In anticipation of the final season of Lost which will be broadcast in early 2010 I have decided to watch again the entirety of the five previous seasons so as to reassess what went before with the knowledge gained from later episodes.
However it is likely that things which seem significant in hindsight are so only because the writers took it upon themselves to develop things which were initially meant to be inconsequential into something larger.
We finally get to meet Jacob, not only is he real but he has intervened in our Oceanic 815 survivors lives at crucial moments in their pasts. White shirt, and he’s joined on the beach to see the arrival of what is possibly The Black Rock by a man who wears a black shirt presumably he is Jacob’s dark counterpart.
Rose, Bernard and Vincent are alive and living a happy peaceful life on the island away undetected by both the Others and the Dharma Initiative. Being together is all that matters. It’s always something with you people.
In my experience the people that go out of their way to tell you that they are the good guys are almost always the bad guys. The circle of ash was broken and so whoever was constrained to the cabin has escaped. They believe it was somebody other than Jacob which suggests that it was the man in black which means that it was not Jacob that spoke to Locke and therefore the others may have been following the orders unwittingly of Jacob’s nemesis.
Jacob resurrects Locke after his ‘fall’.
It is about love. Rose and Bernard. Sun and Jin. Love eventually triumphs over adversity. “Your love is a special thing”. Jacob speaks excellent Korean, in addition to English and Russian (?).
We finally get to see the accident in the operating room that formed the basis of the story that Jack told Kate in the pilot episode where he overcame his panic and was able to repair the damage he’d caused. Interestingly it seems the reality of the situation doesn’t quite match Jack’s perspective, he believes that his father was undermining him when in fact Christian was genuinely helping him to overcome his panic and believe in his ability to operate.
The Oceanic survivors are there on the island for a reason. Jacob it seems is playing a long game and is placing his pieces for the final showdown with his nemesis.
Again with the love theme. Juliet loves Sawyer so much that she would rather that she never met him than worry that she might lose him.
Hurley is a great barometer for establishing other character’s intentions because he is so open and has no agenda which means that people tend to be open and honest with him. Hurley and Jacob’s conversation in the taxi cab shows Jacob to be a good man.
So that’s how Pierre Chang lost his arm!
Heartbreaking to see Juliet die.
Richard knows what lies in the shadow of the statue, what he says in Latin apparently translates to “He who will protect/save us all”. Does that mean Jacob? The man in black has manipulated Ben into killing Jacob but it seems that Jacob was expecting it and that although he’d prefer Ben not to carry out the act he is sanguine about it.
Juliet not dead yet and with eight hits manages to set off the bomb and the screen goes white. What the hell does this mean?
We finally get to meet Jacob, not only is he real but he has intervened in our Oceanic 815 survivors lives at crucial moments in their pasts. White shirt, and he’s joined on the beach to see the arrival of what is possibly The Black Rock by a man who wears a black shirt presumably he is Jacob’s dark counterpart.
Rose, Bernard and Vincent are alive and living a happy peaceful life on the island away undetected by both the Others and the Dharma Initiative. Being together is all that matters. It’s always something with you people.
In my experience the people that go out of their way to tell you that they are the good guys are almost always the bad guys. The circle of ash was broken and so whoever was constrained to the cabin has escaped. They believe it was somebody other than Jacob which suggests that it was the man in black which means that it was not Jacob that spoke to Locke and therefore the others may have been following the orders unwittingly of Jacob’s nemesis.
Jacob resurrects Locke after his ‘fall’.
It is about love. Rose and Bernard. Sun and Jin. Love eventually triumphs over adversity. “Your love is a special thing”. Jacob speaks excellent Korean, in addition to English and Russian (?).
We finally get to see the accident in the operating room that formed the basis of the story that Jack told Kate in the pilot episode where he overcame his panic and was able to repair the damage he’d caused. Interestingly it seems the reality of the situation doesn’t quite match Jack’s perspective, he believes that his father was undermining him when in fact Christian was genuinely helping him to overcome his panic and believe in his ability to operate.
The Oceanic survivors are there on the island for a reason. Jacob it seems is playing a long game and is placing his pieces for the final showdown with his nemesis.
Again with the love theme. Juliet loves Sawyer so much that she would rather that she never met him than worry that she might lose him.
Hurley is a great barometer for establishing other character’s intentions because he is so open and has no agenda which means that people tend to be open and honest with him. Hurley and Jacob’s conversation in the taxi cab shows Jacob to be a good man.
So that’s how Pierre Chang lost his arm!
Heartbreaking to see Juliet die.
Richard knows what lies in the shadow of the statue, what he says in Latin apparently translates to “He who will protect/save us all”. Does that mean Jacob? The man in black has manipulated Ben into killing Jacob but it seems that Jacob was expecting it and that although he’d prefer Ben not to carry out the act he is sanguine about it.
Juliet not dead yet and with eight hits manages to set off the bomb and the screen goes white. What the hell does this mean?
Lots of answers but with them come more questions. Like where did Charles Widmore get a horse on the island?
Ben is lying about knowing that Locke would be resurrected by the island as he was truly very shocked to see Locke welcoming him back to the land of the living. What is in Illana’s crate?
Ben and Ethan are carrying out Widmore’s orders to kill Rousseau but Ben steals Alex instead. this is pre-purge so the two of them must still be living amongst the Dharma initiative and not yet fully members of the Others.
Michael Emerson and Terry O’Quinn are really great in this episode as Ben and Locke and I love that their roles are now somewhat reversed with Locke knowing more than Ben about what is going on and what to do next. Is Caesar dead? That was fairly short lived for what I thought would have been a new major character. He’s dead before he’s made barely any impact.
Who are Illana’s gang protecting the island from and what purpose are they protecting it for. Why didn’t Ben recognise later that the Oceanic Six had been members of the Dharma Initiative. What about Sawyer, Jin, Juliet and Miles whom he has lived with for three of his most formative years and during a period of time that major events happened including getting shot by an escaped prisoner.
Because what is about to come out of that jungle is something I can’t control. Then Locke emerges. Big clue to suggest that Locke is in fact just a manifestation of the smoke monster.
What lies in the shadow of the statue?
Hieroglyphs depicting Anubis communing with the smoke monster.
Did it let Ben live because he’s taken responsibility for the death of Alex. Presumably Alex was not really there and so Ben was talking to an aspect of the monster and then talks to Locke who is I think yet another aspect of the monster.
Roger Linus is not quite the abusive douchebag we’ve been led to believe he was, he is genuinely very concerned about Ben when he sees Jin bring him back suffering from the gunshot wound inflicted by Sayid. Roger is remorseful about how poor a father he’s been.
Cassidy has an interesting interpretation of Sawyer’s sacrificial leap from the helicopter. He did it because he’s a coward.
Miles and Hurley’s conversation is very meta and explains how we are supposed to believe time travel works on the show i.e. not like Back to the Future, you can’t change your future by changing the past. Which presumably means that Ben cannot die and Sayid’s attempted homicide was futile.
Jack refusal to help save Ben is because he’s come to realise that perhaps he was getting in the way of what the island wants. But Kate even after all that Ben had done to her does everything within her power to save the life of younng Ben.
Odd that when Sayid was torturing Ben in the Swan station that Ben didn’t recognise him as being the same guy he helped escape from the Dharma initiative and subsequently shot him.
Juliet makes the suggestion to Kate that maybe the Others can do something to save Ben and in her expression there seems to be some realisation that of course all these events were meant to happen as it is this that leads Ben to eventually join the Others.
Shocking end to this episode of Lost in more way than one. A teenage Ben is shot by Sayid in 1977. Shocking because it is almost unheard of for a child to suffer a violent death of US network television. And if he is indeed dead what does this mean for the show? He can’t be surely as according to Daniel Faraday “whatever happened, happened” so the past cannot be changed so if Ben is alive in 2007 then he must somehow survive this.
Two thoughts/theories on this.
1. Assuming Faraday is correct and the producers of the show have said that there will be no time travel paradoxes then young Ben will survive the gunshot. Is this event the catalyst that turns a quite sweet kid into the manipulative cold hearted Benjamin Linus we’ve come to know?
Typical Lost irony would be that the man Sayid hates for turning him into a monster (or to be more precise turning him back to monstrous actions as we mustn’t forget he had been a torturer in Iraq) is a monster himself because of being betrayed and shot by Sayid in 1977.
2. However perhaps we have been misled up to this point and Daniel Faraday is wrong (or lying) and this is a course correction of a sort as we were shown with Desmond trying to prevent Charlie’s death. Perhaps Ben was never meant to become the leader of the others plus according to Christian he was never meant to turn the Frozen Donkey wheel to move the island. If Ben had died as a child then all the events we have seen so far in the series would have played out quite differently, this is probably the best argument for him surviving this incident.
Jack in the jungle mirrors him coming around in the pilot episode. Focus on the eyes. What just happened? Why have they been randomly deposited on the island?
Hawking’s church is a Dharma station? The lamppost. How they found the island. Ben lies. Ben always lies.
The island is not done with Desmond. Some kind of game and we are just the pieces.
Dharma built the lamppost specifically to find the island. They’d gathered proof that it existed, the Black Rock Captain’s log perhaps. If Hawking was an Other how and why is she now in a Dharma station?
Ajira Airways! Same as the water bottle Sawyer and co. found on the beach by the boats. Were the Oceanic 6 the ones in the other boat that shot at them? Or was it some other passengers on the Ajira 316 flight?
Jack is clearly the Thomas the Apostle of the story of Lost. Does this make Jacob Christ? Then who would Locke be? Perhaps Judas.
Ben has to keep a promise to an old friend. The promise he made to Widmore to kill Penny I think. If Desmond is in town then Penny almost certainly is too and Ben thinks he can seize this opportunity to carry out that threat. I really hope he fails.
The Shepherd boys all have a wanderlust. What is the significance of the scene with Ray. It seems odd to introduce a totally new character just so that Jack can pick up his father’s shoes.
Did Kate give Aaron to Claire’s mum? Finally an explanation about Christian’s white tennis shoes. Ben is injured and at the harbour, does that mean he tried and failed to murder Penny.
Hurley is awesome and is totally not believable as an asshole millionaire who would buy 78 seats on a flight for himself. Sayid is a prisoner under escort, why is he being transported to Guam? I guess that Illana is acting under orders from Jacob and is aware that the plane is going to crash and that Sayid needs to return to the island in that crash.
Frank Lapidus is flying the plane! Wait a second… we’re not going to Guam are we?
Extreme turbulence. White flash. Jack wakes up in the jungle. He was not actually involved in a plane crash, he just materialised in the jungle. Is this what happened to him in the Oceanic 815 crash?
Jin is shocked and pleasantly surprised to see Jack, Hurley and Kate.
Not a great episode and it is interesting that they only took 6 episodes to get back to the island. I’d have thought a lot more of this season would have been off island. The start seemed like a dream sequence as it seemed so unreal that Jack would wake up in exactly the same way as he did in the pilot episode. And that he, Hurley and Kate would be back on the island but be spatially separated and not knowing how it happened.
Ben lies. It is pathological. The line about how he can read “my mother taught me” is a throwaway line, a joke, but it is also a lie.
I’m sure Desmond is correct that they are all just like pawns in a massive game of chess.
Desmond and Penny have a son named Charlie! Presumably named after Charlie Pace and not after his maternal Grandfather.
Again confirmation that Richard is old and unaging. One of the ‘soldiers’, Jones, is indeed Charles Widmore. Mrs Hawking is almost certainly Daniel’s mother and is on the island in 1954 named Ellie.
Locke talks to Richard and this conversation is the reason why he was visited by Richard at his birth and then later as a small child. This calls into question the whole deal with him being the rightful leader of the Others as the reasoning seems very circular now. He became leader in the present because Richard put the idea in his head that he could replace Ben but it seems that this was only the case because Locke had told Richard back in 1954 that he was their leader.
Also Locke totally pwns Widmore by tracking him back to the camp of the Others.
Their leader is some sodding old man!
What, you think he can track me?
You think he knows this island better than I do?
Daniel loves Charlotte!
The Others speak Latin! How long have the Others in one form or another been on the island? Or, is it just a sign that their leaders have had a classical education.
They should have listened to Hurley, they should not have lied. Hurley so goes back on his promise not to help Sayid after Sayid fails to support Hurley on the boat. But of course.
Ana Lucia! Ghost or creation of the island? “Do not get arrested!” “Libby says hi.”
I ♥ MY SHIH TZU t-shirt is his only option.
Never coming back from the island.
“Sayid ain’t explaining nothing”
Store Locke’s body in the butcher’s meat locker. Who is Jill? What is Ben’s plan other than to return the Oceanic Six to the island?
Frogurt is literally a redshirt.
Can Miles talk to dead animals too?
Why only baby pictures of Ji Yeon? She must be nearly three years old by now, should be a wider range of photos. I’m not convinced that Jin is dead. He’s a survivor and was some distance from the explosion. I’m sure he’ll just have been blown into the ocean.
“A good man doesn’t kill three men!” Is Sayid a good man, are any of them?
Hurley’s emotional explanation of basically the entire plot of seasons 1-4 was crazy/brlliant and his mom’s reaction was perfect and a beautiful moment.
“Never clear on the button” Ha ha
Hurley might be the one truly good person of all the main characters of the series. Sayid is a ninja. Barely conscious and he still manages to viciously attack Jack.
Hot pocket throw by Hurley, hilarious.
Is the young soldier Widmore? Locke to the rescue. Mrs Hawking does calculations of what? 70 hours to return or “God help us all.”
We are back.
8:15 am and Pierre Chang awakens to feed his baby (Miles?) and then off to record one of the cryptic Dharma Initiative films using the alias of Marvin Candle. Will we ever discover the reason for these aliases that Chang uses?
Trouble with the Orchid station when drilling into the chamber where the Frozen Donkey Wheel is located.
Daniel Faraday is in the past! There are rules of time travel that cannot be broken. Sawyer, Juliet et al are in danger unless the Oceanic Six return. Dan Norton will not divulge the identity of his client. Surely that’s not possibly legal! Or it is a ruse that plays on the fears of Kate who would probably be ignorant of the legalities of this situation.
Sayid kills some dudes, maybe he needs more comfort food. Hurley is remarkably accepting of the crazy shit other people bring into his life. How and why does the new memory enter into Desmond’s mind at that point in time if his and Daniel’s timelines have changed.