Rekna

Nah they could have found the wreckage in the ocean meaning no survivors. You don't need bodies.

There are a few things that could be implied by the pilots statements. First it could mean that the wreckage was faked. Second it could mean that the they are really dead (the writers have apparently said this isn't true). Third they could have forked into some alternate dimension (like in Donnie Darko).

Here is one of my latest theories. There were multiple reasons Jack, Kate, and Sawyer were kidnapped. One was to get jack to do the surgery. Another was to create tension between Jack and Sawyer and have Sawyer and Kate hook up so she would get pregnant. I bet she is pregnant now.

Leto

Anybody get the feeling that they're making this up as they go along?

fresnelly

Heresy! You are so off the island!

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Grasshopper Green

When Juliet left the message for Ben, she said she still had to get Austin's sample...meaning, I take it, that Juliet assumes Kate is pregnant. I'm betting that the Others allowed Kate to get into Sawyer's cage because they were hoping she would get pregnant when they had sex. It's not like they didn't know it was happening, and since men are extra virile on the island, the chances would be even better than normal.

I read something by the writers somewhere that they have a general plot outline that they write by, but nothing concrete. So yes..in a way they are making it up as they go along.

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ratbastid

Which is no different from how 90% of TV dramas work....

warrrreagl

Forget the rest of the episode - what the hell did Rousseau need with dynamite?

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ratbastid

Maybe she found a really BIG nest of bugs and she wants to blow them up before she eats them.

No, I can almost guarantee you it has something to do with rescuing Alex.

Jove

Or Rousseau has lost her mind to the point that she is going to kill everyone on the island. Or maybe break something open on the island for people on the outside to see where the island is located.

I hope someone gives Juliette a major beating.

Frosstbyte

I don't know why I'm the only person who really likes Juliette. I hope she's on the verge of a beat down and pulls out some shocker that leaves all the Losties speechless. Sure, they're less than straightforward and they're certainly not running a transparent operation, but I don't know why the Others have remained so vilified after everything we've learned about them. The Others have a problem-a fairly serious one at that and one which now affects at least two of the Losties. It seems like what Juliette is doing, even if it's in secret and at the behest of Ben, could be critical for the survival of Sun and Kate.

Either way, I think the Losties need to wake the hell up and get a grip on the fact that there's a buttload about the island that they don't understand and won't understand without the help of Ben and Juliette. I, for one, welcome our new Other overlords. :P >

ratbastid

I think Locke's waking up. The "Next Time On" looked like a MAJOR island-backstory reveal.

Grasshopper Green

My Wednesdays are going to be dull after the next three episodes....

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Formerly Medusa

absorbentishe

This was a great episode! I loved all the little nuances that were thrown in, all the little off comments that really make you think.

MPower

I know they want to be rescued, but why the hell are they still living on the beach? Now that they know (supposedly) that they are 'officially dead' and there are no search parties looking for them, why not move? There is a nicely abandoned housing complex, or the grotto with fresh water, and a couple of hatches with bathrooms.

Mondak

Or maybe Rousseau is the key to this whole thing. She is the spider that is spinning the web and everyone else are just flies. The crazy thing is just an act. THAT would be a crazy plot twist for the final episode. Kaiser Soze would be proud of that one.

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pmb145

I bet Naomi was sent by Darma or Hanso... she has to be lying. I also hope Walt makes it back before the final ep this season.

Daoust

Good point, MP. I guess the answer is that they haven't moved because they don't all know that they're officially dead. As long as the select few get the info and not all of them, it takes forever for information to trickle down the the rest of the Losties.

I hadn't thought that Kate might get pregnant. It's pretty obvious when you explain it, but I'm so out of the loop with this show I wouldn't even have figured that.

I wonder who that helicopter pilot is working for...

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warrrreagl

CNN says that Lost will run for 3 more seasons with a definite end date. There will be 48 more episodes aired at a rate of 16 per season ("uninterrupted," whatever that means).

What happens if the ratings totally tank after 30 episodes?

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radioguy

uninterrupted means that they will run concurrently, just like they have been for the previous weeks...no breaks in the action for holidays or anything like that.

ratbastid

Well, yeah, but 16 episodes isn't much of a season. The first two seasons were 24 episodes long. This second segment of the season alone is, IIRC, 16 episodes. So we're looking at pretty skimpy LOST output for those last couple years.

It'll be a total of 72 weeks of LOSTlessness over those two years, just to put it in perspective. TALK about coming back from an off-season ratings slump!

Grasshopper Green

If they keep doing what they're doing now, the next few years will be full of Lost goodness and I don't know why ratings would tank.

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Formerly Medusa

Frosstbyte

Well doesn't that just piss all over all kinds of things we thought we understood. Hot damn.

I didn't even know what to say when this one ended. I started off REALLY disliking how Locke seemed to think he was all that after he basically had to trick Sawyer into doing his dirty work. The man who couldn't off the one man he hated more than anything suddenly turned around and became a badass at the beginning of this episode. I happen to really like Ben, so seeing Ben's authority undermined by Locke was not so much fun.

From there on out.....man, who even knows what happened. Spoiler: Jacob is almost too strange to really have much of a conversation on, which says nothing for why Richard has looked the same for 30 (give or take) years, what the course of the original Dharma v. Hostiles conflict was (and how uncannily similar it is to the Losties v. Others conflict), what a truly vindictive bastard Ben is and whether or not Locke will make it out alive.

My guess is that the island will revive Locke, simply because 1) it's already cured him once and 2) he seems like too pivotal a character to get rid of so quickly and easily. That would bode VERY poorly for Ben (I'm surprised Ben isn't more thorough about making sure he's dead, given what he knows about the island), and as each week passes I find myself liking Ben more and more, so I probably won't like it. Like him or no, I'm having a tough time seeing Ben make it out of this season in a position of authority and, frankly, I'm kind of wondering if he's going to make it out alive. The house of cards he's built seems to be on dangerous ground.

Phew, lots to digest tonight.

Grasshopper Green

I have lots of wacky ideas this morning.

At first I was disappointed by Jacob. After all, I was expecting some massive big event, not a supernatural one. However, after thinking about it more, it seems more significant.

Ben is a Dharma kid. He happens to meet Richard (a young Richard? Was the dirt an attempt to hide how old he was by the TV crew?), and it seems the two have been working together for years, since it was Ben who let the Hostiles in to gas the Dharma people. I think that Richard is the other leader, the one pulling the strings behind the scenes, but no one else knows about it except for Ben. Jacob is a ruse that the two have cooked up to help maintain control over the others, and Ben was genuinely shocked when Locke heard Jacob speak. Is "Jacob" really the Island itself, and that's what Locke heard?

I think this episode may have given insight into the whole birth thing too. Given the nature of natives, one assumes that means people who are already living there and assumes having kids as well. Perhaps the descendants of a shipwreck like the Black Rock? Is the inability of Ben's people to have kids a punishment by the Island for their purge? What a fitting punishment, for someone whos own mother died during childbirth to watch the same event over and over and over. On a similar line...what happened to Annie? Did Ben save her from the purge? Is she the original Eve of the childbirth problem...did she die giving birth to Ben's baby?

As for Locke...I'm torn about whether he'll live or die. Given the mortality rate of gunshot victims on the Island, things don't look for him. However, if Jacob really is the Island and Locke really heard him, the Island might save him after all. I'm betting we won't find out until next season!

Lastly...I didn't catch what Mikhail said after Ben asked him if he wasn't supposed to be dead. Can someone enlighten me?

Now...feel free to punch holes in my ideas

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Formerly Medusa

fresnelly

I'm paraphrasing here, but Mikhail said that he was "fortunate that the security fence wasn't set to a lethal level". He was also fortunate that Kate is a lousy coroner.

As for the episode itself, my immediate reaction was "HOLY SHIAT! THAT IS SOME SERIOUSLY FUCKED UP SHIAT!" but in a satisfied way.

Ben first gassing his Dad, and then collaborating in the massacre of the entire Dharma village? Damn! Seeing the bodies lying around the compound was reminiscent of latent images from the Jonestown massacre, and I bet that was intentional. To see the mass grave and have Locke dying on top of it was absolutely chilling. He'll be back though in some form or another. That's a moment I'm looking forward to.

Jacob? Who knows? I think Medusa is right in that it represents the island, even if it does turn out to be man made. I wonder if he (it?) is related to the smoke monster. A far-out theory I have, is that the sand-like material running in a line outside his shack is actually the smoke monster at rest. The force that is Jacob manipulates it like a sort of Island God.

Good idea about the Black Rock Ship being the descendants of the Hostiles! I think one of the revelations unfolding is that the conflict between the Lost and the Others is one that has repeated itself over and over again back through hundreds of years. Let's start with the inhabitants who built the giant statues and ruins that we've seen fragments of, who are then purged by the shipwrecked survivors of the Black Rock. The Black Rock survivors become the inhabitants who are then purged by..?..and so on and so on up until the Dharma group gets taken out by the Hostiles.

One other thing: The episode implied that the Dharma group really was just an altruistic bunch of researchers, at least through Ben's understanding, but I'm hoping we'll find out that there was more to their operations than what we saw in the flashback.

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warrrreagl

And just think - you only have to wait a measly three years to get the answers. I wish they hadn't told us that.

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absorbentishe

Wow, I was totally floored by this one. Ben is one fucked up dude. I did think the hostiles were the descendants of the ship wreck. But, as a few questions were answered, a few more were asked as usual. The black dirt, I expected some type of explosion, but the smoke monster at rest seems plausible. Locke will live, he can't be off the show yet. I just wonder what Sayid would figure out if he was there. And for Mikhail to be some old military guy, he sure went down pretty easy.

fresnelly

My more mundane thought about the line of black dirt was that is a ring drawn around the shack to keep superstitious intruders out. However, the possiblitity exists that it is actually functional as a barrier of some sort.

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Frosstbyte

A theory I've seen thrown around is that the "hostiles" are the crew of the Black Rock. Richard was dressed a little pirate-like when Ben first sees him. It would alos explain why there were explosions when the hostiles attacked Dharma, because they were using their dynamite from the ship.

We know the island can prevent/reverse serious injury (and even perhaps death, under the right circumstances) so maybe it can also stop aging. Richard hasn't aged a day since he met Ben in the jungle and I don't think we can trump that up to bad/lazy makeup with Lost's budget. If it can stop aging, incidentally, it has a vested interest in preventing birth for population control purposes. I don't know how much intelligence we want to ascribe to the Island just yet, but it does seem to be selective and it does not seem to help everyone it could. We'll just have to see. Given all this, I can't explain why Ben has aged AND has back problem cured. I'm still trying to sort that out.

I do not think Jacob is a joke at all. I firmly think that if he's speaking to you, you can see him. Though, what "he" is is very much up for debate. I do not think Ben thought he was tricking Locke and then he was wrong and there actually happened to be a mystical thing there that controlled the wrong and whispered to Locke and showed up in the chair. I think it's entirely possible that Ben is somehow controlling Jacob against his will, hence the "Help me" to Locke. It's also possible that it was more a request that he join Jacob's "cause" whatever that may be.

Tons of food for thought, keep it coming.

guthmund

Whatever Jacob is--and I've read some pretty far out there theories today--I think the dark line--which looked like volcanic ash--is holding him in that shack.

I agree with you in that it's Ben holding Jacob and calling the shots, which wasn't what Ben implied in his conversations with Locke, if I remember correctly. For that matter, I guess Jacob wasn't really talking to Ben at all, was he? I mean, he seemed genuinely surprised at the fact that Locke heard him as well as the fact that Jacob spoke.

Richard's lack of aging just seems one more drop in the time trickery theory bucket that the show keeps hinting at, but never fleshes out.

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MPower

Why didnt Bens dad grab that canister and throw it. He could have thrown it a quarter mile. Maybe even hit the mountains.

ChrisJericho

I agree that the ring of black sand is probably holding Jacob inside the circle.

Obviously Ben baited Locke into coming up to the shack, and desperately wanted to hear what Jacob might say to him.

Richard's lack of aging is intriguing. Remember that he left the island to recruit Juliet, so if the island granted him anti-aging properties, these properties hold true in the outside world.

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Grasshopper Green

Am I the only person who didn't see the ring? I remember Locke looking at the sand and thinking, that looks like ash, but I just don't remember there being a ring of it.

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Formerly Medusa

Jove

Why does everyone thing the ash is holding back Jacob? What of the ash is part of Jacob's body when the spirit wants to travel around the island eliminating potential threats? Like, what if the black smoke mist monster is actually Jacob and Jacob is testing each person on the island to determine if they are actually worthy to be living on the island?

ratbastid

It went off into the underbrush in both directions. The implication was that it surrounded Jacob's shack.

I rewatched the episode tonight... In the shot right after Ben is thrown across the shack, the camera pans very quickly back over to the chair that Jacob is allegedly in and... there's a figure sitting in it. Fraction of a second shot, but once you see it, there's no doubt about it.

Frosstbyte

Yes, the delightful 11 frames of Jacob-y goodness that we got out of the deal.

For those of you who missed it, slow motion clippy goodness care of youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=479HkrFTZiI&eurl=

BuddyHawks

SO.. Ben sees his mom..
Jack sees his dad.
Kate sees her horse.
Mr. Echo sees his brother.
Boone's sister sees Walt (who is wet and speaks a different language)

Am i missing anyone?
These are all things the Island wants a person to see.. for some reason..
Anyone have any ideas?

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Frosstbyte

Hurley saw the dude from the asylum with him.

Jove

The dude from the asylum is Hurley's second personality, which tried to convince Hurley the island and everyone on the island is part of his imagination.

Frosstbyte

Imaginary friends aren't too far afield from dead people. You aren't supposed to be seeing either one of them.

Jove

If the hostiles/others win again this season, I am going to assume all the Losties have low intelligence because they seem to be taken out quite quickly.

I wonder if Charlie is going to get killed by the women in the underground hatch or if he survives. I am not too happy how he expressed such joy so soon after getting on deck. You would think he would investigate the place first....oh well

absorbentishe

I'm scratching my head over this one. I think I'll re-watch it.