(Warning: Spoiler Alert for those who have not kept up with season four of ‘Lost’)

At last some clarification has come for avid viewers of ABC’s epic ‘Lost.’ The psychic and the physicist were the stars of last Thursday’s episode, as both island-elder Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) and season four newcomer Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) dealt and fought with The Island’s mysterious time-travel effects.

Probably the most moving and emotional episode of the series’ history, Thursday’s show reunited Penelope and Desmond through a phone call – Desmond on the mysterious freighter ‘near’ The Island (though we suspect it actually takes a time portal or some unbalanced equilibrium to get to it) and Penelope at her European home on Christmas Eve.

The catch (where wouldn’t ‘Lost’ be if every episode didn’t have require some severe mind-bending?) was that Desmond, while traveling to the freighter with Sayid (Naveen Andrews), starting traveling back and forth in time – but only in his mind – from the episode’s present 2004, back to 1996. He and Faraday work out a solution so Desmond won’t die of a brain aneurism – like the freighter’s radio controller did – and this is where Penelope came in to serve as Desmond’s ‘Constant,’ or link to his past and present.

In the end, and before the line went static, Desmond and Penelope cried out their love and vowed to find each other. Though more like minor tidbits, the information presented in last Thursday’s episode helped ease the minds of ‘Lost’ fanatics, who have begun to lose track of how exactly the past three and half seasons fit together.

akalliso@syr.edu