Lost's 'The Constant' is the perfect Christmas episode to watch before the show leaves Netflix

Every Christmas Day, after the kids are tucked into bed and my wife has drifted off on the couch, I turn off whatever holiday movie we’ve settled on and fire up Netflix to watch “The Constant.” The fifth episode of Lost season 4 is a holiday tradition.

While plenty of people are spending their days off rewatching comfort movies or diving back into Stranger Things, I’m queueing up a 17-year-old episode of television for the umpteenth time, and possibly for the last time — at least on Netflix anyway, because Lost is leaving the streaming platform at the end of the month.

As far as Christmas episodes go, “The Constant” belongs in the Die Hard category: only tangentially tied to the holiday by virtue of when it’s set. But every year, it’s a reminder of why I loved Lost in the first place. Beneath the sci-fi puzzle box, the time travel, and the island mythology, the series is a character drama about people changing, oftentimes painfully, over time as they reflect on their past and ruminate on their future.

Desmond Hume stands apart from all that chaos. While much of Lost is defined by fractured identities and emotional whiplash — especially among the core trio of Jack, Kate, and Sawyer — Desmond’s story is about holding onto love. He doesn’t escape the island by becoming someone else. He survives it by never forgetting what he truly cares about: Penny.

When “The Constant” first aired, Lost had fully embraced its reputation as a puzzle-box show. After Charlie’s tragic death, Season 3 ended with the iconic scene of Jack whimper-wailing, “We have to go back!” Suddenly, season 4 deals in flash-forwards instead of flashbacks of six castaways in the future who made it off the island. This disorientation peaks in the middle of the season with “The Constant.”

Desmond, who once formed a charming sense of camaraderie with Jack during a random tour de stade in the past (“See you in another life, brother!”), eventually appeared as the man in the mysterious hatch at the start of season 2, punching in the code that prevented the end of the world. By season 4, he evolved into a central character working with the main cast to escape the island.

In “The Constant,” as Desmond rides a helicopter through an electric storm to reach a freighter off the coast of the island, his mind is affected by electromagnetic anomalies, and he begins slipping uncontrollably between his past and present, specifically his time in the Army in 1996 and the present day of 2004. (Because “The Constant” functions as a bottle episode in its own right, you don’t really need to even remember what’s happened in the few episodes leading up to it, so a faded memory of a few characters and their dynamics is all you really need.) What follows is one of Lost’s best and brightest stories, leveraging a cool science fiction gimmick to bring its themes into focus rather than deepen the mystery.

Most of Lost is defined by change, and not always the healthy kind. The island forces the survivors to confront who they are by stripping away who they pretend to be. It’s all very Shakespearean, grappling with layers of identity: who people expect us to be, who we think we are, and who we actually are when we actually take a real look at ourselves. But Desmond Hume is built differently.

While other characters are propelled forward by trauma or hindered by it, love anchors Desmond. Penny isn’t just the love of his life. She is the point around which his entire existence orbits. So when he becomes unstuck in time like something out of Slaughterhouse-Five, memory and devotion become the keys to saving his life, his certainty that, no matter when or where or why he is, there’s someone out there waiting for him.

The revelation of Desmond finding out that Penny still loves him and has been looking for him for years makes “The Constant” so devastating and hopeful at the same time. We know the truth, but up until this point, Desmond isn’t sure. It’s just something he believes. The episode isn’t really about time travel, even though it uses the mechanic so darn well. It’s about dislocation. What happens when you lose your place in the world and nothing feels solid, or real, anymore? And you can’t be sure that your beliefs are valid? Desmond is told that to survive he needs to find a “constant,” a single emotional tether strong enough to keep him from unraveling completely. He finds it in Penny.

In 1996, the daughter of Charles Widmore is angry and bitter, reeling from the emotional whiplash of loving Desmond only for him to run away from their relationship out of insecurity for his own self-worth (largely imposed upon him by Penny’s super-rich and super-judgmental dad). When Desmond turns up at her doorstep, she almost slams the door in his face. He owns up to his mistakes, but doesn’t exactly use the apology to try and win her back.

This disarms Penny enough for Desmond to get her new phone number. (“I know I've ruined things, and I know you think things are over between us, but they're not! If there's any part of you that still believes in us, just give me your number.”) He begs that she answers the phone on Christmas Eve eight years in the future. She roasts him for not writing the number down as he begins reciting it like a mantra, knowing he’s about to jump back to the present day. She’s still very angry. Neither we nor Desmond are even sure she’ll bother to answer.

Watching it, you’re terrified for Desmond as the phone rings in the present day, because a few minutes earlier, we saw another guy going through this same experience who basically had his brain explode — and the hostile crew of the freighter is literally trying to break the door down. Will the call even go through? Is she still furious with him? What if she doesn’t answer? The moment she picks up lands like a gut punch even after countless rewatches. Desmond cries. Penny cries. I cry. And rather than obsess over the sci-fi mechanism at play, Lost instead sees them both use what little time they have on the phone to reaffirm their love for one another.

It’s not just that the scene is well written or impeccably acted (to be clear, it is indeed both of those things). It’s that, in a show obsessed with destiny, fate, and cosmic coincidence, “The Constant” argues something simpler and far more human: that love is both an act of persistence and a leap of faith. Choosing someone, again and again, across all of time and space, is just that: a choice. It takes willpower, bravery, and more than a bit of vulnerability. It takes faith.

Watching “The Constant” every Christmas for me has become less about Lost itself and more about the space this particular story creates. It’s quiet. Reflective. Lonely, but comforting. The house is dark. The noise of the day has faded. And for 43 minutes, I get to revisit a story that understands that the real spirit of Christmas is about the love we give and receive. (Also, I don’t have to binge-watch the first three seasons to enjoy it.)

My tradition of watching “The Constant” on Netflix may end this year, but Hulu and Disney Plus should still have Lost available to stream in the new year. Still, there’s something bittersweet about knowing that my Christmas ritual, which has felt a bit like my own personal constant in a way, is over.

So I’ll watch “The Constant” one more time on Netflix this Christmas to celebrate in my own little way because it serves as a reminder that holding onto the people that matter is the most important thing. And that feels like a pretty good message for the holidays.