Mindblowing ! That’s how I’d like to describe this episode.
Dan tells Jack and Julliet : “Your perception of how long your friends have been gone, is not nescesarily how long they actually have been gone.” He then tells Jack there might be side effects (which could have also been the title of this episode) if they either didn’t maintain the correct heading, or as it turns out later, one of the passengers has been exposed to a lot of radiation or electromagnetism lately.
So that’s what happened to Desmond when they got back to the freighter. The helicopter passed a ‘thunderhead’ as Sayid called it, and Desmond entered a weird Time Warp and lived in 1996 again. The part played by Henry Ian Cusick was acted so great ! You could feel the despair and confusion coming off the screen.
