Did Daniel Faraday commit suicide?

Question

I was watching episode 5x14 of Lost. Faraday comes back to the Dharma compound and asks help to go to the others to talk to Eloise. Him, Kate and Jack manage to get to the others's camp, but the way he handles the situation is so out of character that it makes me think he wanted to commit suicide.

Being the nerdy character, he storms in the camp, pointing his gun around asking to talk to Eloise. When one of the others try to reach for his gun, he shoots few bullets to warn him. Then Richard comes out of his tend and he points his gun to him, asking for Eloise. Then he even starts counting down from 3 in a threatening way still pointing his gun to Richard. At which point Eloise shoots him to death.

Given that in his previous encounter with the others, he was able to convince Richard, very peacefully, to lead him to the most dangerous thing on the island (the hydrogen bomb), why was there this sudden change of tones in this episode.

Why would he act in such a threatening way? Was he intentionally trying to commit assisted suicide? If so, why?

Answer 1

In the first visit the characters are flashing around through time and Daniel Faraday is constantly insisting that no matter what they do, they can't change anything. "Whatever Happened, Happened". He knows that the island still existed in the future so he knows that he will be able to convince them to bury the bomb.

3 years after that, after the time skipping has ended and they are stuck in the Dharma Initiative, Daniel returns to the island on the submarine convinced that he was wrong and that perhaps they can actually change things. If they can prevent "the incident" and the building of The Swan station, then Desmond won't forget to push the button and the plane won't crash and the freighter will never come, etc etc etc. This is a very different Daniel Faraday who is no longer so convinced that they can't change anything, and he is there with a specific purpose: to set off the bomb; however, he knows that they have very little time to accomplish this, which is likely why he comes out waving a gun and demanding to see Eloise.

He was not trying to commit suicide, he was trying to change the past, which is exactly why there is such a "sudden" change of tones. I used the double quotes around sudden because again, this is 3 years later and several episodes later. Plenty of time for him to have changed quite a bit in character.