Daniel Faraday

Daniel was born to Eloise Hawking (Fionnula Flanagan) and Charles Widmore (Alan Dale), both of whom were Others. Eloise raised Daniel on her own, hiding the identity of his father from him and pushing him to develop a scientific mind, much to the detriment of his social life and casual pursuits. After graduating from the University of Oxford with his girlfriend Theresa Spencer, Daniel was offered a £1.5 million grant by industrialist Charles Widmore.[3] In the 1990s, Daniel started working as a physicist at The Queen's College, Oxford, with controversial experiments including sending a subject's consciousness through time. His initial tests on lab rats resulted in their deaths, which led to the abandonment of his studies. During his tenure, Daniel encountered Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick), who was suffering from temporal displacement trapping him between 1996 and 2004. Daniel helped to ground Desmond's consciousness by telling him to find a constant in both time frames, which Desmond decided was to be Penny (Sonya Walger). This encounter had a profound effect on Daniel, reaffirming the legitimacy of his time-displacement theories and prompted him to resume his abandoned experiments.[4] Daniel eventually performed similar experiments on Theresa, but she ended up suffering from temporal displacement as Desmond had and eventually fell into a coma, with temporary periods of lucidity.

The funds for her continuing care were provided by Charles Widmore. As a result of Theresa's fate, Oxford fired Daniel and quietly removed all references to him ever having been at the university. At some point, Daniel also performed an experiment upon himself, resulting in long-term memory damage. While in Essex, Massachusetts, Daniel saw a news report covering the discovery of the apparent wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815 in the depths of the Sunda Trench. Widmore approached Daniel and after informing him that the Sunda Trench wreckage was a hoax, urged him to go to the island, which he said would heal him of his plight. At first, Daniel was reluctant, but Eloise convinced him to go.[3] Daniel is then recruited into a covert team alongside Charlotte Lewis (Rebecca Mader), Miles Straume (Ken Leung) and Frank Lapidus (Jeff Fahey), which is organized by Matthew Abaddon (Lance Reddick) and led by Naomi Dorrit (Marsha Thomason). Their mission was to travel to the island, find Ben Linus (Michael Emerson), the then current leader of the Others, and disable the Dharma Initiative station called the Tempest, which contained poisonous gases.[5]

Faraday first arrives on the island by parachuting out of a helicopter on December 23, 2004. After setting foot on the island, Faraday's memory problem slowly diminishes. He then encounters the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, who are believed to be dead by the world at large.[5] On the island, Faraday starts conducting an experiment regarding the island's unique passage of time.[6] After reuniting with Charlotte, Faraday sneaks off with her to the Tempest Dharma Initiative station, where they neutralize a potential source of poison gas.[7] Later, the corpse of the freighter's doctor washes ashore. Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) confronts Faraday and he is forced to confess that the freighter upon which they arrived was not sent to the island to rescue the survivors.[8] Around this time, Daniel realizes the Secondary Protocol, detailing the whereabouts of Ben Linus, has been activated by Widmore, necessitating their immediate departure from the island. Faraday begins to ferry survivors to the freighter, but Charlotte and Miles choose to remain on the island. Daniel and five survivors are caught midway between the Kahana and the island when the Kahana blows up and the island is "moved" by Ben Linus.[9]

When Ben causes the island to vanish, Charlotte, Faraday and the remaining survivors begin to travel through time. After the survivors are sent to the past, Faraday lures Desmond out of the Swan Dharma Initiative station, telling him to find Daniel's mother once Desmond is off the island.[10] Upon jumping further to the past, Faraday and the group are captured by the Others in 1954.[11] The Others mistake them for military personnel and Faraday is forced to disable a hydrogen bomb labelled "Jughead". During this time period, he confesses his love for Charlotte. After telling the Others that they must bury the bomb, the survivors experience another time jump.[12] The time jumps cause Charlotte to experience nosebleeds, headaches, and double vision, and she eventually collapses. As she dies, Charlotte tells Faraday she remembers living on the island as a child, and recognizes him as the man who told her not to return once she left the island.[13] After John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) stops the time jumps, the remaining survivors are stranded in 1974. Faraday and his group move into the Barracks and under false pretenses, join the DHARMA Initiative. Despite the option to board the DHARMA submarine and "go back to the real world", the survivors from 2004 stay on the island together in the hope that they can somehow return to the time that they knew and Faraday becomes a scientist for DHARMA.[14] Faraday then leaves the island and joins the DHARMA headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In 1977, Daniel arrives back on the island and sets out to stop the construction of the Swan Station before drilling hits the electromagnetic "energy pocket", which ultimately results in the crash of Flight 815. Faraday plans to detonate the hydrogen bomb "Jughead" and destroy the unstable electromagnetic energy so no one would have to be pushing a button to save the world and Flight 815 would not crash. Before putting his plan into action, Daniel visits a young Charlotte, telling her never to return to the island once she leaves. Daniel then travels to the Others' camp with Jack and Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly) to obtain the bomb. He breaks into their camp and threatens to shoot Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell). However, he is shot by his mother, Eloise Hawking. Before Daniel dies, he tells Eloise he is her son and she sent him to the island despite knowing he would die.[3]

In the afterlife, in which Oceanic Flight 815 does not crash on the Island, Faraday has a different background. Daniel was allowed to pursue his passion for music, and never trained in physics. After overhearing Eloise trying to persuade Desmond to stop pursuing Penelope (Sonya Walger), Faraday approaches Desmond and shares his theory of the timeline being altered. He tells Desmond that he recently saw a red-haired woman he strongly felt he already knew and loved. Daniel states after the encounter, he made a series of notes in his journal which a mathematician has identified as advanced quantum mechanics, a topic he knows nothing about. Daniel shows his notes, and hypothesises that the world as he and Desmond are experiencing is not their correct path. Faraday then tells him Penelope is his half-sister and where Desmond can find her.[15] Later, Faraday meets Charlotte at his benefit concert, but they do not yet realize they are in the afterlife. Daniel then takes the stage with DriveShaft to play as Charlotte watches from the crowd. It is later implied that both Eloise and Desmond are both aware that they are living in the afterlife. Eloise convinces Desmond to let Faraday live out the rest of his afterlife, since Faraday was never allowed to live the life he wanted in his past, and Eloise was never allowed to spend time with her son.[16]