You All Everybody on Lost

We're talking about last night's Lost episode today, so if you haven't seen it you probably don't want to read anymore because there'll be information given out here that will be spoiler-ish. While that ought to be obvious with my saying that we're talking about last night's Lost, perhaps, like the series itself, nothing is ever truly obvious.

One of my great sadnesses with the series is the ever-evolving cast. The cast changes may be necessary for whatever story the producers are telling, and there are whole bunch of characters that I don't mind not ever seeing again – Boone, Ana Lucia, Boone's sister whom I hated so much I've decided to never mention her name again – but then there are other characters that I greatly miss. Topping the list of this latter group is Charlie Pace.

Is it that Dominic Monaghan is a great actor? Well, I have really enjoyed him in the various movies and television shows in which I've seen him. I think he's one of the best parts (maybe the best part) of FlashForward.

I miss Charlie on Lost. As other characters appear, disappear, come back, move around, etc., I have tended to forget about them. Oh, they're in the back of my mind somewhere – when the show asks us to remember them I absolutely can recall what their story was, but I don't think about them and what they would do if they were on the show that week. Charlie, however, I do think about. Charlie I wonder about constantly. Even when I can barely remember Claire, I hear the way she says his name, and when we do see Claire I hope that she speaks of him again. Charlie had a great transformation story on the show, and Monaghan was able to be alternatively funny and serious as the role demanded. He was a drug addict one minute, a loving, would-be parent the next.

I miss Charlie regularly and hope against hope on a weekly basis that he'll be back. I know he won't, but I hope for it anyway. "Not Penny's boat," how great was that moment (the first time we saw it, I mean, not Desmond's flashing to it last night)? That might be the best moment the show has ever had, but it was Charlie's last (sort of, kind of, almost).

Speaking of that sort of, kind of, almost, I know what you're thinking – are we going to talk about the fact that in the alternate reality Widmore and Faraday's mom are married in the present? That George Minkowski is a limo driver for Widmore? No. No we're not. I'm not touching it, not touching it in any way, shape, manner, or form. Why? Because I would be completely guessing as to what the alternate reality is all about.

Last night the show implied that the alternate reality is the result of the nuclear bomb, that it's the "what would have happened if the bomb had worked" reality, and that back on the island is the "what would have happened if the bomb didn't work" reality. But I'm not sure if both are currently taking place, if one or the other is a hypothetical, or if neither is actually going on at this moment.

I'd like to think that both are happening – I really have no proof whatsoever that's the case, but I have a thought or two on it. What if Widmore needs Desmond because he's unstuck in time, because – as we saw after the experiment – Desmond has the ability to live in both realities? Really, he has the ability to exist in both universes in this theory, as it would seem to suggest that the realities split into two separate and distinct ones due to the nuclear blast. I don't know why Widmore wants or needs that, but it is what I think is currently going on. But, that's just one way the puzzle might fit together.

There are totally answers out there that I can't wait to get, but I don't feel as though I have enough pieces of the puzzle yet to answer all the questions. Seriously, do you? But, are you happy we kind of talked a little bit about it, didn't we?