Thursday, February 12, 2009

When He Tells Them They MUST Go Back, He Ain't Just Kidding Around

My latest column on this week's episode of LOST, "This Place is Death
So why is Ben concerned only on getting the original Oceanic 6 back to the island, and not the others? Why some and not all? Physically, all nine escaped the island but Ben and Hawking are only concerned with getting the O6 back.

The answer lies in the common thread between the O6 - they were all on Oceanic 815 when it went down. Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, Kate and (almost born) Aaron. Desmond was already on the island in the hatch, Frank came later in the freighter and Ji Yeon was conceived there. The common thread on why only they must go back is because ONLY THEY were once on the plane.


UPDATE: Screw it. Here's the whole thing:

Thoughts that occur to me during the viewing of "This Place is Death"

1) When Montand is pulled into the hole by the Smoke Monster, and calls up to his comrades - does he sound strange? I mean, yes, he just had his arm ripped off but he seems strangely matter of fact about calling for help. Almost like he's trying to lure his friends into the hole after him. I can't help but wonder if the Smoke Monster is able to take on the characteristics of people (or animals) it touches and mimic them. Something like the old Salt Vampire from the first episode of Star Trek back in the day.... This could explain the appearance of Christian Shepherd to Locke later in the show, that's it's a manifestation of the Smoke Monster. For this to be true, Dr. Shepherd, Sr., would have had to either a) not been truly dead in his coffin, b) revived and then imitated after the crash, or c) visited the island before his death. Anyway, all that to say Montand's behaviour wasn't what was really expected when down in the hole.


2) Speculations is that the ruins covered with hieroglyphs are possibly "The Temple" that Ben sent The Others, Rousseau and Alex to a couple seasons back. According to Ben it was the safest place on the island (and by the map he had was situated in the northwest corner, a good ways distant from both the Tower where the French party was headed and where their camp probably was). The heiroglyphs were strangely reminiscent of the dangerous red symbols in the Countdown Timer in the Swan Station hatch, after they count down to 00:00:00. If it is indeed the infamous "Temple" where Montand was dragged and the French party went in after him (and is the cause of their sickness/madness), and it's also where the Smoke Monster lives, it could be a very important key to the island's mysteries.


3) Charlotte. Poor, poor, cute, redheaded, British accented Charlotte. The time-travelling really started making swiss cheese of her brain, to where she remembered and relived past thoughts and experiences. She revealed she knew Korean, was born on the island, and that her mother "should never have married a foreigner". Sometime in her childhood she was carried away from the island by her mother and told the island was all a dream. She remembers the Dharma Initiative, that a crazy man (Daniel) once told her to never return or she would die, though she became an anthropologist in defiance of this warning to try to find the island. So, why? And who is she? Who are her parents?

Dr. Pierre Chang, the Oriental Dharma film guy was seen in the season premiere waking up to a very Oriental woman and tending their baby, so it's doubtful Chang is her father (although it's very probable the baby is Miles). I'm thinking Charlotte was a Dharma baby, born of Dharma parents and raised for several years on the island in the Barracks. Quite possibly near an adolescent Ben Linus. She could have learned Korean as part of her schooling from Dr. Chang, although why Korean I have no idea. At some point a time-traveling Daniel sees her as a child and warns her to never come back if she leaves. Whoever her mother was eventually escaped the island with her in tow, leaving the father behind.

Another possibility re: knowing Korean. Could Sun's father, Mr. Paik, be involved in the early days of Dharma as well, just as a young Charles Widmore and probably a young Eloise (Ellie) Hawking were once Others? I don't think he could be her father, since Sun is older and had already been born. Probably a stretch but who knows?

4) Now that Locke has turned the Unfrozen Donkey Wheel, have the time-shifts stopped for Sawyer, Juliet and co.? When are they? My money's on them being in the time period as the aforementioned opening scene of the season premiere - in the heyday of the Dharma Initiative and construction of the Orchid. Daniel will pose as a worker and infiltrate, while the rest of the Losties interact with Dharma as well. We'll likely spend most of the rest of the season on the Island with Sawyer, Juliet, Miles and Daniel (and maybe Rose and Bernard if they all meet up) in Dharma times.


5) Ben and Desmond have never had an encounter together before this episode, except for a brief moment together when the two factions met near the wrecked plane cockpit last season. Obviously Ben knows Desmond and knows who he is (since Ben seems to know everything) but didn't seem to know he'd made it off the island since in his dealings so far this season he's been concentrating solely on getting the Oceanic 6 back to the island. Not the O6 + Desmond + Frank Lapidus, the chopper pilot + Ji Yeon, Sun's baby that was still a fetus during their escape. Ben doesn't express a lot of surprise at seeing Desmond, but is shocked and somewhat angry when the Scotsman asks if they're looking for Faraday's mother too. Obviously Ben didn't know that little tidbit of information.

So why is Ben concerned only on getting the original Oceanic 6 back to the island, and not the others? Why some and not all? Physically, all nine escaped the island but Ben and Hawking are only concerned with getting the O6 back.

The answer lies in the common thread between the O6 - they were all on Oceanic 815 when it went down. Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, Kate and (almost born) Aaron. Desmond was already on the island in the hatch, Frank came later in the freighter and Ji Yeon was conceived there. The common thread on why only they must go back is because ONLY THEY were once on the plane.

So the even bigger question, why MUST they go back? Locke is asked several times why he HAS to bring them back, and he can only say, "I just know". Mrs. Hawking insists a couple episodes ago there are only 70 hours left to do so (several of which have now passed, undoubtedly). Why is it so imperative that the O6 return to the island? It's not just to save their friends, which is the lure and a happy by-product, but I think it's to save the flow of time itself.

Or something monumental like that. I believe the Oceanic 6, in some timeline somewhere, were always stranded on the island. Maybe they got off later in the future, but in 2008-ish, they were still on the island. And that timeline has been horribly disrupted by their escape and return to civilization.

Some trigger has disrupted the flow of time on the island, and subsequently in the world. Whether it was Desmond turning the Failsafe Key, Widmore sending the Freighter to capture Ben, or Ben himself turning the Donkey Wheel and moving the island something has "changed the rules". Ben accuses Widmore of "changing those rules" by having Keamy kill Alex in cold blood. There was a smooth path before, and now the path has been disrupted. Mrs. Hawking realizes this and working with Ben has instructed him to get the O6 back to the island where they're supposed to be.

Something about the whole sequence of events we've seen so far, from the orginal builders of the 4-Toed Statue and the Temple Ruins to the Black Rock marooning, the US army use of the island for bomb testing in the 50's, through the Dharma Initiative and the Purge, Roussea's expedition, Desmond's shipwreck and all the events after the plane crash, something has now happened that wasn't supposed to have happened before. And bring the O6 back to the island will supposedly set it straight.

Maybe.

Possibly.

We'll see.

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