LA X Recap

Feb 03

metalman777Lost recap, season 6 2 Comments

SEASON 6, EPISODE 1: LA X

What can you say?  After an almost year long hiatus, Lost is back, kickin’ butt and takin’ names!!!  I thoroughly enjoyed these first two episodes and loved the big reveals, and of course, was frustrated at all the new questions this episode created!

Also, I just want to be clear, that the following ideas and theories are collated from about 10-15 different other blogs and podcasts I follow on a daily basis.  I figure that I’ll summarize all the great ideas out there for those of you who choose to just follow one blog, that being mine.  (click here to see a list of all the Lost people I read or click here to see a list of Lost fanatics I follow on Twitter)  This post is rather long, but well worth the read.  Lots of great theories ahead!

I’m going to start off this blog post by highlighting a very telling interview Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (Lost’s main producers) gave to Entertainment Weekly.  (click here for full link)  I encourage to read it fully, as there are lots of tidbits spread throughout the article.

EW: The whole idea of flash-sideways and the plan to use season 6 to show us a world where Oceanic 815 never crashed — how long has that been in the works? Why did you want to do it?
DAMON LINDELOF: It’s been in play for at least a couple of years. We knew that the ending of the time travel season was going to be an attempt to reboot. And as a result, we [knew] the audience was going to come out of the “do-over moment” thinking we were either going start over or just say it didn’t work and continue on. [We thought] wouldn’t it be great if we did both? That was the origin of the story.
CARLTON CUSE: We thought just doing one [of those options] would inherently not be satisfying. Since the very beginning of the show, characters started crossing through each other’s stories. Part of our desire [in season 6] is to show that there’s still this kind of weave, that these characters still would have impacted each other’s lives even without the event of crashing on the Island. Obviously, the big question of the season is going to be: How do these [two timelines] reconcile? However, for the fans who have not watched the show closely, that’s an intact narrative. You can just watch the flash sideways — they stand alone all by themselves. For the fans who are more deeply embedded in the show, you can watch those flash sideways, compare them to what transpired in the flashbacks and go, “Oh, that’s an interesting difference.”
LINDELOF: Right out of the gate, in the first five minutes of the premiere, you get hit over the head with two things that you’re not expecting. The first is that Desmond is on the plane. The second thing that we do is we drop out of the plane and we go below the water and we see that the Island is submerged. What we’re trying to do there is basically say to you, “God bless the survivors of Oceanic 815, because they’re so self-centered, they thought the only effect [of detonating the bomb] was going to be that their plane never crashes.” But they don’t stop to think, “If we do this in 1977, what else is going to affected by this?” So that their entire lives can be changed radically. In fact, it would appear that they’ve sunken the Island. That’s our way of saying, “Keep your eyes peeled for the differences that you’re not expecting.” Some of these characters were still in Australia, but some weren’t. Shannon’s not there. Boone actually says that he tried to get her back. There are all sorts of other people that we don’t see. Where’s Libby? Where’s Ana Lucia? Where’s Eko? These are all the things that you’re supposed to be thinking about. When our characters posited the “What if?” scenario, they neglected to think about what the other effects of potentially changing time might be and we’re embracing those things.

That said, are you saying definitively that detonating Jughead was the event that created this new timeline? Or is that a mystery which the season 6 story will reveal?
LINDELOF: It’s a mystery. A big one.
CUSE: We did have some concern that it might be confusing kind of going into the season. To clear that up a little bit: The archetypes of the characters are the same and that’s the most significant thing. Kate is still a fugitive. If you were to look at the Comic-Con video, for instance, that now comes into play. There was a different scenario in that story. She basically blew up an apprentice plumber as opposed to killing her biological father/stepfather. Those kind of differences exist, but who the characters fundamentally are is the same. If it becomes too confusing for you, you can just follow the flash sideways for what they are. It’s not as though there’s narrative that hangs on the fact that you need to know that this event was different in that world, in the flashback world versus the sideways world. That’s not critical for being able to process the narrative this season.

Is there a relationship between Island reality and sideways reality? Will they run parallel for the remainder of the season? Will they fuse together? Might one fade away?
LINDELOF: For us, the big risk that we’re taking in the final season of the show is basically this very question. [Lindelof then explains the show has replaced the trademark “whoosh!” sound effect marking the segue between Island present story and flashbacks or flash-forwards, thus calling conspicuous attention to the relationship between the Island world and the Sideways world.] This is the critical mystery of the season, which is, “What is the relationship between these two shows?” And we don’t use the phrase “alternate reality,” because to call one of them an “alternate reality” is to infer that one of them isn’t real, or one of them is real and the other is the alternate to being real.
CUSE: But the questions you’re asking are exactly the right questions. What are we to make of the fact that they’re showing us two different timelines? Are they going to resolve? Are they going to connect? Are they going to co-exist in parallel fashion? Are they going to cross? Do they intersect? Does one prove to be viable and the other one not? I think those are all the kind of speculations that are the right speculations to be having at this point in the season.
LINDELOF: But it is going to require patience. We’ve taught the audience how to be patient thus far, so while they’re getting a lot of mythological answers on the island early in the season, this idea of what is the relationship between the two [worlds] is a little bit more of a slow burn.

Did Jughead really sink the Island? And is it possible that the Sideways characters are now caught in a time loop in which they might have to go back in time and fulfill the obligation to continuity by detonating the bomb?
LINDELOF: These questions will be dealt with on the show. Should you infer that the detonation of Jughead is what sunk the island? Who knows? But there’s the Foot. What do you get when you see that shot? It looks like New Otherton got built. These little clues [might help you] extrapolate when the Island may have sunk. Start to think about it. A couple of episodes down the road, some of the characters might even discuss it. We will say this: season 6 is not about time travel. It’s about the implications, the aftermath, and the causality of trying to change the past. But the idea of continuing to do paradoxical storytelling is not what we’re interested in this year.

Now, off to see what the blogosphere is saying about last night’s brand new Lost episodes.

1. Did Jacob want Ben to kill him?  I keep being reminded of Ob-Wan, “If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine”.  Of course we all know how that ended, Obi-Wan turned into a useless ghost.  But there do seem to be parallels.  Obi-wan/Jacob is killed way too easily by a lackey, Darth Vader/Ben, while the real Master, The Emporer/”Locke” sits on the sidelines.  Will Jacob be more useful?
2. Is it possible that Ben is feeling suicidal?  He’s back on the Island like he wanted, but Locke is there too, ready to snatch The Others away from him.  His own daughter accused him of her murder and now he’s killed his former boss.  I imagine that might be a little discouraging.
3. ”See you in another life” has new meaning now doesn’t it? (Desmond had told Jack that in Season 2 as they exercised at a local track)
   
4. Jacob says, “I was killed by an old friend who grew tired of my company”.  I’m definitely thinking a lot about the cave drawing of Smokey and Anubis. Beside that there is some slight significance to that line.  Apparently the Man in Black was annoyed with Jacob because they had to spend so much time together, presumably stuck on the Island.
   
5. Sayid was very concerned about what would happen to him after he died.  I think that raises the possibility of something interesting happening to everyone off the Island after these characters die.  Dying on the Island, in that timeline, might allow a character to pass into the other timeline.  I doubt the writers wanted to bring up heaven and hell at this point.
6. Charlie says “I was supposed to die”.  Really?  In the same way he was supposed to die at the end of Season 4?  Is Charlie aware of the past?  That would make him more interesting. (1-6 Not Confused Just Lost)
7. Free Will vs. Destiny
8. Again the show’s overarching theme was there in a big way. Charlie says he was supposed to die, and in the original timeline, that’s exactly what happened. When they find Montand’s body, he had on him one of Kierkegaard’s books. Kierkegaard believed in choice and free will and believed in experience over theory. Perhaps Smokey attacked Rousseau’s crew for those beliefs? (Interestingly, he also studied the personal and psychological reactions people had when faced with certain circumstances, as if he were the real father of the Dharma Initiative, who ran many psychological experiments that covered similar material.) There’s an idea in the episode that no matter which path you choose, the outcome will be the same. Jack will always be the guy rushing to someone’s side, and will be hated for it. Locke will continue to believe in his greatness, even if no one else does. Boone says he’d be by Locke’s side, just as he was on the island. When Kate knocks the marshall out, he incurs the exact same wound on the same side of his forehead that he got when the case whacked him in the head. When Kate runs into Jack as she’s stepping out of the airplane bathroom, she looks at Jack like she’s immediately taken by him, just like she did on the island. When Sawyer sees Kate’s handcuffs in the elevator, he’s immediately attracted by her bad-girl nature and helps her out.
   
9. So blowing up a Hydrogen bomb in the Swan caused the entire Island to sink.  Hmm, curious.  That kind of implies that they killed everyone on the Island.  I guess they considered that before they did it, but still, to see it makes a big difference.  All those people died to give Jack a second chance with Kate?  Of course this is all mostly just hypothetical, in reality those people only died in 50% of the show.  They lived in half of these episodes (well until the Purge)
   
10. Hurley’s also wearing a red shirt. Which has me REALLY REALLY worried. Please change shirts, Hurley. Soon! (3-5 Nik at Nite)
11. The questions you are asking are questions you should be asking. (2) You will get answers to these questions — but patience will be required. (3) The temptation will be to dismiss the sideways story as ”What if…?” trivia, but we should trust that we’re being shown this story for a reason, and so we should take the leap of investing in its reality. Interesting: Last night’s first of two conspicuous literary references was Salman Rushdie’s fantasy Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Its famous line? ”What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” The premiere’s second conspicuous reference? Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, which challenges true believers to embrace the absurdity of faith. Combined, both books send this message to us: This absurd sideways thing has a purpose. It is ”useful.” Promise. Have faith. Just go with it..
12. o my eyes, the premiere, entitled ”LA X,” was filled with metaphors for afterlife possibilities, beginning with that bravura f/x shot taking us to the sunken Island — a figurative descent into the underworld, to a veritable city of the dead. The Sideways story line represented old, pagan ideas of reincarnation. The Island story line, with its deus ex machina plucked characters: the Christian rapture.
13. the episode continued to mirror the established Lostnarrative. Jack’s nicked neck RX was analog to pilot’s ”physician, heal thyself” moment when Jack excused himself to the jungle of Craphole Island to patch up the ugly gash on his side. One wonders if the entire season 6 side ways story line will model the general thematic thrust of the castaway story, but with different incidents and events — a gritty, more down-to-earth version of the mythic, larger-than-life Island epic, like how Dorothy’s adventure in Oz was a fantastical extrapolation of her life in Kansas.
14. But where did Desmond go? Later, when Jack returned to his seat from saving Charlie from a bag of heroin, Desmond had vanished. There’s probably a reasonable explanation for this, too. (That Jack was creepy. I’m going back to my other chair next to the snoring guy.) Still, I did have the thought that Desmond could be flickering in and out of this world, like Pariah in Crisis on Infinite Earths. And if that reference lost you, just pretend it didn’t. Maybe there’s something not quite ‘’set” about the Sideways reality, that it’s still in flux, and Desmond is an element moving in and out of the mix, like a supplementary story line to an epic film that may or may not make the final cut depending on the director’s vision.

14. Question: What sunk the Island?

Possible Answer: Jughead.
Does That Make Sense? I’m not sure. If the bomb was powerful enough to sink the Island, wouldn’t it also have obliterated the Dharma Barracks, which we saw were still intact?

Question: So if not Jughead… what sunk the Island?
Possible Answer: The Island’s electromagnetic energy.
Huh? In all my theorizing about Jughead since last May, I have pretty much neglected this pretty huge plot point. The Dharma Initiative was dealing with another crisis that had nothing to do with the time travelers or Jughead. Radzinsky’s ”Black Swan” team has been drilling into the Island’s pocket of electromagnetic energy. Doing so risked cataclysmic consequences, according to Dr. Chang. What if in the Sideways world, Radzinsky continued drilling, hit the EM pocket, and triggered a cataclysm that sunk the Island. Where do the castaways fit into this theory? They don’t. Or won’t. I mean they don’t have to, because this scenario doesn’t need them. The sideways world could have branched off from Island world many years earlier. It may not even be a branch at all.

15.  The question remains: What did Juliet mean by ”It worked”? Clearly, Lost wanted us to think that Juliet was acknowledging the Sideways World. Here’s just one possibility. Perhaps the Sideways World is the afterlife for these characters. Perhaps when they die, their consciousness or essence zips into their sideways doppelgänger. Perhaps what Juliet really saw as she was slipping away from the Island World was the dawning of a new life with Sawyer in the Sideways World. The show has given us precedent. I refer to season 3, ”The High Cost Of Living” — the episode where Mr. Eko was killed by Smokey. As Eko lay dying, we were shown a sweet little bit of younger Eko walking into the sunset with his brother, Yemi. Was Eko merely flashing on a happy memory — or were we being shown Eko’s afterlife destiny, i.e. his soul transmigrating back to a pivotal point in his past? In light of what we saw in the premiere, I would amend ”point in the past” to ”the sideways world.”

16.  So just in case you stragglers weren’t sure of this before, the Whispers = the Others. But perhaps a certain classification of Others, i.e. the hard-core Island mystics that hang in the spiritual heart of the Island, anchored by a ziggurat, a step pyramid more Mesopotamian than Egyptian, even though there were Egyptian hieroglyphics everywhere. I am beginning to feel Island archaeology is tangential to what the Island really is. The Island: the original and purest expression of the God idea, of God power. These ruins? The remains of those zealots who’ve attempted to claim, name, and tame this place over the centuries — those people the Man In Black spoke of last year: ”They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.”

17.  it seemed to me what needed to happen was that Sayid needed to not only be revived but stay alive for the entire course of the treatment in order for the full scope of its magic/effect to take. What is that magic/effect? And what were the ”risks” Dogen spoke of? We may look to Benjamin Linus for some illumination. Last year, after Sayid shot Young Ben, Richard Alpert brought the boy into the Temple for healing. We may now surmise that what happened to Sayid was what happened to Ben, albeit more successfully. But what did Alpert say? ”He’ll forget this ever happened, and his innocence will be gone.” The bottom line is that the spring’s affect on people may be more than physical — it could be spiritual, too.

18.  ”Hello, Richard. Nice to see you out of those chains.’‘ FLocke’s line to Richard after leaving the Four Toed Statue and Richard had finally figured out FLocke’s identity was a theory spawner. ”You?” Richard said. ”Me,” Flocked said, and then took him down hard. The popular theory is that FLocke was alluding to the Black Rock with his chains reference, as if Richard had come to the Island as a slave. What might be the reason for their bad blood? My hunch is that FLocke is bitter toward Alpert for conspiring successfully to keep FLocke locked up all these years. FLocke hoisted the unconscious Alpert on his shoulder and walked into the jungle, yelling before that: ”I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED IN ALL OF YOU. As he left, he passed the body of the real John Locke lying dead on the and. I yearned for this betrayed man of faith to take to his feet and walk again. That didn’t happen.  (10-18 Doc Jensen)

19.  This is also a good time to point out a strange line of dialogue from season one, during All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues. After Ethan drags Charlie off and Jack is chasing after him, he tells Kate “I’m not letting him do this. Not again.” Is Jack referring to Ethan taking Claire earlier in the season? Maybe. At the same time though, it also seems as if Jack knows what’s happened before, and this time around he’s looking to change the outcome. If you ask me, Charlie was supposed to die at that tree. Jack brought him back through sheer force of will… call it faith, belief, or whatever. From that moment on, death always surrounded Charlie. As Desmond proved over and over in season three, there was just no saving him. Even now, in this alternate timeline, Jack is still trying to prevent his friend from dying. It might not be long before destiny course corrects by killing Charlie in some other way.

Examine Charlie’s many deaths a little more closely, and they all have one thing in common: not breathing. Desmond saw him drown (once in a dream, once in reality), Ethan hangs him to asphyxiation, and we see a vision in which he gets shot in the throat with an arrow. Now, in this episode, Charlie’s choking on a big bag of heroin. Whatever happened to kill Charlie must apparently happen again and again, in the same basic way, no matter where, when or what universe he happens to be in.

20.  Traditionally, mirrors have played a huge part all throughout LOST. In almost every case, they’ve reflected back the raw truth. Maybe they’ve even given us a glimpse into the elusive ‘other side’. Whatever happened to cause the wound on Jack’s neck, perhaps it only happened in the one “true” universe. It’s possible the mirror is reflecting back something that happens to Jack later on, or maybe even at the end of the show. It’s important to realize that we never see this wound directly, but only in the mirror.

21.  It was extremely significant that Locke gave Bram’s team a choice before killing them. He explained that Jacob was dead, and presented their situation in a straightforward, logical way. They were basically free to go, at least up until Bram fired his gun. Once that happened, judgment could be passed. This is also why Richard is so adamant that no one on the beach shoot Locke, screaming for them to hold their fire when he finally emerges from the statue.

Going a bit further, this also explains why the smoke monster doesn’t just kill anyone and everyone it comes across. We already know that the dark man disapproves of Jacob bringing people to the island. In keeping with the rules however, he seems unable to touch anyone unless he’s judged them first, or unless they’ve wronged him in some way. Not sure how or why it killed Seth Norris or Nadine… but both of those characters had just arrived on the island so maybe there was a exception clause. Or maybe the smoke monster hadn’t eaten in a while, and he was just plain hungry.

Bram’s circle of ash is something the monster apparently can’t cross. Perhaps this solves the mystery of Jacob’s cabin: it wasn’t Jacob’s at all. If the cabin served as a type of prison, then the circle of ash there was used to keep the entity or monster in and not out. This may by why Illana’s team burned the cabin to the ground upon reaching the island – possibly on Jacob’s orders. In any case, Bram’s plan A sucked, and his plan B was non-existant.

22.  Jacob’s lists have always been critical to LOST’s story. He’s not very big on communication, so these lists are all his followers really have to go on. I’ve long theorized that the people listed by Jacob are the ones integral to the end game – without every single one of them, Jacob’s final ending cannot be realized. This could be why the hippy with the wire-rimmed glasses tells us that Sayid had better pull through, or there’s going to be BIG trouble. As they called out their names, I also realized that we were cycling through every single one of the characters that Jacob had already touched during The Incident. Sawyer shows up later on, and he’s been touched too. But Miles? Uh oh

23.  So what happens now? Is Sayid still Sayid, or is he now a ‘candidate’ for Jacob? As much as I hate to say it, we’ve probably seen the end of the asskicking Iraqi we all know and love. Hopefully I’m wrong, but it would make more sense for Jacob to somehow inhabit Sayid’s body here, especially since he was the one who sent that body to the temple. Go back and look at Jacob’s face while he’s talking to Hurley and examining Sayid’s wounds. Even he knows the guy is too far gone. It’s unfortunate, and he looks a little sorry to even do it, but I’m pretty sure Jacob’s going to somehow live through this new version of Sayid

24.  While I’m not sure Jacob and his nemesis are a pair of fallen angels, there’s certainly a higher power above them. Maybe they’ve been placed on the island for a specific purpose: to serve a penance all their own. Perhaps their game isn’t a game at all, but a lesson that needs to be learned before they can move on. If this is the case, the island becomes their own personal Purgatory…. and yes, I said Purgatory

25.  After the crash, Jack has no way of knowing that his dad’s coffin wasn’t on the plane. As far as he’s concerned, it was. So when he starts chasing ghost-Christian through the jungle and “finds” the coffin, is Jack only seeing what he expects to see? Did he bring his father’s coffin – and even his Christian himself – to the island via the magic box, much like Sawyer unknowingly brought The Man From Tallahassee? Kooky idea, but we’re in season six. Ghosts, time travel, alternate timelines… the whole magic box thing goes down a lot easier these days.

Similarly, Locke’s case of knives was found amongst the beach wreckage early in season one. I’ve long speculated that those knives were there simply because Locke wanted them to be there, but now we find out that he really did pack them. Yet if they never made the plane and they somehow still showed up on the beach… magic box? Could be. Early on we saw a lot of things brought into being by requirement, usually whenever a character needed them most.

26.  After beating Richard like a prison inmate trying to make a statement, the monster stands up to address everyone surrounding him. “I’m very disappointed in all of you!”, he shouts. Not sure what he means by this, but it struck me that maybe he’s going topretend to be Jacob. It was probably that half-smirk he made at the end. The only conscious person who’d know that he’s lying would be Ben… and the last time we saw Ben he was looking for a second pair of shorts. Whatever the dark man’s next move is, you can be sure it involves an asskicking.  (19-26 by Vozzek69)

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