Totally "Lost": Previewing "The Variable"

  Gearing up for Wednesday’s episode of “Lost”:
  Title: “The Variable”
  Significance: Most significantly, it would seem to be a companion episode to last season’s “The Constant,” the Desmond “consciousness travel” episode considered by many to be the finest hour of “Lost.” That episode’s thump (“Lost” lingo for a shocking final twist) was the notation in Faraday’s notebook: “If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.” Well, Faraday is back on the island in 1977 and stuff is going wrong and Desmond is back in 2007, or is he?
  Centricity: Believed to be Faraday.
  Plotline: In the 100th episode of the series, the time of reckoning begins when Faraday comes clean regarding what he knows about the island.
  Sneak peeks: All three include MAJOR spoilers, proceed with caution.
  Peek 1
  Peek 2
  Peek 3
  Revelations, questions and crackpot theories:
  > Revelation #1: We don’t want to spoil too much but the press release for the two-hour finale was released this week and it’s notable because it includes casting for younger versions of a bunch of Losties and because it features two great character actors (Mark Pellegrino of “Dexter” fame and Titus Welliver of “Deadwood” repute) in roles ominously dubbed “Man #1” and “Man #2.” If you want to know any more, Google oughta do the trick for you.
  > Question #1: If we’ve got a bunch of people from 2007 hanging around in 1977, why would it be anything but logical that some of the folks we’ve met on the island in 2007 are actually from 2037?
  > Crackpot theory #1: We’ve been told several times that there’s a war coming, but we have no idea between who, where, why, and, most importantly, when the war will be fought. We’re going to guess the war is over the control of time and that it will be fought in the island “present” of late 2007/early 2008 and that, in true “Lost” fashion, we’ll find out who won the war (via flashforward) before we get any of those other answers.