One of the main characters named Desmond has the ability to time travel. Whenever you have supernatural events or science fiction, time travel is always an interesting phenomenon to watch. The most recent episode titled The Constant explained the ability Desmond has.

http://www.hotconflict.com/blog/2008/03/lost—religion.html

I think the producers/writers have some big themes in mind when the write this stuff, but I also think a lot of it is just easter eggs for the fans and not essential to the storyline or plot development. It’s like the books Sawyer reads. Is it essential to know what those books are to understand the big themes of Lost? Absolutely not. But, for those who care, it is an added layer of the show.

My wife and I both love Lost…but, after the episodes, she is content turning the TV off and going to bed. I, however, like to theorize and guess and predict…

Heh. The Zombie Season!

For the record, the only way this happens is if Cuse and Lindelof have blatantly and repeatedly outright lied to us. They have repeatedly stated, on more than one occassion, that “the dead on LOST stay dead.” That doesn’t mean that there aren’t such things as ghosts (e.g., Charlie in the season premier, and possibly Christian Shepard) or hallucinations of things dead brought about by the Smoke Monster (e.g., Eko’s brother). But I do think it precludes the emergence of the undead.

From Mont
Here’s what is going to happen next on LOST.

We have already seen exposition on one major element of the island, namely, time irregularities. Most people however interpret this as time travel/displacement. The show is telling us otherwise. This is CONSCIOUSNESS DISPLACEMENT. Now, with that card on the table, so to speak, I think the LOST writers must tackle the next big question regarding enigmatic developments on the island – the next BIG THEME. Of course the next theme will tie into this latest theme of Consciousness Displacement. The next THEME to undergo exposition on LOST is the long-incubated theme of regeneration/immortality.

“Nothing buried on this island stays buried”

Supposition
If you die on the island, depending on the state of your consciousness when you died, you may not stay dead.
I think the dead are going to start walking on LOST (like they haven’t already been) but in a BIG way.

We will start to see it with Naomi, who so obviously is not going to stay dead. She is the first corpse (who dies on the island to travel through the electromagnetic anomoly surrounding the island (if only momentarily as the chopper went off course briefly). Of all the chopper occupants, only Desmond’s consciousness was effected by the anomoly. This is because he had previously been exposed to “high levels of radioactivity or electromagnetism.” when the hatch blew. Sayid’s consciousness wasn’t effected because he wasn’t PRE-DOSED by the hatch-blow electromagnetic incident (he was on a sailboat on the other side of the island). Everyone else in the chopper wasn’t electromagnetically predosed because they weren’t around when the hatch blew either.
The only other people who were predosed when they passed through the anomoly were of course Desmond… the doomed radio operator who was predosed electromagnetically by virtue of his job, the densely electromagnetic nest of a radio communications room (and the headphones he wore constantly)… And also Naomi, who engaged in the ultimate electromagnetic predosing prior to passage through the anomoly. She died on the island. Death is an electromagnetic event. Death (or the point of death) is determined by the lack of the two electromagnetic signatures, a heart beat (electrical) and brainwaves (also electrical) ({point of) death can be interpreted as an electromagnetic event. Rest assured that Naomi was predosed.
Also, conception, by the same token, is an electromagnetic event. I propose that any concepetion on the island, the being hence concieved will be predosing all through it’s gestation period. “Predosing” can be understood as “building up a charge,” like when you rub a balloon so it will stick to a wall, or like dead batteries in a battery charger.
Anything predosed with island energy, especially those who die and those who are conceived will undergo a radically different process than what is understood as a “normal death” or a “normal maturation.”
This is why pregnant women don’t come full term on the island without dying. The amplified electromagnetic event in their womb fatally stresses their system.
This is why Walt is so special. Maybe the only island occupant (currently) going through puberty. Which is probably a more potent time with regard to charging up with island energy than conception, gestation or death. Unlike conception, gestation or Death, puberty is a high-charge time concurrent with an active consciousness.
Remember Patchy (can’t rememeber his name) the Russian Other who kept dying (and who killed Charlie). I guarentee you that he has a Patch because he’s a Buccaneer from the Black Rock. He’s old, old, and he’ll be back. Remember Miss Klugh, the Other sister that Patchy so oddly killed? She’s a Black Rocker too and she’ll be back. Patchy “so oddly killed her” because he knew that he wasn’t really. It was more like “See ya later then Hon.”

Right now, these, and other dead people, (probably only Black Rockers) ae going to spring up and reassert themselves. Just you watch. Naomi, who accidentally underwent the correct proceedure for reanimation, will surprise everyone.
Note: It may not be reanimation (people rising from graves) that occurs, but possibly a form of doubling/doppleganger (rabbit number fifteen) manifestation that rehouses a floating consciousness. This will be the next big theme dealt with: What’s up with rabbit 15.

What else…. oh yeah, clearly this series will end when Desmond and his gal are reunited on the island. It will be found that Desmond cannot leave the island for long without dying. So Penny will romantically give up her life in the world and come to live with Desmond on the island.

The only people that do leave the island are the only ones who can: All those who were well away from the hatch when it imploded. Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, Sayid, Jin and Sun (Michael and walt). Sun will die earlier than her third trimester because she concieved so close to the hatch-blow. Sun is doomed. Jin won’t die. He is also working for Ben killing Dharma people post-island and is a player in moves against his father-in-law. Sawyer is going to sacrifice his life to save Kate from something. That won’t be until the last season. It is going to get to the point that we all know that Sawyer died (from flash forwards) and they are going to build on the suspense of us all knowing it’s coming but not how.

Let’s not forget about that hatch implosion. There were four people IN the hatch when it seemingly disappeared, Desmond, Locke, Eco and Charlie. The whole “what happened to those guys at the point of implosion’ thingy is very murky. We know they all proceeded to rapid evolution. In essence they all became Angels to/for the island with Eco either being rejected, or offered as a blood sacrifice to the demon smoke monster.
The demon smoke monster may be the collective psychic energy of everyone who has died on the island. The smoke monster is therefore mostly the ghost of Dharma, or the collective ghosts of Dharma manifesting (everyone Ben killed who lays in the bone pit.. Black Rockers know how to free themselves from the smoke community of souls once they have died.That’s what the whispers are too. The smoke monster is repelled by the electro-fence. Patchy is killed (?) by it. They are trying to tell you they are the same. Ben knows exactly what the smoke monster is. He probably also knows where it is at all times. The smoke monster probably moves aboout the island as predictably as weather. It follows dowsing lines – electromagnetics. It is as helpless as a cloud with regard to where it can be at any given time. That is why Ben can walk about without fear of sudden attack.

Look for Locke to have a toe cut off. he will have four toes and we will be left to chew on that for a while.

Jacob is going to turn out to be Daniel Farraday. The fact that he didn’t wear head protection during his experiments with Eloise gave him a massive predose. Danial farraday is doomed. The granules surrounding Daniel/Jacob’s cabin repel the smoke monster. The smoke monster’s nature will be fully revealed in the episode that show’s Daniel’s final conversion to Jacob (and then time/displaced), The smoke monster will be the instrument of this conversion. When Jacob says “help me” he means help me from the smoke monster. Jacob himself is a smoke monster consisting of one soul: Daniel Farraday. Jacob’s cabin is a Farraday Cage of sorts. Remember, “no electric devices in the cabin or near Jacob.”

Mark my words.

Also…

Aaron is Jack’s constant (maybe). If he visits Aaron, plays with Aaron, or develops any memories regarding Aaron, then Jack will never be able to return to the island. Or something. Whatever it is, Jack’s apprehension about seeing Aaron (in flash forwards) has got something to do with CONSTANTS and time/consciousness displacement.
Right now on LOST we are waiting for Daniel to remember why he is there and what he is supposed to do once getting there. They will eventually head to the hatches.
The reason the hatches are underground and secure is protection from the smoke monster. The hatches are all about Dharma study of the smoke monster. The sonic fence is the same tech as the hatches. Dharma hardware is all about study IN SECURITY of the smoke monster. The whole effort is to be interactive with the smoke monster. The info canisters that emerge in the middle of a fields by way of some pneumatic system of tubes is not a mind game for hatch residents but a com node to the smoke monster. The canisters are info/input for the smoke monster’s consumption all toward a scheme to try to figure out what it is. In killing Dharma, Ben was working for the smoke monster which is a psychic manifestation that the Black Rockers can inhabit and manipulate.
The hatches are meant to be occupied by people who are doppelgangers of themselves. One hatch is filled with a crew. Another hatch contains the SAME crew from a different timeline – and so on. The hatchers are supposed to be studying themselves and possibly trying to psychically effect their actions through a time/consciousness barrier. Dharma/Hanso understands that the smoke monster is a derivative of this process and engages in it to this end. It is also possible that the smoke monster is the result of time/consciousness displacement experiments that went all wrong in an “incident.”
The “incident” was Locke smashing the computer terminal and making inevitable, the time meltdown. The smoke monster is Locke. The smoke monster is the anomoly that was created when Locke imploded with the hatch. It/he was then dispersed throughout time. Locke was looking at himself as he gazed at the smoke monster. That is why it was beautiful to a narcisist like Locke. When the hatch imploded, it, in a backwards way, created the four-toed statue, the Black Rockers, the smoke monster, all of the number tomfoolery and even Dharma/Hanso itself. Like the rat that ran the maze because it had learned it in a past which it had skipped, so to did the entire LOST universe come into existance with a past that it had skipped (throughout time) when the hatch blew.

Like an essence of Locke was attached to Locke’s father as his stolen kidney… so too does Locke attach the essence of others to his new body. If Locke is the smoke monster, then the souls of those who die on the island likewise attach themselves (or are attached) to the Locke essence (the smoke monster). When Locke died/transformed in the hatch-explosion, he became an “extra-temporal soul magnet” otherwise known as the smoke monster.
The hatch implosion created a temporal rift (in the Universe) that created a new past instantly to inhabit a now newly constructed (because of the rift) present. All of the flashbacks that we have been seeing through the years are merely incidents in an imposed TIME WAR. One faction, Dharma, is trying to correct the rift using Time Agents dispersed throughout the NEW PAST. These are people like Libby who are Time Agent Warriors whose mission is to travel into the NEW PAST (the flashbacks) to set up the conditions on the island (in the NEW PRESENT, our LOST viewing present) necessary to correct the time rift… that is – conduct the war.
It is all quite simple in a cock-eyed way.
Ben is leading the other faction in the TIME WAR. These are the people who stand to lose if the Time Rift is corrected. That means anyone who is on the island will cease to exist if Dharma has it’s way. That is why, after a few revelations, it is easy to understand why Sayid appears to be killing for Ben. He isn’t. He and Ben both have a vested interest in eliminating Dharma from their present Timeline. All actions in the upcoming flash forwards will be in service of the above described TIMEWAR which is centered around the hatch-imploded Locke anomoly.
Why did Widmore give Desmond Penny’s address? For the same reason that he left the water running. For the same reason that he sent his agent Libby in to provide Desmond with a means of getting to the island. Widmore is a TIMEWAR general, if not Commander in Chief. he uses mind control subjects as his front-line warrioirs.
Mind control subjects are often recruited from mental institutions and prisons.
Widmore is a Timelord
Ben is a Timelord
Locke is a Time God. Locke is the CONSTANT for the entire anomoly. He was made so by being at the center of the implosion. Charlie and Eco were on the edge of it, Desmond had the key (and turned it with LOVE) so he was only going to be bitch slapped by time. It’s Locke that shouldered the implosion unprotected and he was scattered throughout the univerese and all time. Everything instantly became BECAUSE of him, even if he, and we, don’t know it yet. They will find the head of the four-toed statue. It will be Locke’s stone head.

Jacob is Daniel as a Time Casualty

Miles is going to find himself in one of the other hatches.

Charlotte is a Timelord who knew Ben would shoot her so she wore a bulletproof vest.

Widmore’s agent Libby got Widmore’s other (unwitting) agent Desmond to the island. Widmore’s agent Libby also was a connective presence to Hurley both before and after the crash. It is quite possible that Hurley is Libby’s constant… or rather, Hurley is the constant that Libby engineered for herself. She needed to be on the island as a Time Warrior (as Widmore’s agent) so it was arranged (by Timelord Widmore) for a hapless Hurley to be on the island at the same time as Libby.
All of the 815ers presences were engineered in advance (by all involved parties) to be on the plane which would deliver to the island all the components of the oddly paradoxical TimeWar… a TimeWar that came into being instantly and for all time when Locke got caught in the center of the time cyclone. a TimeWar that is perpetuated by the very existance of the smoke monster – which is a time-displaced Locke acting as fly paper to any consciousness-displaced soul on the island.

In the end there will be a truce because Penny will cross through the anomoly and get to the island to reunite with Des. Widmore will understand that to close the rift will mean that his daughter will now also cease to exist. He will stop his part of the Timewar against Ben.

A timelord is someone who has mastered the art of being unstuck in Time. This means that a Timelord can live their life non-linearly (like Billy Pilgrim of Slaughterhouse Five) but that they can also FEEDBACK and inform their past self with their future self and constantly modify the game. Being a Timelord means you already know what is going to happen to you. But you can change it, but you will also already know what will happen when you do that.
Being a TimeGOD means that you are the constant to the entire anomoly that gives the Timelords their ability.

You see, simple. LOST is a story of TimeLords conducting a Timewar with hapless victims being used as TimeFodder.
Cross your eyes and think of Time and Consciousness as roughly the same thing (Consciousness is the thing that experiences and processes time) and there you have it.

Mont

This week’s Desmond-centric outing is curiously titled “the constant”, which should immediately give you nightmares of high school math and physics. For those who were sleeping through those classes in their youth, here’s a brief refresher (don’t worry, I didn’t actually remember most of this stuff either – that’s why God created Wikipedia, so that we can simply copy and paste large quantities of information into our Blogs to come across as being far smarter than we actually are):

Constants are real numbers or numerical values which are significantly interesting in some way. The term “constant” is used both for mathematical constants and for physical constants, but with quite different meanings. A mathematical constant is a quantity, usually a real number or a complex number, that arises naturally in mathematics and does not change. Unlike some physical constants, mathematical constants are defined independently of any physical measurement. A physical constant is a physical quantity that is generally believed to be both universal in nature and constant in time. It can be contrasted with a mathematical constant, which is a fixed numerical value but does not directly involve any physical measurement.

Huh?

Basically, things like Pi, the speed of light, the Golden Ratio, gravity, etc. – things that don’t change no matter how you use them in some type of equation, and probably things you had to memorize back in school.

Initially, I thought this might be some reference to the “funky” properties of the Island (be it time or space). I became especially intrigued when I stumbled across this article from John D. Barrow in 2002:

“[An] important lesson we learn from the way that pure numbers like α define the world is what it really means for worlds to be different. The pure number we call the fine structure constant and denote by α is a combination of the electron charge, e, the speed of light, c, and Planck’s constant, h. At first we might be tempted to think that a world in which the speed of light was slower would be a different world. But this would be a mistake. If c, h, and e were all changed so that the values they have in metric (or any other) units were different when we looked them up in our tables of physical constants, but the value of α remained the same, this new world would be observationally indistinguishable from our world. The only thing that counts in the definition of worlds are the values of the dimensionless constants of Nature. If all masses were doubled in value you cannot tell because all the pure numbers defined by the ratios of any pair of masses are unchanged.”

I won’t pretend to understand all that, but the portions underlined above sure sound an awful lot like the nerd-science way of explaining that there could be funky time and space on the Island. “The Constant” could simply refer to some factor in the equation that explains all this (representing the Bubble). Heck, maybe it’s the equation that Daniel Faraday is writing on the chalkboard in the preview for the episode:

So is it as simple as that? Unfortunately not. When I first saw this episode title, and found that it was a Desmond-centric outing, I was immediately reminded of his Season Three trip-tastic episode “Flashes Before Your Eyes”, where he maybe went back in time, perhaps had a hallucinogenic out of body experience, or might have accidentally altered the future (let the record show that in my analysis of that episode, I came down on the side of “it was all a dream”).

But for the sake of argument, if you think about it, Desmond was the only one who had knowledge about the “past”, the “present”, and the “future” during that episode. He was reliving life events where he already had prior knowledge of what would happen, attempted to change fate, and ended up back on the Island where he started. With all the variables of space and time around him in the episode, he was the one constant – the one who was seemingly unaffected by the jump in time and space, retaining the same life experiences that he had prior to turning the Swan Hatch Failsafe Key, even though he was interacting with events that happened before he even knew what a Swan Hatch was.

Desmond is “The Constant”.

Whatever funky time or space is happening on the Island, Desmond somehow became immune to it through the Hatch Implosion – perhaps his proximity to the magnetic blast put his body on the same “wavelength” as the funky properties of the Island, which somehow gave him the ability to see the future and relive the past.

If this is the case, when Desmond, Sayid, and Frank break the Bubble in their journey to the Freighter, there may be some unintended side effects for Sayid and Frank, but not Desmond. Maybe they’ll instantly age two years, maybe they’ll forget the past, maybe they’ll all warp to somewhere courtesy of a “funky time” wormhole, leaving Desmond alone in the ocean.

Of course, there’s also the much, much, much simpler explanation for the episode title. If you look up the dictionary definition of the word “constant”, you receive the following three possibilities:

1. Marked by firm steadfast resolution or
2. Invariable, uniform
3. Continually occurring or recurring

Looking at the first and second definitions, one could get all sappy and say that “the Constant” in this episode is something like Desmond’s love for Penny and desire to return to her no matter what the cost. A little late for Valentine’s Day, but still a sweet thought (and much simpler than all this mathematical mumbo-jumbo).

The third option on the other hand, opens up an even more intriguing possibility – that Desmond is stuck in some sort of time loop, continually living the events that led him to the Island, his attempts to escape the Island, and the fate he encounters each time… death. Listen closely to the end of the episode preview, featuring Desmond saying “Tell me, am I going to die?” as he throws Faraday into a blackboard:

This would tie in nicely to the themes of fate (and attempting to change it) that Desmond found during “Flashes Before Your Eyes”.

Heck, maybe it’s a combination of all of the above – that’s the great thing about Lost and their episode titles after all, creating complex, multi-layered titles that probably less than 5% of the viewing audience ever even knows, let alone analyzes. We are the few, the proud, the obsessive.

Yeah, I was wondering how they pull that off as well.

Hayes,
What can I say? I cycle past Queen’s every day.

BIG QUESTION:
Given Des’s clean-shavenness in the past, is the actor sporting a fake beard, wig in the future? How do they film this? (BTW, Rebecca and I like to call Desmond “Jesus”.)

I actually agree with danithew that this episode was one of the best TV shows I have seen.

But I was majorly disappointed with Queen’s College? Why did the writers choose Queen’s? The real Queen’s College, Oxford has such a distinctive look that it is simply hard to fake it. Seeing what they portrayed as Queen’s College was just too jarring! (When I heard Faraday tell Desmond to go to Queen’s College I got really excited since my college was right across the street from it and I looked at it every day as a student there.) Obviously they weren’t going to fly to England from Hawaii for just a couple of scenes but if they had it would have been much appreciated by many, I would guess.

Re # 34 — did the episode actually state that Queen’s College had a Physics Department, or did it just depict Faraday as a Physics professor at Queen’s? (I know you understand the distinction here.) Queen’s College is home to a couple of physics tudors (professors), e.g. Robert Taylor.

Oh well, the Queen’s College angle kind of sucked in how it was pulled off but the idea of it is cool and forms a kind of association with cool physics-related material at Queen’s College depicted in The Saint (although if I recall correctly that movie zoomed in on undergraduate dorms at Queen’s when purporting to show physics labs).