Like LOST fan and acclaimed film director Kevin Smith suggested after the Season 3 finale — the time-travel-dharma station-parapsychology portion of LOST is cool, but like any good show — it’s the relationships that make the show standout. If you’re taking time out of your busy day to read this column then you’ve undoubtedly spent time talking or thinking about Hurley and Charlie, Locke and Walt, who Kate really loves, why Sayid was never able to be with Nadia (or Shannon) for any length of time, Sawyer’s Han Solo soft-side, and, as this week’s episode introduced, a new Charlie. Desmond and Penny’s son, clearly named after Charlie Pace, the man who sacrificed his life so their relationship could continue. You loved it. I know I did… and I’m guessing Silent Bob did too…
All this to say, as much as I dug the season premiere, it could easily have left your head spinning. It was nice in third episode to step back, get some questions answered and enjoy some old-fashioned character development.
WHAT HAPPENED
We learned quite a bit more about the Season Five linchpins mentioned in last week’s column (Daniel Faraday, John Locke and we added Desmond Hume). Faraday is trying hard to keep things together on the island. How much does Daniel really know about what’s happening? Is he just going with the flow to keep his friends safe or does he have a design on how they might stop this record from skipping?
Locke went straight to Richard Alpert and now we know that the reason Alpert visited the hospital where John Locke was born (in last season’s “Cabin Fever”) is because Locke told him to two years earlier. Interesting to note that in the year 1954, Richard Alpert appeared unaware of the island’s time hopping qualities…
Desmond followed Daniel’s advice and sought after Daniel’s mother. After striking out at Oxford (apart from finding Daniel’s dusty lab), Desmond also decided to go straight to the source. The scene between present-day Charles Widmore and Desmond was quite interesting and I’d love to know your thoughts. No way Widmore gives Desmond the information he was seeking about Faraday’s mother and lets him walk away if he didn’t know exactly what he was doing…or actually wanted Des to go see Ms. Hawking, right? Then again, he does want Penny hidden away from Ben, who, as we know, will not hesitate (See:Keamy) to kill her.
HELPFUL TIMELINE
Last night’s episode featured only one on-island time change and it occurred at the very end of the episode. Most of the island happenings take place in 1954, two years before the birth of John Locke.
THEORIES TO DISCUSS
1. Since the beginning of season two we’ve wondered about the Swan station and what else might have been discovered had Desmond not been forced to turn the fail safe key. For example, what, exactly, was contained within that massive bunker buried underneath the Swan’s main floor? A bunker seemingly made of concrete and lead? Could it have been the Jughead H-bomb? It would qualify as a thermonuclear device capable of emitting a massive electromagnetic pulse and would need to be protected, as Daniel stated, with lead and concrete. Extra credit…is the H-bomb on the blast door map?
2. Theory: Daniel Faraday’s actions are causing Charlotte to disappear from existence, literally making her into nothing. Her head is ringing, and she’s getting double-vision. She can’t remember her mother’s maiden name. Her brain is slipping out of joint with the world.
FACTS CONFIRMED
1. Widmore was an Other … and a punk — albeit a confident one willing to snap a colleague’s neck and mouth off to Richard Alpert that “no one knows the island better than he does.” This of course opens up a new set of Charles Widmore inquiries: When did Widmore leave the island? Was he born there? If he wasn’t, how long had he been there? And if he did indeed provide the majority of the funding for the Dharma Initiative, that gives us quite a bit more knowledge about what they were doing there and why Jacob told Ben to execute the Purge.
2. “You just couldn’t stay away, could you?” Ellie quips to Faraday and we think Daniel’s not only been on the island in the 1970s, but in the 1950s as well. Not so fast, as it turned out the 1950s Others believed the Freighter Folk to be part of a U.S. military battalion that somehow made it to the island a month prior, with a hydrogen bomb in tow. By the way…Ellie is short for Eleanor, which is French for “the Other.”
3. The nameless survivors from Flight 815 survivors on the island are dwindling. By the ew.com count, based on the number of total 815 survivors presented last night — that’d be 20, minus Juliet — there’s barely ten no name survivors left alive.
BURNING QUESTIONS
1. Who does Daniel think Ellie looks like? Theresa Spencer? I’m not ready to believe that Faraday put Theresa in this state because he was “testing” on her…what do you think?
2. When Faraday told Charlotte that he loves her, was he genuinely serious? I believe he cares for her, but his primary intention was to save her from the time travel sickness by playing the part of her constant…how about you?
Post away!
[Note: In this column, many weeks I borrow from other LOST sites, primarily Doc Jensen and EW.com. I’ll try to put as much of myself in these as I can, but EW gets to screen the episodes in advance and I certainly don’t … so … much love to the Doc, we couldn’t dig in quite the same without you.]