Lost, Season 5, Episode 14
The Variable

This was Lost's 100th episode (the clip-shows aren't counted).

Daniel: Jeez...I feel so sorry for Daniel. He's wicked smaht, and after having been manipulated since he was a child to show an unwavering loyalty to a scheming mother, he returns to the Island from time spent in Ann Arbor (likely with the DeGroots/Dharma) in an attempt to stop the situation that seems to have gotten this all started: the building of the Swan Station and the subsequent release of the strong electromagnetic (EM) force that exists under that part of the Island. Unable to convince Pierre Chang that he is indeed from the future and can assist with the EM issue, he then wants Jack and Kate to take him to The Others to plead his case. We also see Daniel interact with young-Charlotte and he tells her to leave the Island when Dr Chang tells them to. Will Daniel's attempts to change things work? It seems doubtful if, as Eloise has said in the past, the Universe will self-correct. During a previous time-hop, he talked to Richard Alpert (circa 1954'ish) regarding the Jughead hydrogen bomb that was on the Island, and told them to bury it in concrete. Hoping for a conversation with Richard about this issue, he goes into the Others camp with a gun drawn, and while Richard seems calm and doesn't think he'll fire the gun, Ellie (his mother, but not yet) shoots him in the back. As he lays on the ground wounded, he says to her "you knew all along this would happen and you sent me back anyway. I'm your son". So sad for him to be betrayed by her. I don't believe he'll die, however, and I have solid reason, especially the video I posted a couple of weeks ago of Pierre Chang sending message from 1977 to 2007...you can hear Daniel's voice in the background. It seems unlikely he had time to make the video message with Chang yet. Daniel ends up being one of the rare characters who does not have father issues, but a mother issue.

Eloise Hawking: The Worlds Greatest Mom.....not. For as long as we can tell, she has been manipulating Daniel into eventually solving (we think) the Island's special properties. And she's also been gearing him up to return to the Island, but not before he makes notes of his studies and revealing (at least to Jack and Kate) that the main issue with time travel is not the constants, but the variables (people). Eloise has disdain towards Charles Widmore and actually seems mad when she tells Charles that her sacrifice is that she sent Daniel back to the Island knowing full that he'll.....well, she doesn't finish the sentence, but we learn that she would've finished the sentence with the words "be killed". However, beyond all of this, Daniel had said that it was his mother who needs to get them where they belong.

Sawyer: As his guise continues to teeter on the side of collapsing, he tells Juliet she was right about their world crashing in with the return of Jack/Kate/Hurley/Jin. Though he and Juliet try to get away before they can be found, the shootout between Jack/Kate/Daniel and Radzinski and his men causes Radzinski to go to Sawyer's house. Upon arriving, they find Phil in the closet tied up, and Juliet and Sawyer are captured.

Juliet: She knew that things on the Island were going to change dramatically with the return of the O6. She, of course, is totally right. "It's over for us here" she tells Jack and Sawyer. It seems tensions have begun to flare up between Juliet and Sawyer as she makes sure that Sawyer still has her back, and he asks the same of her.

Charles Widmore: Daniel's father, with Eloise as the mother. So, this would be the union he had with someone from the Island. Ben had accused Charles of having another child with someone off the Island, so that child would be Penny (we don't know who Penny's mother is). It's interesting to note that Ben is not the only one trying to get people to the Island: not only did Widmore get Desmond to go to the Island (via the around-the-world boat race lie), he also got Daniel to go there to look into the Island's interesting properties. Interestingly enough, when speaking to Eloise about Penny, he says he had to sacrifice that relationship, but when Ben was talking about killing Penny, Widmore was in a much more protective stance regarding his daughter.

Pierre Chang: Though his part in this episode was brief, a couple of things happen involving him. First, he finds Daniel's claims of being from the future to be absurd. He also doesn't believe Daniel when he tells him that adult-Miles is his son.

Other characters
Phil / Hurley / Kate / Jack / Radzinsky / Miles

Double Take
--Pretty amazing that child-Daniel knew that the metronome had ticked 864 times while he was playing the piano
--Whoa! How about that shootout
--Code for the Pylons 1-4-1-7-1-7
--The flashback to Daniel crying in front of the TV after seeing the news story about the Oceanic 815 wreckage

Funny
--Well, I hope people are finally happy to see Daniel wearing something other than the white shirt and black tie
--"You guys were in 1954? Like, Fonzie-time?" -Hurley
--Jack to Daniel: "You need a gun to talk to your mother?" Daniel: "You don't know my mother."

Interesting
1. As a child, Daniel loves playing the piano, but his mother has other ideas for his brilliant mind, and when she says the piano would be a distraction from him fulfilling his destiny, he says "I'll make time"
2. Daniel was at Dharma headquarters in Ann Arbor
3. Daniel asks Jack if Eloise told Jack it was his "destiny" to go back to the Island. The word destiny has now been used several times by people: Locke feels he has a destiny; Eloise told Daniel about his destiny; Eloise told Jack it was his destiny to return
4. Eloise wrote in the cover of the journal she gave Daniel for his college graduation "No matter what, remember, I will always love you. Mother" She knew she would eventually shoot him on the Island
5. Theresa was Daniel's girlfriend at Oxford...she's the one we saw lying catatonic in the hospital in the Jughead episode
6. Widmore telling Daniel that he and Eloise are 'old friends' after Widmore tells him "you're a man of special gifts" and Daniel says he sounds like his mother. Yeah, no kidding
7. Even after all of his calculations and time-jumping, Daniel confesses to child-Charlotte that he may not actually be able to fix things
8. In the flashback scene of Daniel watching the news about the recovery of the (staged) Oceanic 815 plane crash, we're reminded of his memory issues (related to his experiments), and we later hear Eloise tell him that if he goes to the Island as part of Widmore's team, the Island would heal him, which it did regarding this memory loss (remember when he and Charlotte first got to the Island, she was testing his memory to see if it was indeed coming back)
9. When Eloise is at hospital to see Desmond, she has conversation with Penny (who is the daughter of Widmore and someone else) and tells Penny that she is the casualty of a bigger conflict

Questions Answered
1. Daniel is the son of Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore (something that was surmised in the wrap-up for Whatever Happened, Happened on April 3, 2009)
2. The variable is people (kind of an easy way out, but it is effective)
3. The button had to be pushed every 108 minutes in the Swan Hatch because of the (upcoming) accident in which the Dharma team (led by Chang) will drill into this pocket of electromagnetic power. Pressing the button will be required in order to release small amounts of the EM so that it doesn't build up. The one time Desmond forgot to press the button, it brought down Oceanic 815, which later caused Daniel to arrive on the Island on the freighter, and this is what set off the chain of events that we've been watching. Daniel believes detonating the Jughead bomb will prevent all of this from happening to them
4. The massive amounts of concrete used to encase the EM energy in the Swan Hatch is more, according to Daniel, than used at Chernobyl. Sayid also made this comment when they first found the Swan Hatch
5. Widmore has given up contact with Penny (so Penny also has father issues)

Questions
1. We know that Daniel returns to the Island in the sub, but, when did he leave to go to Ann Arbor? After time-hopping back to 1977, we never see him leave
2. What was the experiment that caused Daniel to have the memory issues, and also put Theresa in the coma?
3. Will it be Desmond and Penny who eventually become the Adam & Eve bodies found by Jack in the caves after Oceanic 815 first crashed on the Island?
4. The answer appears to be a 'yes' at this point, but I'll ask it anyway: is the release of the EM force - the larger one we haven't seen but know is coming - the 'incident' that Pierre Chang (then known as Marvin Candle) mentioned one of the Dharma vids, and which also likely will result in the loss of his left arm?
5. Where the hell is Claire? And Vincent?

Tune in in two weeks for Lost, Season 5 Episode 15 "Follow the Leader". Until then, don't go storming into someone else's camp carrying a gun.

As a note: the final episode looks like it will be a two-parter scheduled to air Wednesday, May 13, effectively episodes 16 and 17 for the season, titled "The Incident (parts 1 & 2)". Then the long wait until next January.

Feel free to share your views, theories, money....

In the meantime, the video I mentioned earlier that some of you may (or may not) have linked to a couple of weeks ago when I mentioned it. You can hear a baby crying (baby-Miles?), you will also hear adult-Miles off-camera, and I believe Daniel off-camera also.