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What we know of Danielle / Clues

• She doesn't wanna leave the Island, as she mentions in Through The Looking Glass.
• She is Alex's mother
• She hit Ben with a elbow (in episode "Through The Looking Glass Part 2") when he tried to abet John to shoot Jack so he couldn't make a call: "Do it John, Do it! Do what you need to..."
• Ben describes her as "crazy".
• Her experience with setting traps and using weapons suggested Rousseau has some sort of military experience.

History

It is unknown whether Danielle was entirely sane. Many of her predictions seemed paranoid and delusional, however, many of these assertions turned out to be correct. However, because of her extreme cautiousness, paranoia and assertiveness, she was not fully trusted by the Losties. As such, her stated history is in question and is veracity unknown. Here are some possibilities:

Theory 1: Her research vessel was intended to find Dharma

Evidence:

• The Dharma initiative involved many scientists and recruited off island people to work on island (as in The Man Behind the Curtain).

Theory 2: Rousseau was a member of the Dharma Initiative

Evidence:

• This is how she knew about "the disease" - which Kelvin described to Desmond and was apparently part of the experiments conducted on naive subjects.

• Rousseau knows more about the Others than she lets on. In the episode "One of Them" she told Sayid explicitly that 'he Ben will lie for a long time first'. It could be inferred from this that she's had experience torturing Others.

• She knows enough about The Monster to call it a security system. This indicates she knows far more about the Island than she says.

• Danielle was on the island 4 years before the Purge. She may have been part of a cruel Dharma psychology experiment, where they observed her isolation, or even helped drive her crazy.

Theory 3: Rousseau was a member of the Dharma Initiative -- Annie

• She was spared from the purge for Ben, but he had to let the Others brainwash her and cast her out.

• • She was brainwashed in Room 23 before the Purge in an official experiment, which is part of the reason why Ben decided to kill dozens of DHARMA workers in cold blood as an adult. Also explains why Annie/Danielle would not be killed in the purge: she was already in the wild living on her own in her chaotic psychological state. Her Central European "accent" was also given through the brainwashing, which partly explains Danielle's poor French accent and vocabulary and the loss of Annie's childhood American accent.
    • It is highly unlikely that an accent was "given through brainwashing". Mira Furlan is a Czech enacting a French-speaking role in the same way that Naveen Andrews is a Brit playing a native Iraqi. Her imperfect French accent is not likely to be significant.

Miscellaneous Theories

• Rousseau's team may not be "dead" like she claimed. It's possible that they became members of the Others and by doing so, they weren't the same people to her anymore. In a way, the people they were "died".

• The sickness she referred to as killing her crew she described made them dangerous, this is why she took the pin out of her other gun.

• She claims to have been on the island for 16 years, and clearly spends time roaming the jungle; how could she possibly have not discovered any of the various stations?

• In Enter 77, she didn't want to go near Flame, because she had already been there. She "met" Mikhail Bakunin; in the episode when he was yelling that he hadn't crossed the Line, he referred to a pact made with Rousseau - she promised not to get near the station and he promised no to get near her. What is also worth noticing is that when Sayid leaves the Flame with Mikhail and starts shouting "Danielle", she appears behind Mikhail so he doesn't see her. Also Mikhail reacts strangely when hearing her name.

• Maybe Mikhail reacted oddly because, being the one who downloaded all the info on the survivors, knew there was no one named Danielle. He didn't know about her on the island, and was genuinely confused as to who she was.

• Rousseau was most likely brainwashed, possibly in the same manner that Karl was ( Room 23 ). Her recollection of her time on the island is largely false (planted by whoever brainwashed her) and not to be trusted. This is why she acts so strange.

• Given the arrival year of the Russian at the Flame (1993) and given that the purge would have had to have taken place around the same time, Rousseau had to have been on the Island while DHARMA was still functioning.

• She claims she went to the tower and changed the message, but that the tower/message is somehow under the control of the Others now beyond her reach.

• Since there is no sickness, Rousseau executed her team members because they intended to take sides in the purge either with the Others or with the DHARMA initiative.

• Her team members were killed during the Purge.

• She and her team arrived in a boat. The Others are using their team boat to go between the islands. ( Not In Portland )

• If Ben really did know all about Danielle, then this enforces the appearance of Danielle being 'insane'. When Danielle takes Sayid to the net in which Ben was held, one of his statements is "she's crazy":

• Danielle's flashback will be in combo with the further exploration of Miles' character.
  • This is would be difficult as the actor playing her has moved back to Croatia and had requested the producers to write her off the show.
    • Asking an actor to come back for one episode in one of the most succesful show doesn't sound like difficult.
• Montand is Marvin Candle (both have lost the use of one of their arms).
  • This sounds like a theory about Montand or Marvin Candle ... NOT Rousseau.
• When Rousseau and her science team came to the island, Rousseau's team got the time sickness since they didn't follow the coordinates of 305. However, pregnant women don't get affected by the time sickness, their child(ren) does. So, the Others took Alex to cure her of the time sicknes (maybe Jacob cured her).

• We are repeatedly told that Rousseau came to the island sixteen years previously, but we are never told that she came to the island in 1988. This is because she did not come to the island in 1988. Rather, her expedition left in the present (the 2005-6 present, that is), but was affected by the time anomaly surrounding the island, and wound up sixteen years in the past.

Science Team

• There is no sickness - this is a lie that Rousseau and the DHARMA Initiative formulated in order to scare the DHARMA employees. Rousseau murdered her science team - this is why we have never seen her flashback episode.

the reason we do not see Rousseau flash backs is because she is from a future time. She does not have the ability to have flash backs tat take place before she was on the island. If, and when we ever get to see a Rousseau flashback, it will only be from the time she came to the island.

• Rousseau was the one that was sick, her science team were fine - but she murdered them whilst she was unwell.