A couple weeks ago, Lost premiered an episode titled “Happily Ever After”. For those of you who don’t keep up with the episodes, this quick plot summary might not make any sense…but I’ll try my best to convey what went on. The episode focuses on Desmond Hume, who wakes up in a daze and finds out that he is back on the Island. Rather than the usual Lost flashbacks or flashforwards, Desmond travels in between different realities. The first is the REAL world: where he is married to his wife Penny, has a son, and has been brought back to the island after successfully escaping (or so he thought) it. The second alternate reality world is drastically different: he has no knowledge of the island and he works for/has a great relationship with Charles Widmore. He also has no knowledge of Penny, and work drives his life.
On the Island, Desmond is placed in an electro-magnetic room, and flashes into the alternate reality. The Desmond in this world goes through a variety of encounters that puzzle him. First, during a near-death moment, he hallucinates a memory of an event that occurred on the Island. Then, in the hospital, he hallucinates a memory of his (real world) wife and only love, Penny. He manages to track down Penny, who is a stranger to him, and feels an instant connection to her, like he’s known her for years. After shaking her hand, he passes out, but when he wakes up he asks her out to coffee. She accepts.
The episode’s title is a bit confusing (but then again, the show’s name is Lost). The title might simply mean that real life does not end in happily ever after. After all, in the real world, Desmond is brought back to the Island after an apparent happy ending in Season Four (when he is reunited with Penny after years of being apart and promises her that he will never return to the Island). But, within the episode I did find allusions to fairytales, which I found to be pretty interesting. The issue of “spectacular, consciousness-altering” love was brought up. Desmond (in the alternate world) believes that he’s loved plenty of people, but is told that real and true love is something that only happens once and that one is not truly happy until he/she has found it. He meets another man, Daniel, who lives in the same alternate world but had already died on the Island, who tells him that he recently experienced love at first sight with a woman (also in the alternate world but died already on the Island). Daniel warns Desmond that “they are not experiencing their correct paths”.
“Happily Ever After” poses two questions. First, can you love someone you’ve never met before (a.k.a. love at first sight)? Second, is love fated? In fairytales, the answers to these questions are yes. Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, and many more fall in love with their princes without any knowledge of who they are or what their personalities are like. It seems like these relationships are fated – the females in fairytales find better lives, are rescued, or are brought to life. Without their princes, their lives would not be complete. This Lost episode reveals that in Desmond’s alternative world, he falls in love with Penny after meeting her for the first time. He also makes sense of what is going on around him after he meets her. The episode confirms the messages of love that fairytales seem to provide. For a show that talks a lot about fate, this view of love comes as no surprise, but it does force one to think about the subject. Many would say that love only occurs after getting to know someone, although some people claim to have experienced love at first sight with their spouses. Is there a “correct path” for love that we are destined to fulfill? No one will ever know what the answers are…or if there actually are any ultimate answers.
Watch it here: http://www.hulu.com/watch/140084/lost-happily-ever-after
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