Eps 516-517 - "The Incident" Happens...or Does It?

The Tease
Jacob finally introduced! The whereabouts of Rose, Bernard and Vincent revealed!! A new character changes the meaning of everything we’ve seen on the show thus far!!! All of this, plus the most maddeningly ambiguous ending since the peer down the hatch, in season 5’s epic capper, “The Incident.”

Flashbacks
The flashbacks in the finale – with one notable exception – focused on the oft-mentioned but never truly seen Jacob. Jacob, we learn, has been on the island since at least the mid-1800s (and, we are led to believe, much longer than that). And yet, we also got to know Jacob as a mysterious figure who appeared at various times in the lives of our “main” characters.

Flashback 1 – Jacob, himself
We first meet Jacob spinning thread in a candle-and-fire-lit room, then weaving that thread into a tapestry.In this room are three jars. Jacob, wearing a white tunic, then goes to gather a fish trap, and cooks the fish on a rock. Off in the distance, he sees a tall ship. Another man, dressed in a black tunic, joins him. The newcomer says he just ate, so he doesn’t want any fish. He wonders aloud how the ship found the island, then directly accuses Jacob of bringing them there, to prove him wrong. Decrying that newcomers to the island always end up fighting and killing each other, the man who was referred to in the episode’s credits merely as “Man 2” insists, “it always ends the same.” “But it only ends once,” corrects Jacob. “Anything that happens before that, is just progress.” Man 2 (can we call him “Manny?”) asks, out of the blue, “do you have any idea how much I want to kill you?” Jacob coolly responds that he does, and Manny comments about how he’ll find a loophole. As Manny walks off, we see that this scene has taken place, in fact, in the shadow of the statue, which is revealed to be a crocodile-headed Egyptian god figure of colossal proportions.

Aside Number 1 – the subtext in this scene alone could be worthy of its own recap. I don’t know how long the writer’s room worked at crafting it, but it was one of the most brilliant and intricate scenes to date on the show. Where, oh where, to begin?

There’s the three jars. I invite any classics or archeology majors reading this to correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe these three jars call to mind Egyptian mummification. Traditionally, Egyptians removed the three most vital organs (I shudder to think which three those might be) and stored them in jars next to the mummy. Bearing in mind that mummification was common when pharaohs were buried, and pharaohs were believed to be gods, could it be that Jacob is, in the ancient Egyptian sense, a divine being?

Of course, the big reveal here is Manny. Ever since early in Season 3, the implication has been that Jacob, the unseen man pulling the Others’ strings, was the one force who alone would explain the island’s mysteries. Now we learn that Jacob has been locked in an eternal struggle with an adversary, one who unabashedly announced his (already known to Jacob) intent to “find a loophole” and kill Lord Other. This whole loophole thing calls to mind something else – the struggle between Widmore and Ben, in which they both understood they would be unable to kill each other. The Ben/Charles war, we know, has rules, though not immutable ones. And the loophole that caps off this episode certainly explains what happened to Alex.

Now that we’ve met Jacob and Manny, hasn’t their existence, and their conflict, somehow seemed obvious? Think back to season 1. When Locke taught Walt backgammon, he explained how the game is a battle between light and dark. Later that season, Charlie claimed to have had a dream about a white rock and a black rock, and, of course, the skeletons in the cave held a black stone and a white stone. Now here are two adversaries, one in white, the other in black. Clearly, Jacob at least recognizes that there will be only one true end to their struggle, and everything up to that point is merely “progress.” As we know, there have been many waves of people coming to the island over the years.

Then there’s the ship, which appears to be in the same position and configuration as the one Richard built in a bottle in “Follow the Leader,” is most likely the Black Rock. Manny’s suggestion that Jacob brought the ship here suggests Jacob has been recruiting people to the island for a very, very long time. That reference to Richard’s model, as well, suggests that Richard may indeed have arrived on the island on Black Rock. And, assuming the ship is indeed the slaving ship that will eventually settle in the dark territory, that puts this scene in 1843.

There’s also the look we got at the statue. Some quick online research suggests the statue is the Egyptian God, Sobek. Wikipedia tells us, in pertinent part, this about Sobek:

“Sobek was the deification of crocodiles, as crocodiles were deeply feared in the nation so dependent on the Nile River. The god Sobek, which was depicted as a crocodile or a man with the head of a crocodile was a powerful and frightening deity; in some Egyptian creation myths, it was Sobek who first came out of the waters of chaos to create the world.

“Gradually, Sobek also came to symbolize the produce of the Nile and the fertility that it brought to the land; its status thus became more ambiguous. Sometimes the ferocity of a crocodile was seen in a positive light, Sobek in these circumstances was considered the army's patron, as a representation of strength and power.

“Sobek's ambiguous nature led some Egyptians to believe that he was a repairer of evil that had been done, rather than a force for good in itself.

“In Egyptian art, Sobek was depicted as an ordinary crocodile, or as a man with the head of a crocodile. When considered a patron of the pharaoh's army, he was shown with the symbol of royal authority - the uraeus. He was also shown with an ankh, representing his ability to undo evil and so cure ills.”

This statue carries two ankhs, suggesting he’s really into undoing evil and curing ills. Aren’t these notions front and center in Lost’s major themes? And what about Sobek’s link to fertility? This, I’ll return to later.

Also, there’s the fish. Yep, that fish is a red herring. Could it be the obvious interpretation of this scene – that Jacob is a “good” guy, while Manny is evil, is in fact a deliberate turning upside-down of the reality behind this conflict? I tend to think not, but it’s cute of the writers to stick a literal red herring into the scene to at least playfully suggest that idea.

Finally - what did Manny eat? My theory at this point is that he is the smoke monster. What does one feed a sentient electric telepathic smoke cloud that can take human form?

Flashback 2 – Kate

In Ames, Iowa, we see young Kate, with her doomed childhood friend Tom (we know it’s Tom, because he has that toy plane) conspire to steal a lunchbox from a general store. They’re caught, but Jacob shows up, and offers to pay for the lunchbox so there’s no harm done. He crouches down and asks Kate, “you’re not going to steal anymore, are you?” Then he touches her on her nose.

Flashback 3 – Sawyer

Jacob interacted with young Jimmy Ford at his parents’ funeral. As Jimmy sits to write the letter to “Mr. Sawyer” that would come to guide his actions for years, his pen runs out of ink. Thankfully, Jacob was around to give him a new pen, noticeably brushing James’s finger when he handed it to him. After Jacob leaves, another man takes the note from Jimmy, and cautions him to move on. He says they’re gone. “What’s done is done,” he tells Jimmy, and asks him to promise that he won’t finish the letter. Jim promises (his first con?), and the man takes him to go say goodbye.

Aside Number 2 – this was yet another brilliant scene. Given all we know about James "Sawyer" Ford, this moment clearly shaped so very much of the man he would one day become. This is very much the start of the journey that leads James to Australia, and then onto Oceanic Flight 815…

Flashback 4 – Jin and Sun
At their wedding day, Sun and Jin recite their vows. Jin, who has to read his, says they will never be apart, because that would be like the sky being apart from the Earth. In the receiving line is Jacob, who offers his blessing. Touching them both briefly, he says in flawless Korean, “your love is a very special thing. Never take it for granted.” Jacob bows and walks away.

Flashback 5 – John Locke
Jacob reads on a bench – Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge – and, in the background, John Locke plunges from his father’s apartment. Jacob walks to John, touches him, and John comes to. “Don’t worry,” soothes Jacob. “Everything’s going to be alright.” Jacob says he’s sorry this happened to John.

Aside Number 3 – is it just me, or was Locke actually dead before Jacob touched him? In the near future, Matthew Abadon would tell Locke how lucky he was to be alive. Maybe luck had nothing to do with it? Maybe Locke had a preview of Jacob's/ the island’s healing powers at this defining moment in his own life. Not that he remembered it…

Flashback 6 – Jack
We finally see that first solo surgery Jack told Kate about waaaay back when they first met. Christian, observing, tells Jack to calm down, that the only way not to paralyze the patient is to close his eyes, count to five, “and then fix it, Jack.” Jack counts to five, and calms down. He goes back to the surgery, then, when it’s done, he goes to buy an Appollo bar, which doesn’t fall out of the machine. Christian tells him the girl is not paralyzed. Jack, however, is upset his father embarrassed him to be happy at the result of the surgery. “Dad, I know you don’t believe in me, but I need them to.” Dourly, Christian asks, “are you sure I’m the one who doesn’t believe in you, Jack?” He walks off, and Jacob shows up to give Jack his candy bar, touching his hand in the process. “I guess it just needed a push,” says Jacob (but of course he could be referring as much to Jack as to his candy bar).

Flashback 7 – Sayid
Sayid and Nadya cross a street in Los Aneles as they plan to celebrate their their anniversary. Jacob interrupts Sayid by tapping his shoulder, but Nadya continues across the street, only to be killed by a car that drives off. In her dying breath, she tells Sayid she loves him, then asks him, in Arabic, to take her home.

Aside Number 4 – this of course is the moment in which Sayid started on his dark path of becoming Ben’s assassin. By and large, didn’t it seem that Jacob was doing good, or at least not hurting, with the other people he met off-island? So then how to square this horrible event with that general “Jacob=good” notion? How about this – that car was barreling through the intersection one way or the other. Don’t think of it as letting Nadya die, but rather saving Sayid.

Flashback 8 – Hurley
Hurley gets his property handed back to him at the county jail. He comically tries to fight his release. “Look, dude, there’s men with tranquilizer guns who want to hunt me down and bring me somewhere against my will.” The discharge officer is unimpressed. Hurley hops a cab, but finds Jacob inside with a guitar case. He asks what Jacob was in for, and admits, “I was in because I killed 3 people, only I didn’t really. I guess they figured that out.” Jacob, who manages to touch Hugo, says he wasn’t in jail. He was waiting for Hugo, and he’s definitely not dead. Jacob asks Hurley why he won’t got back to the island. “Because I’m cursed,” murmurs Hurley. “Is that so?” asks Jacob. “What if you weren’t cursed? What if you were blessed? You get to talk to the people you lost? Sounds pretty wonderful. I got some news for you, and you’re just going to have to take my word for this – you are not crazy.” Jacob tells him about the Ajira flight, and how getting on the plane in Hurley's choice. He leaves behind the guitar, and says it’s not his.

Aside Number 5 – Of all the returning Oceanic Sixers, Hurley’s story leading up to Ajira 816 was the only one we didn’t have…until now. It’s clear from the post-Ajira events that Hurley has had a weight lifted off his shoulders. He really seemed to believe his jinx had been a blessing, and now we know why. We also know why he carried a guitar case around, even while sneaking away from DHARMA camp – it certainly seemed to have been an implied suggestion from this stranger who set him on his path.

Flashback 9 – Ilana
In Russian, Jacob, wearing gloves, apologizes to Ilana, who is wrapped all over in bandages, for not coming sooner. He says he’s come because he needs her help. Ilana, who seems to know who Jacob is, says she’ll help him.

Aside Number 6 - A common factor in all but one of these flashbacks was that each character was physically touched by Jacob. With Locke, that touch revived him after his high fall. With Sayid, that touch seemed to save his life, even as it did not spare Nadya. What's more, I think we just discovered which of the flight 815 passengers were there by design, and that the designer was Jacob. Anyone else think the final season will be about why Jacob brought these particular people to the island? But, rather than touching Ilana, who seemed to know who he was, Jacob just directly asked for help. I'm curious why she was brought in differently than the others.

2007
The Locke-led expedition continues. Sun asks Ben who Jacob is. Ben says he's in charge of the island. Sun asks about Locke being the leader, and Ben clarifies, "John is the leader, but everyone answers to someone, and the leader ansers to Jacob." Sun asks what he’s like, and Ben, clearly wounded by his response, says he’s never met him.

Richard asks John about his having been killed by Ben. John says Richard’s been on the island longer, so he figured he would know what happened, but Richard says he has never seen anyone come back to life. Richard says he’s ageless because of Jacob, and if he had to guess, John is like this because of Jacob, too. John agrees (particularly ominous in light of the big reveal about Locke's nature later in the show). He says after he thanks Jacob, they’ll have to deal with the Ajira passengers. When Richard asks what he means, Locke responds sinisterly, "what do you think I mean?"

Aside Number 7 - this plan to wipe out the Ajira passengers is the surest sign yet that resurected Locke is more than a little different from pre-murder Locke. Did anyone guess where this was going? Also, I think the fake Locke was probing Richard to see if he knew or suspected anything.

Speaking of the Ajira passngers...Ilana’s crew rows ashore with their big box and knocked out Frank loaded in an outrigger. Bram wants to know why they brought Frank, and Ilana says they might need him. Bram asks if he might be a candidate? Frank is awake, and wonders what he’s a candidate for. Ignoring the question, Ilana says she’s a friend. Frank asks if she whacks and kidnaps all her friends, and she sayd only the ones they like. Frank asks what’s in the box. Ilana decides to show him – Frank looks in, grimaces, and says, “terrific.”

Aside Number 8 - The Ilana/Bram crew, even at the end of the episode, remain one of the biggest mysteries. For what could Frank have been a candidate? Is that why he was supposed to pilot Oceanic 815? After what we saw with Jacob's involvement in the 815ers' lives, can Frank's liks to both flights be considered a coincidence?

Locke trek continues. Locke asks Ben why he hasn’t told Richard yet about the kill Jacob plan. Ben says he assumed he’d want to keep it a secret. John, amused, wonders aloud when that started to matter. Ben, even more defeated, says he started thinking differently about things when his dead daughter threatened to destroy him if he didn’t do everything Locke said. Locke, positively beaming, confirms Ben will do whatever he says. "Well then, I guess I won’t have to convince you after all." Ben's exasperated delivery of the follow-up is priceless - "Convince me to do what?" Again looking like the cat that ate the canary, Locke says, "I’m not going to kill Jacob, Ben. You are."

Frank says he wishes they never showed him what was in the box. Bram explains they need to show it to someone else so they’ll know who they were up against. Frank asks what that would be, and Bram tells him, "something way scarier than what’s in the box." Bram insists they're the good guys, to which Frank responds, "In my experience, the people who go out of their way to tell you they’re the good guys are the bad guys." They find the cabin, but Bram notes that the ash is disturbed. This causes some alarm. Ilana tells the others to wait and goes into the shack. Inside, there is a machete, similar to the one Jacob used to gut the fish, holding up a parchment. She takes it to Bram, and says, "he isn’t there, and hasn’t been for a long time. Someone else has been using it." She orders her red shirts to burn the hut, and they do. Frank is concerned this will burn down the jungle, but nobody pays attention. Ilana shows Bram the parchment – it’s the god from the statue. Bram sees it, and says, “well I guess we know where we’re going.”

Aside Number 9 - I thought the ash around the cabin actually meant something! We've seen the ring broken before. If I'm not mistaken, the ash line was disturbed when Locke saw Christian and Claire in the shack last season. Is Christian the "someone else?" Given Ilana's reaction to this other person's presence in the shack, I'd say Christian's claim to speak for Jacob is highly dubious.

Locke continues to lead his merry band, and has them rest at the former 815ers camp. John finds Ben, who, without looking up, says, " I was enjoying some alone time." Locke points out the Swan hatch door, and notes that's where they first met. "Mind if I ask you a question?" asks Locke, to which Ben, not mising a beat (but also lying), responds, "I’m a Pisces." Ben admits he had only pretended to see Jacob, and was just as surprised as Locke when things flew around the room. He confesses he was embarrassed avout never having seen Jacob. "So yes, John, I lied. That’s what I do." Ben asks why John wants him to kill Jacob. Locke responds by deflecting, "because, despite your loyal service to this island, you got cancer. You had to watch your own daughter gunned down. And what was your thanks? You were banished. And you did all this in the name of a man you never even met. So the question is, why the hell wouldn’t you want to kill Jacob?"

Aside Number 10 - even as Locke 2.0 continues to relish his ability to swap roles with Ben, the once-great manipulator, he creeps me out. Meanwhile, Michael Emerson, in my mind, delivered his best perormance of the season this episode. This beaten down version of Ben truly fleshes out the character.

Sun moves through the camp, and finds Aaron’s cradle. In it, she finds Charlie’s ring.

Aside Number 11 - in the show's order of scenes, this triggers Sun's flashback to her wedding. But to the audience, this trip down memory lane is a reminder that this is still very much the same story we've been watching for 5 years, even if it has changed its focus several times.

The Others party stops, and John asks Richard why. Richard responds, "you'll see." They arrive at the leg of the statue. "Well it’s a wonderful foot, Richard," snarks Locke, "but what does it have to do with Jacob?" Richard responds, it’s where he lives.

Night falls at the statue. Locke stares at the foot. Richard plants torches, and asks if he needs to do this. If he waited, Jacob would come to him. John demands to know where Jacob is.

Sun asks Ben what happened to the statue. Ben says it was like that when he got here. "You expect me to believe that?" Demands Sun. "Not really."

Aside Number 12 - this exchange was a little awkward, but it seems to stand for the notion that Ben was present when the statue was destroyed. Now recall my discussion of Sobek, and his connection to fertility. Now also recall that, some time after Ben came to the island (i.e., after Ethan was born), pregnancy became a death sentence for island women. So I can't help but wonder if the baby plague was caused by the destruction of a fertility totem, and, if so, if that was done deliberately?

Richard objects to Ben's tagging along, insisting there can only be one leader, and only the leader can see Jacob. John says he thinks Richard makes up the rules as he goes along. If there’s a problem he is sure Jacob and he can work it out. Richard finds a hidden door, and pushes it in. "Tell him I said hello," mutters Richard, and then steps aside.

Aside Number 13 - I truly hope one of the 17 remaining episodes turns out to be Richard's backstory. He seems to follow a specific set of rules, but to what end? And why did Jacob make him ageless?

John pushes the rest of the way in. He and Ben enter. John reassures Ben, "I know it won’t be easy, but things will change once he’s gone. I promise." He hands over a knife, which Ben considers, then takes deliberately.

Sun sits and waits. Richard joins her. He offers her water, but she wants booze. Ilana’s group comes out, and says, don’t shoot. It’s ok. She lowers her gun. She asks which one is Ricardus. Richard steps forward, and says, "It’s Richard, actually.". Again, Ilana asks, "What lies in the shadow of the statue." He responds in Latin, "Ille qui nos omnis servabit."

Aside Number 14 - Oh. Of course. The answer to the cryptic Eglish question is a phrase in Latin. Perhaps there really was no point to my insistence Frank should have guessed the answer. As for what this means, I found two competing translations online: 1) "He who will save us all," and 2) "That which we protect." I found more support for option one. Any Latin scolars want to help out with this?

Ilana says she has something Richard needs to see. They open the crate, and dump out a body. It was in the cargo hold. The body is....Locke!?. Ilana, who saw Locke walking around and talking, said he was in the coffin. Sun (who in this storyline has played the part of the audience proxy) asks, "if this is Locke, who’s in there?"

Inside the statue, the other Locke leads Ben into the loom room, as though he knows his way around. Torches and fires are burning. Ben sees the completed tapestry – an Egyptian design, but with Greek writing. From:

Aside Number 15 - thanks to reader Simos Tsamkosoglou, for emailing me this about the Greek text:

"Even though the design is Egyptian Hieroglyphic, the inscription is Ancient Greek. There are 2 texts. One in the top as title and one in the middle. I thought as a Greek myself to help you with that and with translation. The first phrase is : 'Σοι δε θεοί τόσα δοίεν, όσα φρεσί σήσι μεμοινάς' which is translated as 'Let the Gods give you all these that your heart desires.' The second phrase is: 'Ούλε τε καί μάλα χαίρε, θεοί δέ τοι όλβια δοίεν' which is translated as 'Be good and happy (joyfull), may Gods give you happiness.'"

Simos continues, "both these phrases are from Homer's Oddyssey the ancient tale of the hero Oddyseus (Ullyses) and how much trouble he found trying to return to his land. The symbolisms are way too obvious for our heroes in LOST." Indeed they are, Simos. Consider these: Desmond, lost at sea for 3 years, striving, like Odysseus, to be reunited with a lost love named Penelope. Then there's Ben, who on the Ajira flight read James Joyce's Ulysses. And that's just scratching the surface!

Jacob sits and waits. He asks, regarding the tapestry, "do you like it? I did it myself. It took a long time, especially since I made my own thread, but I suppose that was the point." Faux Locke says, "Hello, Jacob," and Jacob responds, "well, you found your loophole." Locke responds, "indeed I did. And you have no idea what I’ve been through to get here."

Aside Number 16 - Bam! So Locke hadn't changed in a personal growth sense. Rather, he has been "Manny" ever since his apparent resurrection. This means that Manny is a shapeshifter, but one whose disguises Jacob can see through. I wonder who else Manny has been? If I had to guess, I'd say he's been Christian, Yemi, Alex, and perhaps even strange-behavior Claire (which is a bit of a stretch, since she sat next to Christian).

Since we've been hopping mythologies, I thought I'd toss in some Norse...could Faux Locke be Loki ("Locke-y")? In Norse mythology, Loki was the great trickster, the instigator of conflicts that more benevolent gods like Thor and Balder had to overcome.

Ben, observing the exchange, asks, "have you met before?" Locke responds, "in a manner of speaking." Jacob calmly addresses Ben. "Benjamin, whatever he’s told you, I want you to understand one thing. You have a choice. You can do what he asks, or you can go. Leave us to discuss our…issues." Tired of feeling dismissed, Ben asks, "so now, after all this time, you’ve decided to stop ignorning me? 35 years I’ve lived on this island, and all I’ve ever heard was your name. All those slips of paper, all those...lists. I never questioned, I did as I was told. But when I dared to ask to see you myself, I was told, you have to wait, you have to be patient. But when he asks to see you, he gets marched straight up here as if he was Moses. So, why him? What was it that was so worng with me? What about me?" Jacob responds, without inflection, "what about you?" This enrages Ben, who stabs Jacob twice. Jacob pulls John closer, and says, "they’re coming." John then rolls Jacob into the fire.

Aside Number 17 - so it seems Ben and Charles were bound by rules similar to those that bound Jacob and Manny. Were these Others leaders proxies for the island's gods? It also seems that the loophole is basically just convincing someone else to do the dirty work. I hope it's more than just that - I mean, did it really take Manny 160+ years to come up with that?

Also, did you notice how Jacob held onto Ben after the stabbing, one last touching?

Now, why did Jacob goad Ben like that? Was this his Obi-Wan, "if you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine" moment? And who did he mean when he said, "they're coming?" If I had to guess? Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Jin, Sun, Sayid, and an actually resurrected John Locke. On what do I base this? Why, the events of the other storyline in the episode....

1977

(But first, another....)

Flashback - Juliet
We see Juliet and big sister Rachel get the talk from their parents about their impending divorce. They insist they love each other but don't belong together. "What if you are supposed to be together," asks Juliet. "We just know," insists the mother, "and, when you’re a grown-up, you’ll understand." Juliet storms off, and says she doesn't want to understand. Of course, she does come to understand, a little too well, and it informs her seemingly arbitrary decisions, beginning on board...

1977 (For Real This Time)

The sub. Sedatives get passed out for the trip. Kate tells Sawyer and Juliet about the need to stop Jack's bomb plan. Juliet and Sawyer exchange a look. He tells Kate he wants to take his chances in the real world. "If Jack wants to blow up the island, good for Jack."

Jack and Sayid, reviewing Faraday’s journal, see they have to remove the core of the bomb, and detonate that at the Swan. Richard points out they sealed Jughead and put it underground because of radiation. He confirms what I suspected last week - Ellie is pregnant. Sayid says they have only 2 hours to get the core to the Swan site.

At the Swan site, Radzisnky shows up and wonders who stopped the drill. Chang did, because it shot up in termperature. After it passed 70 meters. Radzinsky, who has been working on this project for 6 years, insists they drill on. Chang tries to caution Radzinsky, but the paranoid nerd insits he came to the island to change the world, and that’s exactly what he plans to do. The drill reactivates…

On the sub, Sawyer ponders the nuke reset plan. But he insists he decided to leave, and he sticks by his decisions. Suddenly, Juliet knocks out the sedative guy. "We decided to leave," she reminds her beau, "and we’re going back. We can’t just let those people die. You want out?" They take the control room. Sawyer and Juliet demand to be let out, and for the sub to continue on its course, and not come back.

As Sayid loads the core in a backpack, Richard takes a sledgehammer. He asks Jack, "over 20 years ago, a man named John Locke walked into our camp and told us he was going to be our leader." Richard asks if Jack knows Locke, because two of his three off-island trips in the interim were to visit Locke, and he never seemed special. Jack smiles and says not to give up on him.

Aside Number 18 - we've seen the two visits to Locke. I seriously doubt the writers had Richard mention a third trip as a throwaway line. Any thoughts what else took him off island?

Richard leads them through the tunnels. He smashes through a rock wall with the sledgehammer – into the building that will eventually be Ben’s house, but now is Horace's. Eloise says she'll go first, but Richard knocks her out. Richard says she's their leader, "she’ll be angry, but that’s better than being dead."

Aside Number 19 - if there's only one leader, and it's Eloise, that means it's NOT Charles. I think this adds more to my theory that Charles must have tricked Elly off the island, to usurp her. Pretty low, since she's carrying his son...

When they emerge, Jack and Sayid find there’s still an alert underway. Sayid suggests they hide in plain sight, and commandeers Horace’s jumpsuit and holds his gun in plain sight. They get past Phil and a security team, only to be spotted by Rodger, who recognizes the man who shot Ben. Rodger shoots Sayid in the gut, (even as Sayid tries to tell him he's carrying a nuke) and Jack shoots back. Yet again, Hurley arrives in a DHARMA van to save the day (this time with Jin and Miles). They hop in, and Jack tells Hurley to drive on!

Sawyer, Kate and Juliet row back as the sub dives away. Sawyer and Kate banter, and Juliet looks on, sadly. Kate thanks Juliet for backing her up. Sawyer has no idea where they are…when Vincent runs out to greet them. He’s accompanied by Rose and Bernard! Rose sees them first - "oh, hell no! Bernard? They found us!" Bernard steps out, "son of a bitch."

Jack, treating Sayid, demands that Hurley take them to the Swan, then tells Jin he found a way to take him back to Sun. Bernard confirms they’ve been living in the jungle for 3 years. Rose says they didn’t join DHARMA with them, because they’re retired. They made this place for themselves. Sawyer reiterates that Jack is about the blow them all up, but Rose takes a zen approach. Bernard says, "so we die. We just care about being together." Rose can't believe they've traveled back in time 30 years, and they're still shooting at each other. Rose then directs them towards the barracks.

Aside Number 20 - I still think Rose and Bernard will turn out to be the skeletons in the cave. Whether or not that happens, I'm glad their characters got some closure.

In the van, Sayid tells Jack he can’t stop the bleeding. Sayid says he needs to modify the bomb. They suddenly stop, because Sawyer, Juliet and Kate are in their path, with guns. Jack gets out of the van. Sawyer says they need to talk, and he just needs 5 minutes. "Then you can do what you want."Sawyer gets Jack to sit on a log. He tells Jack how his parents died. Sawyer points out that was a year ago. He could have stopped it all from happeneing, but didn’t, because what’s done is done. Jack says it doesn’t have to be that way. Sawyer says a man only acts because he wants something, so what did Jack screw up so badly he wants to take back? Jack admits, "I had her. I had her, and I lost her." Sawyer tells him to just go an ask Kated to be with him, but Jack insists it’s too late. Sawyer says if what he's doing works, they’ll be strangers, and Kate will be in handcuffs, but Jack insists, if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.

Aside Number 21 - a little disappointed in Jack's motivation, but then again, I'm a little disappointed by most things Jack does (could I be his father?) Still, it's great to see Jack vs. Sawyer finally come to a head!

"I guess there’s nothing I can say to change your mind?" asks Sawyer, who then lands a sucker punch. They fight. "Think you can come here and do whatever the hell you want? I had a life here!" shouts Sawyer, as he tackles Jack, then kicks him in the jimmies. He asks Jack if he’ll stop, and Jack says no. Sawyer pummels him, and would have kept going, but Juliet stops him – and says Jack’s right. They have to do this.

James demands to know what happened, since she’s the one who made him come here to stop Jack, and Juliet says only, “I changed my mind.” Sawyer is not satisfied. "I need you to tell me where all of this is coming from," pleads Sawyer. "I got a right to know why you changed your mind." "I changed my mind when I saw you look at her, says Juliet." Sawyer insists he's devoted to Juliet, but Juliet, recalling her parents' divorce, doesn’t think love means they’re meant to be together. If Jack can make it so they never come to the island, she says, he should, "because if I never meet you, I never have to lose you."

Aside Number 22 - sigh. I loved the Sawliet relationship. It was clearly doomed, but it was so belieavable, and almost as deserving of our rooting as Desmond and Penny. But, when you think about the relationships Juliet had before - the jerk of a husband in Edmund, being the other woman with Goodwin, being Ben's captive pet, and losing Jack to Kate...still, I hope that at the end, there's some way for these two to be together.

At the Swan site, the drill is right on top of the pocket. Phil radios to warn Radzinsky. They prepare for the men with bombs. Kate finds Jack, who says, "my talk with Sawyer didn’t go so good." As Kate tends to him, Jack asks why she made him promise not to ask about Aaron. She says it was because she was so angry at him for making her come back. "I came back so he can be where he’s supposed to be, with his mother." Jack insists his plan makes that possible, but Kate reminds him Claire was on her way to put Aaron up for adoption. "You don’t know what she was going to do," says Jack, who insists, "nothing in my life has ever felt so right." Suddenly there’s an alarm. The Swan workers scramble. Jack says it’s about to happen. Kate agrees to join him, and they get going. Sayid, who is not well, warns Jack – the bomb is rigged to explode on impact. Jack says it will work, and will save him, but Sayid says nothing can save him. He takes the pack, and a gun. Jack nods to Kate, and heads off. He finds James and Juliet. As he walks past, Jack says, “see you in Los Angeles.”

Aside Number 23 - poor Sayid. After losing Nadya, and sinking into darkness with Ben, you get the sense he doesn't want to pull through. But he was touched by Jacob, so...

Jin tends to Sayid. Miles asks, "has it occurred to any of you that your buddy is going to cause the thing he’s trying to prevent? Perhaps that nuke is the incident, so perhaps the best thing to do is nothing?" Nobody responds. They see Phill and his gunmen heading towards the Swan. Kate knows they’ll kill Jack if they see him, so the gang gets rolling.

Chang protests to Radzinsky that they need to be getting people away from the site, not calling security in. Jack hides behind a water tank. The gauges at the site go past red. Phil sees Jack and starts shooting. Jack takes out one guy, and keeps moving closer. Suddenly, the van shows up, with Kate and Juliet shooting their way in. Miles and Saywer jump out and help. Kate saves Sawyer. Jack gets close. Saywer knocks out Radzinsky, and takes Phil at gunpoint. He tells Jack to come out. "Hurry up and do your business," he barks. Sawyer gets Chang to turn off the drill, only it won’t shut down. Something’s pulling the drill down. Jack holds the bomb over the drill shaft, and looks to Kate, who nods at him. Saywer throws Phil aside, and he and Juliet smile at each other. Jack drops the bomb. Everyone tenses...but nothing happens. Sawyer grumbles, "this don’t look like LAX."

A humming begins, similar to when the hatch imploded. Metal objects start flying into the hole. The entire drill is pulled down. It pins Chang’s left arm (aha! That explains the motionless left arm in the Swan Orientation film!) Jack gets knocked out by a flying toolbox. Miles frees Chang, and tells him to get as far away as he can. Radzinsky tries to drive away, but the jeep gets pulled in. (Stuart, of course, gets out, since he's meant to die by shotgun decades later). Phil is about to kill Sawwyer, but gets impaled with rebar. Juliet gets stuck in a chain, and it pulls her into the pit. Kate tries to save her. Sawyer catches Juliet as she loses her grip. "Where do you think you’re going blondie?" shouts a desperate Sawyer. He tells Kate to help Juliet get the chains off but Kate can’t reach. Sawyer tries to hold on to Juliet. "Don’t you leave me," he pleads. Juliet says it’s ok. "I love you so much," she says, then gets pulled into the hole, and James is left crying above.

Aside Number 23 - he's not the only one! Juliet's fall left me weepy, both times I watched the episode.

Jack comes to and finds Kate pulling Sawyer back. The rig collapses into the hole. Down below, Juliet lies. She awakens, bloody, clearly in bad shape. She sees the bomb is still there, claws her way over to it, picks up a rock, and smashes away at it…Suddenly, the screen turns…white! With a photonegative of the Lost title card!!!!

Aside Number 24 - and that's where it ended?!?! Noooooo! You can't leave us like this until January!!!

But leave us Lost has, until we reconvene for the final season. So what happened? Was the white flash the bomb going off? Did Jack's plan work, or was Miles right that the bomb itself was the incident that always happened? Did everyone (or anyone) survive? Did history change?

For my money, history DID change. Yet, Jack and company will come back to the island. I think that's what Jacob meant by "they're coming." But I like to think that Jacob's little army will remember what they went through, as will Ben, who Jacob held after he was stabbed. Also, why else would the end title card be reversed, with black letters on a white background?

But what about the dead and left behind characters? We were told last summer that Emilie de Ravin (Claire) would appear in Season 6, but in what capacity? And what about Juliet? She does not seem to have touched Jacob. Moreover, Elizabeth Mitchell landed what appears to be a key role in ABC's relaunch of the 80's sci-fi series, "V," which, like Lost, will be a midseason show. Can she do both? Even if she can, will Juliet end up in the same position as Sawyer and the others? Or will she just show up in cameo so we can see her happily ever after?

Well, that's it for season 5, Lostophiles. The producers will be radio silent until this summer's San Diego Comic Con, so chances are, I will be, too. But I will check in from time to time, and will see you all back here for the final season, which has the tagline, "Destiny Calls.". Until then, Namaste!

Ep 515 - "Follow the Leader" to Island Armageddon or Deicide.

The Tease
Locke launches his master plan! Jack becomes 1977's Locke!! Sayid's triumphant return!!! All this, plus more Richard Alpert than you can handle, in season 5's penultimate outing, "Follow the Leader."

Foreword

This episode marks a huge variation on a theme that has spanned the series - namely, which leader should be followed, the skeptical man of science, or man so dedicated to his faith that he has trouble dealing its insane ramifications (pretty clear which way I lean). The variation here is that the traditional roles of skeptic Jack and believer Locke seem to have been turned on their heads...or have they? Jack is blindly (faithfully) following a scientist, albeit one willing to die for his theory. Locke, on the other hand, becomes a skeptic, but only because he thinks the island told him to. Let's see how this played out...

1977 - In the Jungle (the Mighty Jungle)

Jack and Kate observe the Daniel in the Others' Den scene from the end of "The Variable," and Jack muses that this moment is the reason they were brought back, to change the future…until Daniel is shot. Jack tries to go help, but Kate convinces him otherwise. Suddenly, two Others, including Charles Widmore, arrive on horseback. Charles knocks Jack around and takes them prisoner.

Elloise finds Daniel’s journal, and recognizes her handwriting. Charles brings Jack and Kate in. Elloise has Jack and Kate put in her tent. Charles wants to know why DHARMA has declared war, but Elloise says they’re not from DHARMA. Charles wonders, "then where the hell are they from?"

Aside Number 1 - One of the things that became apparent throughout this episode is that the apparent omniscient foreknowledge of things to come shared by the Others' leadership is not simply a fact that's always existed. Rather, at various points in time, they had to learn things - perhaps from Daniel's journal - that told them about the future. There are some interesting implications for this, which we'll expound upon later.

Jack and Kate get roughed up a bit as they are brought to the tent. Kate returns them to their interrupted discussion, about putting things back to the way they were supposed to be. Jack talks about the losses, the misery they can undo. Kate asks about them. “We just go on living our life, because we’ve never met?” Kate insists it wasn’t all misery. Jack responds, “enough of it was,” and Kate gets teary.

Aside Number 2 - Oh, Jack. For a guy who is so dedicated to fixing things, why are you so determined to mess up what could be a good thing with Kate? For that matter, why are you so determined to push her back to Sawyer, messing up a good thing with Juliet? Jack never had the self-confidence to accept that Kate didn't just end up with him by default, but because she wanted to. He let his jealousy over Sawyer break them up when Sawyer was nowhere to be found, and the fact that they broke up he allowed to let him believe Kate never wanted him in the first place. As heroes go, Jack continues to be a bit of a lame-o.

Eloise returns and asks what Daniel needed the bomb for. Jack says she wouldn’t believe him. Ellie tells Jack about what happened when she was 17, about how Daniel was from the future, and how he disappeared. "Ten minutes ago, I shot that man, in the back, and before he died, he told that he, he said he was my son. Explain it to me, and you have my word I will believe you.” Jack says he thinks there’s a way to take back her shooting her own son. Eloise asks Kate if Jack knows what he’s talking about, and, exasperated, she says, “he thinks he does.” She decides to take them to the bomb. The only problem is that an entire village has been built over it – DHARMA. She assumes they can just sneak back in and help retrieve it, but Jack points out the complication of their being DHARMA fugitives.

Widmore asks why Daniel looks familiar to him, but Elloise interrupts and orders Richard to come with them. Elloise covers Daniel, and closes his eyes. She tells Charles she’s taking Jack and Kate to the bomb, but Charles protests. They have a bit of discussion out of earshot, and it appears as though Charles briefly rubs her belly (is she pregnant with the man she just killed at this very moment?). Richard tells Jack that’s Charles, and he and Elly, "well let’s just say love can be complicated."

Elloise and one of the Others with Guns takes them to a pond, and she explains they have to swim to a tunnel. Kate doesn’t want to go any further, but as she turns to leave. Eloise and her stooge order her, at gunpoint, to stop, because they're not in the habit of revealing their secrets to strangers only to have them toddle off. The gunman makes to shoot Kate, only to be shot dead by Sayid, who was (conveniently) hiding in the bushes.

As Jack, Kate and Sayid powwow, Richard asks Eloise what they’re doing. Eloise says their dead comrade won't matter if Jack succeeds in what he's doing.

Sayid thinks Jack's plan is flawed, because he already changed things by killing Ben, and they’re all still here. Kate tells him how she and Sawyer took Ben to the Others. When Sayid demands to know why she would do that, Kate, even more shocked than Sayid, asks when shooting kids and blowing up hydrogen bombs became ok. Jack insists this is their destiny. Kate asks if he knows who he sounds like, and reminds them everyone will die if he’s wrong. Kate says she’s going to find their people, because if she can’t stop Jack, maybe they can. And with that, she's off.

Aside Number 3 - the Jack/ Locke comparisons become pretty overt at this point. However, like Locke, as much as Jack may wish that Kate would just follow his lead, he seems powerless to stop her from going her own way. Unlike Locke, however, Jack doesn't even try. He is no longer a leader as a man on a mission who is happy to have others with him, but indifferent to those who would choose another path.

Richard dives into the pool. Jack tells Sayid, "if I don’t see you on the other side, I won’t blame you." He dives under, and swims into a tunnel. He emerges, into what looks like a temple, similar to the room where Ben met Smokey. Richard tells him this is (fittingly enough), the Tunnels. Jack says it was a lot further than he thought it was. He asks how they’ll get the bomb out. Richard says, "the same way we borught it in." Jack wonders if he means that passage they swam through, but Richard, annoyed, responds, "it’s a 12 foot long, 40,000 pound hydrogen bomb, so, no, not through the pool." Elly and Sayid emerge from the pool. Jack is ecstatic that Sayid joined him, to which Sayid rakishly responds, "if this works, you might just save us all. If it doesn’t, at least you’ll put us out of our misery." They light torches, and Eloise says, as she will again 30 years in the future before explaining to Jack and company how to return to the island, "let’s get started. "

Aside Number 4 - One of the nagging questions has been why, if DHARMA built the barracks, does Ben's appropriated house have a secret passage into hieroglyphic-strewn tunnels? We now know that DHARMA built its barracks directly on top the ancient tunnels the Others knew about. The question is, when DHARMA built their village, did they know what was underneath? Given the hostility and subsequent truce between Hostiles and DHARMA, how could Eloise's people stomach having DHARMA sit on top of their tunnels?

Richard leads them through the tunnels. Sayid asks Jack if it's occurred to him that Elloise’s only motive is annihilating the DHARMA initiative? Jack concedes the point, then says he still trusts her, "because in 30 years, she’ll tell us how to get back." Sayid – still less than thrilled that they came back, despite his belief that Jack's is the best plan available now, asks, "and that makes you trust her?" Ellie uncovers Jughead, and asks, "now what?"

Aside Number 5 - It would appear another one of theories is now blown to hell - the bomb was not what the concrete under the Swan station was put in place to contain. This still raises the question, though, of just what was under the Swan station. For all Daniel's foreknowledge, all we know is it's energy 30,000 times stronger than what seeps out from the donkey wheel. Please, any physicists out there who can explain things like this, chime in and let me know.

Also, in light of Sayid's point about Eloise's intent to wipe out DHARMA, is that why they allowed the DI to build their camp right above the bomb, because they knew they had a failsafe device if they ever lost control of their island to these Ann Arborites?

1977 - DHARMA Barracks
At the DHARMA security station, Radzinsky starts beating answers out of Sawyer, and refuses to listen to Horace’s order to stop. “You don’t have the stomach for what happens next,” he tells his deposed former leader. Stuart (Radzinsky's first name) has Phil slam Sawyer’s head into the desk by the monitor, and demands to know where Kate is, "or so help me God, I will kill you." Sawyer refuses, and Radzinsky gets tougher. Juliet begs him to stop, pleading that they've known each other for 3 years and have no interest in hurting them. Sawyer begs Juliet not to talk. "Whatever you tell them," he moans, "they won’t believe." Phil insists he can make him talk. He punches Juliet, and Sawyer says he’ll kill him. Someone else arrives with the sub manifest, and points out the Shepherd, Austin and Reyes were last minute add-ons. When Radzinsky asks who Reyes is, Phil says, “he’s the fat guy.”

Aside Number 6 - I can see that Phil might be a bit peeved about getting cold-cocked and stuffed in a closet, but he's quite the little bitch, ain't he?

Hurley loads a backpack with supplies, then tries to look inconspicuous as he slips away carrying his guitar case. Chang follows him into the jungle. Hurley shows Jin and Miles his foodstocks. Miles insists they leave Sawyer and Juliet behind, because the three of them can't take on DHARMA alone, when Chang comes out and finds them. Chang asks again about the future story. His interrogation of Hurley is awesome:




Chang asks Miles if he’s really his son, and Miles admits it. Chang asks about Faraday's warning to evacuate the island. Miles says he’s been right about everything. "If he said get people off the island, I’d do it." Pierre says, "let’s hope he knows what he’s doing."

Chang finds the Sawyer interrogation and tries to order the evac. Radzinsky says no, and insists Horace is no longer in charge, and Pierre needs to get back to the Swan site. Sawyer says to put the women and children on a sub and get them out, "and if you put Juliet and me on the sub with them, we’ll tell you anything you want to know." Radzinsky demands that Sawyer draw a map to the Hostiles.

Aside Number 7 - At this point, I'm happy to suggest that, in evaluating how we're supposed to feel about DHARMA folks, it goes something like this - Radzinsky: evil, and deserving of his years trapped in the Swan; Phil: weasel - hope he dies in a bomb blast; Horace: a little creepy, but more ok than not - bummer about that gassed to death by Ben and the Others thing; Chang - arrogant, but ok. Bummer that his arm will probably get messed up soon. As for Sawyer, it's interesting to see him so willing to leave his former comrades behind like this. But you know what? He didn't screw things up, they did. And besides, I go back to that 3 months vs. 3 years thing. And I'm happy to see him fighting for his future with Juliet.

Miles watches the sub, and sees Charlotte and her mom board. He then sees the baby version of him with his mother (who I'm pretty sure got her makeup stolen by Gaby on this week's Desperate Housewives). Chang yells at her, harshly and Miles, for the first time understanding that his father really did care about him and his mother, realizes the harshness was the only way to get her to leave. They see Jim and Juliet pull up. Hurley says don’t worry, Sawyer always has a plan. Sawyer says to Juliet as they're marched to the sub, in cuffs, they’ll buy Microsoft, and bet on the 78 Cowboys. He apologizes for not leaving with her three years ago, but she smiles and thanks him for convincing her to stay. Juliet goes down the hatch. Jim "Sawyer/LaFleur" Ford turns around, looks at the island, and says, “good riddance,” then follows her down. (So much for giving a flying fig about Hurley and company).

Juliet asks what they’re going to do when they get to Ann Arbor, but Jim says they’re not going there, because DHARMA has no authority over them when they get off the sub. "Whatever happens, I got your back, remember?" Tenderly, Juliet says, "I love you," and Jim responds, "I love you, back." Suddenly, Phil shows up, and puts Kate on the sub, and chains her to the table. next to them. Kate lamely says, “hey,” and Sawyer, wondering what he has to do to be with Juliet away from this elephant in the room, responds merely, “hey.” Juliet rolls her eyes, as if wondering the same thing, i.e. why can't she and her man get away from this third wheel (love, love, love Elizabeth Mithcell). The sub pulls out. For the first time, we see Galaga in motion, as it dives under the waves.

2007
Richard constructs a ship in a bottle on the beach when Locke arrives, bearing boar. “I brought dinner.” Richard asks where he’s been for three years. Locke tells him he’ll explain on the way to run an errand. Richard says something seems different about him, and John responds, “I have a purpose now.” Sun and Ben follow in. Richard asks what Ben’s doing here. Sun asks Ben why Locke say these are his people, not Ben's. "When I left the island," Ben explains (sort of), "he stepped in." Ben says Richard is an advisor, "and he has had that job for a very, very long time." Sun whips out the 1977 picture and storms over to Richard. She asks if he met Jack, Kate and Hurley in 1977. Richard says he remembers meeting them very clearly, because he watched them all die.

Aside Number 8 - I gotta figure, assuming Richard is telling the truth, that this death had nothing whatsoever to do with the bomb. Even someone as ageless as Richard does not "watch" people die in a hydrogen bomb blast.

Sun plays with Jin’s ring. She asks Locke if it’s true that they’re all dead, but John says he doesn’t think they went through all this for nothing. Richard walks up and says he's ready. He still has John’s compass. John wants Ben to join, which prompts Ben to ask if John's afraid he'll stage a coup if left behind with the Others. John confidently responds, "I'm not afraid of anything you can do anymore," and Ben snarkily agrees to join them. John tells Sun to stay there, but swears that, if there’s a way to get her and Jin together, to save their people, he’ll find it.

Richard asks John where he’s been the last three years. John is surprised he didn’t know. He says he’ll show him where he disappeared to, and then he needs to see Jacob. Ben says that’s not how it works, and Richard, concerned about John's brashness, tries to talk him down, "you just got back. There's no reason to rush things." John mentions having a plan, and asks, "I am the leader, right? Then I want you to take me to see Jacob." As they beging to walk, Ben asks Richard, “what plan?”

John shows Richard and Ben the Beechcraft. He explains to Richard that his past/future self is about to arrive, and Richard will have to quickly take a bullet out of his leg, give him back the compass (so John can give it to Richard in 1954), tell him he needs to bring everyone back, and tell him he has to die to do it. We get a replay of the scene from earlier this year, where Richard helped John, gave him the compass, and watched him disappear. This time we got to see it from Richard’s perspective. Richard says John told him there’s a bullet in his leg. Ben tells present John this must be like an out of body experience, and asks how he knew when to be here? Locke responds, "the island told me." He gets Ben to admit the island never told him anything, but Ben continues, if it did for John, he wouldn’t need Richard to take him to Jacob. John deduces Ben never saw Jacob. Past John disappears. Richard returns and offers him the bullet. He says he's glad the dying thing didn’t happen, and John smiles and says, "it did."

Aside Number 9 - In context, we again now know where Locke and company flashed to earlier in the season. We also know, much more interestingly, that Richard (and Ben and the rest of the Others) clearly don't just go around knowing so much more than anyone else does. They sometimes just get informed as they go along. Which is indeed, interesting. Richard's agelessness demonstrates he's different from most people. But he's not omniscient.

What's also cool is how Locke created his own destiny. He told Richard to give him the compass, so that Locke himself could go back in time to give it to Richard, to hold for him until he came back again to claim his role as Others leader. Richard then spent decades waiting for John to come and become their leader. So the $64 question is, where did the compass actually come from?

They retun to the beach. John nods to Sun. Richard says they’ll leave first thing in the morning, but John says "let’s leave right now." Richard says there’s another group at the temple, but John decides to talk to everyone there. He introduces himself, and says they’ve all been accepting orders from Jacob. "Oddly enough, you’ve never seen him. I’m sure there are good reasons his whereabouts are a secret. I want to meet him." Sun asks if Jacob can bring back Jin and the rest of their buds, and John says absolutely. He announces he’s going to see Jacob, and invites the Others to go with him. They all fall in. Richard mutters to Ben, "I’m starting to think John Locke is going to be trouble." Ben mutters back, "Why do you think I tried to kill him?"

As day breaks, the Others form up and march off the beach. Ben, ever the manipulative weasel, tells John about Richard’s concerns, how this trek makes him uncomfortable, and how he wonders if John knows what he’s doing. Ben offers to be John's lapdog, and says he’ll help to reunite John with his people, but John says that’s not why he’s going to Jacob, despite what he told Sun. He says he’s going to see Jacob "so I can kill him."

Aside Number 10 - He's going to WHAT? Yeah, John's plan, or so he says, is to kill Jacob, and apparently to do so right in front of Jacob's people. What an interesting flock these Others are. Which brings up an interesting point. The obvious conclusion up to now has been that Jacob and the island are essentially one and the same. Indeed, Jacob reached out to John for help, which was when Ben first tried to kill him. Now Locke, getting messages directly from the island, wants to kill Jacob. Is this at the island's behest? Is it wise to upset the island if it's not? Will we finally find out who/what Jacob is, sooner than later?

In any case, this week we'll get the resolution of Season 5, and it promises to be a doozy. As I've mentioned before, it's entitled "the Incident," a name that previously was attached to something that went down in the past at the Swan station that necessitated the 108-minute button-pushing cycle. It would seem that one of the great moments in Lost's overall story is about to be revealed, even as Jack tries to rewrite history with a bomb blast and John tries to kill his would-be island God.

So will Sawyer, Kate and Juliet form a bizarre, off-island threesome getting rich on brilliant stock trades and sports gambling? Will the bomb go off? Will Jin see Sun again? Will Richard sprout a gray hair? We'll have to wait and see. Until next week, then, Namaste!

Episode 514 - Faraday Fatefully Considers "the Variable."

The Tease

Miles gets outed! Daniel's memory problems explained!! A shocking death!!! All this, plus lots of plot points getting set in motion, in the antepenultimate episode of season 5, "The Variable."



Foreword

There were so many big reveals this week, each of which feeds off the others, that it's helpful to just lead off with the highlights, then delve deeper:

• Charles Widmore is unambiguously Faraday's father, and unambiguosly the man who staged the fake Oceanic 815 crash site;


• Daniel's memory problems were the result of testing his time projecting machine on himself, and the vegetative state of his girlfriend, Theresa, was the result of his mistakenly thinking the self-test went off flawlessly;


• Daniel's purpose for returning to the island was to try to change the future by using Jughead to blow up the energy source under the Swan station to prevent the hatch, flight 815 crash, freighter arrival and time skipping from ever happening; and


• Eloise Hawking's guiding of the destinies of our characters was always designed to send them all back to 1977...even though she knew her younger self would end up killing her son, Daniel.

So with these major points laid out, let's dig deeper, shall we?

1980-something

Poor little Daniel - he wanted to play his piano, and, as a boy, seemed quite good at it. But then in came his mother, a young Eloise Hawking. Eloise, already crying when she entered the parlor, asked if Daniel knows what destiny means, then explains it’s that everyone has a special gift that must be nurtured. She stops his metornome and asks how many beats have gone by since he started, and he dutifully answers, "864." She explains to him that his gift is math and science, and it’s her job to keep him on his path. Unfortunately, there's no more time for the distraction of the piano. He insists he can do both – he can make time. Lamenting, Eloise smiles, "if only you could."

1990-something
At graduation from Oxford, as the youngest doctoral candidate in its history, Daniel introduces his mother to Theresa - the girl he would eventually doom to a vegetative state, kept alive by Widmore money. Elloise offers to take him to lunch, but rudely dismisses Daniel's request to bring Theresa. Dan is not pleased. They go to an Indian restaurant. Mom insists Theresa is just his research assistant, not his girlfriend. She tells him he won’t have time for relationships, and the women in his life will be terribly hurt, then backtracks and says his work will be important. He tells her he got a 1.5 million pound grant from a Charles Widmore. She pauses, recognizing the name, then says she doesn’t want to fight with him. She came to congratulate him. She gives him a present, then says good luck, “and I do hope you know that I did mean that.” He opens it – it’s the journal he would eventually fill with DHARMA facts.

Aside Number 1 - Eloise, who always seems to know what will happen (or at least what "has to" happen), has guided Daniel his whole life to pursue physics, at the expense of other interests (pianos...girls...). She's pushed him, made him the youngest to succeed in his field. It's almost as though he had to accomplish so much by a certain time in history...

2004
In a rehash of Daniel's first flashback from season 4, he sees the footage of the fake Oceanic 815 being discovered, and cries, but doesn’t know why he’s upset. There’s a knock at the door. It’s Widmore. Dan apologizes, and says his condition affects his memory. Charles says not to be embarrassed, they never met, then introduces himself. He lifts and pushes aside an issue of Wired magazine.

Aside Number 2 - the great thing about the internet is that, although it was clear that the Wired issue was significant, I didn't have to do any research to figure out how so. See the following explanation from Jeff Jensen at EW.com: "It was the August 2003 issue of Wired — 'The Super-Powers Issue' — devoted to the plausible science behind far-fetched stuff like invisibility, X-ray vision, and yes, time travel. The cover featured an archetypal superhero blasting white light out of his Cyclops-visored eyes and breaking a link of chain with his Man of Steel bare hands. The headline: 'The Impossible Gets Real!'" Clearly, this issue has plenty of significance to Lost - time travel, mental powers, agelessness...

Daniel tells Charles he wanted to thank him before leaving Oxford, but Charles interrupts, "you mean before you were dismissed?" Daniel explains that he tested the machine on himself before he used it on Theresa.

Aside Number 3 - Ever since Desmond discovered Theresa, we've been made to believe that Daniel breached all sense of ethics and used his girlfriend as a human test subject, wiping out her mind in the process. Now we have the explanation, both for what he did to Theresa, and the hints that his memory wasn't all that great - he tested the device on himself, first. Not finding any side effects, he then tested the machine on Theresa. She ended up badly hurt, and then, only later, did his memory start to go on him. You have to wonder if, deep in his lost memories, there may have been some knowledge about Oceanic 815's real fate before he saw the crash site footage. More on that later...

Widmore says he’s there to offer a new opportunity. Dan says he doesn’t know why the plane crash is bothering him so much. "Daniel," says Charles, "what if I told you they aren’t dead? What if I told you the plane was a fake, an elaborate, expensive fake?" Charles admits (finally) that he staged the crash, to keep others from finding the real crash site, and further admits he told Daniel because he wouldn't remember by the following day, anyway. Charles says he wants to send Daniel to the island, which would further his research, show him things he never dreamed of, and heal his mind and memory (hence the memory tests Charlotte ran with Daniel last season, which indicated he had improved). Daniel asks why Charles was doing this for him. Smiling, Charles says, "because you’re a man of tremendous gifts, and it would be a shame to see them go to waste." (Silently, we all said, "no, Luke, I am your father). Daniel responds, "you sound like my mother." Charles responds, "that’s because we’re old friends" (and I am your father...no wait...didn't say that there).

Aside Number 4 - Great to see the who faked the crash site thing finally resolved. Also kind of cool that it wasn't Ben (potentially redeeming Ben, at least partially), and that Charles may have had a "good" reason to do it himself (potentially redeeming Charles). I'm really starting to like my developing theory that the Charles-Ben conflict is just between them, but is not the great big war that we keep hearing is coming.

Later, Eloise enters while Daniel plays the piano. asks when she got there. She would have called, she tells him, but he would have forgotten. She hears he was offered the job, and came to tell him it’s very important he take up the offer. (Shades of Eloise telling Desmond to forget Penny and go to the island to push the button for three years). Daniel says he can’t, because he doesn’t know how to do what Widmore needs anymore. She says if the story about the island healing him is true, he could go about his work, and urges him on. "Will it make you proud of me?" Daniel asks sheepishly. When she says yes, he says, "then I’ll do it."

Aside Number 5 - five seasons in, and, after all the daddy issues, Daniel becomes the first Lost character with serious mommy issues. Even without knowing, at this point, how the episode ended, however, it's pretty clear that when Eloise Hawking tells you to stick with a plan, you should run the other way.

2007
Returning to Long Beach, after Ben shot Desmond, we see Des rushed to the OR, with Penny and Charlie chasing behind. Hours pass, and Eloise comes to see them. She says Charlie has his father’s hair, then claims it’s her son’s fault that Des was shot. Penny asks if her son is Ben, and Eloise first scoffs at the very notion, then explains her son is Daniel. Penny has trouble wrapping her head around all this. Elly apologizes for Desmond becoming a casualty of conflict that’s bigger than them. For the first time in a long time, she explains, she doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. A nurse comes to get Penny, and says Desmond is fine, and the other nurse will watch Charlie.

Aside Number 6 - for a while it has seemed that, in some way, Ben, Eloise and Charles have had some foreknowledge of the events that have transpired on Lost. Perhaps Daniel had this knowledge, too, but lost it during his memory wipe. Now, for whatever reason, though, December 2007 seems to be the end of the effective range of their clairvoyance. Ben didn't know that Locke would be resurrected. Eloise doesn't know if Desmond would survive (but query her insistence that the island wasn't finished with him). And Charles...when he arrives, it will be clear that he doesn't know if Penny was ok. Indeed, holes in their collective confidence that they knew the future first appeared when Ben was startled to see Alex gunned down, only to mutter, "he changed the rules." All of this suggests that Daniel's theory that "whatever happened, happened" is not quite right, and that the mutable future, for whatever reason, became unknowable at this time - December 2007. So can the past be changed, as well? More on this later...

Penny goes in to see Desmond. She was scared she’d lost him. "I promised you, Penny. I promised you I’d never leave you again." (Every scene these two have together makes me weepy. I'm such a girl). They kiss. Eloise leaves, and Charles greets her. He asks if Desmond was alright, then seems relieved to discover that he is - which is odd, considering his relationship with Desmond. "Your daughter’s in there, too," nudges Eloise. "Why don’t you go in there and say hello?" He says his relationship with Penny was something he had to sacrifice. Angrily, Eloise says, "don’t talk to me about sacrifice." She says she sent her son back to the island, knowing full well...but Charles interrupts her, with the not-so-shocking reveal, "he’s my son, too, Eloise." She slaps him, and leaves in a cab.

Aside Number 7 - We obviously still don't know the outcome, but it's pretty clear, again, that Charles and Eloise have manipulated events to get us to this point in the story. It also seems clear that Charles never really disliked Desmond. He just needed to motivate Mr. Hume to compete in that boat race, landing him on the island (in much the same way Eloise told time-traveling Desmond to continue on that path, even knowing that to do so would leave him trapped in a hatch for three years). At least one reader told me this week that he knew the outcome of the episode, and I figure this must have been the moment when that took place. Me, I just watched, comfortable in the Jack or Locke-like belief that Lost would eventually reveal to me what Eloise meant.

1977
Fresh off the sub, Daniel tells Miles that he came back because of the induction photo showing Jack, Kate and Hurley. He insists Miles take him to Jack. They wake Jack up. Daniel says he was at DHARMA headquarters in Ann Arbor doing research. Jack explains that Eloise was the one who told him to get on a plane. "How did she convince you," asks Daniel. "Did she tell you it was your destiny? I got bad news for you Jack. You don’t belong here at all." (Like I said - when Eloise sends you on a crazy errand, you just...say...NO!!!)

Jack wants to know more, but Daniel heads off the Orchid. Jack goes to see Sawyer. Sawyer says he’d love to trade theories but he’s busy. Juliet makes him invite Jack in. Sawyer explains the Phil kerfuffle, and shows him Phil tied up in the closet.

Daniel flips through his diary at the Orchid. He sees Chang pull up, says they’re right on time, and tells Miles he’ll be back in 10 minutes. He reads his book as he goes down the elevator. This is the opening scene of the season again, this time from Daniel's perspective. Daniel sees Chang's talk with the worker, then grabs the hard hat and canister to blend in. He sees the injured worker, then goes to see Chang. Chang says he remembers his arrival with LaFleur. Daniel says Chang needs to evacuate the island, because the injured man was hurt by the drilling. The same thing will happen, he explains, in 6 hours at the Swan station site, where the energy is 30,000 times stronger, and the accident will be catastrophic. He reveals he knows this because he’s from the future. Dan follows Chang out of the station. Miles overhears Chang insisting Daniel was playing a joke based on overhearing his conversation about time travel with the worker. Daniel shows him the equations that won’t be discovered for 20 years. Miles tries to shut Daniel up, but Daniel reveals that Miles is his son (hello - two Chinese guys named Miles on the same island???) Chang asks if it’s true, but Miles denies it, so Chang tells Daniel to stay away. As he leaves, Miles asks why Daniel outed him, and Daniel says he’s making sure his father does what he’s supposed to do.

Aside Number 8 - For most of the 1977 scenes in this episode, Daniel seems deliberately to be making a mess of things in ways that will motivate actions to be taken. Here, he got Chang thinking about Miles being his grown up son. Later, we'll see him take all sorts of actions that make no sense unless you figure he wanted to bring about the awful results that ensued.

Sawyer assembles the DHARMA-inducted Lostaways, and tells them the party’s over. There’s no choice but to leave. Kate wonders how long before Phil’s missed. Sawyer says they can either commandeer the sub or flee to the jungle. Jin won’t take the sub until Sun is found, and Hurley doesn’t like leaving abruptly after trying so hard to get back. There’s a knock, and it’s Farraday and Miles. Sawyer asks Miles if "Twitchy" is still crazy, and Miles responds, "whole new level man." Farraday apologizes to Jack, for his abruptness then asks the room where he can find the hostiles. Juliet asks why he needs to know that, and Daniel responds, "because one of them is his mother, and she’s the only person on the island who can get them back to where they belong."

Aside Number 9 - not that there was much doubt by now that Eloise and Elly the Other were one and the same. But anyone not following along with a score card connected the dots here.

Jack says they don’t belong there, but Sawyer says "I belonged here just fine until you came along." Jack asks Kate how to get to the hostiles, but Sawyer tries to stop her. "Come with us, Freckles." Hearing this, and knowing now that the party between them really is over, Juliet tells Kate the code for the fence, 141717. She urges her to take Daniel, then tells Sawyer, "it’s over here for us, anyways.: Miles gives Daniel the keys, and Kate and Jack leave with him. Sawyer tells them on their way out, "when you realize you’ve made a huge mistake, we’ll be back at the beach, right where we started." James tells Hurley, Jin and Miles to pack what they can and meet back in 20 minutes. He takes Juliet’s hand.

Kate says they should bring guns, and Jack points out he can get the guns from the locker in the motor pool. Daniel sees young Charlotte on the swing, sneaking some chocolate, and goes to talk to her. “I’m not allowed to have chocolate before dinner," she says, shyly, which explains why this phrase became her dying words later. Daniel says it’s okay, he won’t tell. He says he’s new there, and asks if she knows Dr. Chang. Daniel says "hopefully really soon he’ll tell people to get on the sub and leave. When he does, you and your mommy have to leave. In case what I’m doing doesn’t work, you have to leave. I tried to avoid telling you this. I didn’t think I could change things, but maybe I can."

Aside Number 10 - Obviously, this is the conversation Charlotte remembered at her death, the one that perversely convinced her to return to the island, only to die there. But will she die? Daniel seems oddly confident that this go-around, things may have changed.

As they gear up, Radzinsky pulls up. He wants to know why Farraday isn’t at the Swan site. Daniel's carlessness in letting Radzinsky see he has a gun borders on the intentional, and Radzinsky and his men pull guns on them. A shot rings out, then everyone starts shooting. Daniel and Radzinsky both get nicked. Jack covers them, and Kate and Dan get in the jeep. Jack shoots some fuel cans, then jumps in the jeep. The windshield gets shot out, but they get away. Radzinsky shouts to sound the alarm.

They arrive at the fence. Kate turns it off. Daniel explains they are mortal, because this is their present, and, for the first time, Jack's "let's just watch and see what happens" attitude becomes noticeably more dire. Kate says it’s just a couple of miles in. She asks Jack if he thinks Daniel knows what he’s doing?

Sawyer and Juliet pack. He offers her the chance to say, “I told you so,” and asks if she still has his back. She asks if he still has hers. He pauses, sensing the something more about her question, when, suddenly, the alarm goes off. Hurley, guitar case in hand, asks Jin, "that’s not good, right?" Radzinsky goes to see Lafleur to report what happened, but he hears Phil in the closet. Radzinsky holds his gun on Sawyer and Juliet, and orders them to the ground.

Kate leads them through the jungle. Jack asks Daniel what they have to talk to Eloise about, why she was wrong, why they don’t belong there. Daniel says in about 4 hours, at the Swan site, there will be a release of catastrophic energy; that DHARMA will have to close off the engergy pocket with concrete in like Chernobyl (and Jack's reaction makes clear that he remembers Sayid saying the same thing about the concrete in the Swan hatch basement back in season 2); they’ll then have to build the hatch, and spend 20 years pushing a button, until Desmond forgets to push it once, bringing down flight 815, and leading the freighter to the island. This whole chain of events will start this afternoon. Daniel explains that, after years of study, he spent so much time studying the constants, he forgot about the variables - people, and their innate ability to change their own destinies. Daniel says he thinks, if he can destroy the energy under the Swan, then the hatch will never be built, and their plane will land like it was supposed to, in Los Angeles. Daniel says he can destroy the energy by detonating the Hydrogen bomb.

As they march on, Kate says this is insane, but Jack notes he’s getting used to that after they got yanked off a flying airplane only to land in 1977. They find the Others camp. Daniel says, "wish me luck," then darts off. Clumsily, he holds the Others at gunpoint, then demands to see Eloise. Richard comes out and apologizes that she’s not there right now. Daniel asks where the bomb is. He gives Richard to the count of three, but then Daniel is shot in the chest…by Eloise. Daniel looks up at her, and says, "you knew, you always knew. You knew this was going to happen, and you sent me here anyway." She asks who he is. He says, "I’m your son," and then he dies.

Aside Number 11 - again, Daniel's tactic for heading into the camp looked like suicide-by Others. A lone gunman coming in and acting like a threat, then marching towards an authority figure while not watching his back or flanks suggests he's either an idiot or knew he would be killed. I suspect the latter, and here's why. Before he got too far into the camp, Daniel deliberately dropped his pack, the one carrying his journal. I think Daniel, like Eloise would decades later, came to realize he needed to die here in order to have a chance to change things in the future. When Eloise wished him luck before sending him off to the freighter, I think she meant it. She knew her younger self would kill this Daniel. But I think she wished him luck in his plan to change history. Then, presumably, if there was no hatch, and no plane crash, there would be no freighter for him to board. No freighter means no being on the island when it goes back in time (if, indeed, it ever would), so no being in 1977 to get shot.

Some people mentioned to me this week that, if they were Kate, would they want to change history? Now she's a free woman. If she never became one of the Oceanic 6, she'd still be a fugitive from justice, with no "son" and no story of heroism to win over the public.

But then the question is which of Daniel's theories is right - the Battlestar Galactica-style "all of this happened before, and all of it will happen again" theory (which, I concede, was more aobut history repeating itself than time travel), or the Terminator-style, "there is no fate but what we make?" We know the "incident" is coming, and that it always happened. What if trying to change the future brings it about? Case in point, Charlotte. It's pretty clear Daniel's actions will order at least a partial evacuation of DHARMA, and young Charlotte and baby Miles will be among those to leave. So then didn't Daniel just cause the same things to happen that he claimed he could change?

Then there's the black hole of foreknowledge that is 2007. We still don't know how the Others knew so much about the future (or thought they knew, in the case of Ben's mistake that got Alex killed). It seems the future is open to change, what with their inability to know what will happen next.

Which makes me wonder, what will happen next for Juliet and Sawyer? They do not seem to be in a good place right now. We know a major death is due to happen in the remaining three hours this season, and right now, it can be any of them.

So I'm looking forward to next week, entitled, "Follow the Leader." Internet chatter suggests it will be focused on the ever-mysterious Richard Alpert, which, if true, could be very exciting. Until then, Namaste.

Theories, Odds and Ends

In this off week, I didn't think I'd post anything. But, as it turns our, I have a couple of theories and observations to share.

The Cop Out
As they come close to finishing the season finale, Lost show runners Damon Lindeloff and Carlton Cuse have been giving a lot of interviews, and recording a lot of podcasts lately. One such interview produced a response to a fan question that, I have to admit, I found a little disappointing.

In my mind, one of the more interesting questions Lost ever asked was how Libby ended up in the Santa Rosa mental hospital at the same time as Hurley, and if there was a greater meaning to that coincidence. Now, however, Darlton has recently said that, in their minds, the Libby story has already been told.

This, to me, is a big let down. I wanted some cool Libby/Hurley connection that perhaps also could hae explained her connection with desmond. Now, it appears, we'll never get that story. So what happened? Here's my guess - Cynthia Watros, who plays Libby, may just not be available for any guest appearances. Another possibility is that, with only 17 episodes left to write and shoot, they just can't find the time divert from the main story to tell us more about Libby (though, again, I was hoping Libby's story and the larger story would have been more connected). A final possibility, which ties in to my next point, is that perhaps the character whose story Libby's would have to link up with will soon get killed off...

Death Watch 2009
Another item that has had the internet buzzing lately is the rumor that a major character would die before season's end. For a while, the assumption had been that this death would come in the season finale, but now, the buzz is that we might see that death this week, in "The Variable."

This brings up the question - who's the next one to join the Lost body count?

In my mind, there are three obvious choices. First and foremost, you have to look at Sayid. As I opined a few weeks ago, his story seems to hae come to a natural end, and with DHARMA cunning for him for his shooting Ben, it would seem his days are numbered.

Second of all, there's Desmond. Sure, he beat Ben to a bloody pulp, but only after getting shot in the abdomen. This doesn't bode well for our favorite Scotsman. On the other hand, Ms. Hawking told Desmond that the island isn't done with him, and, since he has yet to go back, he seems a little less likely to go right now.

My third choice is Hurley. As I theorized last week, his head seems to be churning out a plan to sabotage the Swan station to change the future. I suspect Hurley may inadvertently create the "incident" that will ultimately, decades later, bring down Oceanic 815. Given the tremendous power in the area of the Swan station, if I'm right about Hurley's intention, couldn't he be in serious danger?

Finally, my dark horse is Sawyer. Now, I think Josh Holloway's spot as eye candy for female fans and a vital cog in the Jater/Skater/ Jackliet/ Juliyer quadrangle makes his death a bit of a longshot. But given that he's spend season 5 finally living up to his potential, could a heroic sacrifice be in his future? wouldn't that be the kind of shock Lost prides itself in?

The Magic Number
My last theory is a bit out there, so bear with me. Ever since season 1, we've know about the numbers - 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 - which seem to have a recurring importance. The "Lost Experience" alternate reality game from the second offseason told us that the numbers were constants in the Valenzetti equation - a doomsday forumla that predicts the end of the world. We were also told that DHARMA's primary pupose was to change one of the numbers, and thereby avert this armageddon scenario.

(For their part, Damon and Carlton have said in podcasts since then that the numbers will turn out to have had their signficance since long before Valenzetti's equation was written).

Meanwhile, all along, those numbers repeatedly turned up, in various combinations, in the lives of the Lost characters. See, for example, the flight number, 815 (8-15 - get it?). But now, all of a sudden, in season 5, the number "3" has taken on an added importance. The Oceanic Six were off-island for three years. Team Sawyer spent three years in DHARMA before their former companions came back. And the flight that brought Sun, Jack, Kate, Sayid and Hurley back to the island was flight 316 (3-16). Is it possible that, in some way, the time-hopping antics of those who stayed behind may have actually done what DHARMA, by itself, was unable to do before. In other words, might one of the numbers have changed, for example, from 4 to 3? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Well, if I'm right (and I don't pretend to understand this stuff I wrote enough to have a strong sense that I am), we may learn about it this week, in the Daniel Farraday-centered episode entitled, "The Variable."

Until then, my friends, Namaste.

Ep. 513 - "Some Like it Hoth," or How Hurley Would Change Empire Strikes Back to Avoid Luke's Severed Hand

Foreword
Up to this point in Season 5, Sayid, Jack and Kate have wrestled with the philosophical question of, if you could go back in time, could you kill Hitler (or, more apropos, Ben), as a child, and if you could, should you? In the largely lighthearted “Some Like it Hoth,” which focused (at last) on snarky ghost whisperer Miles Straume, his newly acquired sidekick, Hurley, wrestled with an issue that was almost as deep and metaphysical – if you could go back in time and change The Empire Strikes Back so that Luke and Darth Vader just hug it out (avoiding the whole second Death Star and concomitant visit to Ewok village), could you, and should you? Heady stuff for the inner geek inside most Lost fans.

The Tease
Miles’s origins revealed! A new cultish faction emerges!! Naomi returns in too much makeup and a bad wig!!! All of this, plus the early stages of construction of the Swan station, in “Some Like it Hoth.”

Retraction
Earlier this season, I surmised that the Orchid had been built before the Swan because Daniel Farraday, no longer present in DHARMAville as of 1977, was there during construction. This episode clarifies that the Orchid and Swan were being constructed simultaneously in 1977, and, as we’ll see later, the reason for the confusion.

Flashback - 1980s
We open with a woman who astute observers will recognize as Dr. Pierre Chang’s wife from the opening sequence of the season, and her young son (presumably the baby from that same scene) being shown an apartment. The kid is named Miles (aha! Theory confirmed! Miles Straume is Pierre Chang’s kid – what’s with all the name changing fake-outs?) Mom assures the super he’s quiet, so he demands 2 months up front. She gives Miles change for the vending machine, but he starts to get visions of dead people in Apartment 4. There’s a key under a white rabbit statue.

Aside Number 1 – Lost’s fascination with literary allusions runs rampant throughout this episode. As this scene appears to mark the onset of Miles’s strange ability to commune with the dead, I see the white rabbit as an obvious Alice in Wonderland/ Matrix reference. After all, Miles is following the white rabbit to his first visit to a dead body to feel its dying thoughts, into Wonderland/ out of the Matrix, indeed.

Miles calls to his mother, and she comes running with the super. They find a dead body. Miles says he called out for Kimberly. The super says that’s his wife, who died last year. Miles says he’s still talking, covers his ears, and shouts for the body to stop. (Wonder if Mom got the super to approve the lease application in time!)

1990s
A punky Miles with face piercings and skunk-streaked hair goes to see his ailing mother. It’s obvious they’ve become estranged, Miles has hit a rebellious streak, and Mom is dying from cancer (the baldness and hospice care are a dead giveaway – query if the disease itself is a symptom of her time on the island, or just rotten luck).Although Miles apologizes for not coming sooner, she’s suspicious about why he did come. He says he needs to know why he is “this way”, how he does the things he does, and why she never talked about his father. Angrily, she repeats what’s clearly been a refrain he’s heard since early childhood – “He didn’t care about you.” She says he’s dead, and tells him (and us) his father kicked them out when he was a baby, and didn’t want anything to do with them, so the less he knew, the better. She never told Miles so as to protect him. She says his dad’s been dead a long time. Noting the opportunity to do “that thing he does” to get answers from Dad’s remains, Miles asks where the body is. She responds, “somewhere you can never go.”

Aside Number 2 – This explains Miles’ lack of memory of having been on the island. Unlike Charlotte, who left later in childhood, Miles got the heave-ho when he was but an infant. What’s interesting is that the mothers of both Miles and Charlotte seemed dead set against their offspring learning about the island from whence they came. I can’t help but wonder, given what we already know about Chang, and what we see from him in the 1977 portions of this episode, if his forcible ejection of his wife and child was more a product of protecting them from some Hostile or DHARMA inflicted danger, rather than true lovelessness. More on this later.

2004
Miles is hired to help a “Mr. Gray” tell his recently dead son that he loved him, and lets slip that the son’s cremation makes it difficult for him to commune (i.e. no body, no talkie). Of course, this being Miles, he takes the money and walks off, anyway. As he leaves, he’s greeted by Naomi (in an awful wig and too much blush), who says her employers have been monitoring his work for a while. She asks him to join her at a nearby restaurant.

Aside Number 3 – the parameters of Miles’s ability are starting to come into focus. We now know a dead body is part of what he needs to commune with the dead. It’s an interesting limitation – as he informs Hurley later in the episode, when a person dies, the electrical impulses of the brain stop, so there’s nothing left to have a conversation with. So then why does having a body present make a difference in his ability to read them? We didn’t get it in this episode, but I wonder if we will discover whether there is an explanation for Miles having the ability at all, and, if so, if that explanation will clarify the mechanics of it.

Naomi takes Miles to a closed kitchen, where there’s a body (so much for the assumption Miles was getting fed at this meeting). She tosses him money, and asks what he can say about the man. Miles closes his eyes – His name is Felix, he was on his way to deliver something to a guy named Widmore. The delivery was papers, photos, pictures of empty graves, and a purchase order for an old airplane. Confirming he passed her test, she says she’s leading an expedition to an island, looking for a man that’s hard to find. She needs him, because the island has lots of deceased people, and the bodies can help lead the way to the man. Ever the pragmatist, Miles responds, “as much as hunting down a mass murderer sounds fun, I think I’ll pass.” She says her employer is willing to pay $1.6 million dollars. Pragmatism, it seems, has a price.

Aside Number 4 – This scene answered a lot of questions – First, we learned why Miles demanded $3.2 million from Ben in exchange for silence – it was double the offer from Widmore. Also, we learned why Miles was recruited for the freighter expedition last season – based on the belief that the corpses of Ben’s victims would rat out his location. Finally, we learned that Charles Widmore was, in fact, behind the phony flight 815 crash site…

…or did we? After all, the items Felix’s corpse told Miles about ended up in the possession of first Tom, then Ben. Jeff Jensen suggests an alternate explanation, i.e. that Felix uncovered Ben’s plot to fake the crash site, and was on his way to report the information to Widmore, when Tom intercepted him, killed him, and took the evidence. This kind of mutually exclusive binary theorizing is part of what makes Lost so much fun. My gut feeling is that the first explanation is correct. I do think Widmore faked the crash site to keep anyone else from finding “his” island. But since the Ben/Charles pendulum of who’s the bigger bad keeps swinging, I’m open to the fact that, for example, it makes little sense for one Widmore operative in L.A. to be the guy who both purchased the airplane and who dug up the Asian graves used to put all the bodies on board.

At night, men jump out of a van and shove Miles and his just-bought fish tacos in the back. The man up front says he’s Bram, and we recognize Bram as being one of Ilana’s henchmen on Hydra island. He warns Miles not to get on the freighter, and asks him the same silly riddle Ilana would ask Frank three years later, “what lies in the shadow of the statue?” Since Miles doesn’t know the answer, Bram says, he’s not ready for the island. Bram promises that if Miles joins his group instead of Widmore’s, he’ll learn all about his gift, and his father. Miles claims he stopped caring about those things year before, but he does care about money. He demands $3.2 million – the same demand he would later make of Ben. That’s a non-starter, so Bram’s men toss Miles out of the van. Bram says, “you’re playing for the wrong team.” “Yeah,” Miles retorts, “which team are you on?” Bram smiles menacingly, “the one that’s going to win.”

Aside Number 5 – this may have been one of the most important scenes thus far this season. The obvious assumption last week had been that Ilana’s crew were affiliated with Charles Widmore. After all, they seem to be mounting another hostile incursion onto the island, and to have superior knowledge about the island than Frank. Also, her claim to Sayid to be working for the family of one of the men he killed, coupled with Ben’s claim to Sayid that he had been killing Widmore associates, led to the obvious conclusion that Ilana was part of Widmore’s off-island organization.

Except now, Bram came along and tried to convince Miles to join them instead of Widmore. All of a sudden this opens up the possibility that the “war” that’s coming will not be between Ben and Charles, but between the Others and this new, mysterious group of people. Ben and Charles have their rivalry, but it appears to be over who will lead the Others in the conflict to come, suggesting Season 6 will be about something that up to now had been completely unsuggested.

I’m also curious if Bram can actually back up the offer to tell Miles about his ability, an about his father (at least with respect to the latter, as I’ll discuss below, Miles is going to figure that part out on his own). What connection, if any, does the Shadow Statue cult have with Chang and/or DHARMA?

Finally – seriously, what lies in the shadow of the statue???

Miles, packed to leave, goes back to see Mr. Gray, and returns the money. He admits to having lied, and, apparently a bit moved by Bram’s mention of his father, says it would be unfair to Gray’s son to take the money like this, since, if dad wanted his son to know he loved him, he should have told him before he died.

Aside Number 6 – we now know that Miles isn’t really just about the money. He does care about his dad. But I’m guessing that Bram’s intervention at least made it clear to him that the island and his long-forgotten father are in fact connected. Miles being Miles, he’ll take the money, anyway. But I guess he figures he can find his father’s body on the island, and get his answers and get paid $1.6 million for doing it.

1977
Miles gets a radio call from Sawyer, telling him to erase the tape of the security camera feed from perimeter fence 4. Sawyer says he needs to find the escaped hostile (who, Miles pointedly reminds him, is Sayid). Miles pops the tape, but Horace comes in looking for Lafleur. Horace asks if Miles can be trusted, and he gives him a package for Radzinsky, who is in section 334, which Miles comments is in Hostile territory. Horace grimaces, “welcome to the circle of trust,” then says Radzinsky will give him something in return, to bring back and he’s not to look at it. Of course, this exchange makes it impossible for Miles to erase the popped security tape…

Miles drives out toward 334, and Radzinsky, wearing a black DHARMA jumpsuit with the Swan station logo on it, steps out of the bushes and stops him at gunpoint. Miles gives him the sack, and Radzinsky whistles. The sack contains a body bag. Two helmeted workers bring out a body. Radzinsky says the death was an accident, and that the man fell into a ditch. Miles notices the hole in the body’s head, and asks, “that ditch had a gun?” Radzinsky (whose fate as ceiling decoration gets more delicious every time he opens his mouth) says “knowing that is not your job. Your job is to do what I tell you.” The stooges load the body into the van, then depart with Radzkinsky. Miles unzips the bag, and asks the body what really happened.

Back at the security station, Miles finds Horace talking to Chang over the phone. He hears Horace say, “it was caused by electromagnetism, he never knew.” Horace tells Miles to take the body to Chang at the Orchid station. At the motor pool, Miles finds Hurley loading the van (with the body still inside) to take lunch to the Orchid. After some half-assed protesting, Miles is convinced to allow Hurley carpool with him.

Aside Number 7 – with no disrespect to the late Charlie Pace, I’m loving the Hurley/Miles pairing. They make a great buddy comedy team. Both of them have some serious geekiness going on, but Hurley’s is so rosy, while Miles’s is so dark. It makes for some great banter.

Kate comes back to find Juliet, and thanks her for sending James. Roger comes in, nervous, and notices Ben is gone. Juliet says he’s not dead, and pretends not to know where he went. Roger says he’s calling security, and leaves. Juliet turns to Kate and says, “well, here we go.”

Aside Number 8 – I kind of like Kate and Juliet as a pair, too. Kate really hasn’t had much of a girlfriend, other than Cassidey, in two brief appearances. Now that the “don’t mess with my Sawyer” phase is past them, they seem capable of making a good pair.

As Miles drives, Hurley writes in a Pearl station notebook, and asks how to spell “bounty hunter,” then says what he’s writing is personal. Hurley smells something rank, worries it might be his sandwiches, and demands that Miles pull over so he can check if they’ve gone bad. Naturally, he finds the body. Miles tries to play it cool: “that’s traditionally what you put in a body bag.” Miles says his name is Alvarez, he was digging a hole and thinking about his girlfriend, when he felt a pain. His filling got yanked out of his tooth by a powerful magnetic force, and pulled upward through his head. Hurley susses out Miles’ ability to talk to the departed, and assures him, “don’t worry dude, your secret’s safe with me. Want to know why? Because I can talk to dead people, too.”

Aside Number 9 – I guess Miles kind of needs Hurley, and senses that in a way. He does absolutely nothing to prevent Hurley from figuring out the secret about the body, or about his ability.

As for the way that Alvarez died…shouldn’t that right there be a sign that messing with so much electromagnetic energy could be dangerous, i.e. could lead to an incident???

Roger drinks DHARMA beer alone on the swingset. Kate joins him. He says he’s “pretty far from ok.” Kate tries to assure him things will work out, and helps herself to a beer. She says she has a feeling he’ll be ok, and urges him not to give up hope. This makes Roger suspicious, and he wonders why she’s so interested in his kid? When she tries to squirm out of the interrogation, he just gets mad, yells, “if you want help, Kate, why don’t you just mind your own business?” and storms off.

Aside Number 10 – this whole Kate/ Roger thing is a bit disappointing. Isn’t she like the best secret-keeper on the island? Wasn’t she just begging for his suspicions to be raised? Is she trying to deliberately bring the purge about?

As the Hurley/Miles pairing’s bromance is serenaded by “Love will keep us together” on the radio, Hurley tells Miles about his conversations with dead people, how he actually sees them, and how they play chess. Miles scoffs that that’s not how it works, which is all Hurley needs. “A-ha! You wouldn’t know how it works if you couldn’t do it!” Miles admits it, but says it’s just a feeling a he gets near a body. Hurley mulls this over, then insists, “you’re just jealous my power is better than yours.” Boo-yah!

They arrive at the Orchid construction site. Chang comes out to greet them, and asks what Hurley is doing there. Miles’s instructions were to come alone. Hurley says, don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about the body. Chang brings down his most threatening look, and asks Hurley, “how do you feel about Polar Bear Feces? Because if you say one word of this, you’ll be sent to the Hydra station, weighing turds for their ridiculous experiments.” He asks if Miles can handle staying there until he comes back, then leads two workers off with the body. Hurley calls Chang a douche, and Miles responds, “that douche is my dad.”

Aside Number 11 – It’s readily apparent that there are multiple layers of what’s going on with DHARMA. Inside the “circle of trust,” there’s Horace, Radzinsky and Chang messing with awesome island powers at the Orchid and the Swan stations. But then there’s the real idealists, who believe the DHARMA hype. They’re apparently the ones staffing the Hydra and similarly innocuous stations. Since we now know we can’t trust the DHARMA videos and films, I wonder just what those people were up to?

Hurley asks Miles how he knows that Chang is his dad. Miles says their third day, his mother ended up in line behind them at lunch, so he kind of pieced it together. Hurley wonders if Chang would let Miles change his own diaper, and, on a more serious note, asks why Miles doesn’t try to save his father from the imminent purge? Miles insists, he can’t save him, no matter what he does, so why bother? Pierre returns and demands a ride to see Radzinsky. Hurley asks what happened to the body, and Chang, shooting that polar bear poop look, asks, “what body?”

Roger finds Jack cleaning a class room blackboard, its ancient Egypt lesson plan still visible. Jack says he thought he’d cover for Roger, who’s obviously upset about Ben. Roger angrily dismisses him. Jack starts to leave, but Roger asks if Jack knows Kate, “’cause she’s got some kind of weird thing for my kid.” He says he suspects her involvement in Ben’s disappearance, and starts to gear up to go to Horace and report her. Jack says he thinks Roger’s had a hell of a day, then got drunk, and that all put weird ideas in his head. He says Kate’s his friend, and she’d never do anything to hurt Ben. Roger says, “sure,” then walks off.

Aside Number 12 – What’s up with all the Egypt references? If the Others built the temple wall, are they Egyptian? If the Others and DHARMA are separate, why does Egyptian culture seep into DHARMA?

Hurley sits in the back while Miles drives Chang to 334. Hurley asks what happens in the Orchid, but Chang gives a harrumph, and says it’s classified. Hurley asks if he’s allowed to tell his wife, or his 3 month old son, Miles. Chang explains they named their kid based on Miles Davis, because his wife is a jazz fan, though he prefers Country. Hurley tries to get Miles and Chang to bond, and suggests they all get a beer later. Chang abruptly orders Miles to stop. He gets out, then pushes open a gate disguised as a wall of foliage. It’s the Swan construction site. Hurley sees the hatch getting marked with the numbers, and mutters to himself that the last one will be 42. Miles asks how Hurley knew that. “Because, dude, they’re building our hatch.” Miles asks, “what hatch?” Hurley responds, “the one that crashed our plane.”

Aside Number 13 – you can almost see the gears in Hurley’s brain turning. He’s always been a fan of the “you CAN change time” theory. As we’ll soon learn, he even believes he can take advantage of his back-in-time jump to improve pop culture. Now, here, Hurley sees the construction of an installation that will one day be responsible for the crash of flight 815, the death of friends like Charlie and Boone, and so much suffering. What if Hurley, for all his optimism about the ability to change the past, decides to try to stop the Swan from becoming operational? Taking this a step further, what if Hurley’s attempt fails miserably, and becomes the “incident” we know is coming?

As they drive off, Hurley starts telling Miles about what’s going to happen at the Swan. Hurley asks if this is awesome, getting to know his dad. Miles stops short. “I don’t want to hang out with my dad,” protests Miles, “I don’t want to know him better, and stuff. He wasn’t around when I was little.” Hurley says he has the chance to get to know him now. Miles grabs Hurley’s note book. It turns out to be the script for the Empire Strikes Back. (the “fury” fists typo was pretty funny, eh?) Hurley suggests, since it’s 1977, and Star Wars just came out, he’ll send Lucas a sequel script, with a couple of improvements. His primary goal? Preventing the Ewoks from showing up and ruining Return of the Jedi.

James returns home, and finds Juliet, and Jack. Jack tells Sawyer that Roger thinks Kate had something to do with Ben’s disappearance. Jack says he thinks Roger isn’t going to say anything to anyone for now. Sawyer thanks him for filling him in. Sawyer/LaFleur is then greeted by Phil, who says, “we got a development. You better come to the office.” Phil says he knows who took Ben, and holds up the tape. Sawyer says he has an explanation. He brings Phil inside, and asks if he’s talked to Horace yet. Phil says no, so Sawyer knocks him out cold with one punch, then tells Juliet to get some rope. As Juliet said to Kate, Sawyer tells Juliet, “and here we go.” (It’s so cute – they have a catchphrase together).

Aside Number 14 – By now, I think, James and Juliet had already suspected that they’d seen the beginning of the end of their idyllic DHARMA life. I wonder if they have a game plan now that Phil, Roger and Radzinsky have all gotten suspicious of them, or are they just going to keep trying to forestall the inevitable?

Miles and Hurley check in the van. Hurley apologizes for saying he was scared to talk to his dad. Hurley says his dad left when he was 10, but best thing he ever did was give him a second chance. Miles says he was just a baby, and he never knew him. Hurley says that was Luke’s attitude, too. But instead of talking about it when he met Vader, he lost his hand. But at what cost? If they had just talked it out, they could have avoided the loss of the hand, the second Death Star, Vader’s death, and the Ewoks. “And let’s face it, the Ewoks sucked, dude.”

Aside Number 15 – okay, maybe it’s because I was 8 the first time I saw Return of the Jedi, but I never thought the Ewoks ruined anything. There, I said it. Jar Jar Binks? Total bantha poodoo.

Miles strolls over towards the Chang’s house, and sees his young self, being read to by his father. A phone call comes in, and Pierre hands baby Miles to his mother. Pierre hangs up and goes outside. He sees Miles, and says he needs him. It’s touching the way Miles, who watched the scene of Pierre and his own younger self, asked, “you do?” as though Chang’s statement had a deeper meaning. But Pierre says he needs Miles to go pick up some scientists who just arrived on the sub from Ann Arbor (do submarines really have a way to get to Michigan). Miles goes the Galaga’s dock, and sees that one of those scientists, wearing a black jumpsuit like Radzinsky’s, is none other than Daniel Farraday. “Hey, Miles,” says Dan to his former colleague. “Long time, no see.”

Aside Number 16 – I had worried that some ill had befallen Mr. Farraday, what with Sawyer’s oblique statement that he wasn’t there anymore. No, it seems, Farraday left, presumably on that first sub out after they first stumbled into planet DHARMA. With his return, hopefully, we’ll get some more exposition, some more explanation. This return of Daniel, coupled with the season's opening scene - in which baby Miles was crying before Chang encountered Farraday in the Orchid construction area - further clarifies that we have not yet reached that teaser moment. The next episode, entitled “The Variable,” looks to be Daniel-focused. Alas, it only airs after a week off (i.e. there’s just a recap special this week). So until then, Namaste!