Desmond’s Hatch Implosion Flashback in LOST 3×8, “Flashes Before Your Eyes”
So the big question left after watching “Flashes Before Your Eyes” is whether the flashback we saw after Desmond turned the fail-safe key was a coma dream or a true memory showing he already had precognitive abilities before he ended up on the island. By the end of the episode, I don’t think there was much chance left for it to be a true memory, but stranger things have happened.
I’m going with the coma dream theory. I think it was the writers’ way of messing with us about all the time travel theories, and trying to not-so-subtly tell us it’s ridiculous. They’ve told us in interviews that time travel was not involved. Now they brought it up in the script. But in true LOST fashion, they didn’t tell us flat out that it wasn’t really time travel; they left us to decide it for ourselves. I haven’t yet ventured into the fan forums to see what sort of debates are going on about what we really saw.
Desmond’s flashback was an interesting look at what life he led before going into the military. We hadn’t seen that before. I’m going to take a leap and say that the events that unfolded were mostly true memories, aside from the island “premonitions” and the old woman in the jewelry shop. I love the fact that he was a set designer for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Of course, that wasn’t good enough for Penny’s father, Charles Widmore. So that is why Desmond joins the military, to earn the honor he thinks he doesn’t have, only to commit some kind of crime that will land him in the brig and force him to seek honor elsewhere, in Widmore’s around the world sailing race. It’s possible that Desmond had met Charlie singing on a street corner in the true past, but he wouldn’t have had that conversation about the island, the hatch, and pushing the button. Or else Charlie would’ve remembered it. (Did you catch that Charlie’s middle name is Hieronymous?)
I was unsurprised that Desmond was trying to save Charlie instead of Claire. I blame someone on LOST-TV for posting their theory that Claire was a red herring. I’m truly hoping that person was really making a guess, and not one of those evil people who slips spoilers into non-spoiler forums by making their own “theories.” I do wonder how Charlie will actually die. Or if maybe Desmond can change the future he sees and save him after all. I don’t think he’ll stop trying to save him, at any rate, because that’s not the kind of person he is.
