Thursday LOST Blogging: Some Like It Hoth

Spoilers below!

Last night’s episode wasn’t exactly an action packed ride, but we did get a coupe of important reveals, at least one important clue, and finally some of Miles’ back story. Oh, and more of that Hurley-Miles interaction we were all loving so much from Whatever Happened, Happened.

RECAP

The episode opens with a woman looking at an apartment with a potential landlord.  She has a child with her; Miles.  He asks her for vending machine money, and she gives it to him.  As little Miles approaches the vending machine, he seemingly starts to both hear and see things, and feels attracted to another door in the apartment.  Going over, he finds an extra key hidden by the door and lets himself in, to find a dead man.  He screams for help, and when his mother and the landlord come rushing, Miles divulges all sorts of details about the man’s life.  When asked how he could possibly know, he says “he told me” and when it’s pointed out that the man is dead, little Miles covers his ears and starts screaming “I can still hear him!”

Back in Dharmaville, Miles gets a radio call from Sawyer, telling him to erase a certain security tape, and to not ask questions.  Sawyer then says he’s going off the grid to look for Sayid, and tells Kate to head back and see what’s happening with Juliet.  Miles goes to erase the tape, but just as he’s about to get started, Horace enters the room and demands to know where Sawyer (“LaFleur”) is.  Miles says he’s off the grid, and Horace says that in that case, Miles is going ot have to run the errand for him.  He has to go pick up a package, out in hostile territory no less, and not ask any questions.

Miles does as asked, and though Radzinsky doesn’t like the fact that he’s there, he gives Miles the “package” anyway; a dead body, of course.  Miles wants to know what happened, and Radzinsky said he fell in a ditch, despite the obvious bullet hole in his head.  Once the body is loaded into the van and Radzinsky leaves, Miles uses his magical talking to dead people powers to find out what really happened.

Another flashback, and teenage Miles with some bad spiked hair and a lot of piercings shows up at his mother’s house and demands to see her.  She’s sick, losing hair.  Miles apologizes for not coming sooner, but soon expresses that he came because he wanted answers.  Why is he “this way”?  And where is his father?  His mother tells him, after some pressing, that his father is dead.  Miles wants to know where his body is.  The mother says: “some place you can never go.” (Oh! Clue!)

Back in the 70s, Kate tells Juliet that things went fine.  That is, until Ben’s dad comes back and obviously flips out to find that his kid is gone.

Miles brings the body back to Horace, who tells him to instead bring it to Dr. Chang (i.e. Dr. Candle).  As he’s about to head out again, he sees that Hurley is stealing is van.  Miles tries to protest, but they soon learn that they’re both going to the Orchid.  Why not carpool?  Miles protests, but eventually gives in.  They drive down to the Orchid, while Hurley writes furiously in a notebook, and won’t tell Miles what it’s about.  On their way, Hurley starts to smell something and insists they stop so he can check to make sure that none of his food is bad.  Of course, he instead finds the body.  Hurley asks Miles what happened, and Miles gives an overly-detailed answer about what the guy was thinking when he was killed.  Hurley realizes that Miles can talk to dead people; he also says he won’t tell, because he can talk to dead people too.

In a flashback, Miles gives a “reading” for a grieving father who wants to know if his dead son knew he loved him.  As he’s leaving, he’s approached by Naomi who says that her employer is interested in retaining his services.  He goes with her, to find a body on a table and is told that this is his “audition.” From the body, he learns that the man was on his way to deliver papers to a guy named Widmore; receipts for a plane, photographs of dug up graves.  Naomi says he passed, and wants Miles to come to an island with her.  There’s a man on the island who has killed many people, and those dead people might be able to give information about his whereabouts.  Miles says that doesn’t exactly sound safe and starts to leave, until Naomi says that the payment is $1.6 million.  Miles turns around and asks when they leave.

Back on the island, Kate tries to comfort Ben’s dad, and tells him she has a feeling that Ben will be okay.  Suddenly, Roger becomes suspicious and asks Kate if she had anything to do with his disappearance.  She denies it and leaves.

Meanwhile, Hurley wants to know why Miles won’t admit that he talks to dead people.  In the end, he does admit it when Hurley describes a radically different process to talking to dead people than what Miles does.  Hurley declares that his power is cooler than Miles (in some ways yes, in some ways no), and they arrive.  Dr. Chang is pissed that Hurley is there.  But smooth as ever, Hurley says that he won’t tell anyone about the body.  Dr. Change tells Hurley that if he doesn’t keep quiet, he’ll be scooping polar bear poop.

As he starts to walk away, Hurley tells Miles that Dr. Chang is a douche.  Miles says that douche is his dad.

Dr. Chang comes back and demands to be taken to the Swan Station.  On the way there, Hurley asks tons of hilarious leading questions, about the name of Dr. Chang’s kid, and whether or not he and Miles are friends.  Eventually they arrive to a hidden gate, which Dr. Chang opens.  Inside, there is a construction site, and after Dr. Chang gets out, they watch the crew stamp The Numbers on the outside of the hatch.  Miles wants to know how Hurley knew what the numbers would be, and he explains its the hatch where they had to press a button every 108 minutes to prevent the end of the world.  Duh.

In a flashback, Miles is leaving a taco stand when a van pulls up and abducts him off the street.  A man named Bram says that they want him to reconsider going to the island with Widmore; it’s a bad idea.  Miles says he likes it just fine, and Bram asks him the $1 million question — “Do you know what lies in the shadow of the statue?” Miles doesn’t, and Bram says that proves he’s not ready.  He then makes all kinds of promises to give Miles information about his father and why he has his gift.  Miles just wants $3.2 million.  Bram drops Miles off and tells him he’s play for the wrong team.  Which team is Bram on?  The one that’s going to win.

Back on the island, Hurley is harassing Miles about why he won’t talk to his dad or get to know him, and Miles gets pissed off and steals Hurley’s notebook.  It seems that Hurley is writing the script for Empire Strikes Back — since George Lucas is shopping around, Hurley’s seen the movie 20 times, and reckons he can make improvements.   Miles says that’s stupid; Hurley says not as stupid as being afraid to talk to your dad.

Meanwhile, Jack is over at Sawyer’s, telling him what he learned from an earlier encounter with Ben’s dad; he thinks that Kate has something to do with Mini-Ben’s disappearance.  Sawyer thanks him for the heads up, and Jack leaves.  Soon after, Phil shows up at Sawyer’s door, saying he has information about what happened to Mini-Ben, on a security tape.  He says that Sawyer took him.  Sawyer asks Phil if he told Horace yet, Phil says no.  So obviously, Sawyer knocks him out cold and asks Juliet to get him some rope.

After some more heartfelt dad talk with Hurley, Miles stands outside Dr. Chang’s window and watches him read to mini-himself.  He gets all teary-eyed and starts to walk off when Dr. Chang leaves, sees him, and calls for his assistance.  They have someone they need to pick up at the docks.  New recruits?  No, scientists.  They arrive, and someone asks for Miles’ help.  It’s Faraday.  Miles looks at him incredulously, and Faraday says “Hello, Miles.”

QUESTIONS

Okay, first of all: am I the only one who expected Faraday, in that twitchy hesitant way, to say “uh, I’m, er . . . sorry?  Have we, uh, met?” I totally thought it was going to be 70s Faraday who had never met Miles.  But thankfully, I was wrong — not in the least because, as I realized later, Faraday isn’t quite that old!

It seems like all of the previous freighter recruits have ties to the island.  Charlotte and Miles were born there.  Faraday’s mother was an Other.  Lapidus knew the pilot of 815.  Does that mean that Naomi had a tie to the island as well?  If so, what is it?

And what the fuck are they going to do about Phil?  It doesn’t seem like Sawyer’s style to just execute him — hell, that doesn’t even seem like Sayid’s style — but obviously shit is going to go down.  It sure as hell looked like it in the preview.

Who killed the guy whose body was being transported?  We know it was by gun, but who did it?  The hostiles, I think we’re supposed to assume?  Because the Dharma people are living on their land? (Totally misunderstood all of this — see comments.)  And who killed the guy who was making the delivery to Widmore?  Someone working for Ben?

And what the hell is going on with Faraday?  How did he get of the island?  And we know he was living there for at least a little while — remember in the first episode we saw him working on the Orchid station — so wouldn’t someone other than his original group remember him?  And do they and just not care?  Why did he leave?  What is he doing back?  I hope those questions will be answered shortly.

THEORIES

Last week, I posited that Ilana was working for Widmore.  But I think that this week, that was pretty thoroughly debunked.  Why?  Well, as I realized last night, Bram asked the same question as Ilana — “what lies in the shadow of the statue?” — and that indicates they’re likely on the same side.  And Bram was definitely not on Widmore’s side.  Then, upon reading blogs this morning, I saw an even more obvious clue — Bram is actually on the island.  He’s one of the Ajira flight people who was working with Ilana.

Which leave a few possibilities.  They could be working for Ben, but I see this as unlikely.  I think that Ben’s people would have just killed Miles.  Secondly, they could be a whole new group that we haven’t yet seen.  This one is plausible, and I’m in no way ruling it out yet.

But currently, my theory has now switched over to a third possibility; they’re Dharma coming back in an attempt to recolonize the island.  Dharma hates both Ben and Widmore’s groups.  They don’t yet seem big on random killing and do seem a lot bigger on reasoning.  They likely know that all of their people are dead but seemingly have not cut ties with the island entirely (still delivering food drops, for example).  And they know a lot about the island.  And Dharma was already kind of “at war” with the Hostiles/Others.  This could indeed be the war that is coming.

What do you think?