#lost characters

She killed her son. Like that’s literally the problem here. Sure, in the moment of *shoot* she doesn’t know who he is and she’s very confused after she does it but she, later, WILLINGLY sends him to the island where she KNOWS she will shoot him, effectively making her pull that trigger with full knowledge and intention. All he ever is to her is a pawn and something that just happened and so must happen, because she doesn’t care about his hopes and dreams of music, his pursuits in relationships, his medical condition beyond it harming his physics work, and thinks anything beyond his purpose to do the things he did as extraneous and completely beside the point. She completely takes advantage of his condition, using it as leverage to convince him to do what she wants because he doesn’t have the memory or confidence in his own thinking to disagree with her whenever she suggests he do something, ultimately pushing him in the direction of what she wants because he RELIES on other people to make sensible decision for him because he needs help with sensible cognitive function since he was likely never taught to fight his condition to think for himself, as it’s very helpful for Eloise to have him take her word as gospel, which he does because he trusts her and doesn’t know any better (but he SHOULD know better than to blindly trust, because that’s what a PARENT should TEACH him), but that trust is entirely misplaced because of her horrible intentions. All this means she is completely apathetic to him, whereas HE is completely devoted to her and constantly seeks her approval, because in his eyes she has all the answers and will look out for him when he can’t take care of himself and she has his best interests at heart even when those decisions are difficult because she’s wise and cares for him and loves him - except all that is a LIE. 

The one singular moment we need to see their entire relationship play out is the scene where she tells him to go to the island in The Variable: she pushes him, tells him it’s the right thing to do, that it’s “very important” that he agrees to it, he’s unsure of his own capabilities because he’s been treated lesser for constantly forgetting, she then uses his condition as leverage, outright LYING to him by saying what he could “accomplish” when the island bakes him “better” (all that he will accomplish is exactly what SHE wants him to do, then die, and never accomplish anything HE wants to do, and once again his only value in her eyes is his academic success - even if he did get better and return home healed, the only thing that will be good for in her eyes is the fact that he will be smarter at his work), then he asks “you really want me to go?”, because he’s been searching her approval all his life and has been taught that what she says is the utmost important thing, and when she says “yes”, he asks, and I swear to God I will cry, “WILL IT MAKE YOU PROUD OF ME?” because that's the ONE thing he never got, his mother being SATISFIED with ANYTHING he does, it’s never good enough for her, so now he FINALLY has a chance to make her proud and feel like he is worth something, so when she says “yes” again, by which she means that the only way she will actually be proud of him is if he goes and does what is necessary of him and then dies without anything for him in his life, he “then” agrees to go.

And in the moment that he finishes doing everything she wanted, and she shoots him, and he realises he’s been played by his own mother his ENTIRE life, he’s just so sad. He’s disappointed with his own life. Because he’s been searching for the approval of someone who will never give it to him. And right when he was starting to think he was finally making his mother proud of him, he realised that was always going to be impossible. And all his doubts about himself come rushing back, because he never mattered to anyone, and no-one ever loved him, and he was never worth anything, he was just there to do his work, get manipulated, and get betrayed.

And also? In the flash-sideways where his mother can be not-a-bitch because he has no island-dying purpose and can just live his life? Yeah. At her request, Desmond never wakes Daniel, so he never learns anything about the island life, because Eloise is scared he’ll see sense in how ridiculously ridiculous she was to him and he’ll drop her like he should. Bonkers.