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.

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.

[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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

[17] During the casting of the "freighter folk"—the nickname that Lost's producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse use to refer to Daniel, Charlotte, Miles and Frank[18]—fake names, occupations and scenes were temporarily assigned, to limit the leak of spoilers.

[20] Jeremy Davies was cast as Daniel because he was one of the writer-producers' favorite character actors, and they think that his "transformative quality [and] the tremendous intelligence that seems to emanate from him … seemed perfect for [the part].

Sanchez merged this "cool, edgy look" with his idea for the character's clothes: a "nerdy" loosely woven dress shirt from J.Crew.

[25] However, following their introduction in "Confirmed Dead", the four characters were well received, with Paige Albiniak of the New York Post citing them as a reason behind the show's improved ratings.

[30] Jeff Jensen from Entertainment Weekly liked that the "fascinating" new characters brought "mind-blowing new possibilities, and exciting new theory fodder".

Tom Iacuzio of The Daytona Beach News-Journal deemed Jeremy Davies's performance deserving of a Primetime Emmy Award.

"[36] Rachel Dovey of Paste said "The Variable" revealed "a whole different" side of Daniel: "We've oscillated before about the true nature of the physicist, whether it's good or evil [...] We decided he's mostly a decent guy, barring the whole experimenting-on-his-girlfriend-then-running-away-when-her-brain-turned-to-mush thing.

[42] Jeremy Davies submitted the episode "The Constant" on his behalf for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.