The Last Mile

So here we are at last, the final outing. Will it answer all of our questions? I doubt it, but it should answer more then a few.

First of all I have to apologise for my absence throughout most of this season. This season has been an unusual one, with the answers/new questions ratio finally tipping in favour of answers there has just been a whole lot less to debate and discuss and many of the pieces have fallen fairly neatly into place, pretty much where we expected (such as with Jack being the chosen one). However, I have really enjoyed this season and am looking forward to the finale, even though it means the end of an era.

At this stage we think we know a lot, but of course Lost is a show that likes to show us that we really know nothing. So what do I think we know? Well on the topic of Jacob, Adam (I’m going to refer to the current incarnation of the Smoke Monster as Adam as it’s the only name that character has ever been given), and the light:

• The island is older then Jacob and Adam, so it’s story pre-dates theirs and we are yet to see it (and it’s possible we won’t).
  

• The “Light” at the centre of the island is very important. Should it be destroyed it would be very bad for everyone. We don’t know why.
  

• Should someone go into the light they become a Smoke Monster and are tied to the island (presumably by the light).
  

• Being tied to the island inevitably leads a Smoke Monster to want to destroy the light and so the island needs a protector.
  

• While the island has a protector only they and people they allow can find the light. This is why Jacob needed a replacement and why the island needed a protector even before Adam became a Smoke Monster. It also seems Smoke Monsters can’t harm the protector or potential protectors (not sure how that one works).
  

• It seems very likely (given the ancient hieroglyphs) that Adam was not the first smoke monster. If that is so, then it seems it can be destroyed. Unless the non-Adam Smoke Monster was not sentient as such and could be controlled by the Protector (perhaps used to kill Adams camp). Perhaps the suggestion here is that it can be cleansed of the human spirit inhabiting it.

All that still leaves the big questions: When did all this start (the light, island and any proto-Smokeys) and how does it effect the outside world.

So how about how things will turn out on the island? Here are a few thoughts:

• It seems to me that Ben wanted to know what Widmore knew and the only way to reliably get that info was to have him die and get Miles to use his ability to get the info. He knows he couldn’t trust Widmore to tell him, nor could he trust Widmore to tell the truth to Adam or Adam to tell him the truth. If there is one thing Ben knows really well it is deception after all! This suggests why they spent time making sure Ben could get in contact with Miles via the walkies.
  

• Desmond is obviously key to both Widmore and Adam’s plans. He also seems to be key to what is going on with the sideways reality. So that suggests that the two are very much linked together themselves. Can Desmond be consciously active in both realities and working towards a goal tied in both?
  

• We’ve all no doubt noticed that for most of the Losties the sideways reality is significantly better then the Island reality. Most notably for all of the ones that are dead in the Island reality. But will it turn out to be a way for the Island reality guys to have a happy ending or is it some kind of Devils Paradise? It could just be a side effect of damaging the islands light by nuking near it’s source (perhaps suggesting that if the island is destroyed it would un-write all of time?), but then why all the action over there?

To be honest I do not have a firm theory for this conclusion and that is really the way I prefer it at this stage. It’s also important not to forget while all the mysteries are being answered that there will be a number of personal stories concluding in this episode. Despite all the complexities and puzzles of Lost is has always really been about the characters. For the most part their personal stories could be considered concluded already, but I think we can still expect more.

Anyway, that is all I have. Like everyone else I will just have to watch and find out. So to everyone, good luck and Namaste.

The Desmond Factor

Looking back at old episodes as well as following the new ones, something has been bugging me. I’ve wondered for a while just how much Desmonds past was manipulated for him. But now I am wondering who and why. Let’s look at a few things.

• In his early life Des was little more then your average Scotsman. He liked to drink and he supported Glasgow Celtic (one of Scotlands better soccer teams). He was likely a Catholic. Liked the girls. Had trouble with commitment. He worked to support his younger brothers after something happened to his father and never had time to finish University.
• One day that changes. He went out drinking and having doubts about whether his future lay with marriage to Ruth (his long term girlfriend). He woke to the face of Brother Campbell offering him help. Something in him told him to follow the brother and that he had a calling that at the time made him think that calling was to become a monk.
• Now this is where things get interesting. The monks have a vow of silence which they use to initiate new members. This can last for a varying length of time. For Desmond it took such a long time that Brother Campbell thought he may never make it. We don’t know how long this was but the suggestion is that it was over a month (as a month was the standard time for those they were unsure of). Could it been as many as 108 days? I have often thought so.
• The monks worked to produce wine, which they sell for just over £100. Again I’m thinking £108. By the time Des left, they had bottled 108 of them. The wine was named the wine “Moriah” after the mountain on which God asked Abraham to kill his son Isaac.
• Could this be some kind of conditioning or was he merely there so that he could be led to the events that would follow it?
• Upon being fired as a Monk he met Penny who had come to the monks to collect some of the wine. This moment set up Desmond’s life on the path which led him to participate in many pinnacle events in the Lost mythos, such as:
• Reaching the Island and taking over the running of the Swan, pressing the button every 108 minutes
• Being part of the incident that led to Flight 815 crashing on the island.
• Being the one that turns the key to de-activate the Swan relatively safely.
• Being a key person in the events that led to the Oceanic Six leaving the island.
• Travelling in time twice, the second time meeting up with Daniel Faraday and helping him develop his understanding of time travel (as well as becoming his constant).
• The head of the Monastery, Brother Campbell had a very curious picture on his desk showing him outside the Monastery with one Eloise Hawking.
• Was he at one time romantically linked with her?
• Were they friends?
• Were they part of a secret organisation?
• Did she act as a proxy for someone to help him set up the Monastery and/or wine making operation?
• Now Eloise has an interesting number of links herself.
• As well as being the resident expert on where and when the Island is, she is the mother of Daniel Faraday. A man linked with Desmond through time travel experiences and possibly the most knowledgeable person on time travel around.
• She appears to have been on the Island as an Other in the 50’s along with Charles Widmore. She still has links with Widmore as he funded her sons research and knew where she could be found.
• She was working with Ben to get the others back on the island giving her links to the current Others as well as Widmore.
• The strangest thing though is her appearance in Desmond’s flashback. Was she manipulating Desmond all along? Did she tell her son about Desmond so that he knew Des was someone that could actually change events while time travelling?

So even back in Desmond’s earliest flashback to date it seems that Widmore, Ben, The Others and/or Eloise could have been manipulating his life. They could have been doing it on behalf of the Island or there own ends. Apparently the Island isn’t done with him yet, even though he chose not to come. But then Ben’s secret little side mission may have changed that. I am certain we will see more of Des and that this mystery will unravel itself. It will certainly be interesting!

UPDATE: With the events of Episode 5x07 and the revelation that one of Widmores employee's, Matthew Abbadon specializes in "getting people to where they need to go" I am even more convinced that Charles Widmore had similarly had a hand in Desmonds destiny. Especially considering that it seems Ben wasn't already linked up with Eloise beforehand.

The Third Policeman

"...a journey is a hallucination."
"Apparently there is no limit, Joe remarked. Anything can be said in this place and it will be true and will have to be believed."

This book was seen in the Season 2 premier “Man of Science Man of Faith”. It was being read by Desmond and is also seen on his bunk (this information is from Lostpedia). Lostpedia as well as other blogs and Lost media sources quote one of the shows writers, Craig Wright, as saying that the book was chosen for the show for a reason, and that there are key ideas that relate to the show. This is not really confirmed anywhere so I’m not sure how much stock I want to put in the ideas it presents us. That said, this book, while full of bicycles, has many concepts and ideas that tie in in such an interesting way. I literally had notes on every other page. So to avoid another big, long post a la AiWL I give you The Third Policeman in four bullets and a list…

• Comparisons To Lost:

1. The road to Eternity compares to the way Lock and Boone had to run through the jungle to find the plane. Also when Eko and Lock find the big ? on the ground by following their dream.
2. The map…well it parallels the blast door map. I think that is pretty much cut and dry.
3. Omnium parallels Ben’s magic box if it is indeed a real thing and not just a metaphor.
4. The policemen who stay in Eternity don’t age when they are there, which reminds me of the constantly young Mr. Alpert.
5. De Selby attributes night to “black air” coming from volcanic activity. Our island has a volcano, and also our island has volcanic rock that may or may not be creating some kind of effect on the island.
6. Grey powder shows up in Eternity when the narrator asks for a weapon and is given a device that will turn an enemy into a gray powder (or other colors if calculated to do so). On the show we see a gray powder surrounding Jacob’s cabin. Maybe volcanic ash, maybe something else, but curious (not to mention outlandish) to ponder that it could be powdered enemies.
7. The policemen are constantly taking recording in their notebooks, checking instruments, and looking at numbers. Lost has numbers, yes it does, and they add up to 108, and they show up in curious places, and they need to be entered into computers so that things will not “happen”. So yeah numbers parallel the book and the show.
8. De Selby claims that there are only two directions on a sphere north-south and east-west...or maybe only one direction because, "...if one leaves any point on the globe, moving and continuing to move in any "direction", one ultimately reaches the point of departure again." (p 94). Could this be describing Michael and Walt on the boat pointing it in one direction and eventually getting home? Maybe they are just going to go in one big circle and end up at the island again.
9. De Selby also thinks that Earth is sausage shaped, and "If a way can be found, says de Selby, of discovering the "second direction", i.e., along the "barrel" of the sausage, a world of entirely new sensations and experiences will be open to humanity." Okay we know the earth is not sausage shaped really, but it is not perfectly a circle either, so, is this what DHARMA has discovered... a new direction and a new world? Is this where the numbers lead to? Is this the island?

• Travel From Point A to Point B (pgs. 50-52)
• De Selby says that, “…a journey is a hallucination.” He believes that wanting to move or get from one place to another one must begin, then rest at various points between when you begin and end, and finally rest when you are where you want to move to. Each separate rest, grouped by the “many millions” make up the illusion of motion. It even goes on to recount a time when de Selby wanted to get from Bath to Folkstone by locking himself in a room with pictures of where he wanted to go, and instruments to simulate change in time, etc…he believed that he had indeed traveled.
• How does this relate to Lost? Well, there are two characters in particular that come to mind when I think about traveling without really going anywhere and they are Jacob and Walt. Both have appeared in season three (Walt in season two as well) in sort of semi-transparent states. So perhaps these characters are not really on the island but rather locked in a room somewhere with pictures of the island, and sort of willing themselves to be there. The result is them showing up in a not quite formed manor, as I would imagine flinging yourself into motion by constantly hallucinating and then grouping your "millions of rests" between two points may do. The question then is, will we see anyone else who is able to do this on a more formed level? Are there characters that are able to manifest themselves off the island and have interactions with other people that we don’t know are doing this? Maybe Desmonds monk, the ring lady, Nadia, etc… are all people who are sort of jumping about by literally thinking about it hard enough.

• Eternity:
• To get there you take a hidden road that is overgrown. Once inside, you travel underground and end up in a series of tunnels and passages that basically all connect into one big circle. Off of these are doors that open into different things, but mainly through the use of omnium, can give you anything you want. Anything at all…poof just like that. The catch is that while you’re there you can play with the stuff you get, but you can’t take it with you. So yes, this sounds exactly like Ben’s magic box, that he proclaims can give you anything you want.
• Also, while in Eternity you don’t change. You don’t age, grow hair, etc. Even the cigarettes that are smoked don’t burn down. On the island Hurley never gets any thinner (and yes I am actually LOLing at myself for writing that), people become whole again and then don’t seem to change (Rose and Locke), Richard Alpert seems to not age, and no new babies are carried to term (from people at least). So, it could be said that the Losties are in some sort of “Eternity” of their own and just don’t know it. There are loads of holes in this idea beginning with the birth of Aaron, if things didn’t change he would just stay in Claire forever I guess. Also with Sun’s pregnancy, and maybe even Kate’s if she is indeed pregnant.

• The Punchline:
• There is this third policeman who we don’t see until the end of the book, but through the whole thing has been in the walls of Mathers’ house (the murdered man) in his own little police barracks, and he has been messing with the readings, numbers, and data of the other two policemen. Thusly he has saved our narrator from a hanging. BUT then our narrator goes to seek out his box of omnium, which is at his co-killer’s home only to find that he is dead, and has been through his whole odd adventure. He then walks back out to the road and starts the whole thing all over again.
• I’m not going to lie, I am becoming more and more alarmed at the number of book club books that are ending as dreams or as after-death adventures. So I am going to pretend that the Losties are not dead, or in purgatory (ugh I can’t believe I wrote that), or in a mass hallucination/coma, or in a snow globe, and just say…at the end of the book, Flann O’Brien’s letter to his friend appears. In it he states, “…all the queer ghastly things which have been happening to him are happening in a sort of hell which he earned for the killing.” That idea is interesting. I totally forgot as I read the book, that this narrator has brutally killed a man. I actually sort of like the guy, as I do most of the characters on Lost. But let’s review; there are loads of people on the show who have indeed killed someone before getting to the island, we all know this, and there are loads of lists posted so no need to make this one any longer. But I do like the idea that Hell is this cyclic thing and that it keeps going round and round and actions earn you a journey there.

• Final Bullets:
• Here is where my brain is going into overdrive. Okay so we have the idea that there is this place where you don’t change while there. Couple that with the idea that Hell is cyclic and weird and full of two dimensional police barracks where everyone is obsessed with bicycles, taking measurements, and omnium. Add in the idea that you can have whatever you want but you can’t take it with you, and the fact that the main character is stuck in a loop that he has earned himself by being a bad murdering dude.
• Desmond is holding/reading the book on the show, and he is the one that we know is doing some sort of looping. Maybe it's a clue that with this book we are on the right track. (Thanks for the reminder on this Jess.)
  
• What if our Losties are stuck in some sort of cyclic place, where they have unwittingly earned themselves a spot? What if while they are there nothing changes, and time outside of where they are is moving slow or not at all (ie: pgs 142-143 where the narrator emerges from Eternity after 2-3 hours and it seems only minutes has passed. Or when he makes it to his partner's house and it is 16 years later while it has only been 3 days for him)? They have been there for months, but maybe things off the island are moving like a day for every month they have been there.
• Now add to that the looping idea where things are running in a circle and not all in a consecutive manor. Is there a way that our Flight 815 crashed, and everyone ended up in an “Eternity” but somehow in the whole big loop of things they are also back at home, at some point in the past or future. There is another crash of Flight 815, one in which the bodies are located with undersea cameras and played for the news shows. All the while the other “survivors” are just out of synch with the world. When they get out of Eternity will they actually have to loop around to another point in time and crash again? Is that what Jack is looking for? Is that why they need to stay on the island, to avoid their deaths? I know somewhere, somehow this makes a little bit of sense.

Next Month: Turn of the Screw and Of Mice and Men

Watership Down

During the break from Lost the folks over at The Lost Community have decided to create a book club. The first book was Watership Down (view synopsis at Lostpedia). So I decided to post my thoughts on the book, and how it relates to the show.

Conceptually the book Watership Down reflected many many ideas and themes that carry over to the show Lost. The first that really stood out for me was the different warrens and their places on the down:

• The original watership warren, which were semi-forced to leave their burrows because of some unseen danger that was coming. The danger being "seen" or predicted by Fiver in a jumbled vision. (Flight 815 survivors)

• The white-lighters, who have a near utopian society, tons of food, does, and wonderful cavernous burrows. The big BUT here is that they could be snared by the men at any time, and it seems this is an unspoken danger. A quid pro quo, utopia for death at any moment. (DHARMA Initiative)

• Efrafa, led by the brutish Woundwart, was a dictatorship of sorts. Rabbits were marked and separated by these marks. It was overpopulated, the does were unable to have litters, and everyone did what they were told. (Ben's Others)

All three, it could be argued, represent some faction of groups on the island.

An underlying theme throughout the entire book was the search for does, so that litters could be produced. That is the main reason that the rabbits were in contact with other warrens at all, and didn't just go off on their own. Just another theme that is present on the show with the constant fertility issues and Ben's "project".

Another theme falls to the secondary characters, specifically the mouse, and the gull called Kehaar. Both of these animals would not normally connect with a bunch of rabbits, but a relationship was formed where they all helped each other out using their individual skills. Kehaar was the most helpful to the warren, telling them of danger, where to travel, and finding them does.

• I felt that Kehaar was a counterpart of Danielle's character (right down to the accent) from the show. She is an outsider (as far as we know) to all of the groups, yet seems to be helping our Losties with her knowledge of the others and of the island.
  

• The mouse, who was significantly less helpful, but did his best, could represent an Alex or a Karl character. Useful but only to a certain extent as they don't really have a lot of experience to draw from.

There are so many points that are similar between the book, and the show, but in an effort to keep this blog relatively short-ish, the last I'll look at is precognition.

• On the show we see Desmond having these sort of visions or loops. It has also been speculated that perhaps he isn't the only one on the island experiencing this.
  

• In the book Fiver and Hyzenthlay have visions, that eventually lead the rabbits from danger and to their new society. Neither can really explain what they see or even why, but they know that they must take heed of it. This is very similar to Desmond's situation, in that he feels what he sees is canon and needs to be followed, although he tends to keep this information to himself.

• In the book, Fiver is very vocal about his visions, and is not afraid to share them. Perhaps if Desmond was more like Fiver the Losties would believe his visions and figure out a way to utilize them. That is the one thing that is always a constant on Lost, no one communicates with each other, to the detriment of some of our heroes. In the book, we do see a lack of communication illustrated within the white lighters. They don't talk about the fact that their food and utopia comes from man, and that they are basically living a death sentence...it's only a matter of time. All of the rabbits there know it, but they just don't discuss it. Similar to the Losties, they all know they are in a strange situation and no one really talks about it or shares their experiences. Perhaps if they did, there wouldn't be so much conflict within the groups.

Final Bullets:

• I didn't love this book. I know I was supposed to, but I just didn't.
  

• Ultimately, the book connects to the show in many ways, and I can see why the writers chose to incorporate it into the scenes with Sawyer, etc... I just wonder how much of this was thought out as a plot point or "easter egg" or if we (obsessed fans ;) ) are just looking at everything with Lost colored glasses.

Next month: A Wrinkle in Time

Remember the Future.

Have you ever wondered what the deal is with the flashbacks? Sure there is speculation that they could be implanted memories or the black smoke monster extracting them. There is also the theory that they are just simple plot devices to move on character development and add to the general mystery of the show. Okay there is some truth in that last one. But is there more to them? I think maybe there is a lot more going on than it seems. I have a theory that ties the flashbacks and various other events on the island with the island's unusual properties and perhaps even the Valenzetti Equation. Consider the following:

• The Lostaways always seem to have relevant flashbacks to whatever is going on. One could easily presume that these flashbacks are memories triggered by events that are happening. But then think about the timing. Almost every time the flashbacks happen just before the event that could trigger them. Take the most recent one for instance. Charlie is thinking about his own "greatest hits" before Naomi mentions the album to him and before he was told that he had to die. Of course he may have been thinking on his mortality anyway. But is it a co-incidence that he thinks about learning to swim and seconds later he is told he is going to drown? Had this happened once you may call it a co-incidence, but this happens all the time.
  
  
• What about Desmond's precognitive ability? He sees "flashes" of things that are going to happen. What this establishes is two things, firstly that there is some kind of capability to see into the future within the show. Secondly it establishes Desmond's conception of it. Humans aren't really designed to deal with precognition, but like any sensory perception it is all about how we perceive it rather then what it actually is (consider for instance how different creatures perceive the visual appearance of the same things differently). Desmond sees flashes of the future. Perhaps it is a bit like dejavous, which may trigger memories from the past, but in Desmond's case it triggers some from the future. What if everyone on the island actually has some precognitive ability, while on the island. Like the island helps channel it. Desmond is now heavily in touch with it, but other people are only able to process the information in very basic ways. Triggering a more traditional sense of dejavous, where they can only conceive future events based on their own past experience.
  
  
• A lot of people have speculated that "Jacob" looked a lot like Locke. Considering that we were seeing him from Locke's perspective, what did we really see? Locke saw someone that looked like himself and heard a voice saying "help me" just after that he was shot by Ben and said those exact words (although quoting Jacob, which creates a strange paradox in that theory). What if Ben also sees someone that represents himself in that hut? Perhaps what Jacob really is, is the center of the islands precognitive influence. People see themselves in Jacob and through that image they can view the future, but only if they are truly sensitive to it. That makes you wonder what Desmond would see in that hut!
  
  
• How does Ben stay one step ahead of the Losties so often? Perhaps that is via Jacobs hut too. If he see's the future there then he would be able to manipulate events to suite himself. Which interestingly could be why the island is turning on him. Perhaps the reason that Lockes father ended up on the Island was because Ben saw his car crash when visiting Jacob and sent some of his operatives out to pick him up. That way Ben can say the island/Locke brought him to the island and go on about magic boxes, where as in reality he just knew when an unfortunate event would happen and be there to take advantage of it. Perhaps he also saw Juliets ex being hit by a bus and so knew that Alpert would be able to recruit her. It could also be that Juliet has some natural precognitive skills too.
  
  
• The whole purpose of the Dharma Initiative was based on the concept of being able to predict the end of the world. While the Lost Experience may not intertwine heavily with the Lost show but we cannot ignore this very important fact. For a start it again emphasizes that it is possible to see into the future in the Lost world. In this case it's a mathematical equation. This brings up two important questions. The first is did Dharma set up on the island because of these unusual precognitive effects? Perhaps they thought it would be a good way to find a back door to changing those core values.
  
  
• The second question about Dharma is sort of the reverse. But ties into the apparent effect that the dead seem to have on the island. We have heard things that sound like the voices of the dead and we have seen Smokey take the form of the dead on a regular basis. What if the deaths of so many of the Dharma Initiative on the island, and apparently close to Jacobs hut too, had an effect on the islands "mentality" (or something similar). Even ignoring the deaths, what if having so many alive on the island at one time that were investigating the future and trying to change it had an effect on the development of the strange properties of the island.
  
  
• We have heard that the show will be based on scientific possibility rather the outright fantasy (with Smokey perhaps the sole exception). So where does precognition fit in? Well read this article (Credit to Ange on that one). It seems that it is entirely within the character of the show.
  
  
• The subconscious manipulation of oneself based on knowledge not consciously available to you, could perhaps be the answer to why the Lostaways all ended up on that plane with people they are deeply tied to but are not consciously aware of. Perhaps they are all coming to the island for an event they have seen in their subconscious but are totally oblivious to.
  
  
• The article linked to above quotes something from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. The Red Queen says, "It is a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." That is an interesting quote in many ways and made me think about Chaos Theory. In Chaos theory even a small event can cause massive repercussions. A good example is the lazy blacksmith not fitting a new shoe to a horse. The horse is unable to take a kings messenger to a point in a battle in time to give vital directions. Thus, a whole kingdom falls. Just because of a lazy blacksmith. So what if this can work in the other direction too? One event that is yet to happen leads out from the center of a massive web. This event causes repercussions through everyone's pasts that work when viewed in a forward direction. A series of intertwining events pushing people towards a central point. That links in with the subconscious influence. Everyone is actually aware of it yet they are not conscious of it. Could this be mathematically plotted? The whole concept is mind blowing and the big question is, can you avoid the "cause" if you are already suffering the "effect"?

So there you have it. To finish, I leave you with a quote:

"I believe that we can 'sense' the future, we just haven't yet established the mechanism allowing it to happen." - Nobel Prizewinning physicist Brian Josephson.