Lostwatch: You Can't Make a Record If, You Can't Make a Record If, You Can't…

@James in response to two of the questions you raise -
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It certainly seems that the Losties move in time, but also because the island appears to disappear, it seems that it moves too. But not with them. Maybe those spots on Mrs. Hawking’s compu-map are the places it moves to in space.
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Based on the fact that the Others (I’m assuming only the original inhabitants, ’cause clearly Juliet moves too) don’t move with the flashes – and depending on when exactly the plane crashed don’t age – I’m guessing that the Others are *part* of the Island in some way.
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And now here’s my quick rain of flaming arrows… er, bullets until I’m able to process everything overnight:
*Sayid went rogue from Ben? But it was such a loving relationship.
*I’m happy Sun is still badass. Real happy.
*”Libby says ‘hi’”… even as a ghost/hallucination, Ana-Lucia’s a jerk.
*So the O6 has to go back to get the island and/or Losties to stabilize in time, and Des has to go back in order to help Charlotte (or so my memory tells me)… but what about Frank? Or Walt?
*Widmore waylaying Sun at the Oceanic terminal implies that he owns the airline. Iiiinteresting.

I don’t know where to begin, so I’ll start with what struck my funny bone:
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1) Richard to Locke: “It points north.” Brilliant. And clearly the producers/writers messing with us, after all the preview scenes showing the compass in Locke’s hand.
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2) Frogurt. After the Scott/Steve comedy bit (that lasted multiple seasons, and was a constant funny reminder — particularly if you watch the episodes later on — that there were other non-main characaters on the island)….well, Frogurt randomly appearing, becoming a big (complaining) deal, and then quickly getting an arrow to the heart? Well, I laughed. A lot.
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As for substantive stuff…it’s not Ben that I’m not trusting anymore. I don’t trust Sun.

“* So: Past Ethan does not recognize Locke. But Past Richard does”

I think that was actually present (relatively speaking) Richard.

I got the impression that the island was shifting back and forth between the past and present just like Desmond did when he became unstuck. If so, does the island have a constant?

Again, we should be following the Reverse Occam’s Razor (rozaR s’maccO?) with this show: Just because Daniel eventually ends up in the 1970′s doesn’t mean everyone does (though there is nothing to stop that either). And since Candle is Dharma, it means they wake up at 8:15… Although it was odd to see that, unlike last year, where the Comic Con reveal sat unmentioned for the entire season (and did ruin the surprise for many of us), here they get it out of the way in the very first scene of the season.
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Also, there’s nothing to indicate the Others aren’t along for the ride as well into the past (more on that in a second) – we just didn’t see any shots of them.
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Because you missed the point with Richard – that was the Richard of the Past – i.e., eventually Locke will end up in the past before that point and inform then-Richard of the details (“I’ll be born on this date, and oh yeah, save me from dying on this other date too please”).
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About Expose – Nikki’s role was finished on the show in the last episode she filmed; she was killed off by their ally-turned-archenemy (store that for later).
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A couple random points before I get to the meat:
That Sayid was being attacked with non-lethal measures makes me think it was Ben’s goons that were after them. As to why Ben & Sayid had their breakup, it could be that Sayid found out Ben was using him to kill people unrelated to Nadia’s murderers – or that Ben’s people killed Nadia themselves to break any connection Sayid had with the “real world”.
As you said, same deal with Kate’s sudden legal issues.
As soon as Miles went off to “hunt”, I knew that he was just looking for an animal ghost to backtrack to its corpse. But doesn’t that throwaway concept imply that animals definitively have ghosts, adding another wrinkle to the various mystery animals of previous seasons (Kate’s horse, Hurley’s bird, etc.)?
Amusingly enough, a couple months ago you joked Locke would be put on ice – and that is indeed his current status!
Err, Charlotte alone was getting nosebleeds – I don’t think everyone is at risk for Constant-disease. Though it does make me wonder, just when is Charlotte having her bout of Constant pox – still in the future, or in the past when she (apparently) left the Island as a small child?
I am confused on one point – didn’t Locke look up after the last time jump to see the smuggler plane in the tree (with smoke coming out of an engine, no less). Doesn’t that stricly put the Islanders (and their double assailants) in the time period between Eko becoming a priest and 815 crashing, so only 10-15 years before 815?
And was I the only one that couldn’t quite place the accent on their uniformed assailants? Are they Danielle’s “science” team?
One interesting point in the Science vs Faith argument: some of the biggest universities in the world (Harvard, Cambridge) started out as religious seminaries before they turned to science.
Including Oxford. Ms. Hawking is Daniel’s mother. (At least nominally – should could be a nun, and Daniel adopted.) What that reversal of the father/child dynamic of the show means is unknown.
And now the meat: Ben & Hawking working together. Wow. Now, lets get out of the way that they need not have always been allies. But if they have…
My Peace Treaty theory, The Rules – all of it is shot. If the two have worked together since before 815, then it explains numerous things on the show – Desmond was left alone because Hawking decreed he must not be interfered with; Kelvin was an Other and he and the food drops were staged as “Dharma” to keep Desmond in his fated role. And Ben then knew that there would be “pregnant women on that plane” not because he knew it was a trap, but because Hawking told him (thus Aaron moves back to being a pivotal plot mover). Ben just had no idea things would spiral so out of control after they arrived.
It also adds another winkle to just how dejected Ben is in the Season four finale – Ben gets exactly the help he needs when the anointed ones arrive (i.e. he will be present for whatever their great fate is), and next thing you know, he’s being cast out to protect those anointed ones. Nothing like dropping out of the cool kids’ club.
Of course, that leaves the biggest question of the season – why was Ben so eager to let them leave last season, when now he has to get them back. Was the freighter supposed to explode earlier, such that the chooper would have to go back to The Island (and thus never make it back?) Or was he given bad info in the past? This sudden change in motives makes no sense to me.
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All in all, this was the most intense of the season openers, raising dozens of questions and putting a massive chunk of the history in doubt. If the next 32 episodes will all be like this, hold onto your hats…

[...] Related reading: “Lostwatch” on TIME.com [...]

so…

I don’t know about this guys

I think some of the time travel stuff is a bit consistent with what’s already happened in previous seasons

For Example:

- The Losties need to return to the island as requested by Faraday to Desmond, Richard to Locke, etc. so they can become the people on the island’s CONSTANTS

- Richard Alpert never ages, and hasn’t since Locke was a kid… Maybe he has a constant already?

- It would be fitting if the two skeletons found in season 1, “Romeo and Juliet” were actually Sawyer and Juliet or more likely Charlotte and Faraday (as they both wanted to return to the island so badly)…. maybe they got stuck without constants and died in the past (By the way how can the Losties be Miles’, Faraday’s or Charlotte’s constants??)

Favorite two parts:

1. Obviously when Hurley throws the hot pocket at ben
2. Seeing the donkey-wheel on the picture shown to Faraday by the construction guy

That gave me a serious W . T . F . moment :D

Best moment? Without question, Sayid killing Intruder No. 2 by impaling him on the steak knives in the dishwasher. Sayid’s fights with Keamy and with the beach strike force were pretty awesome, but nothing beats tonight.

Liked seeing Frogurt make a brief, annoying return. Loved seeing more of Black Widow Sun. Yunjin Kim does such a great job of conveying Sun’s frightening, vengeful strength just by refusing to break eye contact. We saw it with Widmore and last season during her hostile takeover of Paik Industries. Quite a turnabout for a character who spent much of Season One looking at the ground, fulfilling every stereotype of the docile, submissive Asian woman.

I actually think that was a Richard of the future, the future being any point after the island initially moved “3 years ago”. When Richard tells Locke that he will tell him I think he means that from Locke’s perspective, not his own. At some point the island stops hopping around and settles back into 3 years ago time or some time shortly after that. At that point Locke will go find the others and tell Richard what happened. Shortly after that Richard will go off and find Locke, shot, heal him, and send him on his way.

This is also the only way for Richard to know that Locke had to die. That scene would have had to have taken place after the initial time jump.

maybe I need to watch them again, but I was kind of ‘meh’ about both episodes. There were great individual moments, like when Hurley told his mom what happened on the island and when Sawyer slapped Faraday, but all of the mythological/time stuff — which I normally love — just felt showy rather than necessary at this point. Sun FTW, though.

Richard of the future gave Locke the compass so that when Locke runs into Past Richard he will have proof that he knows him. I am guessing Richard and the Others can’t travel to a time where they could possibly run into their past selves. Because that would most certainly be taking time traveling rules to a different level.

And I am pretty sure that the skeletons in the first season were nicknamed “Adam and Eve.” And there was an article a few years back where the producers said they would be explained and they would prove that the writers knew what was happening in the story the whole time. It was after this interview where the time traveling theories really started to come out. Because a lot of people took that to mean that “Adam and Eve” might be Jack and Kate. Or Sawyer and Kate. Or maybe somebody else.

ahahah you’re right

it was adam and eve, not romeo and juliet
sorry that was at like 2 in the morning :P

@Tom – I’m going to have to rewatch (aren’t we all?) but I think the accents of the soldiers(?) who attacked Sawyer & Juliet were British. If Widmore did have control of the island in the having-an-army-on-it sense, they could certainly be his forces. Of course, last time he got mercenaries they weren’t British, but maybe he exhausted the supply with this mission ;)
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Also, I think the Others ARE along for the ride because they don’t move through time the way the Losties do, they “revert” back to where they were *whenever* the island is.
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@brendons – I think Frank is the Freighter Folks’ constant.
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Here’s a mind-bender for y’all: Richard gives Locke the compass to give to past-Richard, who later gives it to Locke… the compass exists only within a time-loop. So it was never “made”…
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I’m going to under-the-radar rewatch during work, more to come then…

Did anyone catch the Cuse/Lindleoff recap before the episode? C or L said something to the effect of “Sun thinks that Jin is dead…” I took this to mean that Jin is actually alive. Which would make sense seeing as his “death” never seemed complete somehow, even with the ship blowing up. Does this now imply that maybe he was in the time warp radius as well and is now skipping along, albeit in the waters off the island somehow?

Along the same lines of my Jin comment before, it would make a lot of Lost-sense taken in the context of how Cuse and Lindeloff are setting up Sun’s revenge tale – i.e. Sun is so angered over Jin’s death that she is now willing to “cooperate” with Widmore and goes very far with the plan, sells her soul, yadda, yadda, yadda, only to find out a season later that Jin is actually alive and she has bought the island the brink of destruction for nothing. No way is Jin dead.

Well then… where do we start? I’ll go off James’ bullets:
*I don’t think the Island moved. The place on earth where you can get to the Island (I really don’t want to use the word “portal”) moved, and apparently continues to move, but I don’t think the Island itself physically moved. (Note to anyone shifting around the Island: don’t sit on any tree stumps)
*Who’s shifting: I don’t think we have enough information to know much about the shifting. What we do know: Richard and his camp did not flash with Locke and the beach folk. Is there a camp of recruits (Ben’s people, if you will) who are flashing somewhere? Are we going to see Cindy and the kids flashing on another part of the Island? Or are they somehow protected in a way that Locke isn’t? Is that why Jacob makes lists?
*How many kinds of time travel? Good question. I’m sure the conversation will return to it :)
*Daniel is a great character, and I love it every time he talks, because he knows what’s going on. Everything from him at the Dharma station (that rock was cut away when Ben walked to the FDW, and something must have put the wheel there, right? Right?) to him with the magic golden fishing reel to figure out the bearing.
*Miles is also a great character. I can’t wait to find out more about what all he does. For example, how does he know the boar has been dead for 3 hours? Can he tell how ghosts age?
*My initial thought was the lawyers are somehow involved with Aaron’s father, though that gave way to assuming they’re either from Ben or Widmore. I’m thinking Widmore, though it’s hard to say.
*I was also very happy to hear Daniel talking about the Island
*I can’t help but both groan and grin at the 8:15 thing.
*I think the presence of the baby shows that the baby problem wasn’t always there. I think that’s a byproduct of the Incident. One detail I’ll need to look back and see: did the guy who interrupted the Flame orientation call him Chang or Candle/Halliwax/etc.?
*I’m okay with the “God help us all” dialogue, mainly because we get those other gems.
*I’m more than fine with Daniel introducing the flash-skipping stuff. I try to soak in every bit of dialogue he gets.
*There were a few times where I thought they were showing unnecessary flashbacks and stuff, but at the same time, I guess it still contributed to the episode.
*It would have been funny to have the Zodiac disappear while they’re riding.
*Do you think the flaming arrow attack was old-school Hostiles lead by Richard?
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Other points:
*I think the British sounding guys in what appeared to be military garb were guys who knew Sam Toomey (the guy who heard the numbers on the radio with Leonard, the guy from whom Hurley heard the numbers). Sam and Leonard heard the numbers, they sent some guys in that direction, and they never heard from them again.
*I’m not sure what I think about Hawking and Ben. (For the record, I also think that Hawking is Daniel’s mother) I hesitate to think that they’ve been long-standing allies. It’s possible Ben has known who she is for a long time, and when he moved the Island, she found him and told him what had to happen. That would explain his change of heart.
*The nature of the shifting is interesting (understatement of the century). If it took the O6 50 years to get back to the Island, in theory, that could be the next jump that the people on the Island shift to. If the O6 gets back to the Island within the 70 hours, the folks on the Island could be shifting for years before they coincide with the O6 returning. I highly doubt something like that would happen, but still, theoretically, it could work like that.
*It looks to me like Locke isn’t going to learn much more before getting off the Island. It seems very Lockeish to go to such huge lengths off little information. I’m not sure if Richard will know to go to John with the first aid kit because John tells him before leaving the Island, or if BenthamLocke is going to fill him in on everything when the O6 gets back to the Island.
*So… was the freighter stuck in the radius, but considered like the camp and stuck in that point in time, or was the freighter outside the radius, leaving Jin floating in the water? Do Widmore’s people go to the freighter after it explodes?
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So many more questions, but I suppose this is a good start. I probably should do some work today.

I didn’t think of the soldiers being Widmorian. That makes perfect sense, too… he’s always been saying everything Ben has he took from Widmore, and they were very possessive about the Island. Are those the first guns the Hostiles stole from people? We’ve never seen a flaming arrow attack, and in the Destiny Calls recap, L&C said that the Hostiles kill, take, and use. Maybe Widmore sells out his troops to lead the Hostiles the same way Ben sells out the DI to lead them. And by “sells out” I mean “kills.”

something curious i just remembered – Ben tells Jack to pack up the things he wants most because he’s not coming back.

I’m a little ‘meh’ about all the various time-travel plots (and I’m a huge sci-fi geek). I understand it’s going to be there, but I don’t necessarily want it to take over the entire show. It seems, at the very least, that it’s going to take over S5, which is a little disappointing to me. The biggest thing, which is always a problem when a show starts doing time-travel, are the inconsistencies.
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For example, Daniel goes off at length to explain how Sawyer going to the hatch and confronting Desmond (or whoever is currently there) is a waste of time b/c Sawyer never met Desmond in the past – since it didn’t happen before it can’t now. But then 2 minutes later Daniel does exactly that – he confronts Desmond when Desmond never remembered meeting Daniel before. How does that work? Then Desmond wakes up in the future and suddenly has a new ‘memory’ about meeting Daniel? Why couldn’t he have a new ‘memory’ about meeting Sawyer earlier? WTH is the difference? (Unless Daniel is somehow ‘special’ like Desmond – I’m w/ Tom Shaw that Hawking is Daniel’s mom b/c that was my immediate reaction. But I’m not sure what effect that would have.)
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-I’m curious about Charlotte. That part about her forgetting her mother’s maiden name reminded me about Daniel and the card/memory game he was playing on the beach last season. Obviously, he seems to know what’s happening to her. I’m not convinced its the same thing that Desmond and Minkowski experienced though. (As James said, there seem to be various forms of time travel.)
- I got lucky and guessed Ana Lucia right, but I never saw Ethan coming. I was waiting for Yemi to get out of the plane. That would have been cool.
- 70 hours? ‘Til what?
- Mrs. Hawking – if she is Daniel’s mother, and Desmond is supposed to find her at Oxford, it’s a little convenient she’s with Ben in LA, no?

Wait — crazy thought here.
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Is the whole season going to be 70 hours long?
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Follow me here: presumably (and this is admittedly perhaps a huge presumption), this season is about the Oceanic Six returning to the island. One would imagine that the return would happen close to the end of the season, with the final season being “saving” the island/the Losties/the Others/whatever.
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Ms. Hawking (wow, was that amazing to see her) just set Ben with a deadline — he’s got 70 hours to get them all back. We know that ALL of the Oceanic Six are in Los Angeles, thanks to Sun’s curious visit to see Kate (why, by the way, was she going to Los Angeles? Was that ever explained?).
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So does that mean that all of the action for the Oceanic Six this season takes place in 70 hours, while the island folks’ story goes on for however long they need? Did Cuse/Lindelof just add a “24-esque” ticking clock to the Oceanic Six? And if so, how AWESOME is that?

Oh, and I too need a code name.

@Chaddogg

I wouldn’t be to quick to assume that the whole season is about the Oceanic 6 getting back to the island. That was everyone expects. But I’ve read an interview with Damon and Carlton where they said that they might be getting back sooner than most of us expect. I think they will get back before. Every season of Lost starts out with two groups being separated. And they usually meet back up during the middle of the season. So I am going to predict that they make it back around episode 8 or 9.

@Chaddog- Sun’s being in LA confused me too. In the S4 finale, before she confronted Widmore, she was talking on the phone with Mother (or whomever was watching Ji Yeon). Didn’t she say she was finishing up her business in London and then flying right back to Seoul? Did she say she was making a pit-stop in LA? There didn’t seem to be any overarching purpose behind her wanting to see Kate (other than just to say hello). All the interesting stuff came AFTER Kate told her about the lawyers. (Who, BTW, either aren’t real lawyers or the PTB REALLY screwed up the legal stuff, again. “I can’t tell you my client.” Uh, it’s probably going to say right there on the subpoena buddy.)

@antilles13 – I’m not sure if you read Maureen Ryan’s interview with Cuse and Lindelof before the premier, but she posted the questions relating directly to what we’ve seen in season 5, and they address your inconsistency directly. According to them, based on what Desmond did at the end of S2 (I’m assuming they mean when he turned the failsafe key), and his other experiences, normal logic doesn’t apply to him. Remember, Daniel looked in his notebook, where there’s probably a note there that he and Desmond crossed paths (“If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will by MY constant”) at that skip of the space-time stone.
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@Chad – in the same interview, Cuse and Lindelof assure us that they’re not going to take the entire season getting the band back together and getting back to the Island. I suspect the 70 hours will be up relatively quickly for us (2 or 3 more episodes? Maybe 4?).

@antilles – Charlotte’s thing is not the same as Des or Minkowski, because she never blacks out during her “episodes,” and the nosebleeds came along later on in the process, too.

@antilles13 – Sun was probably in LA because Widmore wouldn’t let her go back to Seoul. He’s probably either using her to get O6ers on his side, or else Hawking is playing him and Ben, using both of them to get everyone together back on the Island. After all, if the universe explodes, Widmore won’t be able to use the Island :)

Regarding Charlotte’s nosebleeds, we’ve had hints that Charlotte may have grown up on the island — so presumably she is a) already extra-sensitive to all the weebly-wobbly time shifting or b) is going to get all nose-bloody when she’s in close time/space proximity to her former self, who at some point I presume we’ll meet frolicking amidst the Dharma barracks.

I wish we had a clearer sense of how ‘we’re all gonna die’ if the timeline goes all wonky. What is the nature of the threat here?

@ Dave – Sun was already on her way to LA when she met Widmore. So either she was going for business and after meeting Widmore, she changed plans… or she’s been up to something for some time.

One interesting note on the Lost:Origins special before the season premiere — at one point, Cuse and Lindelof were talking about how ghosts or dead people “appear” on the island, and they showed Hurley’s imaginary friend Dave.
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Did we know Dave was a ghost/dead? I just thought he was someone Hurley made-up in his head….

@Chad, I noticed a number of things in the recap episode like that where my ears perked up and I said, “Huh… I hadn’t assumed that as fact before.” Like when they said the Island wasn’t visible if you flew over it or looked from space… had that actually been declared in the show?
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Man, I wish I could watch this again right now. So many details!

Yes Chad, Ms. Hawking just gave the real world cast a 70 hour deadline. But where I don’t agree with you is that those 70 hours will encompass the entire season; that will just be the first “act”, and after those 70 hours, either the O6 will have jumped somewhere/when else, or the past will have changed (due to her interacting with Desmond) such that the deadline no longer applies.
Of course, 70 hours isn’t a whole lot of time to work with – will Sun have time to fly to Korea and back between then? Or is she willing to never see her daughter again if that is what it takes to get revenge?

Wow. I’m still taking everything in, I need to watch it again as soon as I get home from work.
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My favorite lines: “it. . . points north, John”; “Why is there a dead Pakistani on my couch?”
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@Dave: “Don’t sit on any tree trunks”. LOL!!!!!!
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Observations:
It was good seeing Hurley actually connect with his parents – his mom had never seemed to listen to him or take him seriously before, and his dad hadn’t had much of a chance to prove himself worthy of Hurley’s trust/respect. But both of his parents really came through for him in this episode – his dad lied to the cops and smuggled fugitives, his mom listened and accepted his seriously crazy-sounding story. Both parents took him seriously and had his back – and at a point where other parents we’ve seen would have turned the kid over to the cops (e.g. Kate’s Mom). We don’t often see scenes of families coming together like that on this show, and I think this is a defining moment in Hurley’s healing process. No theory-spinning, just an observation
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Ben and Sayid’s breakup – I think Sayid must have figured out that he was being a total tool to Ben’s whims and realized that he had been a tool serving others for far too long.
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Theories:
The more I think about it, the more I like the Doc Jensen theory that “You’re not supposed to raise him” and “Don’t you dare bring him back” are talking about Locke.
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I very much believe that Ben is behind Operation Spook Kate. He wants her vulnerable, he wants her scared, he wants her to want to go someplace where nobody could get to her and Aaron. He wants her to call Jack, furthering the goal of Getting the Band Back Together. His plan almost worked. And the attack on Sayid – again, a nonlethal attack that would necessitate Hurley calling Jack. Again, sounds like a Ben move to me. And again, it almost worked.
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The island moving – I really like the idea that mutchtastic posted above about the Island being in a state like Desmond was in The Constant, and possibly needing a Constant itself. There is also the question of whether the on-island folks will be needing constants at some point in this process (Charlotte being the most obvious candidate, with the nosebleeding, but Antilles makes an excellent point about her memory issues possibly being more like the ones Daniel experienced with the card trick).
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So, was Desmond’s “remembering” the new-old memory the same thing that happened to Faraday when he took the notion to go through his notebook to find the “Desmond Hume will be my constant” note? That’s how I took it, that the flashing around created a new memory that was then incorporated into the future consciousness of the not-then-flashing person? My head hurts. This is getting long. More later.

Weird Pierre Chang/Marvin Candle note: in the first scene, both of his arms were working, whereas in some of the Orientation videos we’ve seen him have an apparent prosthetic left arm.
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Which got me to wondering about Juliet and the British(?) soldiers — are THEY the people that cutoff Chang/Candle’s arm? Would that place the Losties far back in time? Like 1970s?

@Dave – I know normal logic doesn’t apply to Desmond, but that’s the other side of the equation. I guess my question is, what’s the difference between Sawyer confronting Desmond and Daniel confronting Desmond? One apparently will make no difference (according to Daniel), but the other is apparently going to save them? They only answer I can come up with is that the rules don’t apply to Daniel either, but that doesn’t sit right.
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Regarding, Charlotte, I’m w/ you Matt. She’s getting the nosebleeds, but it seems in an entirely different way (or for a different reason), since it was her first symptom, as opposed to Daniel and Minkowski’s seventh or eighth symptom. @profdante – I wonder if we’ll ever see someone running into their past or future selves. When Richard came out of the jungle and found Locke I was thinking it was going to be Locke coming out and seeing himself.
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Something I completely forgot to mention. Someone yesterday (I think profdante) brought up Claire’s warning – “Don’t bring him back!” – and how that might not mean Aaron. I responded that I thought it meant Ben, and yesterday’s episodes I thought gave more evidence for that theory. 1) Someone on the Island (I think Richard told Locke, but my memory is fuzzy), that the others have to come back in order to stop the time-shifting. 2) As a consequence of turning the FDW, Ben can’t come back. Those two things are contradictory in a way – the “others” coming back can’t include Ben. Ben is saying to Jack that they all have to come back, but b/c of that contradiction Ben must just be along for the ride. But why is Hawking helping him? Is the real ‘war’ here not Ben vs. Widmore, but Jacob vs. Hawking?

@Chad – the scene we saw was before he met Daniel. The comic con scene showed him rubbing his hand, presumably after he met Daniel. I suspect that he lost his hand in the Incident, which resulted in the Swan being built.
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Re: the British soldiers – Matt’s suggestion that those soldiers are Widmorian really makes perfect sense to me. Look at the uniforms and weapons they’re using. I’m hardly a history expert, but the first thing I thought was WWII/Korean War era. Widmore isn’t quite that old, but at the same time, age is a strange thing when it comes to the Island.

@Chaddog- OMG, I completely forgot about Candle’s arm. And the significance of him and his wife having a baby there on the island never even occurred to me until James brought it up. There is SO MUCH STUFF in this show you have to pay attention to. I’m with shara, my head hurts.

Re Daniel and Sawyer and Desmond – I think that Faraday thought that if anyone contacted Hatch Desmond it should be him – because he and Desmond were already linked, because Desmond is his Constant, because they had already had one time-bending interaction that worked out OK on all sides. Maybe Faraday was wanting to find his Constant to see if that settled anything out. Also, Faraday knowing more than Sawyer about what was really going on with the island might have made Faraday think he could be trusted to handle the time-bending interaction responsibly, whereas the physics-ally challenged Sawyer could not be.

The reason Desmond knocked on the door is because he wrote himself a note in his journal to knock on the hatch door. He wasn’t going to do anything until he took out his journal.

Re: Candle’s arm. Anyone remember which orientation videos he had the prosthetic? Last night he was recording #2. Assuming they made them in order, that would suggest he lost the arm shortly thereafter. Maybe some type of accident involving construction of the Orchid station resulting from the mysterious power and the FDW? And did anyone notice the giant structure they were building that was supposed to be the Orchid station? When we saw the Orchid last season it wasn’t nearly that size – it wasn’t even two stories. So what happened to the Orchid before our Losties got there?

@Dave — I don’t think the fact that the soldiers threatened to cut off Juliet’s hand and Candle losing a hand are unrelated. I mean, WHY cut off her hand? And in an episode (okay, two-episodes) where we already saw the only one-armed man in the show’s mythology?

@Dave – that was the note we never saw right? I think your interpretation is right, but I wonder what that note actually said. I mean, you guys are right that Daniel knocking on the door certainly serves a greater purpose and was necessary. I just didn’t like the fact that he did right after telling Sawyer knocking on the door was a waste of time. There had to be some other way to get that message across (that you can’t change what already happened). Maybe it’s not an inconsistency, but it does seem like weak story-telling to me, something that has been few and far between on this show. But you always run into these types of problems with time-travel plotlines, which is my larger concern.

Antilles, I don’t think Faraday’s speech to Sawyer at the hatch door was necessarily true. I think he just wanted Sawyer and the rest of the group to leave so he could talk to Desmond alone. … It’s very hard in this show to figure out when characters are lying and when they’re explaining a truth as conceived by the PTB. I think this was the former. I might be wrong.

OK, a question that will likely make no sense:
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So, let me get this straight: Hatch Desmond did NOT recognize Faraday, even though at THAT point in linear time his past self (from 1996) should already have gone to visit Faraday at Oxford. However (still at THAT point in linear time), FUTURE Desmond hadn’t yet had the flashes back to his past and hadn’t needed to find a constant, so his past self (from 1996) wouldn’t have gone through the Faraday Experience yet. So, is this proof that the past CAN be changed by flashing folks, regardless of what Ms. Hawking says, or is this just evidence that Desmond continues to be special? My mind isn’t properly wrapped around this yet, so I have no idea if that even makes any sense. . .

I am starting to think that we might go back in time thousands of years in one episode to explain the foot with 4 toes.

@Various – Yes, in the Comic Con footage, Candle had two arms and a baby; that he had them tonight (earlier than that footage) isn’t a surprise. (Although the comments I’ve seen that say Miles is his kid do throw me – why have both Charlotte & Miles’ origins be in the DI-era Island?)
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As to the uniformed assailants: I’m no military expert either, but their weapons and uniforms seem to limit them to being between WW2 and the 80s, leaning earlier.
But, again, didn’t we see Yemi’s plane in the tree after the last time jump – which limits them to the 80s?
(Yes, its possible that Yemi’s plane and/or the assailants time traveled like the freighter’s doctor’s corpse did. But Ethan was there when the plane landed, which means that both parties are there only after Ethan arrived on The Island- unless he’s also using Richard’s anti-aging cream, that would seem to limit it to the 80s or later.)

@Chaddog – so, would that indicate that the “incident” had caused the island to become unstuck, taking Candle with it to the past where he gets his hand cut off?

Or were the hand-cutters contemporary to Dharma? I really need to rewatch.

@Chaddogg — I had the same thought as you about Hurley’s friend Dave, but I don’t think it necessarily means he’s dead. Are all the island “ghosts” dead? Walt and, presumably, Kate’s horse were just off the island, not dead.

Via Lostpedia, Chang had use of his arm in the Pearl video (5), but not the Swan (3) and Flame videos.
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@Chad – I think the two are totally unrelated. The Dharma folks were there in the 70′s. We saw the Losties get attacked by flaming arrows, presumably from the Hostiles, and then they got picked up by soldiers in what appeared to be WWII or Korean War era flight suits (and matching weapons). We saw Chang rubbing his hand in the Comic Con video, and so I think Chang losing his hand is related to the Incident.
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Side note: what if Chang’s baby is Miles?

@shara — or that the soldiers are from the same time as Candle….although Tom Shaw makes a good point that the soldiers would seem to be from AFTER Yemi’s plane crashed, making them in the late 1990s (I believe that’s when Yemi’s plane crash supposedly happened).

@Could an option be that the soldiers who cut off hands had also became unstuck in time at some point, explaining their anachronistic presence? If the island had been unstuck in time multiple times, then it seems like it would be possible for groups from multiple different times to interact at once (while the presence of both would be simultaneously anachronistic). Or that the soldiers who cut off hands arrived at the island through the wrong bearing, putting them on the island at a Future-for-Them date?

@Dave – if Miles is Chang’s baby, then perhaps Miles’s proximity to the “incident” was what gave him his psychic-esque abilities?

@Shara: Look here at Lindelof’s answer:
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2009/01/lost-abc-tv-ben-linus-time-sawyer.html#more
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Basically, it seems that the showrunners are saying that Desmond’s consciousness has a permanent (safe) case of Constant-pox as a result of the Season 2 finale Hatch mess, not the season 4 Island-freighter trip: All his “visions” he had in season 3 were “real”; they were memories he had of futures that now no longer happened.
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Essentially, only Desmond’s memories are exempted from the no-changing the past rule. Although it is interesting that Desmond only retroactively gets that information at the same point as Daniel – if Daniel, two days from now for him, tells Desmond something else, even if it happened in the 80s, it seems that Desmond won’t “remember” that until two days from now.

As a brit, I really hope that isn’t a british accent that soldier was doing, but, I guess it could be. We don’t really sound like that, do we?
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I’ve decided with regards to time travel that Faraday’s speech about not being able to change the past is wrong. Weather he was intentionally being dishonest or not I’m less certain.
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Why do I think he was wrong? Because if you cannot change the past then you cannot change the future (cause ya know, in the relative nature of time the future is just the further future’s past). So, you cannot change the future implies a level of predestination, but if the future is preordained no way would Ms. Hawking be freaking out and spitting cliche dialogue. Maybe she knows the future is bad is actively trying to change it, and enlisted Ben’s help. Making Ben an actual “good guy”.
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This means that Ms. Hawking wasn’t trying to help or enlighten Desmond so much as keep him on the path that best suited her needs?

So many questions…although I’m going to take a stab that we did get two answers (sorry if someone already mentioned this before, haven’t had time to read all the comments):
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1) I’m guessing we have the answer to the whispers in the jungle, its our time traveling losties.
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2) I think we also know how at the season 3 finale, Locke got from shot in a ditch to across the island thowing a knife in Naomi’s back, again, the knife thrower Locke was the time traveling Locke.

@yogi – the locke that killed naomi hadn’t yet traveled through time, he’s just damned good and throwing knives into people.

@Tom Shaw – I love the phrase “constant pox”. So, what about the “Charlie dies so Claire and the baby will get on the helicoptor” vision of the future that Desmond had? He did what he needed to do, and Charlie died, and Claire may or may not even be alive anymore. Does that cast any doubt on the legitimacy of the future visions, or does it just indicate that the path of the future was never really under Desmond’s control anyway?
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Another thought. I rewatched the Ms. Hawking episode before the premiere, and was surprised in hindsight how much she reminded me of Ben in the way that she talks – authoritative, slightly resigned, mysterious, as if she has all the answers, manipulative of emotions. Then as I watched the premiere, and listened to Ben talk to Hurley about how totally awesome it would be to go back to the island, the similarities hit me again – when Ms. Hawking appealed to Desmond, it seemed that the thing that resonated most strongly was her saying “its the only truly great thing you will ever do” – she appealed to what he wanted most, to do something great. And that’s the same thing that Ben did when he was appealing to Hurley – telling him that the island was the answer to the thing that he wanted most (to be honest, to not have to lie or feel guilty, etc). I was not at all surprised to find them working together, and it made me think of what Ms. Hawking had said to Desmond: something like “if you don’t go to the island and push that button, all of US will die”, never really specifying who US was. It sounds a lot like there are (at least) two groups with knowledge of future events (through flashes, time travel, or whatever) competing over two possible versions of the future, each determined (or determined to convince the players in the past) that their course is “destiny”. Or one trying to change things, and the other trying to protect the original timeline.

@Ashman – I’m definitely on board with that line of thinking!

I wanted to throw something out that I haven’t seen mentioned yet.
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We’ve naturally assumed up until now that Richard is some kind of immortal, but isn’t it becoming more and more likely that he’s a time traveler?
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Put the pieces together for a sec. Present Richard finds Locke and tells him “the next time I see you, I won’t know you – give me this compass.”
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Okay, great, buuuuut didn’t Richard always know Locke? Wasn’t he there for his birth? For that specialty test with the knife??
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Unless, of course, the Richard that witnessed Locke’s birth was the present Richard who will later be throttled back in time to be able to witness Locke’s birth and only know of him after the fact of actually meeting him on the island. Come to think of it – wasn’t one of Richard’s items that he showed to kid Locke a compass??
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I definitely believe Richard is a time traveler now and NOT an immortal, but it might be tricky to pin down at what time Richard jumps back to witness Locke’s birth. Does he jump back after the crash? Or maybe he jumps back after Locke “re-gives” him the compass when Locke presumably bumps into him next in the past.
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Confusing to say the least, but maybe Richard wanted kid Locke to pick that compass as proof that he was unstuck in time, and not necessarily some kind of chosen one.

For some reason, it’s sticking out to me that we didn’t see Locke for a couple flashes, and so the flaming arrow attack was not in the same now as Locke seeing the plane. Though, as we’ve all been saying today, I’d really like to see the episode a couple more times to get a better hold on all these details.

I still hesitate to call Richard immortal, though I still consider him an ageless wonder. I think we’ll find other items of Locke’s that past-Richard is going to look for. If future-Richard was going back in time, he would know that he couldn’t recruit Locke, so then he wouldn’t have looked so hopeful when he tried to recruit him.

Unless you CAN change the past.

I know Daniel says you can’t, but don’t tell John Locke what he can and can’t do.

Okay, obvious/weird question, but — if the soldiers at the end had guns (of the WWII variety or otherwise), why were they shooting flaming arrows?

@chad – I think the arrows were from the Others (or at this point, are they the Hostiles?). But they also have guns, so still, what gives?

I never really thought of Richard as an immortal. If figured it has something to do with the healing properties of the island keeping him in a healthy state. I thought for a while that there might be multiple Richards, some sort of island manifestation, but now it is feeling more and more likely that he is an individual who somehow has managed to harness the time travelling abilities of the island.
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Maybe Richard is trapped in time skipping around and has been for a while and he is trying to manipulate John/Ben in order to free himself? Maybe Ms. Hawking has a relationship to Richard and is trying to help her son?
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Hawking as Farraday’s mum feels to obvious.
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Argle Bargle

@Chaddog and Matt – I am leaning towards the idea that the Losties are not the only ones who have ridden the island while its unstuck in time, and that – while its in that state – they are encountering others (not necessarily Others) who had ridden the unstuck-in-time island at a different time.

Anyone have any guesses about what was in the box Ben took out of the vent and put in his bag?
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Also, it occurs to me thinking of last night’s episodes and the S4 finale that Ben must have known this was going to happen. He let the Oceanic 6 escape – he told Kate and Sayid the helicopter was theirs and they were free to go (Richard’s promised reward). So, he freely let them leave after going to all of that effort the previous 2 seasons to keep them there, and this was after he learned that Jacob was kicking him off the Island. The O6 must have been his plan to get back all along – he knew the Island would still need them.

@Shara, Chad, and Matt – based on the era, I think the soldiers had guns, but it was before the Hostiles encountered anyone with guns, so they had never taken anyone’s guns away.

My favorite part was definitely Neil Frogurt’s flaming arrow. My wife had been complaining about him and I explained that she needn’t worry because he was clearly a red shirt. And lo and behold, he was actually wearing a red shirt and then he died. It made me seem pretty smart.
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It was my understanding that Sawyer can’t talk to Desmond because the first time they meet is after the 815 crash. If they were to meet in the past, it would mess up the future meeting which has already occurred.

The problem there, tyrantking, is that if Sawyer cannot meet Desmond because they haven’t met, then Locke should not be able to meet Ethan (because they also haven’t yet met).
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Locke did meet Ethan, therefore, Sawyer could have met Desmond, which implies that Faraday is wrong with regards to the inability to change things. I just cannot decide if he is purposefully dishonest or not.

@ashman – I wonder if Ethan did recognize Locke when he met him after the plane crash and we just don’t know it (yet). Or if Ethan would only have suddenly “remembered” meeting Locke if he had still been alive after the island got unstuck…

@Ashman – it’s never shown that Ethan had never met Locke before when the plane crashed. therefore, Locke was *supposed* to meet precrash Ethan, but Sawyer could only meet postcrash Desmond.
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Daniel’s analogy of time as a string was all well and good, but once you throw time-travel into the equation, that string becomes twisted and looped and stacked upon itself. That, for me at least, is the easiest way to visualize things.

@antilles – watching the “Destiny Calls” catch-up, I was struck by Ben’s look when he let Kate & Sayid go. I think you’re definitely on to something.

I can’t believe nobody seems to have noticed that wry smile from Ana Lucia when she told Hurley to stay away from the police. Y’all know that’s why Michelle Rodriguez was killed-off the cast, right?

Charlottes nosebleed seems to suggest to me that the way the Losties’ brand of time travel works has an opposite effect on the way that Desmond’s conciousness brand of time travel worked. As it has been hinted at, Charlotte was probably born on the Island, therefore, her conciousness has been on the Island before. Now she is one of the unstuck-in-time Losties, there are two Charlotte-conciousness’ floating around the Island’s seperate-from-the-rest-of-the-world-time-sphere of past/present/future. So her unstuck-in-time self keeps flitting in between conciousness’. As she has no singular, grounding conciousness her body cannot function (nosebleed), whereas the nosebleeds from The Constant were as a result of they’re conciousness not having a physical grounding point (the titular constant).

@chad re: guns/arrows thing

I think that they were two seperate groups. The British gunmen could possibly be linked to Widmore’s apparent previous presence on the Island. The flaming arrow-ers were probably the Hostiles who were just dealing with the threat of the British gunmen, they happened upon the Losties and assumed they were part of that group, and the British gunmen happened upon the Losties and assumed they were the Hostiles. It’s a bit of a stretch, and for it to work they would’ve had to land at the point where the Hostiles and the British gunmen group first meet. It’s a tough call, but I think it doesn’t make sense that for there to have been two weapons and one group.

Ok, there’s a lot of talk about Sawyer-Desmond and Locke-Ethan. Here’s how I see it, and I think I’m in line with the way the Lost universe works. Because Sawyer, Juliet, et. al. never met Desmond in the past when they were, they could have kept banging and banging and banging, and for whatever reason, Desmond would have never come out (either he didn’t hear, or he ignored it, or he was in a coma, or whatever). Daniel had something in his notebook telling him that he and Desmond did meet, and so, for whatever reason, Desmond would come to the door for Daniel. With Locke and Ethan, they always met when they did. Ethan could have completely recognized Locke from the very first moment he saw him post-crash. Since he was playing a part, he wouldn’t let on, but in his communication with Ben, he would have said, “Ok, dude. This is messed up.” Other people in the crash got healed, and the Others weren’t looking to them to lead them.

i can’t wait until the losties go back in time and meet pregnant Rousseau and her science expedition. She’s crazy enough that she wouldn’t remember them, so it might work.

@Dave — I think you’re dead-on about Desmond-Daniel-Sawyer. In fact, we KNOW that Desmond met Daniel BEFORE getting on the island, because of “The Constant” — Desmond and Daniel met at Oxford where Desmond learned about having a Constant, and Daniel’s notebook would have confirmed that.
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What is interesting, though, is the Ethan-Locke interaction, though I think you may have gotten it right — Ethan just acts as if he had never met John before….or maybe that’s why the Others know he is “special”? Because Ethan said “this is the guy I shot way back when who disappeared, and now he’s back”?
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One other interesting theory that goes by the wayside if you think the first scene of the episode was a flash of Daniel time-jumping — is it possible that Daniel and Alpert are somehow related, in that neither age?
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As for questions — why did the Other NOT leap in time with Locke? I mean, some of them (Cindy, the kids) are indeed ex-815ers, so why wouldn’t they have been taken along for the time-travel ride with John?

Wow, was I the only one who wasn’t feeling last night’s season premiere? Maybe I had my expectations set really high, but there were so many moments that were ridiculously melodramtic. Like the flaming arrows of fire. And Hurley blubbering to his mother about the island. And I happen to love Hurley!

I guess the problem is, I was one of those “Lost” fans who loved “Lost” because the science fiction/fantasy stuff was so ambivalent. It didn’t feel like “Battlestar Galatica” or “Star Trek”. It attempted to be grounded in “reality.” I suppose it was inevitable that the writers would have to dive into the deep end, into “legit” sci-fi, so I guess I shouldn’t be so distraught. But I miss all the speculation and suspense of the first few seasons. The feeling that somehow all the “weirdness” could all be rationally explained.

And also, I kind of miss the flashbacks. Another component about “Lost” that I loved was the exploration of the characters, their family histories,their backgrounds, as a Nigerian, I was particularly interested to see how the set designers created Nigeria, England, and South Korea etc. It will be sad if, in the writers’ attempts to explain all the craziness going on, they forget to continue to develop the characters and introduce new fascinating ones. But I’m still excited.

@Chad – I thought about Locke being the only one shifting, and I’ve got three possible solutions. Solution 1: it looked like the people Locke got to were Richard’s people. Maybe Richard’s people are all ageless wonders and tied to the Island. Since we didn’t see Cindy and the kids there after the Orchid, they could very well be in another part of the Island, shifting and going nuts. Solution 2: by being chosen by Jacob, Cindy and the kids (and, of course, other 815ers taken by the Others) were brought into the Other fold, and are thus tied safely to the present.
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I like Solution 3 the best: season 1 was all about the characters being interconnected. Off the top of my head, I’m going from Hurley to Locke to Sayid to Desmond(s2) to Jack to Sawyer to Kate, and that’s not counting the spider webbing over to other connections. All these people are intertwined somehow, and when the O6 left, it all got screwed up. The Others are their group. When Juliet joined the Losties, she became part of their fabric. Now, that fabric of people was drawn together by the Island into a tight weave. Given the nature of people, the various fabrics can stretch and twist, and even be added to or removed from, but because the FDW was turned and the portal to the Island moved while parts of the 815 fabric were both inside and out, things got messed up. The fabric didn’t tear, because if it did, the group would just be 2 different groups; since that fabric was still on either side of the old portal to the Island, the people still on the Island can’t be anchored to one time until they’re all together again.
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I’ll be honest, at the start of the post I only had the first 2 solutions, but the third one just kept making more and more sense the more I typed. I’m positive it makes way more sense in my head than I can put into words.

I agree that it’s not clear why certain people are time-jumping and why not Others. Cindy is the interesting case, I agree. If it is simply a matter of being ‘chosen’ and being part of the Island (like Richard, presumably), then Locke shouldn’t have jumped. Apparently he’s still not special enough, which is the story of his life, I suppose.
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also, is it the Island that’s jumping through time or our group of Losties? To put it another way, which is the record and which is the needle?

@Chaddogg — Aren’t most of the Others at “The Temple”? I’m wondering if that hatch (or whatever it is) has some properties that shield it from some of the weirder time/space shifts.
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Can someone who’s seen Season 2 recently answer a question for me? What was the deal with Kelvin at the Swan station? He had to have been on the island when Daniel knocked on the station door because he was there when Desmond arrived, and didn’t leave until right before the 815 crash (of course, his murder precipitated it). Either he was catching some shut-eye when Daniel came a-knocking, or (as I seem to remember) he was out exploring the island/fixing up Desmond’s sail boat.
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As far as the Desmond/Daniel issue goes, the first time Desmond met Daniel was at Oxford in the ’90s. The second time was at the Swan station door, where it’s possible that Desmond was too freaked out to recognize him (maybe?). Did they physically meet in Season 4? I don’t remember, I think it might be possible that Desmond took off for the freighter before he actually physically “met” him.

@profdante – I don’t think the Island itself has moved at all. The location that Widmore sent the freighter to was just the current open path to the Island (I hate calling it a portal, but it’s the best word). When Ben turned the Frozen Donkey Wheel, he caused that portal to close and another to open (maybe in October of ’05, when he appeared again). Going off my theory in my last post, the on-Island Losties can’t get anchored to the new portal, because they have such strong connections to the O6. The Losties are the needle jumping around time (the record) on the Island (the record player?).

@jimmycrack — Good line of thought on the number of times Desmond and Daniel have actually seen each other, since they talked on the satellite phone through most of their S4 interaction. They did, though, meet at the helicopter before Frank brought Sayid and Desmond and Naomi’s body to the freighter the first time. D&D met again (briefly) when Daniel dropped off Sun, Jin and the first boatload of Zodiac redshirts at the freighter.

@jcrhoo — Hmm. Yeah, I guess you’re right. Desmond not remembering Daniel does seem to contradict the rules as they’ve been defined. Maybe it can be chalked up to Desmond’s “specialness”.

@jimmycrack — Yeah, I am fully prepared to treat Desmond as a unique case. With the hatch explosion and all, we shouldn’t expect his experience to match that of the “regular” time travelers.

[...] has its own Wiki. It has its own obsessive columnists at Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly. Hell, Stephen King loves this show. And we all know how I feel about [...]

OK, so I’m rewatching The Lie, and back to wondering about Sun – particularly wondering about the scene with Kate and Sun where Kate asks Sun why she’s in LA and she says “I have some [small deliberate pause] business to attend to”. So what would have been in LA for her to do (that would have necessitated a suspicious pause before she said that)? Who do we know that is in LA at that same time, with whom she conceivably be having a secret meeting?
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Ben.
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My money is on Ben coming to Sun and informing her that Jin is alive on the island, and that the island is under threat from Widmore, and enlisting her help in getting everyone back to the island and getting close to Widmore – I’m always suspicious when any character on this show tries to manipulate another person to do something by telling him/her exactly what they most want to hear (like I was saying about Ben and Ms. Hawking above), and Sun telling Widmore that she wants to help him kill Ben would be exactly what Widmore wants to hear. She gets him to bite, she gets inside information – I’d bet she’s the kind of lady who would keep her enemies closer, and knowing that she had to protect Jin would give her the grim determination that she has shown off-island.
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And, Sun’s warning to Kate that “they want Aaron” and she needs to “take care of” Aaron just sounded like she was manipulating Kate for a particular focus – both distracting her from the possibility of her being spooked by the Back to the Island team (which should have been obvious to two smart ladies used to these ruses, who had just heard Bentham’s entreaties that they must return), and hitting on her worst fear – that someone was trying to hurt or take Aaron – making Kate more likely to view a return trip to the island as a necessary means of safe escape, rather than, like, the worst thing ever.
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Yup. Sun is in league with Ben and double-agenting Widmore. I’m calling this the Sun Is A Spooky Ninja Theory.

Plus when Ben is whining to Ms. Hawking about “losing Reyes tonite” to the cops, he doesn’t mention “Sun freaking hates me and wants me dead, so we can count her out too”. Not that that means anything, but if he’s just got 70 hours and major obstacles, I’d count an angry rich widow with a blood vendetta as at least as much of a challenge as a crazy dude in jail.

This may never get read since its so late, but I just got done re-watching the episodes and I have a whole new hail of bullets:
- Production error – probably not relevant at all: after Richard heals Locke and Locke flashes away, Locke is back in the daylight all alone. There is a shot of the jungle, and you can see someone moving out there. The person never shows himself/herself, which is why I’m guessing it’s a production error (cameraman or something), but I thought I’d note it anyway since I didn’t see it on Lostpedia.
- Maybe production error, or maybe relevant: Hurley and Ana-Lucia. This one is blatant if you’re looking for things, but I haven’t seen anyone note it. Look closely, the background before the Ana-Lucia traffic stop is drastically different than the background afterwards. It’s almost like Hugo blacked out or something. Before he pulled over, he was on a busy four-lane road. After, he seemed to be in a more residential area (apartments, at least), and it was only a two-lane road. Also, the stoplight behind him is gone. It’s obviously a different road. Finally, the car behind him appears to be the same blue truck, but the license plates are different numbers (they aren’t even close – it’s a different plate). I have no idea if this was on purpose, but I would think it has to be.
- When they meet in LA and Kate tells Sun about the lawyers, Sun tells Kate she has to “take care of them.” What good does that do? Killing the lawyers means nothing if you don’t get to the people behind the lawyers. As James would say, please to explain.
-The flaming arrow attack. Whomever launched the arrows, how did they know our Losties were even there? Ethan knew someone was there b/c he saw the plane crash, and Richard knew Locke would be there b/c Locke tells him sometime in the future (but, how the hell would Locke have known what day it was?). The Losties flashed, and appeared at a different time, there was no reason for anyone to know they were there.
-After the arrow attack, Sawyer and Juliet are walking through the jungle (before Jones and his crew show up). Sawyer says they have to get to the creek and meet up with the others. When exactly did everyone agree that in the event of a flaming arrow attack they would meet at the creek??
- Those were just minor complaints – wholes in the story that are probably irrelevant. No biggie. This one actually confused me. When her comes clean to his mom, he mentioned the chopper crash, then says, “By then there were six of us . . .[pause] that part’s true.” Um, no it isn’t. There were eight on the raft – the O6 plus Frank and Desmond. Why is Hurley going out of his way to protect Frank and Desmond, b/c that seems to be what he’s doing. He pauses, looks directly at his mom, and says “that part’s true,” when it clearly wasn’t.
- I think someone already mentioned this, but at the end of S4 Richard definately saw the white light before the time-shift. Now he doesn’t seem to notice it at all.
- They took a pciture of Hurley w/ the gun, but 2 of three people didn’t die by gunshot wounds (the two at the location where teh picture was taken).

@antilles – the in-show rational is probably something like hurley threatened the guy with a gun and pushed him off. weapons don’t just hurt, they also threaten (remember that, kids)

@shara – do we know that ben knows that sun (lies that she?) hates him?

Hey antilles13! I’m still up, I had TOTALLY missed the whole road switcharoo. Good catch, dude. Reminds me of when Miles was walking upstairs and the pictures were one way, and he came back down and the pictures had totally changed up (I had totally missed that one, too, before some clever person pointed it out!).
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I thought Sun told her to “take care of him”, meaning Aaron (see my above comment), not “of them” like kill the lawyers.
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About the Hurley thing – I think that this was just an example of the media jumping the gun, sensationalizing a story before all the facts (like autopsies) were in.

@Matt- next you’re going to tell me that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. :) You’re right – the third guy Sayid killed at Santa Rosa died by gunshot anyway, and the gun is certainly enough to want to question Hurley anyway.

@shara- in addition to what Matt said, how would Ben know whether Jin is alive or not, since he’s never been back to the island and can’t get back. Yes, he has this Jill chick and a few friends, but if they knew what was currently happening on the island wouldn’t they be able to get him back w/out the need for the O6? Plus, Ben asked Jack if he knew what happened after they left (though that could be Ben playing games). I’m under the assumption Ben doesn’t know what’s happening on the Island since he left.

@Matt – we don’t know that ben knows that sun hates him :) He may have no idea, although it seems like he would be doing some homework on what was up with the folks he was trying to round up, at least keeping an eye on them (his spies could have reported her meetings with Widmore, and he could have drawn whatever conclusions he thought appropriate from that). But it would be an excellent mutually-agreed-upon cover if she was indeed doubleagenting Widmore.

I forgot to point this out in my hail of bullets. So people have been theorizing that Miles is Pierre Chang’s kid. Don’t know where that started from (or if I agree – I really don’t have any idea who the kid may be), but this is interesting. The actress that plays Dr. Chang’s wife, who we first saw in the premiere, used to be a frequent character on Star Trek (first TNG and then DS9). On the show(s) she was married to a man named Miles. I’m just sayin’…

(I love this stuff)

@Antilles – I am, of course, assuming that Ben has a wider network that we have seen – which could totally be wrong, and also assuming that Ben was playing games about not knowing what happened – which could totally be wrong. But both fall under my general rule of not taking anything that Ben reveals at face value. He has had some knowledge of future events before (from whatever sources), so even if he doesn’t have on-island contacts now he possibly could have learned it before he left.

Or, he could have lied to Sun. Just out and out lied to get her on his side – I could totally believe him capable of lying as a means to an end.

@shara – I’ll buy that. One more thing about Ben – he seemed to me to give a great deal of deference to Ms. Hawking, showing her a lot of respect, moreso than any other character (including Jacob).

@antilles: yeah, that was interesting for ben to be so submissive to someone else calling the shots. And she did seem to be calling the shots – or at least calling them as she sees them, aka being the one with future insight and therefore the one relating the parameters within which Ben must work (although no idea if we’re talking her trying to protect the integrity of a predestined timeline or just trying to steer things in a chosen direction for unknown reasons).

@antilles & Matt – one more thought, if Ben does have Mrs. Hawking feeding him info, she could quite conceivably have access to information about Jin (since we know so very little about who she actually is and what kind of abilities of perception or information sources she might have).

[...] SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, microwave a Hot Pocket and watch last night’s Lost First Aid News [...]

“-After the arrow attack, Sawyer and Juliet are walking through the jungle (before Jones and his crew show up). Sawyer says they have to get to the creek and meet up with the others. When exactly did everyone agree that in the event of a flaming arrow attack they would meet at the creek??”
`
When the hail of arrows came, Sawyer called out for everyone to meet at the creek. Then Juliet started making fun of him for using that destination, as it’s not exactly one small location.

Things I am (pretty) sure of:

- Sun is setting up Kate. She sent the lawyers to Kate’s house and is trying to make Kate think it was Ben and that he is trying to take Aaron away so Kate will go after Ben for her. Either that or she told Widmore to go after her. Her “bizness” in LA was simply to meet Kate and plant the seed.

- Mr (Dr.) Chang could be the “R.C” printed on Naomi and Elsa’s bracelet. My current theory is Chang will eventually be revealed as the “Economist” and mastermind behind evil goings on. .. perhaps revealed as a bizness partner with Widmore. Also, i believe there is a relationship between Chang and Paik.

- Miles/Daniel/Charlotte were all on the island before which is why they were chosen for the mission – Miles is probably Changs child and something happened to him on the island that gave him the power to sense the dead. M/D/C all at some point or another insist on staying on the island.

- The island has been inhabited since Ancient Egypt, hence the Pharoah like statue, hieroglyphics in caves/hatch/etc., and transporting into the desert, finding polar bear remains in the desert, etc., and also the connection in Lost story lines to the story of Ra the Sun God in ancient egypt mythology.

The titles that tell us “Three Years Ago” –
.
Important information or the result of a network note to explain things for new watchers? Discuss.

I think “Three Years Ago” is just there to eliminate confusion. In S4, they were bouncing around, and we didn’t always know when we were. Here, they’re probably just putting it there so some fan won’t say, “Wait a minute, what if the O6, Frank, Desmond, and Juliet all put on the same clothes they were wearing before, then got on the same boat and went out onto the ocean, then had an intense conversation about lying about the lie, so they’re, like, going to lie about lying!!!” I know, I know… it’s totally unheard of for fans to take a scene totally out of context to make a theory :)

@natego: Do we have any indication that Sun in any way implicated Ben when she talked to Kate? I had the exact opposite take.

She is setting Kate up in my opinion so she would not divulge here ulterior motives to her regarding Ben.

along the same lines, if she didnt blame Kate, why would the producers rehash the circumstances of Jin’s death with dramatic flashbacks during the scene if they didnt want to drive the point home that Kate basically made the final life or death decision for Jin and Sun is pissed..

I know it’s totally awful for me to think like this, but I honestly don’t care about anything Sun or Kate do. For me, all the great parts of Sun’s character involved Jin (not telling him she spoke English, their relationship resurrection, the stuff with the baby), and I can’t get into her big-tough-vengeance character right now. As for Kate, well… yeah. I’ll give you guys a spoiler of every Kate storyline we’re going to see: a)Kate encounters a problem; b)Kate runs away from the problem; c)Kate lies about the problem and/or running away from it; d)Kate gets burned for running away from the problem; e)Kate runs away from whatever burned her for running away from the initial problem; f)goto (c).

perhaps you left out g) tries to (or does) kill someone to protect the ones she loves??

@Dave – I’m not totally into the Vengified Sun either, which is why I’m hoping that she IS secretly working with Ben, and that she believes that Jin is alive (my “Sun is a Spooky Ninja” theory) – that would properly justify and explain her present actions and not break the Sun-Jin dynamic that has always been interesting. If she is sincerely in league with Widmore, and just a vengeful b*tch, the interest level does drop a bit (unless its going somewhere cooler that I haven’t thought of yet, of course. . .).

@Dave – Lie to me was pretty good! It was better, more well-put-together than I had expected. Tim Roth is a pretty charismatic lead, the supporting lady is a good balance for him, it was really good as pilots go.

Lost Theory:

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