Orientation Film 485
Season 5, Episode 14

The Variable

May 10th, 2009 / Dean

I know, I’m several days late, sorry about that, but I’m not going to get this close to the end of the season and give up posting my thoughts. Hopefully I’ll find the time to get my “Follow the Leader” post up before this week’s finale.

Des is alive

After being shot by Ben he’s rushed to hospital, while in surgery Penny meets Eloise who explains that she thinks its her son’s fault that Des got shot. Later on we find out Des is in recovery and going to be ok.

Why is Dan back?

He tells miles that its because he saw the 1977 recruit photo with Jack, Kate and Hurley in it. However the real reason is that he knows about the incident and he wants to prevent it from happening.

Destiny? no.

Dan tells Jack and the others that they don’t belong here and that his mother was wrong when she told them it was their ‘destiny’ to go back to the island. Is destiny a faith thing and is that why it doesn’t sit well with Dan, a man of science?

You need to order the immediate evacuation…

When Dan finds Chang at the Orchid (he also notes that he arrived ‘right on time’… did Dan already know that he’d be there at that exact time…) he tells Chang to evacuate the island immediately because there is going to be a massive incident in 6 hours at the swan and he knows because he is from the future. Chang isn’t amused and thinks he’s joking. When Dan tries to explain that Miles is his son and also from the future Miles just flatly denies it.

Do what he’s supposed to do?

Dan tells Miles that he’s trying to make sure he gets Chang to “do what he’s supposed to do”. What is that exactly? I’m assuming that he just means evacuating the island?

Shall we stay or shall we go

The Losties convene at Sawyers place, to discuss what they are going to do now, they’ve basically got two options, try and take the sub and leave the island, or flee back into the jungle and start from scratch again. General consensus is that they spent too long trying to get back only to leave again so soon.

One of them is my Mother

Dan tells the other he needs to find the Hostiles because one of them is his Mother and she’s the only person that can help them get back to where they are supposed to be. Sawyer protests, but after he calls Kate ‘freckles’ Juliet gives Kate the sonic fence codes so that Jack and Her can take Dan out to the hostiles (she’s probably also hoping that Kate doesn’t come back…)

Why are you telling me this?

Dan is sitting watching the news about the discovery of Oceanic 815, sobbing without knowing why. Is this because somewhere inside him he knows why that plane crashed, and that he was unable to prevent it? Anyway, Charles Widmore shows up and introduces himself, he proceeds to tell Dan that the plane is an expensive fake and that plane really crashed on an island. When Dan asks why he would tell him this, Charles says its because he won’t even remember it tomorrow. He wants to send Dan to this island because it can help further his research and because this island has healing powers that may restore his mind to its former state.

Dan also mentions that he never meant to hurt her (his lab assistant) and that he’d tested it on himself first. Is he says that he used his time travel contraptions to transport his consciousness elsewhere? And if so, where/when did he send himself…

Young Charlotte

What does Dan tell Charlotte this time, does he tell her anything additional to try and prevent her returning in her future? I see this event as a good indication that no matter how hard he tries he can’t change things from happening. Remember after Charlotte died and they ended up in 1974 he said that he wouldn’t tell her this time, yet now he’s just said that he tried not to tell her but maybe it will work this time.

Radzinsky is a pain in the…

Every time we see Radzinsky he gets a little more annoying, I’m just hanging out for the time when he (or someone else) blows his head off in the Swan. This time he has a shootout with Jack, Kate and Dan as they collect guns prior to heading off in search of the hostiles, then after this happens he rocks up at Sawyer’s to discover Phil (who’s also highly annoying) tied up in the closet. Damn Radzinsky ruining everything.

Should I go?

When Dan asks Eloise if he should accept Widmore’s offer and go to the island, you can tell that she would rather have said no, because she knows what’s going to happen once he gets there.

Four hours is blast off

Dan tells Jack that in four hours the incident will happen at the site of the Swan hatch, and its this one thing that he’s traced everything back to, he thinks that preventing the incident will prevent the plane crashing in 2004… and somehow detonating a hydrogen bomb can make things “better”. I won’t repeat my thoughts again here see my last post (Our Present, Their Past) for more talk about this.

He’s my son too *slap*

When Eloise leaves the hospital she runs into Charles, shes say that she had to send her son back to the island knowing full well what would happen, Widmore reveals that Dan is his son too. I had already picked that, since there had never been mention of Dan father, and Charles and Eloise just happened to be similar ages and both hostiles.

She’s behind you!

Dan storms into the hostiles camp with a gun demanding that Alpert tell him where Eloise is, and he wants to know where they put the bomb that he told them to bury in 1954. Pretty sure Dan had no intention of actually shooting Alpert (mind you the bullet probably would have bounced off him), but Eloise was behind him and didn’t waste much time in shooting him in the back.

I’m your son

As Dan is dying he tells Eloise that he’s her son, realising that she knew all along that this would happen.

The Comic-con anomaly

Remember the video from last years Comic-con which was Pierre Chang saying that if he can keep this pinhole open long enough that you should see in this in about thirty years (1977 - 2007, that works), and that he and his colleagues are all dead as a result of a violent purge. There’s a voice behind the camera that sounds a lot like Dan, but prior to Dan leaving to find the Hostiles he hadn’t convinced Chang that he was telling the truth, so when would this have been supposedly filmed? I’m guessing that since this was shown in July last year that the planned story for season 5 changed by the time they got to the point where this would slot in and we should no longer consider it canon.

One Whisper about The Variable

  1. Neil

    Dean, you are my constant.

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