Essentials
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Desmond & Penelope
One of the main characters introduced in season 2 is Desmond. He was the man who lived in The Swan Station (beneath the hatch) before Locke, Jack and Kate got in. However, he gave them little explanation before fleeing, aside from giving them the short story about how to enter the Numbers every 108 minutes into the computer, and where to find the orientation film.
Desmond returned before the end of the season, and more of his backstory is filled in. Apparently, he was a Scottish man who once was in love with a British woman named Penelope. After spending time in prison for something he did while serving the Royal Scots Guard (not elaborated), Penny's father, Charles Widmore (a rich tycoon) tried to bribe Desmond never to see his daughter again. Desmond wanted to recover his pride by winning a race around the world sponsored by Widmore. He then met Libby, a tailee of Flight 815, who ended up giving him her late husband's boat in order to help him enter the race.
Desmond was determined to win, but during a bad storm, got shipwrecked on the island. It was then that he met Kelvin, a DHARMA employee, who rescued him and took him back to The Swan. Kelvin taught him the basics about entering The Numbers, and showed him some tricks, such as injecting himself with medication and painting a map on the blast door that was invisible in the daytime. He passed these secrets on from a man he called Radzinsky, his DHARMA hatchmate before he supposedly killed himself. For years, Desmond and Kelvin lived together, observing the button-pushing protocol. Kelvin convinced Desmond that if he didn't, the world would end, and that there was a sickness outside. However, one day, Desmond followed Kelvin outside, and realized that he had been lying all this time. Kelvin had been trying to fix Desmond's boat and escape the island without him. Desmond, furious, got in a fight with him, and apparently killed Kelvin. That day, he missed the 108 minute countdown, something which inadvertantly resulted in the plane coming down because of the electromagnetic burst (though he did not know this at the time). Desmond was left alone beneath the hatch until the losties arrived.
When he got them to take over the button-pushing task, he went back to his boat and tried to sail away. However, he ended up back on the island despite sailing in the opposite direction for weeks. It was then that Locke convinced him to see what would happen if he purposely stopped pressing the button. It was then that they both learned the unpleasant truth about the crash of Flight 815 being caused by this lapse, and another burst goes off at the end of season 2. This was so large that it was registered by a monitoring station in the arctic.
This station was apparently being run by Penelope, who had been looking for the signal all along. It is unknown by the end of season 2 what connection she or her father have to the mysterious events of the island, but it is notable that the Widmore logo strangely appears on the basket side of a hot air balloon that had crashed into the island, and a pregnancy test that Sun finds and uses.
Item Last Updated: October 06, 2006, 03:43:11 PM by Pandora
