LOST Theories for S6E11 Happily Ever After April 6th, 2010

Relationships. Whether it’s the relationships between strangers on a plane, parents and their children, husbands and wives, and even those who are kept apart by time, space, and a weirdo island, relationships make up the core of LOST. We saw it in Season One in a father and son trying to repair a broken relationship. We saw it on the island and we saw it off the island as each of the survivors’ back stories intertwined with one another.

Now, when we are so near the endgame, we see that relationships still drive the story of LOST. We see a husband and wife trying to desperately get back to one another. We see a mother struggling with sanity after her son was taken from her three years before. And we see two forces, opposite sides of the same coin struggling in their relationship to good and evil. But the biggest relationships are those that were possibly not meant to be. And the producers have said to not read too much into the relationship between the Flash Lefts and the Original Timeline. I say, “Screw that.” If anything, last night made that relationship all the more clearer.

Critics of the Flash Lefts may be brought back into the fold after last night’s episode or will just give up their relationship to LOST altogether. There will be some that will hail that Happily Ever After was the BEE of LOST and they will do it in their best Simpson’s Comic Book Guy voice. I think it was good, but it doesn’t sit above "The Constant" on my ever evolving top ten list of best episodes ever. Because in that episode lies the destiny of Desmond Hume in the following phrase, "If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant."

The good of the episode is that we get to see Desmond, of course, but also Charlie, Eloise, Penny and Daniel. The bad is that we get more mysteries than answers. The highlights are Charlie getting to reprise his death scene with a different ending from "Through the Looking Glass" (although it would have been funny if Charlie would have put his hand up to the glass and been missing part of his pinky finger in a nod to FlashForward) and the low points include Sayid having the chance to put us out of our misery with killing Zoe, the most hated character since Nikki and Paulo, and not following through for once with his homicidal tendencies.

The biggest mystery solved is the connection between the Flash Left Verse and the Real World and that some people are self aware that their seemingly perfect lives are merely a lie. The newest mystery is how does Desmond plan on convincing Locke, Hurley, and Claire, among others who are better off in this fake life, that they are better off being dead, unlucky, and crazy sometime else. Not to mention, how do you reconcile the two timelines and bring everyone three years forward and to the right?

My general theories about what the island is and how everything functions keeps getting turned about like a giant Rubik’s Cube. I work for hours to solve one side thinking I’m making progress only to have five other sides still unsolved. In order to work on them I have to screw up the one thing I thought I had figured out. In the case of LOST it’s the nature of who is the key to everything.

But while fans overly analyze and try and pick apart every little thing about every episode, every sentence, every prop, and every pop culture connection between the show, science fiction literature and religion I tend to skew the connections by offering the oddball ones. Before I move onto individual aspects of the episode let me pepper my section on Desmond with this. Everyone is discussing and theorizing that Demsond’s experiment was used to cause the acknowledgement of the Flash Lefts. I don’t know that is the whole truth. We’ve seen over the course of almost six years that when someone has a flashback or in this case a flash left the connection… or relationship between the two is implied but the action that is taking place at the moment of the “whoosh.” I’m not so sure this wasn’t simply the same thing.

Maybe Desmond, being forced to withstand another Catastrophic Electromagnetic Event wasn’t designed to make him see the alternate reality but see something else that makes him compliant with Widmore’s plan. His Flash Left doppelganger may have the same inherent talent as his Original Timeline self and can see the connections as well, not just because he licked a giant 9 volt battery in the original timeline. What C.E.E. did Charlie and Daniel experience that caused them to realize the truth? Perhaps that C.E.E. is more commonly known as L.O.V.E. and when Sideways Sawyer meets Sideways Juliet and Sideways Hugo meets Sideways Libby, they’ll see the truth, too.

CHARLIE IN THE ALTERVERSE
Alterverse? I like that, I can’t keep typing Flash Left because it just doesn’t have that great flow to it. Alterverse feels more natural to say. Anyway, I liken Charlie to a type of dream I’ve often had in my life. You may or may not have had this dream. The setting or characters in this dream are inconsequential as they can be interchangeable with nearly any others. The focus is that at some point in your dream you suddenly become self aware that you are dreaming. For me it’s usually a scenario where I am supposed to take a very important test that I haven’t studied for. I don’t even remember going to any of the classes. As the test gets passed around and I find that I cannot read the questions. Suddenly, I realize that I am over 30 and no longer sitting in my 11th grade U.S. History class. (akin to a Batman The Animated Series episode plotline) So, then I proceed to just sit as an observer, put my head down, or run around the classroom yelling and screaming obscenities for the hell of it.

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one. Charlie has the same self realization that he doesn’t belong in this reality. It’s almost like Groundhog Day where Bill Murray starts goofing around because he realizes there are no consequences to his actions because he will wake up to the same day, every day. So, Charlie shows Desmond that something is wrong. Desmond then goes to the Widmore estate to inform Mrs. Widmore of Charlie not showing up to perform. After he begins to question reality, Eloise steps in and tells him to stop. Well, of course she does. She knows full well what’s going on and doesn’t want to see a reality where she kills her own son and then 30 years later sends him to his own death by her younger self. But what is important is that Desmond meets Daniel and Daniel also realizes that something is wrong. Perhaps the trick is that you have to have died in the original timeline to recognize that something is off in the alterverse. The exception would be John Locke, but there is no telling whether or not Locke is really Locke in the alterverse, just yet.

DESMOND IN THE ORIGINAL TIMELINE
“The island isn’t done with you yet!” Is the phrase we keep hearing from characters about Desmond’s destiny. But what does that mean? Is the island a stage five clinger? Or have the puppet masters of Jacob and MiB not finished their game of Dungeons & Dragons yet and still need Desmond to prove a point one way or the other. Desmond’s role may or may not be that important to the overall mythology. I tend to look at these last few seasons as a giant Rube Goldberg machine (The Game Mousetrap to all you unfamiliar with the concept.) Basically, the island and everything on it is one overly complex machine with many parts that when activated performs a simple task. Think of MiB’s loophole scheme to kill Jacob. All of that work just so he could leave the island. However, in keeping him on the island or stopping him for good, another equally complex and intricate device needs to be activated. In that device all the castaways and island visitors have a part to play. Perhaps Desmond is just one cog in a bigger wheel. Us old school text adventure gamers will recognize this as a sort of Chekhov’s Gun, where a seemingly unimportant item or character will suddenly become important later on and “Will Know What To Do When The Time Comes." For me, I’d rather see Desmond be Chekhov’s Gun that Zoe. At some point, because of Desmond’s ability to withstand Catastrophic Electromagnetic Events, he may be useful in performing some task relating to Jin’s knowledge of where these concentrated electromagnetic “Hot Pockets” are. We already know the Swan and the Orchid have one but where is the third one?

THE PACKAGE
A friend commented on my facebook import of last week’s post and said that perhaps Desmond is not the package. This could be a plot twist. I didn’t believe the probability seeing as how Desmond was introduced to Snoopy eyed Sayid in the water, but perhaps there could be something to this. What if Desmond is not the package but merely the mailman? Why would he need to be drugged if he was double padlocked on the sub? Maybe someone is still on the sub or being held somewhere else and they are the package. Maybe that person has a special talent that makes them somewhat akin to a hydrogen bomb that can interact with a “hot pocket.” Maybe that person is Walt?

SAYID’S ROLE
If ever there was a case for IS HE BAD OR ISN’T HE it’s Sayid. His pa-pa-pa-poker face, his pa poker face leaves me wondering if he isn’t in some way working both sides against the middle. Still, he killed Dogen and Lennon and red shirt number 23 for Team Widmore but he let Zoe live and took Desmond with him. If Desmond was had some kind of clarity or epiphany maybe he sees that he’s supposed to go with Sayid or it could be that he’s just a little bit high. Not sure. In any case, the truly evil Sayid would have killed Zoe instead of letting her run back to Charles to report the abduction.

THEORY DEBUNK TIME
I have no energy to scan old posts right now and pick theories I postulated however, the ones about Zoe and Desmond’s role in the story still stand because I think that the “sacrifice” Widmore says Desmond will have to make is to either to become the new Jacob, die to save everyone, or in a really wacked out scenario keep the alterverse the way it is because it’s the way things should be. However, I did check back to a previous post and decided to debunk my theory from Recon.

5. The Ajira survivors were killed by...


1. Widmore because he’s a sick bastard.
2. Locke Monster because they didn’t want to go with him OR he used them as leverage for Sawyer.
3. Something else happened to them entirely.

We know that the MiB/Locke Ness Monster cannot travel over water in smoke form but he was able to travel to the Hydra Island to chat with Charles about Jin’s abduction. In that case, he either killed the other Ajira survivors before he went to the temple OR Widmore did it for whatever reason. I think the fact that they were beginning to smell bad and attract flies might indicate it was still MiB’s handy work, although I am not a doctor or forensic scientist. Either way I’m debunking C. because it probably won’t ever get explained anyway and that means that C. is irrelevant.

NEW THEORIES

1. Desmond is going to...


1. Be the package
2. Deliver the package


2. And his sacrifice will be…


1. Die in the process
2. Become the new Jacob.
3. Keep the alterverse the way it is.

His sacrifice must involve his love for Penny somehow otherwise it wouldn’t have been so important to focus on their relationship in previous episodes.

3. Sayid is


1. Evil
2. Pulling a Sonny Crockett and playing evil
3. Just plain crackers

I still can’t come to grips with the whole idea of who is good and who is evil. If that is going to be a big twist then they are really going to lose the audience members who don’t slice and dice the series as much as those who do. I mean that in the case of people who look back on episodes and say, “Well that makes perfect sense now because so and so was really good/bad. But I find Sayid’s lack of character motivation disturbing in that I can’t read him….much like History tests in dreams.

4. The experiment was meant to…


1. Show Desmond the alterverse and allow his doppelganger to realize the truth.
2. Simply show that he can withstand a C.E.E. so that he can interact with the “Hot Pocket.”

I’m going with B. on this one as I previously stated. Charlie and Daniel are the exception to A. in that they merely caught a glimpse of love by seeing Claire and Charlotte which caused them to experience the notion that “this life is not our real life.” Now, you may say that unless Desmond is in love with Charlie, that theory doesn’t jive. I say, ”What was written on Charlie’s hand?” That’s right, it involved Penny and that is his relationship to the original timeline, he loved Penny and would cross time and space to be with her.

That’s all for now. Can’t wait for next week’s episode entitled “Everybody Loves Hugo.” Because why shouldn’t they.

LOST Theories For S6E9 The Package March 30th, 2010

Wednesday’s are always a bit sluggish for me. It’s not that it’s hump day. It’s Day After Lost Day and that means I’m up until usually after 1:00 watching my bloated DVR’s saved episode from earlier that night. However, this Wednesday wasn’t as bad as last Wednesday. Last Wednesday I got little sleep because my head was swirling with thoughts about Richard Alpert and the similarities of MiB and Jacob to certain Bugs Bunny characters named Sam and Ralph. This Wednesday we get a little bit of a lopsided scale of revelation and piece movement. Yes, you read that right. I didn’t mean peace, I meant piece as in chess pieces. Perhaps last night’s episode was an exercise in castling. Perhaps not.

With only enough episodes left that my old shop teacher could almost count without removing a shoe we have the Jerry Reed problem. "We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there." So, it seems silly to burn an episode placing pieces around the board but there was more going here which may or may not get resolved in the end. First and foremost we know who/what the package is. And is anyone surprised? Ok. That gets chalked up in the “duh” column. Second of all we get a glimpse of what MiB’s plan is but we don’t know why as of yet. (See Theories) Lastly, we get a heavy dose of that wacky couple who just can’t seem to get together Ross and Rachel… I mean Jin and Sun. That was the best part.

Summing up the action. Jin and Sun aren’t married in the Flash Left Verse. They are however going at it like Losties in a polar bear cage, though. How do we know? Well, the drawn out answer is that Sun is pregnant thanks to a heart wrenching admission after she is shot by Patchy who wasn’t Patchy in Sideways World until Jin made him Patchy and Deady. The short answer is that we saw ample amounts of Sun’s…. um, we saw, um…. There were boobs and that’s all I remember because they made it a point to give them their own close up, twice. We also saw that Jin wasn’t exactly tenderized as we thought he was from the previous episode with Sayid meeting with Omar and Keamy. That was simply Omar being Dum-mar and Keamy being a slimy Christopher Walken that he has been emulating since he first showed up on the series.

Back in the real world, Locke and Sayid decide to go visit the rival summer camp across the lake after lights out and attempt to find out what their secret weapon is for the camp summer games. It’s only fair since they kidnapped our best potato sack racer, Jin. And they are taking an outrigger. OOOh, could they actually end up firing a few shots at time skipping Sawyer and company from last season? Um, no. I truly think Lindelof and Cuse are seriously effing with the audience with the final explanation of that. Every time someone gets near a boat I get all excited.

It’s nice to know Sayid isn’t feeling quite himself because I think he’s going to go kill Desmond. We also get a sense that Locke needs the O6 alive to get off the island or at least he needs them to stay away from being Jacobified so that he can leave. He needs all the candidates not because it makes him stronger but that it keeps him from being stopped. Once they’re on the plane and off the island, Claire is free to be Crazies on a Plane. He also continually tries and somewhat succeeds in giving characters enough rope to hang themselves or someone that he doesn’t want around which was like channeling the alive Locke who helped Sawyer take care of their mutual problem. He’s the wish bringer. He gives people what they want versus Jacob who gives them what they need. The only exception could be that he does grant Richard his final request of immortality but he says he couldn’t bring his wife back, yet MiB offers something similar to another character. Of course, the problem with that idea is that Dogen said Jacob offered him the life of his son for his service on the island. Still working on that one.

Meanwhile at the hall of justice a.k.a. the beach, Ilana is doing more gun cleaning than a guy holed up in a shack in North Dakota fuming about the government. Ben is being, well Ben, and Sun is trying to keep her mind on things that don’t entail sitting around and waiting. So, she trots off to see her garden and lo and behold there’s Locke Ness Monster with his man boobs offering to take her to see Jin. She decides to pull a Friday the 13th Female Victim #2 and run away only to turn and look for the monster who isn’t there and bonk her head into a tree. And that is why I always recommend that if you ever, ever, get trapped in a horror movie sequel that you run away from the monster for a few feet then turn around and run in the opposite direction because they are never behind you anymore. They are always in front of you waiting behind a tree and throwing out bits of trees to trip you up.

Now Richard’s back and he says, “We’ve got to blow up the plane!” And Sun, in Korean, is like, “FukYu.” And Jack is like, “See this tomato” and Sun is like “Oh, Jack, they always give you the uplifting speeches that relate to a medical procedure or gardening…” Now give me more paper because this Post It pad got filled up with that last sentence. Hey, Sun, while you’re at it, can you move the Post It pad a little to your right. I can’t read your responses unless she wrote, “I don’t trust V’s” underneath it. I mean WTF? (Internet Slang Quota Per Post now reached) That was annoying to see that stupid plug in the corner of the screen for most of the episode. At least they didn’t use it earlier in the episode to cover her….um… yeah.

And now for the worst part of this episode and what I fear will be the worst part about this season. Zoe. She’s like the bearded archeologist in Lost World Jurassic Park. You know that character that’s brought in late in the game to either shake things up and make it watchable or they come with some unshared knowledge about what’s going on and then become too important. I’ve been scouring tvtropes.org for the actual name but another example is Dawn from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For four seasons we have a core group of characters that have been developed over time and during the fifth season a new character was introduced who ends up being the key to the entire season, literally. Think of in terms of "Chekhov’s newborn sibling." She’s Nikki and Paulo redux and apparently, she’s very important, at least she appears to be acting like she’s been on the show since the beginning giving interviews and what not.

OK, THEORY DEBUNK TIME

There’s not much to refute since we already knew Desmond was the package.

The Flash Left Verse didn’t give us anything new except for Sun’s recognition of something strange in the mirror and her…. Um…. Her, um….. *giggle.* Come on, they had their own closeup.

However we can start to whittle the reasons for why the Lighthouse side quest happened.

1. Jack’s purpose at the Lighthouse was to actually destroy the mirrors because:
    a. it allows the truth of the Flash Lefts to be revealed. 10%
    b. It unmasks the island from Widmore who can put things right. That means that MiB has been manipulating Ben far longer than we thought. 20%
    c. Desmond can return 45%
    d. It was simply to give Jack a reason to become who he needs to be. 25%

First of all because Jack mentioned it and anytime an episode leads off with a “Previously on…” clip showing something that hasn’t been seen for awhile or makes mention of a place, person, or event that hasn’t been mentioned for awhile they usually become important. Since both Desmond and the Lighthouse are mentioned then I give letter c more weight because there are a lot of connections between Desmond and the name Wallace which was listed as 108 on the lighthouse dial. After all, Eloise said the island wasn’t done with him yet. What that has to do with a geophysicist and pockets of electromagnetic energy is anyone’s guess and I am anyone.

3. Widmore is able to find the island because:
      a. He is the friend Jacob was guiding towards the island and his name is actually Wallace.
      b. Desmond is on that sub and his name his family name is actually Wallace.
      c. Locke-Ness has killed Jacob leaving the island unveiled and seen by Widmore.
      d. He went to the Lamp Post

It seems that all are really probable except for d. because there hasn’t been any mention of the lamp post yet this season or Faraday for that matter in terms of lineage. But, if we see a “Previously on…” with Faraday being shot by his mother or Widmore being slapped by Eloise then it might be true.

1. Locke Ness Monster and Widmore hate each other.

Perhaps Widmore was rightfully protecting the island all along and by keeping Locke Ness Monster on the island a sort of white/dark force is still kept in check. Could you imagine him getting off the island?

Unless there is a Palpatine moment about to happen I think it’s safe to say that this is now true.

NEW THEORIES

1. Zoe is...


1. A pain in the ass.
2. The key to everything.
3. A red herring.
4. A geophysicist with a knack for finding pockets of electromagnetic energy.

I say all of the above, except I hope I’m wrong about b. Honestly, she is a bit annoying and such a trope of fantastical and mysterious plots. I said before she is the Cousin Oliver character that gets introduced way late into a show’s run who is suddenly all important and acts like she’s been around since the first episode. Her only funny line is the one about hiring a mercenary instead of a geophysicist. We see how that worked out for Widmore.

2. Desmond is there because…


1. He is the key to everything.
2. He is the ultimate candidate which is tragic considering his history with the island and Penny.
3. His affected neurological disorder that caused him to become unstuck in time could help them find the third pocket of electromagnetic engery.
4. The island isn’t done with him yet.

We all knew Desmond was important but as to why is not yet clear. Perhaps Widmore just wants him away from Penny, but why? Maybe he knows how important Desmond was all along but really wanted him away from Penny to spare her the eventual heat break when he becomes the new Jacob.

3. The Three People Kate Needs To Get Are…


1. Jack, Hurley, and Sun (All candidates but who flies the plane?)
2. Jack, Hurley, and Frank (What about Sun being a candidate?)
3. Sun, Hurley, and Frank (Do you really think Jack would buy anything Locke/MiB had to sell?)
4. Sun, Jack, and Frank (Hurley would never trust Locke/MiB as he is communicating with Jacob now on a regular basis)


4. Adam and Eve are…


1. Rose and Bernard  - 40% Most acceptable answer as we have not seen them yet in the OT
2. Jin and Sun  - 20% It would be the payoff of them finally being reunited.
3. Desmond and Penny - 10% Low score on this since if Desmond ends up being the new Jacob he wouldn’t have died and these skeletons died in the past.
4. Kate and Jack 10% Unlikely since they would have to time travel again.
5. Kate and Sawyer 10% Unlikely in that Sawyer was married to Juliet, he’s done with Kate romantically.
6. Never explained 9% I’d have a brain melt down.
7. Nikki and Paulo 1% That would send me over the edge.

That's all I got.   One thing that I find interesting is that everyone in the Flash Left Verse has checked themselves in a mirror and found something interesting.  Only Sawyer has punched one.  And, why doesn't MiB just go down and spin the FDW for a free trip to Tunisia?  Maybe it's in the rules somewhere.