid kills a Russian.

  On the Island
  Young Ben brings Sayid a chicken salad sandwich and a book.
  Horace and Radzinsky visit Sayid’s cell.
  Juliet makes Sawyer breakfast.

  The very essence of the show, distilled into five sentences. Makes me wonder why I spend hours writing these rambling recaps.

See ya next week when “whatever happened” will happen.