Get LOST with JOpinionated: Fan Feedback: The Constant

I am cooking up a new batch of thoughts and questions about "The Constant," last week's amazing episode of Lost. In the meantime, here are some great theories from one of my shy readers. I'll refer to him as 'Jacob' since he prefers to keep his identity a secret.

Email #1

"Did you ever see the movie Somewhere in Time? Using the same premise form last night, his constant was a coin...a penny! When he saw the modern Penny, that was what made him teleport back to the future. Basically Desmond's constant was the same thing... a penny, only this time a human Penny!

And theory number two, just as in any mad scientist/crazy theorist movie, Daniel Faraday is going to put himself in that machine he used on Eloise; just like the guy in "The Fly," they always decide to test it on themselves. That is why when we first meet DF it is on the island, AND THEN, we flash forward (or backward???) to him sitting in that chair crying. He caused himself to short circuit somehow or other (maybe not in the same way that Minkowski and Desmond experience it... and that is most likely due to the fact that his machine, while enough to kill a rat, didn't cause the same damage that the hatch explosion did to a human...it was exponential to the size of the lab rats in each situation) and that is probably why he needs a caretaker, he blacks out (time travels). When he is crying and we first meet him it is because he has just flashed back from the island to his living room and his caretaker, and then the news breaks about the plane crash and he makes the connection between his present and his past. In that moment the circle connects partially and it won't be completed until Desmond makes his connection. It's a whole space time continuum thing.... You almost need a graph to understand it."

Email #2

"I think some of the people on flight 815 were from the present and some were from the future. Here is why...somehow or other if you are from the future and you go back in time, and then you resolve that time break, something has to happen to you in the past for you to permanently stay in the future. I think that that something is that the "you" in the past dies. That would explain why Charlie died on the island but could appear to Hurley in the future (which was Charlie's own time).

If you notice that when they time traveled, their bodies were physically in both places, they just went catatonic in the "time" that they were no longer actively in. And although we never saw it, there have been episodes where Desmond has disappeared and you don't see him, since the hatch explosion when he theoretically would have been exposed to the radiation that starts his time traveling. Could he have been in a trance somewhere on the island, for example, when he saw his friend from Oxford and explained what was happening to him? I think Desmond is the entire lynchpin to the whole thing. That none of this could start unraveling, or begin to play itself out, until he and Faraday crossed each other in time and space...kind of like last week's episode where you asked...which came first, the chicken or the egg? Desmond to Faraday, or Faraday to Desmond???

So my point about the dying is that if they are physically in both places, and then they connect with their constant to resolve the conundrum, what happens to the physical person in the past??? They can't just disappear like the rapture. Wouldn't that be too unsettling to people? I think that they must die. Which leads me to believe that Christian Shepherd, Charlie, Boone, Shannon, Ana Lucia, Libby, Naomi, Paolo and the GF, etc...all were there from the future and had to die to be released back to the future. That was why no one on the freighter seemed shocked that Naomi died. They all knew she would. I guarantee you that the bodies disappear when they die too. See if Sayid and Desmond look for her body and it is gone. Juliet was also so concerned about those two new characters that died about where they were buried... that was because she knows about all of this too. She wants to know if the bodies are really there.

Take for instance the case of Libby...If she was Daniel's caretaker as has been suggested, maybe she was exposed to his experiments which somehow sent her back. Or maybe he tested it on her???? That would explain why she thought she was crazy and was in the asylum, also why she gave the boat to Desmond, because she, just like Mr. Widmore, was just doing things to further Desmond's getting to the point that he got to last night (again, the chicken or the egg) which would set off this whole chain of events.

I know this is way convoluted, but I think this really has something to do with the whole explanation. Most everyone was on that plane for a reason. Maybe Jack's father was sent to the past, made his connection so that he would die, so that Jack would go to Australia to get on 815. That is why in the future he says "Go get my Father" maybe he still is alive in the future...."