We have to go back! (Lost 2009 season)

I missed tonight's episode. Damn you APR.

Anyone know the best place to watch it online? How quickly will ABC have it up online?

 

Great, great stuff. Jacob doesn't seem to be the type of thing that can be killed in a traditional sense.

 

My top three questions are easily explanations of Alpert, Smokey and Jacob.
Tonight was another outstanding show. This series is so much better than anything else on right now it's ridiculous.
Here's hoping Season 6 isn't a letdown, because I just can't imagine how it can stay this good while winding down.
But I'll bet next week's finale is just off the charts good.

 

The last time I checked, ABC posted each new episode on its Web site between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. Eastern Time.

As for that episode, well, to echo a common sentiment around here, I think that sets up everything pretty well for the finale next week. From the dude who looks like Paul Giamatti (can never remember his name) taking command from Horace ... to Chang actually listening to the late Farraday ... to Richard walking Locke around the island wherever he wants to go ... to Sawyer on the sub with Juliette, then somehow back on the island next week (check out the preview at the end of the episode) ... just excited for next Wednesday.

And I do have three questions.

1. What is the smoke monster? And what is its relation, if any, to Jacob, Locke and the Others?

2. If the Dharma Initiative does manage to drill near the hatch and release that massive swell of energy, how does that flip the island into some sort of time loop? And how does Dharma manage to build the hatch to conceal that energy and, presumably, contain it by pressing a button every 108 minutes? And how does that energy affect the rest of the planet?

3. At this point, I think it is safe to assume that someone on the island -- or with a history on the island -- managed to orchestrate who was on Oceanic 815. All of those folks were on the island back in 1977 and affected it then. They needed to go through 2004 on the island in order to get back to 2007/1977 and do who knows what. (Save the island? Prevent the accident? Switch which side wins the impending war? Erase the history of the island and all that happened there?) Who did that? Who worked out that all the right folks would be on Oceanic 815? And how?

(While pounding out the parenthetical notes in that third question, an image popped in my head of an empty island. No people. No camps. No science. Just sand and jungle and rocks and lots of green. And water. Lots of water. And for the first time, I thought that that image -- nothing -- would be a suitable way for the show to end. The island is as it was. After all, if we're going to go back in time over and over and over, if we're going to mess with that continum, and if we're going to change so many things, why not go all the way? Why not go back before people messed up (or harnessed or were sucked in by) whatever powers the island contains? What if time and the island just swallow up everything? Enough! the island might say, so to speak. Leave me alone. And that was that. That would be a suitable ending, I think, but it scares me that it might be a possibility, because I do not want this show to end.)

 

Another great episode. It's weird . . . the show is so straightforward now, it almost doesn't feel right. Like the earlier part of this season conditioned me to constantly try to speculate about meanings and such, and now "normal" storytelling feels like a deviation.

My memory may be faulty, but didn't the heroin plane crash in a tree near the Dharma station where Paolo hid the diamonds in the toilet?

Three current questions:

1. Who are the "shadow of the statue" people? Modern Dharma? Religious fanatics?

2. How would the hydrogen bomb affect the electromagnetic energy? (as in, just what was Faraday's plan, and what made him think it would work?) In the last three years, what was Faraday doing?

3. What was Alpert and the Others doing? Were they leaderless and just drifting? For that matter . . . I hope to finally get some hard Jacob-related answers next week.

Three questions for the overall show:

1. What is the story behind Richard Alpert? Immortal, but apparently unaware of the Island's time shifting ability.

2. What were Dharma's stated motivations for coming to that particular Island, and what were its actual motivations?

3. What in Sam Hill is the monster?

 

Ok, nobody is commenting on the biggest reveal of last night's episode (I just watched it).

Locke, Ben and Sun came back to the island in the present via the new plane. Locke and Ben went with Richard to Eko's brother's plane and then watched a time traveling JL come wondering through the jungle with a bullet hole in his leg.

Now, I can't remember exactly when Locke got shot or how it happened, but I know this for sure....that version of Locke traveled into the FUTURE of the island by appearing where 'Present' locke and ben and sun are now.

So, if that's true that means that the time travelers were going both forwards and backwards when flashing. They were seeing things that hadn't happened yet and things that had.

To me, this is a pretty big deal because if Locke truly has the answers about what the future holds, he got them by figuring all this out. If that's the case, then he likely (IMO) knows that what he is about to do to Jacob must be done in order to save the island in some way.

 

Um, where Locke is now is three years ahead of where he was when the time shifting started.

 

Yes. I think that's what schiezainc was getting at and what I posted last night.

I'm curious about this: Present day Locke was very willing to get close to and send Alpert to talk to time-traveling 2004 Locke. This is a contrast from what time-traveling Locke said about getting to close to himself when he and Sawyer, Juliet and other time-travelers saw the light from the hatch. And it's further contrasted to what was shown in the Orchid video with the time-traveling bunnies and Chang screaming "Keep them away from each other! They can't be close!" in relation to present day bunny and apparently time-traveling bunny.

So this makes me wonder WHY present day Locke was a-ok with getting close to 2004 time-traveling Locke. I know WHAT needed to be done (Locke needed to know that he had to die), but why was present day Locke so comfortable with it after not being so before? Somehow this ties into present day Locke being "different" as Alpert called him last night. It goes along with this resurrection upon returning to the island.

 

I guess the question is how he knew that was the exact time when he would step out of the woods.

 

Remember, Locke alays seemed to know exactly when it was going to rain very early in season one.

 

I think that Juliet, Kate and Sawyer leave the sub via a flash (or maybe Juliet stays?)

 

Lost producer Damon Lindelof on "the numbers":

"Here's the story with numbers. The Hanso Foundation that started the Dharma Initiative hired this guy Valenzetti to basically work on this equation to determine what was the probability of the world ending in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Valenzetti basically deduced that it was 100 percent within the next 27 years, so the Hanso Foundation started the Dharma Initiative in an effort to try to change the variables in the equation so that mankind wouldn't wipe it itself out." This information, in more convoluted form, was leaked out via the online games rather than explained on the show itself, says Damon, because, "That would be the worst thing ever. We have to make the show for the hardcore fans who care about the numbers, but we also have to make it for my mom, who just wants Sawyer to take his shirt off."