Only what appears in the show is cannon because you can't expect everybody to be as fanatical as us. So if the casual viewer sits down and watches all 6 seasons they have all the information they will need to decipher the themes of Lost. They can't be expected to hunt down an obscure 2 min video to fill in the blanks. That would be unfair to the viewer.

Also, Madame P. I had the same reaction to Faraday and his comment about the timing of Changs arrival. I actually have the crazy idea that Dan new ALL of the events that would be happening to him that day; including being shot by his mother. Why else would someone who is not comfortable with guns, a novice he said, go into the Others camp firing his pistol into the ground, threatening to kill someone he has already spoken to in the past, while wearing a Dharma jumpsuit. For some reason Faraday knew he was going to be killed by his mother and that it had to happen for the rest of his plan to work. Thus he lit a fire under Jacks ass, by telling him about free will, that he wasn't supposed to be in '77 and that there is a way to get flight 815 to land safely in LAX, in order to get him to finish with Dan's ultimate plan.

Thanks for the info, Neoloki. I don't listen to interviews nor podcasts so I was not aware of TPTB saying anything about whether Daniel is dead or not. I just go by the show! (But I did see that one Comic-Con video... it was my understanding that it was canon, but I may be wrong.)

Good point about Christian -- it didn't appear that he could physically help Locke that time in the Donkey-Wheel room. But Charlie did physically interact with Hurley, didn't he? And didn't Ana Lucia knock on Hurley's car window? (not entirely sure about that one...)

I thought of another "time loop" hint -- when Daniel commented "Right on time!" when Chang drove up to the Swan Station. He said it as if it had happened before, and he'd lived though it before...

Ben is not the leader nor will be able to fight to be the leader of the Others because of Smokey. Yes, John is the leader and I think even Widmore recognizes this now. Their are 3 groups on the Island: The Others, The Losties and The DI. The coming war will be between the Others and DI with Widmore and Ben both being Others. I think the fight is over between those two.

Dharnmawaffle:

I have been saying the same thing ever since we first heard the question "what lies in the shadow of the statue"! Posting it on numerous boards, but everyone was going with Widmore or Ben as too who the new group is connected with. Only problem is the Chang video, or comic-con, if you like. Darlton recently said that that the video is not cannon and similar to the video of Chang and the two #15 rabbits shown before season 4 will not be in the show. They do those video's as promotional material for the upcoming season to highlight ideas they will be presenting. With that in mind however, I still think the new group is Next Gen. Dharma.

Madame P:

I think now that Darlton have said in interviews and the most recent podcast that Faraday is dead. Period.

Also, here is a clear difference between Christian and Locke: Christian can not physically help people on the Island or maybe it is just touch other people, but John Locke is running around doing and physically interacting with people on the Island. "dead is dead" talked a lot of how John is different. He was reincarnated so to speak while christian, charlie and others are apparitions or manifestations of Smokey.

Alternate timelines were explained by Eliose to Desmond way back in the 3rd season’s “Flashes Before Your Eyes.” Her theory is that you can’t change the past or the future in any meaningful way. If Charlie is supposed to die, you can delay it, but he’s still going to die.

The show is veering away from this “course correcting” version of destiny, however. Alternate timelines do account for more than just superficial changes. For instance, delaying Charlie’s death sets off a series of events that lead to the rescue of the O6, as well as Desmond reuniting with Penny, and birth of their child. If Charlie had died days earlier, how much of that would have happened? There’s been speculation that only Charlie could have cracked this music-based code in Looking Glass because he WROTE IT in an alternative timeline. I think that’s probably true.

Daniel explained it last week - people act as variables. “We have free will. We can change our destiny.” Apparently, Daniel made a video with Dr. Chang (see dharma_waffle’s notes below) in haste as something catastrophic was about to happen. But it appears that Daniel died before he could make the video. I think he made that tape during an alternate time line, one in which he was still convinced that you can’t change anything.

I think Daniel has been on the Island, reliving many of these events, many times. This is hinted at the first time we saw Daniel and it’s indicated over and over throughout the past 2 seasons. He’s built a time travel device! Horace’s time loops in Locke’s dream are, of course, another big hint. Why else do the O6 have to return to the Island? Why can’t destiny set itself straight? There’s no sense in denying time travel or alternate time lines anymore. Even Eloise can no longer predict the future.

So Madam P is right about time lines, and I think dharma_waffle and punisher33 are right about the reconstituted Dharma. Thanks, punisher, for explaining the coming war so succinctly. Wish I could learn to write like that.

Madam P thanks for that...you have a good point. This time travel stuff is so ridiculously confusing that I find myself just trying to simplify it for my own sake.

Dharma Waffle, I agree with you completely on this. I think the new group is the new DI and that is what "WAR" is coming, as widmore warned there would be. I think that Widmore and Ben are fighting over who should be the leader of the others during this war since both of them think they should be. However, both of them are wrong because JOHN LOCKE is the true leader!

What about this video???????!!!!!! The whole time I've been watching expecting Daniel Faraday not to die, because he and Dr. Chan make this video together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCVCzplSa6A

And another thing, I think this video answers who the people are who ask "what lies in the shadow of the statue"

IT can only be the RE-constituted Dharma Initiative. If you recall they always use riddles to identify one another. Rememer Desmond asks "What did the snowman, say to the other snowman?" which he later reveals the answer as "It smells like carrots" As goofy as it is, DI has a history of doing this, and to me, it makes since that DI has been remade when Ann Arbor gets this video in the future. And they are coming to get the island back. I totally think Daniel either lives or is revived. Either way, he totally redeemed himself, I hated his character on Saving Private Ryan, so much!!!! That's where he shoulda died, not here! :0P

What is the clear difference, neoloki? How did the show go out of its way to point this out? (I'm not being snarky, I'm really curious as to what you're citing.)

Also, I think Locke was "clearly stated" as being dead, too, but yet, here is is walking around and eating mangoes. And I wouldn't necessarily take what TV Guide says as canon... but that's just me.

Punisher, one possible hint about "time loops" was the scene last season with Locke and Horace, when Horace was building the cabin. Some have said that was just Locke dreaming, and it could be, but it might be a hint. Also, another hint that time-travel happened before (or at least, that the island was moving around in time while the "outside world" was doing something different) is way back in Season One (or Two?) when Sayid was fiddling with the radio and he picked up the radio station with the '40's music on it. Granted, it could just be an Oldies station... or it could've been a hint.

There is a clear difference between Locke being alive on the Island and Christian or anybody else that we have seen after they have died. The show went out of it's way to point this out. Daniel is dead. It has been confirmed by tv guide. If he reappears on the show it will either be in the same form as Charlie, apparition/ghost, or it will be because an event has changed and his death was avoided.

Also, the worker is dead. the one who was drilling. that was clearly stated.

I don't think there is much evidence or mention of a time loop occurring in the show, but who knows. For 3 or 4 seasons no one suspected time travel would be built into the storyline. I think this is the first and only time they have time traveled, but i obviously could be very wrong.

Scaldog, you didn't like Deja Vu? I thought that was a great Denzel movie. Of course I love anything with Denzel, haha.

I just can't believe Daniel is dead.

OK, we know that dead is not necessarily dead. Locke became un-dead when he travelled back to the island. So I'll run this up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it:

What if it's not the island itself, but it's just the travelling between one... (world? dimension? whatever?) and the other that is the defining action that brings the dead back to life? So if Locke died in "our world," then when he was brought back to life on the island, that means he can't go back to "our world," or else he'd be dead there. (Maybe that's where the idea comes from that Ben mentions about "you can't go back.") So, perhaps, maybe... Eloise or someone will bundle Daniel up and get him back to "our world" somehow, which will bring him back to life there?

OK, admittedly reaching.

Oooooh, ooooh! Another thought! Charlotte gets "sent back" somehow also, and Daniel and Charlotte are both alive in "our world," but something happens that they have to return to the island in order to save all mankind, but that means they'll be dead, but they decide to do it anyway and martyr themselves, and they turn out to be Adam and Eve! Tah=dahhhhh! :-)

I think I need to sleep on this... It started out just as hoping that Daniel isn't really dead...

Sorry, just noticed one small possible mistake in my theory -- there's no evidence that the worker is dead in the most recent episode. I mixed up this incident with the one in the last episode where the guy's molar went through his head. My bad. But the rest of my theory still stands... I think.

So I went back and compared this week's scene with Dr. Chang in the Orchid with the scene shown in the first episode of the season. (It's not available on ABC.com, but I found it here: http://www.cucirca.com/2009/01/13/lost-season-5-episode-1-because-you-left/)

The words used by both Dr. Chang and the crew boss are the same, but there seems to be one major difference -- it sure looks like, in the first episode, the worker who got hurt from the electromagnetism LIVED. There's the briefest of scenes where it sure looks like they shine a flashlight in his eyes and he turns his head. Obviously, in the most recent episode, the worker is killed.

I've also read (in the Doc Jensen posts) about other inconsistencies between versions of the scene at the dock in L.A., though admittedly I didn't notice them at the time.

And add to this Hurley's "mistaken" timeline of events when describing The Empire Strikes Back (he erroneously says that Vader reveals himself to be Luke's father BEFORE cutting off Luke's had), and I think we have a pretty clear possibility that we're seeing the same events play out at different times -- i.e., these characters and events have unknowingly been involved in a massive time loop for who knows how long, and small changes are being made over time.

It also fits with Desmond's ability to see the various ways that Charlie dies (i.e., he DID die each of those ways in different timelines), and possibly why Daniel knows that Dr. Chang is going to show up at exactly the time he does. My guess, though, is that Desmond is "special" because he is the only person who can see what happened in the previous loops through time, and that Daniel knows because of his notebook.

Oh, and while it wasn't a particularly good movie, this whole thing seems to be similar to the plotline of Deja Vu (the Denzel Washington movie), with a similar theory of time travel and alternate timelines.

Miles needs to go see Daniel's body.....then maybe we can get some answers.

Miles needs to go see Daniel's body.....then maybe we can get some answers.

Miles needs to go see Daniel's body.....then maybe we can get some answers.

Oh, another thing, Daniel told Jack that his mother was wrong in sending them back to the island and that they should not be there. At first I thought that was odd, because Ben, Locke and even Richard said they all needed to come back to the island to save it. Now I think the reason Daniel said that is because he knows they are the reason some of the things that have already happened on the island happened and he was trying to get them off the island in order to save Charlotte.

I believe Daniel getting shot by his mother is just the ultimate proof that what Daniel originally said was true. "What ever happened, happened." Next week I think Jack is going to try to change future events, just like Dan did, but instead he is just going to end up causing an event that has already happened. Like whatever blew out the cement wall in the hatch and caused Dharma to install the button that had to be pushed every 90 seconds. Anyway, it's good to see Jack's going to be up off his butt doing something again.

bigpinkbunny- the beginning scene of the season with Daniel was actually that scene exactly. Now its just in context.

Thanks, mcday. I am just speculating, of course, and with a lot of wishful thinking.

But I do know for sure there are some things we don't know for sure yet. We don't know how the temple works and if it can only heal people who are still alive. We don't know how John was healed after his initial crash without him setting foot in the temple. We don't know how he returned from the dead, miles from the temple. We don't know how Christian, Charlie, and a host of other people who were at some point dead, are now alive, residing on the Island, or are something else entirely. It does appear that some have returned from the dead, some are apparitions, hallucinations, manifestations of Smokey, etc.

I do know for sure, however, that most of what Ben has said has been a lie.

Clearly, the time travelers are capable of changing things. I think most of us would agree that their purpose in going back 30 years is either to set things right or mess things up. Especially after this episode. So, basically, we’re probably going to see a lot of paradoxes and just about anything could happen.

When Daniel followed Dr. Chang down into the Orchid it seemed like Dr. Chang's warning to the men drilling the hole to stop, was the same warning that Daniel said at the beginning of the season where we saw Daniel in a flashback as a Dharma worker in the Orchid. Did anybody else notice this? I could be completely wrong, but it also seemed that Daniel was listening intently to what Dr. Chang said at that moment. If this is what happens, then wouldn't that be an indication that, at least in some way, they are able to change events?

Whoa, Westy....hadn't thought of that angle! I'm with you!

The only person to come back to life is John and Ben said that had never happened before. Yes, I do believe we see Dans death stare so their is no healing that. With young Ben, he wasn't dead yet so the Island could still heal him; not the case for Dan. I would love to see him come back. Doc Jensen has a theory that Jack will change certain events in the future/past and one will lead to Dan living. Since he is one of my favorite characters I am hoping for this outcome.

Why not carry Daniel over to the temple ala young Ben?

I can see Eloise arranging this - she seemed ready to believe that Dan was her son.

We've never found out why Eloise left the Island. Perhaps the Island required a sacrifice to restore Dan back to the living, so Eloise sacrificed herself by leaving the Island - much like Ben did when he turned the donkey wheel. That would explain her agitation in her conversation with Widmore.

It could also explain why she was so keen on getting Jack especially to return to the Island. Perhaps it is he that persuades the younger Eloise to save Daniel.

In true LOST style, we saw Farafay's death-stare, but we also heard Widmore AND Hawking tout the Island's healing properties repeatedly to him... so does this mean Faraday's really as dead as dead can be?

Last I heard, Boone, Shannon and many other dead people were still whispering in the woods and hanging out with smokey.

No matter what the case, The Variable was one of my top 10 fav episodes to date!

Very sad to see Daniel go.. I thought his character had lots to offer, especially since he was back at 'Dharma Headquarters' - couldn't we have gotten a little more insight there?!?

Since we can now see the direction the series is heading in (we have a mere 23 episodes left), I have to admit I'm a little let down by DI... where are all the great mysteries we marveled at the first few seasons? The report tube? The Pearl? I kinda want that mystery back...

unfortunately I have a strong feeling that dead is very much dead this time.

Rob you make perfect sense. The conclusion is this would create a grandpa paradox thus it is impossible. But wouldn't that be the ultimate mind frak; the season finale ends with oceanic 815 landing safely in LA?

LAST thing, please no, not rose and bernard as adam & eve. I always thought that A & E would be some one more important to the show like sawyer/juliet, Jack/kate, etc.,al.

WE are on the island; Faraday is an Other by parentage; dead is not necessarily dead.

I think Adam and Eve will be Rose and Bernard.

I figure Kate wouldn't want the plane to just land safetly in LA. She was wanted for murder and was IN CUSTODY!
Why couldn't Kate have died instead? I liked "Twitchy."

His death proves, what ever happen,happen. The plane is still going to crash, Hurley is still going to read off the magic number.

My question is, are Adam and Eve two of our losties?

Thats what I said in a less fancy way

See if you guys can stick with me here... If the losties change their present situation and stop the energy purge and that results in their future 2004 plane landing safely in los angeles, then that means they never crashed on the island on the first place. Which means they couldnt have traveled back in time to 1970 (what is now the present for them) to conspire about stopping the future, which means nothing we are watching will even happen, which means it never did happen. feel me? My mind cannot even fathom time travel...

If they follow the journal and what Jack says is right with 815 landing in LA, then will all the dead return also?
Maybe Daniels Mom sent him back knowing he would be alright in the end.
LOL, I know...Shut up Chops :)

I totally didn't see that coming. I assumed he had so much more to do! He was a great character on the show. I'll miss 'Twitchy'

:-(