The Constant Revisited

Doc Jenson at EW.com does a great Lost preview and recap. I thought I'd pass along some of his comments about "The Constant," since he clears up a lot of information on what happened and confirms his theories with producer Damon Lindelof.

Here's an excerpt from his article on "The Constant":

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. I know: tricky stuff. But I had the chance to run all this by Damon Lindelof — and he says this interpretation is correct.

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.''

PARADOX R/X, or ''HOW COURSE CORRECTION WORKS'' To be clear, Desmond's past was different before ''The Constant.'' Before his time-travel adventure, Desmond never met Faraday at Oxford, never got Penelope's digits. As a consequence of changing the past, Desmond's personal history has been ''course corrected'' by The Powers That Be, beginning from the moment he walked away from Penny's apartment. Lindelof says this interpretation is also correct. But here's a Big Question: since scoring Penelope's phone number, has Course-Corrected Desmond lived his life knowing that on Christmas Eve 2004, he MUST be on a freighter in the South Pacific in order to make a call to Penelope if he wants any chance of having a future with her? Lindelof says this is indeed a matter we should be mulling. Perhaps in the future, Lost will give us an episode that replays Desmond's backstory (getting the boat from Libby; killing Kelvin; meeting the castaways) from the point of view of this knowingness.