LOST’s best episode The Constant turns 10

“The Constant” is the best episode that LOST ever did. Here’s why. 

One of the best things that LOST ever did was realizing at the end of the second season that one of the best characters at their disposal was our favorite button-pushing Scotsman, Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick). “The Constant” was the episode that Lost perfected the kind of episode to use with that character.

Like most characters on this, Desmond has lost things important to him and, also like the other characters, he’s mostly been the architect of his own misery. The subject of that loss is his former girlfriend, Penny (Sonya Walger), whom he left for, well, it’s real timey-wimey so let’s just not get into it.

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This is the first shot of the episode, one that we’d seen countless times before, but proves to be absolutely crucial for the episode: Desmond staring at a picture of Penny and himself on the day they broke up.

Desmond, Sayid (Naveen Andrews), and Lapidus (Jeff Fahey) are flying from the island to the freighter full of dubious individuals. After hitting some turbulence, Desmond becomes very confused and demands to know where he is and what he’s doing here.

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True to LOST fashion, the plot bounces between the current events and the flashbacks. Only this time, Desmond is living these flashbacks as an active player. The past feels more real to him than the present because, as he soon learns, the magical properties surrounding the island have reset his brain to 1996, the time he keeps jumping back to. He soon learns from Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies), both past and present, that his mind is becoming too confused from there being nothing on the island that corresponds to his time in 1996 and, as the title suggests, he needs a constant; something to ground him.

This is the part that makes “The Constant” so great. While simultaneously perfectly reflecting the ultimate theme of LOST: Love will save you in the end, the only thing that can prevent Desmond from dying is by calling Penny at her home in 2004, and on Christmas Eve, no less.

That’s right: LOST‘s best episode is secretly a Christmas special.

Out of any other options, Desmond and Sayid hatch a plan to break into the ship’s communications room and make a call to Penny. It’s so crazy it just might work. What follows is perhaps the single best, most affecting scene in the entirety of the series.

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As you’d expect, it goes exactly to plan. He calls her and she answers. They talk for the first time in years, the thing they’ve both wanted for so long now. This scene should be the ultimate test for a sociopath because if you can watch this sequence and not become a devastated puddle on the floor, you clearly have no emotions at all.

In closing, “The Constant” is not only one of the best episodes ever made, but also one of the best episodes in recent memory. Praise be its name.