Major spoilers below!
As Cara explained last week, we’ve got a weekly LOST roundtable discussion for you all. In awesome news, Sady will be joining us!
This week was the two-hour season premiere and it was a doozy. The bomb created two realities: one in which everyone is on the island (on the same timeline??) and one in which the plane doesn’t crash. Off the island, Hurley’s lucky, Kate escapes, Jack and Locke bond. On the island, Flocke reveals he’s Smokey, Ben still feels left out, we see the temple, Sayid is alive… or something.
There’s so much going, let’s begin!
Let’s start with the obvious question: WHAT THE POOP?! Alright, no, that’s vague. General reactions?
SALLY: I really liked the premiere, but I expected more major questions answered from the start. Instead, we got more questions.
CARA: I thought the premiere was great — I was tossing and turning all night thinking about it, which is a positive sign. But it was also the most confusing of all the season premieres, and we did get more questions than answers! ARGH!
Really, I would just like to note my aggravation with the fact that they have now essentially killed Juliet 3 times. WTF? She was already getting the most awful death ever in last season’s finale, with falling down the hole that ends the world. Then we find out she’s not really dead, and we’re presumably going to watch her die a slow and agonizing death while she either bleeds internally or starves to death! Thankfully she just blows herself up, but nope! Still not dead. After making us watch both those horrific deaths no less than 3 times in 20 minutes (during the recap episode, during the “previously on Lost,” and during the episode itself), she dies again. Jesus Christ, have some mercy, writers!
SADY: Never. They will NEVER have mercy on Juliet. For lo, she was a female character on Lost, and did conspire to steal focus from Our Lady of the Kate. Although I’m kind of glad she got the final scene with Sawyer? It makes it feel less like her death was a last-minute plot contrivance so that she could go star on V, and more like a character on the show just lost what is (I think?) his most long-term, meaningful, and non-con-game-focused relationship. Granted, he will grieve for like two episodes and then his motivations will miraculously alter completely, but whatever.
My general feelings about the premiere can be summed up in one word: ARRRRRRRRRRRRRZT. I was so excited to see Arzt, you guys!
We learn the bomb sorta worked: it created an alternate reality. Plane didn’t crash, Hurley’s lucky, Shannon’s with her boyfriend, Desmond’s on the plane, Rose is calm, Jack is panicked. What’s the significance of these changes?
SALLY: Hurley seems easy to explain – nobody ever heard the numbers so the numbers aren’t cursing him. I was thinking maybe Desmond wasn’t actually on the plane, but Jack’s subconscious is trying to tell him that this reality is wrong. Everything else is a mystery to me.
CARA: I will be upfront and say that I have NO IDEA what the whole two timelines thing is about. Thus, as for the changes, I have no idea what they mean, though I would note that a really, really big one was the island being under water! Did the bomb somehow put it there? I don’t know! I’m mainly paying attention to the action on the island, at this point. But perhaps that is a mistake?
SADY: I’m more into the off-island action! And I DON’T KNOW WHY! But at this point, it just feels like the It’s a Wonderful Life deal that someone brought up last week. Look: if the plane never crashes, Boone never sleeps with his sister (?) but he and Locke are still best buds, sort of! But alas, their friendship, based on acid trips, bossiness, and the premature crushing death of one party, cannot come to full flower, for the plane remains in the air. I think we’re just meant to note that things ARE different, and to feel sad for what they’re missing out on (for example: their own premature crushing deaths) due to the lack of Island in their lives. ALSO? I was sad when Charlie died, but then I noticed how much better the show was without him, and so, to amuse myself last night, I was predicting an episode in which Charlie never landed on the Island, but was still destined to die, and thus OD’d in the plane’s bathroom. And I almost got my wish! But I also got the call-back to Boone’s pen trach from the first episode, which was wonderful. So I think we’re going to see how much each character’s “destiny” remains in play with the Island removed as a factor.
JILL: Is it an alternate reality, or a parallel one? That’s where I’m confused — at what point in time this is happening. And how the eff Juliet knows that the bomb worked.
SALLY: Well, ABC is officially calling it a flash sideways. In regards to the actual years involved, that’s unclear. My assumption is the flight timeline’s in 2004, and the island timeline’s in 2007, but a lot of people seem to think there are two island timelines, not one.
Sticking with off-island happenings, Jack’s dead daddy is lost and Locke’s as faith-y as ever. Jack says he can make miracles happen and Locke will walk again. Do we think Locke will go to Jack? Will it work?
SADY: Locke basically HAS to go to Jack, to make sure the plotlines continue to connect, doesn’t he? Other than Kate and Claire, he and Jack have made the only actual connection in the off-island timeline. Of course, Jack made his connection in the typically Jack way of meeting a dude in a wheelchair and being all “oh hey whoa WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR SPINE I am a magic surgeon FALSE HOPE IS THE BEST HOPE OF ALL,” which: yeah.
LAUREN: That was bad.
CARA: I was just glad to see that some things never change. Jack is an insufferable, overbearing, rude douche who sticks his nose where it doesn’t belong.
JILL: Word. Locke of course will go to Jack, but the missing body issue is more interesting to me…
Back on the island, Flocke reveals he’s Smokey, then wastes no time and kills Jacob’s “bodyguards.” What’s with that magical Smokey repellent powder?
SALLY: I didn’t realize until they also used it at the temple that this is the same powder surrounding Jacob’s cabin. I dub it “anti-smokey.”
CARA: That was a badass scene. Both when Smokey killed the dudes, but also with Ben’s reaction afterward. I love Terry O’Quinn/Michael Emerson scenes. I assumed that it was just regular old ash, but knowing the island, it probably has some magical properties.
SALLY: I LOVE the O’Quinn/Emerson scenes! If O’Quinn is gunning for an Emmy, he deserves it.
SADY: See, the ash is what I love about this show. It is total fairy-tale dream logic – make a circle of ash or salt or chalk, and keep the demons out; they do it on Supernatural all the time, NOT THAT I WATCH THAT SHOW – and yet the disturbance in the ash is way more scary to me than anything else. And I think it says something that I’m less scared of the giant CGI smoke monster (faaaaake) than I am of Terry O’Quinn and this completely lo-fi special effect of pouring ash on things. If I had to guess, I would say that they will probably give it a sciencey explanation, about electromagnetism and such, but right now I just like it as a circle of ash.
CARA: With Flocke/Smokey, I’m mainly confused/intrigued by his statement that he wants to go home. There were a lot of “OMG” moments in this episode, but that was the point at which my eyes truly bugged out of my head. The idea that even (some of) the controlling forces on the island want the hell off of it is quite the revelation.
SALLY: Agreed! That is quite perplexing.
In other Flocke news, he tells Richard: “It’s good to see you out of those chains.” Are these metaphorical or literal? Either way, what’s your reaction?
SALLY: I think these are literal chains. As soon as Flocke said that, I yelled “RICHARD WAS A SLAVE ON BLACK ROCK!!”
CARA: Same thought. But then again, if we’re all thinking it, it’s probably not true …
SALLY: Well, we thought Flocke was Smokey, and we were right!
JILL: Richard must have been slave somewhere, and I suspect Egypt, only because of the eyeliner.
LAUREN: I think they mean chains figuratively, regardless of how good he looks in eyeliner. I just can’t see how Alpert, who has been on the island for a “very, very” long time, extra emphasis on “very,” can be a slave from Black Rock. I think if he’s a slave, he is a slave along the lines of having been indebted to or ordered to serve Jacob/the island indefinitely. And now that Jacob is dead (maybe) WILL RICHARD AGE?
Meanwhile, dead Jacob wants Hurley to take almost-dead Sayid to the temple so he can be saved. But he dies. Then he wakes up suddenly. Is he magically alive or possessed? If so, by whom?
CARA: SAYID IS ALIVE!!!! I KNEW HE WASN’T REALLY DEAD!!!
LAUREN: I was kind of wrong on Sayid dying in the premiere. Thankfully. But only on the count that he stays dead.
JILL: Dudes. I really thought they killed Sayid for a minute there, and was ready to boycott. But when they brought him out of the water in that Jesus crucifixion pose? Yeah, obvs not dead for long! I was surprised, though, that they resurrected him to so quickly. I thought it would be three episodes before he came back.
CARA: Okay, gloating out of the way, he didn’t come back to life, he just didn’t die. Here’s how you know: 1) they didn’t play the “Life and Death Theme.” There’s music that they play every single time a significant character dies. This was the reason that I thought that maybe Juliet wasn’t really dead, because they hadn’t played the Life and Death Theme, and I was right — she wasn’t dead until they played it this episode. 2) Miles couldn’t talk to him. You saw Miles sitting there really confused, and he tried to shrug it off, but I knew — Miles was puzzled because he couldn’t hear anything coming from Sayid, and that means he was never really dead.
SALLY: Yeah, I think our biggest clue here is Miles’ reaction to Sayid. At first I thought “oh snap, Sayid isn’t dead because Miles can’t talk to him.” But then I also think the other explanation could be that Miles sensed something was happening, like somebody possessing Sayid. If that’s the case, then we’re obviously supposed to assume it’s Jacob and that he brought him there for that reason. But. I think Sayid never died. Just because.
SADY: Alternate perspective, though: how awesome would it be if Sayid were possessed by Jacob, and magically became the avatar of all that is good and right about the Island? Because that is basically how I feel about him anyway. And last season Sayid just seemed really broken, to the point that I honestly did believe they would kill him because there was nowhere left for the character to go. I would like him to have a second chance and play this really beneficial, central role. So, yeah: I think we’ve established that people don’t come back from the dead except as avatars for someone or something else. The question is what Sayid is now.
LAUREN: And these new characters (thank you, Writers of Lost, for introducing two dozen new characters at the beginning of the final season, Jesus H.) were told that they, presumably their side of the war, would be in serious trouble if Sayid died. That’s pretty good support for the theory that Sayid is going to have some higher purpose on the island regardless of whether he is literally inhabited by Jacob.
SADY: Okay, potential irrelevance on the topic of new characters? The translator guy was immediately recognizable to me, because he was on The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Which was a show co-created by Carlton Cuse, starring Bruce Campbell, which started as a western and turned out to be about… time travel. And Bruce Campbell’s dead father showing up to give him advice (!!!) and make inscrutable mystic pronouncements about They (!!!) and help him get over his daddy issues (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Mr. Friendly, the Other that showed up to get Michael on the boat, was also on Brisco County. So, this has nothing to do with anything, but I’m really tickled by the fact that Cuse has been working on time-travel-dead-daddy-issues shows for as long as he’s been around, apparently. He loves that business! And it leads to my new theory, which is: maybe Sayid has been possessed by the spirit of Bruce Campbell.
LAUREN: If we’re lucky, Sayid’s hand will turn into a zombie and we’ll spend a whole episode looking for a chainsaw.
We also learn what’s been in Hurley’s guitar case: an ankh with a note inside. Um, what?!
SALLY: Was I the only one who thought this was just a guitar?
SADY: Yeah, the Egyptian thing is really confusing to me on any number of levels. If this turns out to be a show about Ancient Astronauts and the Mysteries of Atlantis, I will sue my television set for one million dollars. But I guess it makes sense, the ankh: we have at least three characters by now who qualify for “eternal life.”
LAUREN: I’m trying to think of a joke re: Freud/cigar/guitar, but I’m failing. And I have to reveal a particular prejudice here, in that I find the whole Egyptian mysticism storyline kind of annoying and cliche and played out on all kinds of sci-fi levels, and I totally turn the side-eye on the appropriation of ancient cultures to denote that a story is mystical and mysterious. It’s lazy. And it’s been done. Usually poorly. I’m willing to see where this goes, but if the writers introduce aliens (or zombie hands) I am OUT.
JILL: They wouldn’t do that to us, would they? I think the writers just have a North Africa interest… characters keep popping up in Tunisia and Morocco too, right? But yeah, if aliens become involved I quit.
CARA: Yeah, I think aliens are definitely the cutoff point. My theory is that if they’ve joked about it on the show, it’s wrong. As such, just as they are not all actually dead and stuck in hell or purgatory, there are also not aliens involved.
Last question, what does the alternate reality mean? Are both real or is only one real, and if so, which?
CARA: This is the big question, isn’t it? If only one is real, I hope that it’s the island one. Obviously a ton of bad stuff has happened on the island, but I’d hate for the whole show to be canceled out, and there has also been a lot of growth among the characters that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.
My best guess at this point is that both are currently real. But the characters will learn of this, and try to somehow merge them, or cancel one of them out.
SALLY: I think the island one is real, and the off-island reality will merge into it. Or… did Juliet say “it worked” because the island one is the wrong one? OMG! CONFUSION!
SADY: I think they did create an alternate reality, both realities being equally real, but now there is probably a Disturbance In The Force due to their coexistence. Disturbance in the force! Chaos! Up is down, right is left, Hurley is Sawyer! Possible wormhole action! This excites me.
Just saw this and thought it might be interesting. The theory is that the folks in the alternate reality are different because they weren’t touched by Jacob.
Right now I am operating under the theory that both timelines are “real”, but the reality in which the plane never crashed will be flawed and breaking down, and will have to be fixed so the plane does indeed crash.
I think the sideways reality is demonstrating that detonating the bomb affected a lot more than just the immediate reality surrounding the crash of the flight – the characters aren’t in the same exact situations as the original flight because their whole lives are different due to something with the bomb or wevs.
Also, re: Richard’s guyliner: a friend told me that on the season 5 DVDs there’s a behind-the-scenes feature where the actor playing Richard specifically mentions that he is not wearing eyeliner, he just has super dark lashes and they actually try to de-emphasize them in the make-up room.
Tis true, lyra, Richard does NOT, in fact, wear any eyeliner! He is just blessed with awesome eyes.
I know, as someone who has never successfully applied eyeliner in my life, I am jealous of those peepers.
So, I still have, like, 800 questions:
What if Jacob isn’t the good guy? Who is in charge, and I mean, really in charge? Slate is doing their own roundtable which asks these questions, and they have pointed out that the power plays are growing in scope, from Jack vs. Sawyer, to Jack vs. Ben, to Ben vs. Widmore, and now Jacob(/Sayid?) vs. Esau/Flocke. The power dynamics and the goodness/badness of the characters isn’t always clear. Also, there has been an overarching emphasis on these lists stating who is good and who is bad — what if what we’ve assumed as good and bad isn’t so?
Is Ben irredeemably evil? (I kind of like Ben.)
And the alternate realities — is there a physicist in the house? I’ve got two theories, one that this is a Shroedinger’s Cat situation, where someone just needs to find the box, as it were, peer inside, and tell us whether or not the cat is dead (which reality is real), and the other, that they have created a time loop that they will spend the rest of the season trying to close.
Y’all are way off on one thing, in this part of the conversation:
Of course, Jack made his connection in the typically Jack way of meeting a dude in a wheelchair and being all “oh hey whoa WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR SPINE I am a magic surgeon FALSE HOPE IS THE BEST HOPE OF ALL,” which: yeah.
LAUREN: That was bad.
CARA: I was just glad to see that some things never change. Jack is an insufferable, overbearing, rude douche who sticks his nose where it doesn’t belong.
Jack and Locke, in at least one significant way, were the total opposites of the characters we’ve known them as. Throughout the run of the series, Jack has been the man of science, and Locke has been the man of faith. But in their exchange at the airport, Locke says point-blank, “My condition is irreversable.”, while Jack says, “Nothing is irreversable.”
That is NOT the Jack we know. He might still be douchey and arrogant and sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, but he’s a man of faith, right there.
Oh, and I’m really fond of this theory, posited on Jezebel:
For the castaways, the purpose—of trying to get off the Island, trying to get back on the Island, trying to destroy the Island with a nuclear weapon—is always they same: they want to find their own personal paradise, and until they do, they will always be “lost.”
In Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov—which has remarkably similar themes to Lost: spirituality, free will, morality, faith, doubt, and reason—paradise is described as life itself.
“Do not weep, life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we don’t want to realize it, and if we did care to realize it, paradise would be established in all the world tomorrow.”
…Which brings me to Milton’s Paradise Lost, the epic poem that tells the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, aka The Fall of Man, which is also based on the concept of “free will.” The most applicable passage:
“The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
Basically, when these idiots crash-landed on the Island, their problems had been solved and they were too caught up in their own paranoia to recognize what they had around them. So they ran around with guns and bombs and fucked shit up, instead of eating mangoes, getting a tan, enjoying themselves, and avoiding the Smoke Monster.
Ha.
If they make Jacob and Smokey Awesomely Good and Awesomely Evil, I will have a tantrum. One of the best aspects of the show is the way no person or group of people is good or evil, right or wrong. It’s always more complicated than that. It helped save it from becoming an icky natives vs outsiders/colonizers/intruders story. The show constantly questions what it means to be good or evil, while never going too far and suggesting there’s no such thing.
Interesting reading, Josh, but I think it is the Jack that we know. Jack has always been a man of faith more than he would admit to. He was only a man of science when it came to the island. He told his wife Sarah that he would “fix her” when that was all but impossible. He tried to save the life of that guy who came to him when everyone else knew that he couldn’t. He tried to amputate Boone’s leg when everyone else knew that there was no way to save him. When it comes to his science, Jack is a man of faith, if only in his own abilities as a miracle worker and fixer of all things he deems in need of fixing.
I hope Sayid is now Jacob, because I think it would rock. I’m just not completely sold on that theory. They made it very clear that Flocke is not DeadLocke possessed by the Man in Black, Flocke is the Man in Black taking on Locke’s appearance. If Sayid is possessed by Jacob, this would be the first possession as far we know. I can’t decide whether the shot of Flocke walking past DeadLocke was to highlight that dead people don’t need to possess recently dead folks in order to walk around looking like them, or if it was an attempt to throw us off the Sayid/Jacob possession thing.
Well, they have always insisted that NOBODY on the show is all good or all evil. People are complex and every seemingly evil person has several redeeming qualities, just as every seemingly good person has awful qualities. And I know they recently said that they basically set up rules to later break them, but I don’t think that would apply to this because it’s about character development, not story.
Also, Josh… Hmm… I’m a bit torn on what you’re saying here. Because Locke was all “your father’s not lost, just his body” which struck me as very Locke-like and Jack saying that nothing is irreversible I took to mean nothing medicine-wise, which IS characteristic of Jack. This is especially true after saving his future-wife. I mean, he even took on that so-called miracle case. Even though that failed, I think that attitude is still present in him.
Haha, sorry for basically repeating Cara’s comment. That’s what happens when you leave a window open without pressing submit for, like, ever.
Darlton more or less confirmed that these are separate, equal realities (“flash sideways”) in this interview.
“This is the critical mystery of the season, which is, “What is the relationship between these two shows?” And we don’t use the phrase “alternate reality,” because to call one of them an “alternate reality” is to infer that one of them isn’t real, or one of them is real and the other is the alternate to being real.”
In relation to the all-good vs. all-evil thing, I’m wondering if Sayid, whomever he is, is “good” now. Before he died, he was wondering what would happen to him, because he had done so much harm in the past. With his “baptism” in the temple, has he been cleansed?
Maybe that’s too literal?
Oh! ZiaTroyano! You reminded me of what I forgot to include in our discussion. The people I was watching with were all “what side effects?! ask about side effects, jack!” But I thought we were to assume that the side effects are the same that they were with Ben. When little Ben has to be healed at the temple, Richard says that he will always be one of them, he will lose his innocence. So if Sayid never died and the pseudo-baptism worked, then doesn’t that apply to Sayid as well?
However, if it didn’t work and Sayid is currently possessed, then maybe that theory will hold – he will be working towards the good or evil ends of whoever possessed him.
I’d give Jack all Insufferable Douche, which is pretty close to all evil.
Right now I am still focussed on the part where they said that all the mysteries would have sciencey explanations, but they’re really on the edge of falling entirely to the side of fantasy. (Which is fine, except they’re not properly playing by those rules, either.) I mean, fine to try to break rules, but there needs to be an underlying coherence to the plot and determined rule breaking makes that really hard.
I also don’t get why we’re supposed to believe that Ben is horrified that he was used. Because he’s too smart to be used? He seemed more like someone who would appreciate that kind of game, as someone who used almost every other character. Equally, I don’t buy that this is the only murder that bothers Ben is Jacob’s — they’ve really made his character change in unnatural ways. (This is true for everyone, I guess.)
Finally, it pisses me off that the two main temple others are also men. They’ve turned Kate from an interesting character to a boring corner in a love quadrangle, sidelined Sun and killed off all the other interesting women, but they keep introducing new guys.
Also, I don’t buy that no one thought that maybe magical miracle life-restoring temple could restore Juliet as well as Sayid.
According to this interview with Darlton on Entertainment Weekly both story lines are real
Did anyone catch Juliet inviting Sawyer to have coffee with her as she died? I’m pretty sure that was her meeting up with him in the alternate universe, which is why she knew that it worked. I’ll be pissed if that’s their ending though. Juliet has this whole awesome storyline with Ben, her sister, trying to get home, etc, etc. If that is abandoned in favour of making her Sawyer’s consolation prize, there’s gonna be trouble. I may write a strongly worded letter.
Apart from that, I did enjoy the episodes. I’m embarrassed to say that the 14 year old girl in me still cares enough to be really psyched at Kate and Sawyer meeting in the elevator. And to loathe Jack in every reality. All of the Locke/Ben stuff was awesome, and that “his last thought was ‘I don’t understand’” made me strangely sad. I can’t believe there’s only 14 episodes left!
Okay, I’m not going to read any of this post or any of the comments because (gasp) I’ve never seen Lost. I know. But now you all have convinced me that enough is enough and I’m going to start from episode one. Thank you, Gods of DVD land!
“I also don’t get why we’re supposed to believe that Ben is horrified that he was used. Because he’s too smart to be used? He seemed more like someone who would appreciate that kind of game, as someone who used almost every other character.”
I don’t know, it’s well established Ben really does’t like it when he has no control. At the end of season 5, he basically revealed a side of his nature he tends to keep hidden… his child like passion to be the center of attention. He seemed genuinely hurt that after all those year, he had never truly seen or heard from Jacob and Jacob has nothing to say but, “Eh, so?” Jacob’s point may have been, “It’s not about you”, but he hit a jealous and angry nerve in Ben. I believe Ben is deeply troubled that the Island used him as a pawn…users do not like to be used.
The idea that even (some of) the controlling forces on the island want the hell off of it is quite the revelation.
Who says Flocke’s home is off the island? I suspect it’s the temple, actually.
Hmm, it’s possible! I thought it was implied, though, since he preceded this statement with a speech about all of the Losties wanting off the island, but Locke wanting to stay because he knew that the island was better than what he had back home.
Did anyone catch Juliet inviting Sawyer to have coffee with her as she died? I’m pretty sure that was her meeting up with him in the alternate universe, which is why she knew that it worked”.
yes, and my theory is that she experienced something like desmond did a while back, where he was able to tap into the future stuff…always seeing charlie die, etc…like, he had 2 realities occurring…so now that the losties have created 2 realities, i’m wondering if when you die in one, you finish in the other.
I also don’t get why we’re supposed to believe that Ben is horrified that he was used. Because he’s too smart to be used? He seemed more like someone who would appreciate that kind of game, as someone who used almost every other character.
I think Ben felt betrayed there. It wasn’t just that he was used, but that his faith was used against him to accomplish something that had nothing to do with him. Ben likes to be in control, but I think even more importantly he – like Locke – needs to feel like what he’s doing has meaning and that he is important. He’s showed it before when he’s hinted at being angry at being replaced by Locke, and resenting that the Island seemed to value Locke more than him.
Did anyone else notice the customs agent called Sun “Miss Paik?”
“Hmm, it’s possible! I thought it was implied, though, since he preceded this statement with a speech about all of the Losties wanting off the island, but Locke wanting to stay because he knew that the island was better than what he had back home.”
Flocke states he wants to leave the island, apparently, unlike Jacob, he was trapped on the island.
Jacob ordered the Others to abduct children. Jacob probably ordered the genocide of the Dharma people. I’m certain Jacob is not good. The question is is Flocke evil. Flocke gave Jacob’s bodyguards a chance to leave unharmed. I’m thinking Jacob made Flocke a prisoner of the island. The question is why?
The Dharma people were colonizers and invaders. I’m sure that they were given many chances to leave the island unharmed. After all, they lived there on stolen land with their sonic fence for years. I have a lot of sympathy for the Others in that context, and exceedingly little for Dharma, so I’m not sure why what Jacob did is worse than Flocke’s actions, at least given what we know right now.
“yes, and my theory is that she experienced something like desmond did a while back, where he was able to tap into the future stuff…always seeing charlie die, etc…like, he had 2 realities occurring…so now that the losties have created 2 realities, i’m wondering if when you die in one, you finish in the other.”
groovybroad, I think your theory is pretty interesting. I need to rewatch those time/place shifting episodes with Desmond. Or read on the Lostpedia or something.
Re: Ben — I assumed he felt betrayed, because he saw Jacob and the Others as his replacement family. He killed his own father and gave up Dharma to be with those people and protect the island. On top of that, he lost his daughter. And it was all for nothing.
Also, dumb question/reminder request — when Alex told Ben to follow Locke, was that really Smokey/Flocke? I haven’t had a chance to go back and look at that episode.
I feel confident saying yes. Smokey appeared before Alex did, Flocke was not currently present (i.e. Smokey was not currently in a different form), and we know that Smokey can take the form of dead people. So, yeah. Ben got played numerous times over.
I totally missed Juliet asking Sawyer out for coffee and the customs agent calling her Ms. Paik, but I’ve seen it pop up all over since then.
I think it’s quite possible that Juliet said that as she met up with him in the other reality.
The Ms. Paik thing is confusing me… Most people are saying this means they’re divorced, but if that’s the case 1) why are they traveling together and 2) why are they going through customs together. Because let’s say that, yes, they’re divorced but they didn’t want to cancel these expensive plane tickets they already had (which I don’t buy because they have money), once they land, why would Sun stay with Jin? She’s not going to use her English to help him (assuming she speaks it in this other reality), and they pretty much hated each other before they left. I’m just confused…
The Dharma people were colonizers and invaders. I’m sure that they were given many chances to leave the island unharmed.
Given that the Others couldn’t have kids there, it’s not like they could have been living on the island for generations when Dharma showed up. Unless I am hugely misremembering background, which is possible. (I also do not recall that they were really warned off as opposed to threatened off.)
Well, we don’t know that at all. We have no idea why women can’t have kids on the island. One of the theories out there is that the statue on the island is Taweret, that it was there to protect pregnant women, and that its destruction (since all we have now is a foot) is what caused the fertility problems. We don’t know when/why the statue was destroyed, but it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that Dharma destroyed it when they invaded the island.
Since Amy (Dharma, Ethan’s mom) could give birth, I’d assumed that it was the Incident that caused the problem. And that, too, was caused by Dharma. But the fact is that we don’t know, and there’s no evidence that it was only the Others who couldn’t survive pregnancy. We also know that Jacob has been on the island for centuries. It stands to reason that he didn’t just pick up followers within the past few years, especially considering they’ve been there since the 50s at the very least, at which point they already had a process (implied to be longstanding) for choosing leaders.
I hate jack as much as it seems most here. He annoys me to no end. But Kate and Sawyer? Rlly? They are not good for eachother. Juliet was the best person for Sawyer. She grounded him. She made him better than he knew he was. They were awesome together. I do know, tho, that in the Entertainment Weekly article Darlton did say that the triangle of Jack/Sawyer/Kate will figure prominently into this final season. I don’t mind it, but does it have to be prominent?
Ok. . . I read. . . Is Flocke really the smoke monster or was him saying “sorry you had to see me like that” or whatever he said exactly just more games from Flocke? No one I’ve relayed this too thinks it’s even feasible, but I’m not convinced. . . I think it might be.
I’m so excited for this season and reading this roundtable every week. Thanks Feministe!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Dharma people were colonizers and invaders. I’m sure that they were given many chances to leave the island unharmed.
It could have been Whitmore that ordered the genocide. The abduction of children has been confirmed as being ordered by Ben. The Others are paranoid, violent and angry. Jacob’s followers don’t strike me as nice people. The Smoke Monsters chews Jacob out for bringing people who create conflict. Jacob’s recruits are a militant. Whitmore and Ben were leaders. That reflects on Jacob.
Michael, you’re missing the point. The paranoia, violence and anger you’re describing happens AFTER Dharma is on the island. If you characterize the behavior of the Others as “paranoid, violent and angry” then you have to take that into account.
Obviously, we don’t know the full story of the history of the island yet, we don’t know who Dharma is or where they came from, we don’t know where the Others came from or how long they were there undisturbed. But what we do know is that the Others were there first and that Dharma basically took over the island and left only a small portion to the Others. We can’t forget that the way the Others have been described by Dharma folk (the “hostiles”) is a slanted view. Of course the Others would be “hostile” to Dharma — they just up and took over their land. For all we know, what Dharma considers hostile is really just any resistance to colonization. And even the way the Others interact with the 815 folks is from the perspective of the LOSTies. Nobody is saying that the Others are some altruistic wonderful band of good fairy angels, but we’ve never really seen anything from their perspective.
Michael, you’re missing the point. The paranoia, violence and anger you’re describing happens AFTER Dharma is on the island.
Smokey’s mention of the people bringing conflict occurs as they watch the Black Rock approaching the island; centuries before Dharma. The Others could be as much invaders/colonizers as Dharma.
That may well be the case, but we have very little evidence to suggest that at the moment. We have significantly more evidence to assume that the Others were there for a while and the island was then colonized by Dharma.
Geez, it’s amazing how much folks want to cast the Others as awful and Dharma as fine.
I wasn’t suggesting that Dharma was fine, just that they and the Others are cut from the same cloth.
While I would say that Dharma is quite clearly an invading force, the same can’t be said for Oceanic 815; they’re crash victims. Yet the Others treat them as hostile invaders, dragging them off in the night and experimenting on them.
Come to think of it, it makes a halfway decent US immigration metaphor. “Acceptable” immigrants like Juliet are vetted and welcomed, while the tempest-tossed are shunned and exploited.
I didn’t read Jack in the “nothing is irreversible” scene as being the old “I can fix anything” Jack—partly his tone and body language were very different from his scenes with Sarah (to me, he actually seemed surprised at himself for saying that), and partly because he wasn’t saying “I will fix you” so much as “don’t rule out the possibility that it can be fixed somehow”. I also thought it was much more man-of-faithy than the “original” Jack had ever been portrayed.
I really like the Jezebel theory. It is poetic.
And I feel like I need to balance out the Jack hate. Jack is bangin’. I like the way in which he is “lost,” I like how his daddy issues are so intense that they are actually surreal, and I like the process by which he tries and fucks up. I fell in love with his character right after his introduction, and have consistently adored it. His ridiculous fuck-ups are compelling to me, because of the way he’s always searching. He has a questing mentality I really enjoy. And if I had crash-landed on the Island, I’d totally have him get me out of my skinny jeans.