Will the real Marvin Candle please stand up
This video was presented during the LOST panel at Comic-Con 2008, shot by Dan Bronson, one of the participants in the the Dharma recruitment drive that was running during the convention, and shows what is supposedly classified top secret footage of the man we previously knew as Dr Marvin Candle/Edgar Halliwax/Mark Wickmund etc etc. The video is introduced by Hans van Eeghen (who was also part of the ARG that started are Comic-Con). I’m going to look at this in two parts, first a recap of the video, second some theories about what it means.
The Video
Chang sits down and begins to introduce himself as Dr Marvin Candle before he pauses and says that its not worth playing games anymore, and that if you’re watching this you already know that his name is Pierre Chang. There is a baby crying in the background, Chang get gets up and yells for Lara (wife?) to take him outside. He says that he only has one chance at ‘this’.
He explains that he was brought to the island many years ago and has been working on a number of experiments, during his explanation the image breaks up and there is a lot of static and the sound is lost briefly. There is a random image flashed during the static (the third image below) not sure its relevant or not, can’t really make out what it is, might be trees, might not be?
He says that if he can keep “this pinhole” open long enough that we should be receiving this message roughly 30 years in the future, he says that the current US President is a man named George W Bush, and that we share digital information instantaneously across “something called internet”. Both things that he would/should/could not really know in the mid 1970’s. He adds that he and his colleagues are all dead, victims of a violent purge, hat they are apparently powerless to escape. Is this Ben’s purge? or another purge that happened earlier?
Chang says that the information comes to him from a source, that has proven himself to be credible. A voice from behind the camera interrupts, saying that none that that matters, “just get to it”. Chang says that if this transmission is successful then it is proof that the work he has been doing is successful. He says that (the island) has extraordinary properties, and that no matter what’s happened it imperative that the Dharma Initiative be reconstituted, that the research has to be continued, now, “Time is not just of the essence. Time IS the essence”, and the perhaps the may be a way to save them, to change the past and the way to stop what is about to happen. The voice from behind the camera chimes in again telling Pierre that “this is useless”, that ‘they’ are never going to see this. And he turns the camera off.
The video ends with Hans discovering that Dan was filming the video, and he runs off screaming just like you would expect the chubby fanboy character to do.
The Theories
Ok, first, the man behind the camera, who is it? I’m pretty sure that its Daniel Faraday, which was the general consensus in the days after the video was initially shown. Don’t agree? listen the the voice again and tell me who YOU think it is.
He says that time IS the essence. He also mentions keeping a pinhole open, and if this “transmission” is successful. My guess is that the video is being sent from WHENever the losties (and the island) went after Ben moved it, forwards to the present day (Ben? Locke? Widmore? Oceanic 6?). Since it appears as though Dan is Chang’s “source”, and he obviously had to travel back in time somehow to provide him that information the question is whether he is the only one that went back. Im guessing he’s not. It does, however, seem a little odd though as Dan was in a boat offshore when the island “moved”, were objects in close proximity “moved” too?
The other alternative to Dan traveling back in time is that he experiences the same effects that both Desmond and Minkowski suffered, due to him being in the boat offshore when the island moves. Faraday may end up being in both 2005 (on the island) and in the 1970’s visiting Chang, much like when Des visited Dan in Season 4. Could Chang be Dan’s constant… or could Desmond be back there with Chang, after all Dan’s note book said Des would be his constant. Confused. Yeah, me too.
If Dan has gone back to visit Chang, does that mean that he and other Dharma-ites might be making an appearance in Season 5? Is it possible that we’ll see this video in some other context early on in Season 5? When will we find out “when” the island is, and if it has moved in time hows that going to affect Ben’s plans to get back, assuming he knows it moved through time of course.
Only a bit over two weeks to go now, can’t wait.