Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Season Five and all that Jazz.

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So We’re back…finally. The season is in full swing and a lot of questions have been answered, semi-answered or replaced with twice as many questions. We’ve seen Charles Widmore with hair, Hurley throw away food, Locke leave the island, Jack join up with Ben, Sawyer give a man hug, Jin translating Korean for people, dogs and cat’s living together…chaos!

what do I make of it? Well with this season bouncing around the past and future of the island there has never been a better time to go back and look at older episodes and that is what I have been doing, both leading up to the new season and since it started. It’s given me a perspective on a few things that I would like to share.


Healing, Sickness and Vaccinations CR4815162342

  • When the Island heals someone does it share a deeper link with them? Is it possible that the Dharma vaccine was to prevent the islands healing powers and stop that link with people that it caused? This would explain why Kelvin did not heal while Patchy did. Speaking of healing why did it not heal the Marshall?
  • Is the sickness that Danielles group had after going to the temple the same as the one that the babies were vaccinated against and the same as the one the Dharma initiative was vaccinated against? I can understand the Dharma link, but why would the Others vaccinate a baby against the island seeing as it seems having this sickness is what makes an other an other.
  • Early in season one, Claire commented to Shannon that she hadn't felt the baby kick since the crash. This seemed to be about 24 hours of not feeling the baby. Which is not a good sign. Then a while later she felt it kick again. With everything else going on no one really took that much notice and of course as the baby was fine again by the time things started to settle (comparatively anyway) it seemed to become less relevant. However, I wonder if the island healed the baby. Perhaps even brought it back to life. That would make Arron special indeed.

The Kids are alright (apparently)

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  • Speaking of Arron, We now have four children of survivors: Walt, Arron, Charlie and Ji. What is there destiny? Of course Charlie has spent no time on the island, but with genetic links to the Widmore family and the unique Desmond he would seem likely to be special.
  • Is there still relevance in the choice of name for Arron? Eko actually spelled out it's meaning and before that it had been asked about. Is Arron to be a spokesperson for “Moses”? Is he to be some kind of high priest? When the characters actually take time to talk about that kind of thing, it puts your suspicion levels high.
  • Back in season one, Walt had the comic he was reading burned by his father. The comic showed a heroic battle against a polar bear. I think perhaps Walt created the situation where the polar bear attacked him and Micheal had to save him, so his father would be just like the super hero in the comic that he burned.
  • He also mentioned about being attacked by a shark before they set out on the raft where they would eventually be attacked by a shark. Did he predict that?
  • Interestingly though, while he seemed to be foreseeing everything else, he didn’t say anything about the Others capturing him. Did he not see it, or did he on some level want that to happen?
  • Why did Walt see the opening of the hatch as very bad? This seems to conflict a little with the islands apparent desire to shut down the hatch. It's also easy to assume that he went on the raft because of the hatch, but was it actually because he needed the others to capture him?

The Swan

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  • That brings me to the Hatch. By the end of season two it seemed the island wanted the hatch to be shut down. Walt appeared saying not to push the button and events seem to have conspired to make sure the hatch was shut down, including Eko being told in a dream about taking Locke to the the Question Mark, which led to him losing his faith and causing the hatch to be destroyed. I also think maybe Charlie, when he told Locke about Desmond, was actually the island in disguise. He seemed to be acting a little strange and far more purposeful then usual.
  • Did the hatch keep the islands moving/time travel in check? Perhaps the island couldn’t move while it was still there.
  • I know a lot of people now feel that the bomb which was seen this season was buried under the concrete at the Swan. This seems to be supported by stray comments by Sayid (who said the only time he had heard about this much concrete being poured on something with Chernobyl) and by Desmond (who commented that it would take a nuclear blast to get through the blast doors). There is also the links to the “Swan Device” which was part of a US test in 1956 (part of Operation Redwing).
  • I’m not 100% certain about this. With Alvar Hanso being involved in advanced weapons design for the UN around this time, it would seem that he would at least be aware of the weapon and probably wouldn’t build a station around it. Then again maybe Dharma felt that the island had had a strange effect on it and there was some way to harness it. The second doubt I have involves the fact that the Swan has imploded. It is likely we will see more of the bomb and if it is simply a thing of the (relative) past that reduces the possibility of it being involved in the (relative) future. Of course time travel can factor into countering this and I can’t think right now of how else the device will fit into the puzzle.

Latin

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  • The others speak “Vulgar Latin”. That is a spoken form of Latin, not used in churches or for scientific writing (as Juliet suggested) but instead the Latin of the common folk of quite a large geographical area around the Mediterranean sea.
  • Carthage/Tunisia isn’t one of those countries. But perhaps the Others first came from one of these areas when the island was around there and their descendants eventually forgot where they got their language from.
  • If the Others originated from the period/area where Vulgar Latin was common then this means that they are not survivors of the Black Rock slave vessel (which left port much later), nor are they likely directly related to the ancient civilisation behind such things as the hieroglyphs and the four toed statue.

More on this season

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  • Did the Island really want Locke to turn the wheel instead of Ben? Or when it said Locke needed to move the island was it talking about the second time, after Ben had moved it?
  • It seemed that Locke was in the past, before the Dharma initiative or whomever built the well turned up on the island. So that means a past island move was actually due to Locke. Did the island perhaps pop up right under a certain slave ship at this point?
  • Did Ben kill Locke? After all he said that he “went to see him” and yet he didn’t seem to get a lot of answers from him and why would Locke give him Jins watch?

Random Notes

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  • Is there a significance to the fact that Eko's brother may have been dead already when he reached the island. Like Christian Sheppard and presumably like Locke will be.
  • In season two Hurley got Sayid to fix a radio. Briefly it picked up some Glenn Miller. Hurley joked that the radio broadcast could have been from "any time", maybe it was? Like we saw in that disappointing second (not-exactly-an) ARG.
  • On a side note apparently “Orchid” is Greek for testicle. Thank you QI. Lol.
  • I still find Desmond’s comments to Jack in the stadium where they first met a little creepy. Did he know Sarah’s surgery was successful?

4 comments:

Capcom said...

I'm going to comment as I read your post here. :o)

Interesting idea about the vaccines and the island. I've also read someone guess that maybe the vaccine was a protection against Smokey taking over your body, like he did with the B612s and perhaps even Locke. Locke did all of a sudden get all island-lovey after his Smokey staredown.

Yes, we're still waiting for some meaning to the Moses/Aaron connection, aren't we? And true, there must be something special about little Charlie, he's got all the special genes.

Oh wow, great idea about how Walt made the polarbear incident happen to try to raise his dad up to a more acceptable status. And yep, we still deserve an explanation about why Walt said the hatch was bad, and, about the Swan missing links in general. :-p

I love that U.S. Swan device tidbit, so very neat. I don't go with the bomb-in-the-Swan theory either yet myself, even though there were seemingly a lot of hints toward that idea.

Thanks for the info clearing up the Latin! I'm wondering also what we should be learning from the Carthage reference.

Holymoly, I didn't even think that perhaps Ben could have killed Locke, wow.

Thanks for the reminder about the old-timey radio transmissions! I really think/hope that could be the case too.

Great bullets! :-D

Fenris said...

Hi Capcom, thanks for commenting.

It's interesting that Smokey presumably wanted to drag Locke to the temple and have him change like the B612s. After that it seemed like the others always wanted to recruit him but were strangely hesitant.

On the Carthage reference, I've always been interested in Hannibal. I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but I've watched some documentaries and from what I know, I can't see a huge link other then the fact that there seems some kind of "out" point from the island to Tunisia.

If we had seen Elephants on the island then perhaps (Hannibal was famous for using Elephants in his army). Of course if the island frequented the Mediterranean then there is no reason that there couldn't be links in there somewhere. If it is from the time of Hannibal then it would pre-date the arrival of any Vulgar Latin speakers by quite a while. I am still thinking the statue and glyphs pre-date even that.

I can't say I'm 100% on Ben killing Locke, but I would think it's got to be something well worth considering. They have been heavy on the suggestion that the Island wanted Locke to sacrifice himself, so it may not be Ben going against the islands will.

Fenris said...

Guess I was right about Ben killing Locke after all!

Capcom said...

Haha! :-D