SPOILER ALERT: So Charlie and Daniel are back---but what the hell is actually happening here? Desmond in alt-life is single, is working for Widmore and is buddy-buddy with him--and then he is shown something by Charlie that makes him have a revelation. And then Daniel says that maybe we are supposed to have a totally different life if something catastrophic happened, like maybe setting off a nuclear bomb. Well. Okay. It now appears that the two timelines are definitely connected, but how they ultimately converge is still a guess. Momma Widmore/Faraday is still being as creepy as ever, but she's hinting that something is just around the corner--does she know that her husband is about to have a battle with Locke in the other dimension?
Seems like in the alternate sideways flash, everybody got what they always desired most? Daniel - Music Charlie - Peace? Hurley - Good Luck? Locke - Relationship with father Desmond - Approval from Widmore (Eloise tells Desmond you have what you always wanted..approval from her husband or something similar?)
The alternate universe is basically a timeline where all those people essentially got what they always wanted. However, the island is under the ocean, which means the MIB probably escaped, so everything in the alternate universe is likely to come tumbling down. I believe Desmond is going to be the one that gets everyone together to realize it's a fake reality and somehow the timelines will remerge and they'll have the oppurtunity to defeat the MIB in the original timeline.
Eloise seems to be "omniscient". She appears to realize somethings not right, perhaps that there's an alternate "universer".
I think what we may find is that in this alternative line, the Whidmores have a knowledge of the alternate timeline, or at least that something is not right - and they seem to have an interest in keeping it intact for some reason, at least for the time being. Eloise's comment "you're not ready yet" seems to tell me that Desmond definitely has a roll to play, and it may well be that they are planning to do something about either re-merging those timelines or something along those lines. I was actually half expecting to find out that the Desmond-Whidmore exchange with the electromagnetic charge actually was the alternate reality Desmond. So what reason would there be for the idealic timeline? To keep the Oceanic 6 (and maybe others) occupied and out of the way so that MIB can go on with his plan, which obviously included killing Jacob, preventing a successor from being named and leaving. The question now becomes - did the bomb actually go off? At first I thought it did, but now I don't think so. Because Whidmore's wife was alive and on the island at the time, and we've been assuming that the alt timeline picks up from there and moves on. So now we have a timeline where Eloise leaves the island as she did before but has a lot bigger appreciation for her son (having, you know... shot him and all) so now she indulges his music rather than forcing him into science. That couldn't happen obviously if the bomb had gone off. Which leads back to the idea that the idea of releasing the energy was EXACTLY what needed to be done, and MIB was able to stop it somehow by creating that time flash. So he went on his merry way able to continue with his plan, while removing the people who would be opposing him (or at least the people who would be key to stopping him) from the timeline.
It's not about good/evil. It's about love/hate. Everyone assumed that Jacob was holding back "evil"/Smokey/Locke. He's not. He's holding back hate. In the altverse, everyone got what they wanted... except for love.
SPOILER ALERT: Did anybody else get the feeling that alt-Desmond and Island-Desmond traded places because of the machine? Kinda similar to the earlier episodes where Desmond jumped back and forth through different times in his body.
maybe not traded places, but merged together. and b/c of desmond's unique electromagnetic properties he is somehow aware of both realities.
i doubt they traded places. he would have behaved differently if OT Desmond ended up in the AT. The moment he touched his constant, his consciousnesses merged.
