Desmond Hume has always been one of my favorite characters on Lost. While he's the man who's had all these unimaginable supernatural things happen to him, he's also the one most grounded in reality. He can see the future, but longs for the past; longs to make amends to the one person he cares so much about.

And as I think about it, in all of Desmond's flashbacks, there has been one thing in common. One "constant."

Penny.

So in this episode, "The Constant," we don't get a flashforward or a flashback, we get a time-warp. Because of the electrical storm the helicopter encounters as they leave the island (and because of the electro-magnetic exposure he got when the hatch blew up) Desmond goes back and forth from his current timeline to his time back in the army.

Everything about Desmond revolves around one thing: True Love. He's always trying to get back to Penny. And every episode about him is a love story. You've got to love that!

I'll admit most of this episode was way out there. Time-travel rats? Come on. Meeting Faraday in the past to make sure the future works? Uh huh. Okay. But the heart of the show was Desmond and Penny and now things start making sense.

I don't believe we were ever told why Desmond was in the brig; if they did mention he went AWOL, we now know. And we know the reason Penny is looking for him. It all fits together.

So far in this abbreviated season, this is by far my favorite episode.

We also see a painting of the Black Rock ship on auction, another tie-in to the island. I'll have to see the repeat to find out what was said about it.

And one question I have - Desmond wasn't on Oceanic 815, but none of the supposed rescuers said anything about it. They pointed out Juliet wasn't on the manifest, but they were silent about Desmond. If Desmond really was working for Dharma (like the guy who pulled him into the bunker - the US Army man who trained Sayid to torture - filled in Desmond's paperwork) are the rescuers actually working for Dharma? Is Dharma simply trying to get their island back?

This article was written by david and published on
March 2, 2008 at 12:41pm.
The article was given the following tags:

• abc
• lost
• media
• time travel
• tv