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Desmond: 'What if you did?'While writing elsewhere, I was thinking about the Season 2 premiere of LOST, and Jack's encounter with Desmond at the stadium, when I had a sudden moment of satori.
At the time, I was very much taken with the exact phrasing of Desmond's words to Jack about Sarah. When Jack said he didn't save Sarah, Desmond responded:
"But what if you did?"
The verb tense here actually prompted a whole thread on the Fuselage with the awesome title, "Desmond and the Pluperfect."
Now that we know about Desmond's "flashes" I would propose that the Stadium encounter and Desmond's odd phrasing here indicates that during the stadium meeting Desmond had memories of the future.
When they met on the Island, Jack talked to Desmond about Sarah's fate. Desmond remembered that fact, so he asked Jack "What if you did?" because he remembered that Jack had.
This would also explain the difference in Desmond's demeanor from the first time we saw the scene to the S2 finale. In the finale, just before he met Jack, Desmond looked drawn and despondent. In "Man of Science, Man of Faith," he was chipper and upbeat. The reason for this may be that Desmond's encounter with Penny outside the stadium went differently this time -- that he made a change which set the stage for repairing that relationship.
Maybe that change involved giving Penny a copy of the much-discussed snapshot that later appeared on her dressing room table. Desmond kept the snapshot at the end of "Flashes Before Your Eyes," and had it on the Island, but Penny had the snapshot on her dressing table at the end of "Live Together, Die Alone" (the infamous "challah" scene).
Overall, I believe "What if you did?" is an intentional clue that Desmond's time-trip is part of the long term story arc for Lost.
The catch here -- and it's a big one -- is that Jack doesn't actually tell Desmond that he fixed Sarah -- only that he married her. In fact, Desmond asks several times whether he saved her, and Jack replies several times "It doesn't matter."
I hereby predict we will either see that scene in the jungle revisited -- in time-tripping manner -- or else we will see a further conversation about Sarah between Jack and Desmond before we get to the end of the series -- and before Desmond's next jaunt into a retroactive flashback.
Technorati Tags: Lost, Jack, challah, Desmond, Flashes Before Your Eyes
Posted by J.M. Berger || Permalink
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