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If there’s only one comment then we know this will be the last post on Lost. Ha!

Last week’s episode The Constant was amazing. Here is my spoiler-free summary of The Constant that will help you understand what went down.

This is from executive producer and co-writer of The Constant Damon Lindelof

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO DESMOND?
In ”The Constant,” Desmond became ”unstuck in time” after flying through a thundercloud crackling with strange electricity. He experienced something like time travel, though not bodily time travel; instead, his consciousness shuttled between two different time periods, Island present 2004 and Desmond’s past 1996. But here’s the tricky twist: Desmond’s Island-present mind wasn’t the one doing the time traveling. When Desmond got hit with Island magic, his consciousness got knocked off-line and was replaced by his 1996 self. It was this older Desmond consciousness that toggled between present and past throughout the episode. Once Desmond ‘96 completed the errand of getting Penny’s phone number so he could call her on Christmas Eve 2004, Desmond’s present-day mind came back online, but rebooted with the new memories created by his time-travel adventure.

THE MINKOWSKI EXCEPTION
Desmond had the time-warp blues, but freighter freak Minkowski had Marty McFly Mania: Due to his own exposure to electromagnetic magic, he began psychically commuting back to a pleasant day on a Ferris wheel. He died desperately trying to zip-line back to this happy day one more time. Coldly poignant, I thought. Notice: Unlike Desmond’s time-travel story, Minkowski’s present day consciousness was making the trip. Lindelof says this difference was designed to make a very important point: ”As Faraday explains in the episode, the effect is random. Sometimes a person can be displaced by minutes, other times, years. And the direction of the effect is equally unpredictable. Our way of demonstrating this was to give Minkowski a wildly different experience than Desmond was having.” Lindelof says none of this is arbitrary; exposure to electromagnetism or radiation plays a role. But he adds: ”Looking for specific rules for how all this works will lead you down the path of insanity.”

That excerpt is from here, but the link does have some spoilers.

This link does have a couple small possible spoilers, but the interesting part he mentions is this:

If we reflect back on Live Together, Die Alone (The Season 2 Finale) we know that Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sawyer were bound and gagged on the dock. Michael and Walt were also there and about to set sail. All six of them were away from the hatch explosion that caused an EMP. We learned tonight that an EMP could cause some very wonky side effects when coming and going from the island if you don’t have a constant.

Simply put…If one was in close proximity when the EMP went off caused when the hatch exploded/imploded they cannot leave the island without a constant or they are “stuck”. Presumably, if anyone was not in range they could leave the island without any side effects.

Sayid, Sun and Jim were aboard Desmond’s boat that was heading to rescue Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley. They too were not on the island near the beach when the hatch exploded.

We now know that Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid are four of the 6 (Oceanic Six) and also 4 of the 8. My guess is that not being at the site of the blast areas of the EMP, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Jin, Sun, Hureley, Sayid, Michael and Walt are immune to the comings and goings on the island.

A really good post on some of the physics of space and time in the episode.

If you want to understand some of the terms on Farraday’s chalkboard and notebook like the Lorentz invariant, Kerr metric, Imaginary time, etc. then check this out. More on that topic here.

Really long and complicated post on “Non-Local Brain Games.”

Here are some Lost blogs I have in my reader (all of them periodically have spoilers):
Dark UFO
UFO Spoilers
The ODI
Sledgeweb
Josh Meister
Lost Blog
Film Fodder Lost Blog

Cheers.