Lost: There’s No Place Like Home, Revisited

I’ve been preparing my speech for my keynote talk in Arkansas this Friday at the Buffy conference (woo!) and I’ve now scrapped it three times and completely rewritten it. Somewhere around 9pm last night I finally got a version that I really liked, to the point where I could finally test it out on my critical husband, who loved it. So now that’s done and ready, and it’s just a matter of packing. Which means, I will postpone packing until the last possible second and think about Lost instead. :)

First of all, you guys are totally amazing. I’ve been reading every single comment posted to the original blog on the finale, and wishing I had more time to jump on here and discuss, but whenever I think of something, you guys say something before I can post it. So here are some of my thoughts, and favourite questions and comments from the forum so far. I’d love to keep discussing the finale and all of season 4 well into the summer (eight months until season 5, people, EIGHT MONTHS!) so let’s keep talking!

Jin:
Is he dead or is he not? Some people said they think he’s dead, others are convinced he’s not and are holding out hope. Some were confused by the episode “Ji Yeon” and thought he was already shown to be alive in the future. To clarify: What the writers did in that episode (and what some viewers thought was a little too manipulative) was they showed us a flashback of Jin in 2001, trying to bring a panda to a client who works for Paik, and a flashforward of Sun in 2005, giving birth to a daughter alone. Why was there a grave in that flashforward? It could have been one of a number of things: She put the grave there believing that he’s dead. Or maybe Paik or someone in the family put the gravestone in there when he thought both of them were dead (if you look closely, it’s a two-sided grave, with Sun’s stone beside it). Why do I believe he’s alive? Because I think it would make for a better story. First we’ve got Sun believing that he’s dead, and she’s angry at Jack for telling the pilot to leave, she’s angry at the pilot for leaving, she might be angry at Desmond for letting Jin stay behind and not bringing him up to the deck with him, she’s angry at Ben for putting them through all of this... she has a LOT of reasons to be pissed right now. In the finale, we see her approaching Widmore, as if she’s recognized the rest of the Oceanic Six have aligned themselves with Ben, so she’s choosing the other side of the battle. It would make for a better story to see Sun sort of go off the rails, maybe eventually being redeemed, only to find out that Jin was alive all along (and maybe finding him alive would be her redemption). I’m so intrigued by what her character could do now. (Does anyone else feel a sudden need to go back and watch those season 1 episodes again with the two of them? It must seem like a world away now.)

The Frozen Donkey Wheel:
What exactly was Ben doing? (If I could answer that, I think I’d be in the writer’s room right now and not sitting here typing away in my living room while the baby sleeps.) I think everything that happens at the Orchid will be tied into the Faraday stuff, the time travelling, and several of the flashforwards that we’ve seen. Ben knew about the Orchid. Ben knew about that tin that was lying in the dirt along the way. Ben has clearly been there before. He knew what was hiding behind the teleportation chamber. How? It was sealed up. Who sealed it? How had he been there before? Again, the timeline is what remains the fluid factor here... Richard Alpert does not age. Is that because he’s immortal, or is something else going on? Is Ben really as young as we think he is? Could Widmore actually be 400 years old or something? The more questions you ask, the deeper into the vortex you fall, and it seems like there’s no way out.

The last we see of Ben he’s crying and upset, because he’s moving the island, and he knows there’s no going back. Presumably, Widmore had been on the island and had been forced to move it in the past, and now he can’t go back. But something is drawing him back to that island and he would do anything to get back there. So, he sends out Desmond. He hates the guy anyway, so what does it matter if the guy fails at his mission? But something tells him he won’t. Somehow Des finds his way to the island, but it’s under some sort of cloud of electromagnetic energy. Penny stumbles onto what her father’s been doing, and all of his tracking systems, and discovers that he’s sent Des to find a mysterious island of eternal youth and healing. So she begins to watch it, and sends a couple of guys out into a wintery wilderness with some of her daddy’s equipment, and tells them to watch night and day until the island reveals itself. When the Swan station goes kaboom, the guys see it, call Penny, and she rushes to her father’s equipment to monitor things for the next couple of weeks. Perhaps she does it surreptitiously, rigging her father’s tracking system to a video monitor and alarm system in her own apartment, so when Charlie removes the thing that was jamming all signals from the island (which had been put in place by Ben to keep Widmore away), she gets an alarm, and rushes to the video monitor to talk to Charlie immediately. He tells her Desmond is alive, and she begins to put things in place to come and rescue Desmond. But so far she just has some British rock singer’s word for it, until three days later she gets a phone call from Des, and that proves he’s alive. She puts a team of people together on a boat, follows the coordinates from Charlie’s signal, and finds Desmond.

Of course, while she had been talking to her guys in the tent in the blizzard, her father’s more sophisticated equipment had picked up the same signal, and he got Abaddon to put together a crack team of people to get to the island as quickly as possible and find Ben. He needs to put an end to the game they’ve been playing, and just wants to get back to the island. So the freighter folk and everything we see happen there was sparked by him. But only some of the freighter folk are loyal to Widmore – Keamy and his team of psychos are following his orders, but Captain Gault is wary of what is happening. He tells Sayid and Des what is up, and they try to help him.

This is what I can surmise so far, but there are so many questions left open by all of this. What is the history between Widmore and Ben? Are they immortal? Widmore flat-out tells Ben that he knows he can’t kill him... is that part of the game, or is it just not possible? Was Widmore part of the ancient civilization on the island? We know there was one – they built the four-toed statue, we’ve seen hieroglyphics all over the island, and usually wherever there are hieroglyphics, Dharma isn’t far behind. The frozen donkey wheel looked ancient.

What do you think the donkey wheel did? We see a bright flash and then the island disappeared. It didn’t sink. It didn’t float away, it simply disappeared. The donkey wheel could have been acting like something anchoring the island, and by turning the wheel, it pulls up the anchor, so to speak... but taken literally, that would lead us to assume the island would float away. But I’m thinking it’s a mystical anchor that’s holding it in one time-space, and by pulling it up, it moves to another. The island could be in 1880 now for all we know. MAYBE (and this one is for fb and all of us who were SO upset at her death) the island went back in time by 15 years, and Rousseau will be back? Maybe we’ll actually see her arrive? The possibilities are endless, really.

We do know that Ben is ejected to Tunisia. He’s been there before, as we know, but could that be any indication of where the island is? Most importantly, if he knew he was going to be ejected from the island if he turned the wheel, why turn the wheel? Ben always seems to think of himself, so what good is an island if he’s not on it?

Dharmic Preservatives:
One of the best questions asked in the comments section of my blog on this episode was by reader “Dogtown,” who asked, “Why were the 15-year-old crackers such a big deal? They got more air time than some of the characters. Are we missing something?” I read that comment, and my head began to spin with the possibilities. I mentioned in my original post that I’ve had some crackers in my pantry that go stale after a few months without ever being opened. Wouldn’t 15-year-old crackers be mouldy? Someone replied that if you put crackers in a tin, they stay fresh longer, but even that person admitted that 15 years is a bit of a stretch. My daughter found some crackers on the weekend that were unopened, and she opened them and started eating them and said they were “delicious,” but when I tried one I thought I’d gag. So how could Hurley keep eating them? I know they’re on a long trek, but 15-year-old crackers would be enough to choke anyone. Then I thought back to Tricia Tanaka and how Sawyer and Hurley find the beer, and Hurley says it’s probably from 1982. The beer would taste like aluminum and be completely undrinkable if Sawyer had opened it. I don’t care how thirsty you are – if someone hands you a pint of turpentine, you won’t drink it. Same goes for very very old beer.

I’m thinking both of these things are hints that we should be looking deeper. The crackers are 15 years old, according to Ben. The beer, about the same. (Hurley says the beer is over 20 years old, but we see Ben kill his father about 15 years ago, so he was off by a few years.) Did Dharma use wicked awesome preservatives? Or could the crackers and beer be existing on another plane? Is it possible that there are several different timelines happening simultaneously on the island? Could 2004 Locke be having a conversation with 1962 Alpert? They’re both in different times, but speaking in a neutral time zone, the island? Could the crackers exist in 1990, but 2004 Hurley could be eating them and they would SEEM fresh? Am I making any sense at all? (I’m starting to feel like I just drank 1989 beer.) It DOES seem like more than just an onrunning joke to keep coming back to those crackers.

Mister Locke:
So Locke is the guy in the coffin... (anyone else more intrigued by Sawyer possibly being there??) First he usurped Ben as the leader of the Others. Now he seems to have usurped Christian, and is in a coffin and being taken back to the island, just like Christian was. How did he end up in L.A.? Was he using passports like Ben was? If so, when he left the island, could he walk? Was his paralysis healed permanently on the island, or only while he was there? If the island really has curative properties, one would think he’s cured, not to get it again. But then again, Ben had a tumour on his spine. Could he have gotten it by one of his travels off the island? The island keeps him safe until he left it? Perhaps the island cured Locke of his paralysis, but made him susceptible to something else after he left.

My major issue with Locke being the guy in the coffin is the obituary from a year ago. I’ve seen prop errors in this show – too numerous to count – but was all the information in it manufactured to make us think one person when it’s really another?? If so, that’s a pretty crappy thing to do to the fans who spend all their time seeking out this information. Here’s hoping Locke discovers a long-lost teenage son. Ahem.

So why the name change? My husband wondered if it was always his real name, and we’ve been led to believe John Locke is his name, when it never was. Does that mean the flashbacks were all phony? I think the writers would have a mutiny on their hands if it turned out all the background stuff was misinformation as well, so I doubt that would happen. But I really find it hard to believe that he would suddenly change his name and the Oceanic 6 would refer to him by his new name, when they only knew him as Locke beforehand. I know someone who went by a fake name all throughout university, and post-university he finally told his friends what his real name was, and those friends STILL call him by the old name, 7 years later. It’s just not something you can easily break out of; you think of someone by that name, and that’s their name.

How did his information get out at all? Who put him in that funeral home? Presumably it was Abbadon or someone who desperately needs the Oceanic 6 back on the island... the only way to do it is for Locke’s obit to bring them all back together again, and they knew one of them would see it. Will Locke come back to life if he returns to the island? Will he become a spiritual guide like Christian?

How will the Oceanic 6 be able to find their way back to the island? Ben’s still looking, Locke’s dead... is it Aaron?

Claire and Aaron:
Darlton have said Claire is most definitely not dead. (UPDATE: Turns out I was misinformed; someone told me Darlton said in a recent podcast that Claire was not dead, when in fact they said she wasn't GONE and we'd see her again... not the same thing. So let's go back to talking about how she's probably dead.) So how could a mother of a new baby just serenely let him get taken from her? Again, Darlton say it’s because she’s been told he’s where he’s supposed to be. What does that mean? What is Aaron’s importance to the larger story? Way back in season 2, in my first book, I suggested he’s the most important person on the island, and it’s starting to look that way again. What is his role? Remember, the camera lingers on Penny holding Aaron and cooing and talking about how amazing he is, and she’s the direct connection to Widmore... could there have been some significance in that scene? Why would Claire appear to Kate and suggest she shouldn’t bring back Aaron? Was her happiness in knowing he was going to leave the island? Does BEN need the Oceanic 6 to return, and not Jacob, and that’s what is causing the rift?

What have I missed?