LOST Revisited: 6-15 “Across the Sea”
I’m just going to cross my fingers and hope that there’s more Frank to come. Or at least Frank X – we haven’t seen him yet, after all. You just know Frank X is exactly the same as our Frank. It’s like he’s everybody’s Constant!
Also, thanks and bonus points to spunkybuddies SMQ, Sara, and Larry – they confirmed that Claire X’s music box was indeed playing the ubiquitous “Catch a Falling Star”. The context had me thinking that was the case, but I’ve got such a tin ear. Thanks, all!
Just a few things to get to this week – the upcoming episode apparently doesn’t feature any of the regular cast, so my guess is we’re going to get a lot of answers about Jacob and Smokey. And at least an episode that’s light on Lostaways means no more traumatic deaths.
Seriously, Sawyer. Not Cool: This week, spunkybuddy Julie was particularly frustrated with Sawyer. Because, let’s face it, he’s kind of to blame for the whole explosion thing. It’s especially maddening when you think of how far he’s come as a character. In a way, it feels like all his growth as LaFleur just went out the window over the last few weeks.
I think Sawyer might be salvageable, though. After all, Jack is the person he trusts least in the world – it wasn’t that long ago that Sawyer wanted to kill him in revenge for Juliet. I think this whole season takes place over about a week’s time, so this is still really fresh for Sawyer. If Jin or Sayid had explained the bomb, I think he would have trusted them. But Sawyer is not going to believe anything that Jack has to say at this point.
In this way, it’s a return to their Season One relationship. Sawyer will make a bad decision rather than listen to Jack. Only now, Sawyer has what he considers a legitimate reason to do so – back in the first season, you got the feeling he was just playing a part. He was the rebel, Jack was the authority figure, and so Sawyer was obligated to flip him off.
What worries me over these final days is that Sawyer is going to know that it’s his fault. And whatever you want to say about Sawyer, he’s a guy who doesn’t deal with guilt very well. A major part of his early character was his need to be punished for killing an innocent man back in Sydney. Remember how he led Sayid torture him for Shannon’s inhaler, never even attempting to explain that he didn’t have it? So what’s going to happen when he tries to process the fact that he helped cause the death of three (or four!) of his friends? This is just going to wreck him.
If you look at Timeline X as a world where the Lostaways get what they want most, Sawyer X still lost his parents the same way as our Sawyer did. The difference is that Sawyer X can’t find Anthony Cooper, despite the fact that he lives in a rest home in the very same city. Sawyer doesn’t want to have to confront the man, because he knows what choice he’ll have to make. What he wants is to not have to make that choice, because he knows he can’t make the right one. That’s pretty heartbreaking.
A New Perspective on Timeline X: As you know, I’ve been assuming that Timeline X was created by Smokey, possibly as a trap for the Lostaways, or else to buy them off. Well, spunkybuddy Jennifer had a great theory – what if Timeline X is their reward for serving the Island?
Now, obviously some bad things have happened to them in Timeline X, but that’s always going to happen when free will is in the equation. But look at the starting points. Jack has a son, Claire gets to keep Aaron, Dogen’s son is alive and well and they’re together, Jin is (as far as we’ve seen) not a brutal enforcer, Nadia is alive, Sawyer and Miles get to leave their con man lives behind, Locke is still with Helen and doesn’t have to deal with the realization of what kind of man his father is. And once again, we come back to the possibility that Kate’s wish is that she can help keep Claire and Aaron together. We don’t really know who Ilana was off the Island, but she’s a bigshot lawyer with a fancy office, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. Faraday gets to be a musician, like he wanted before his mother manipulated him so that she could shoot him dead in the past.
It’s just a matter of whether these rewards are meant to distract them or meant as legitimate actual rewards. It’s sort of counterintuitive to think of an artificial world as being a reward. Let’s face it, that’s pretty Matrix. But then, in that movie, the real world sucked. The artificial world gave its inhabitants the ability to make their own decisions, while in the real world, they had to live in tunnels and hang out with club kids.
But there’s the issue of Desmond, and it creates an issue with the idea that Timeline X is Smokey’s trap, too. Desmond and Desmond X seem to be in sync, which means that the Timelines must exist simultaneously. And then consider that Timeline X is still in 2004 and the regular Timeline is in early 2008.
So here’s a new theory that I’ve developed as I’ve been typing – what if Timeline X was created by Jacob, and it’s basically a holding tank for duplicates. There are back-ups of all the candidates there. His dying words were “They’re coming”, which still hasn’t been explained. What if “They” are the Anti-Smokey Squad from Timeline X? They’re the candidates, but without the flaws that have led our versions astray. I’ll admit, I’m only noodling about with it now, so it doesn’t quite fit together yet. I will say that I like the idea, if only because it means as long as one version of somebody is alive, then they’re still alive. (Sorry, Keamy and Mikhail!)
And I’ve been pretty sure that at least a couple people from Timeline X are crossing over at some point – after all, somebody had to tell Juliet that “it worked”. And I still think the skeletons in the cave are from Timeline X – somebody from the other side comes to our Timeline at some point in the past. They render Jughead inert, through whatever means you can do that with a hydrogen bomb. Since Jughead was leaking and giving off all kinds of radioactivity, they die of radiation poisoning fifty years in the past, which fits in with Jack’s assessment of the age of the skeletons. Thus, the bomb was never going to work, and the white flash when Juliet struck the bomb was just the Lostaways timejumping back to the present. (I think I said all this earlier in the season, but a lot of stuff has happened since then.)
That just leaves us with the question as to why there’s no Island in Timeline X. It’s been made pretty clear (and I’m sorry to keep harping on this) that it was not destroyed by a hydrogen bomb in 1977. But we don’t know when or how it went away, and in the absence of new information, I’m just going to keep running myself in circles. I’m going to miss this, you know.
How To Kill a Candidate: A lot of people wrote to me about the Candidates, since we learned some specifics last week. I’m going to try to put together all the information we have, just to get a clear picture.
Smokey can not kill the Candidates directly. We don’t know whether he’s actually unable to, or whether there would be severe consequences for breaking the rules. It was the same with Jacob – he needed a “loophole” to kill Jacob.
Being touched by Jacob and being a Candidate are not the same thing. There are people for whom both things are true, but Ilana and Richard were touched and were not candidates. Sayid and Hurley weren’t touched by Jacob until after they left the Island – presumably they were still Candidates during their initial time there. And “Linus” was crossed out on the wall – Benry was a Candidate but never met Jacob. Until he killed him, of course.
Candidates can die. Locke was killed by Benry while he was an active Candidate. And it would seem they can be killed as a result of mistakes (theirs or others) – Sayid, Sun, and Jin died because Sawyer made a mistake by trying to defuse the bomb.
It’s not clear what the rules are that prevent somebody from killing themselves. Richard, who was touched by Jacob but was not a Candidate, can’t kill himself. Michael, who was neither touched by Jacob nor a Candidate, also couldn’t. It’s possible that Richard is wrong, by the way. He assumes that somebody else can cause his death, but that can only be an assumption on his part. I certainly didn’t hear Jacob give him that caveat. Jacob only told him that he wouldn’t die.
Some people can’t die until “The Island is done with them”. Both Ilana (touched by Jacob) and Michael (not) were protected until they fulfilled their destiny.
Candidates can be eliminated from contention while still alive. We saw both “Linus” and “Straume” crossed out on the cave wall. Juliet died after Jacob, and her name was crossed out. And then there’s Kate, who was apparently a Candidate until very recently (her name isn’t crossed out at the Lighthouse, but it is in the cave). We don’t know what leaves one unsuitable as a Candidate, though. It might just be Jacob realizing that somebody just isn’t going to work out.
Smokey can’t leave the Island unless all the Candidates are dead. Given that he could tell that some of them survived the sinking of the sub (Alliteration!), I have to think that something dramatic will happen if and when they’re dead. Some sort of Dark Rapture, perhaps.
I think that covers everything we know about Candidacy.
I think that’ll do it for this pre-game. Be sure you check out our friend Larry Young – he’s got things to say about Frank, mirrors, Ji Yeon, and just why Look-a-Locke took the digital watch before he discovered the C4. Poor Larry lost Ilana and Frank in quick succession, so you should give him a hug.
And as always, let me know what you think. The opportunities to win bonus points are disappearing fast. (Please note, bonus points can not be redeemed for cash.) You can reach me in the comments section, by e-mail at ejfeddes@spunkybean.com or you can hit me up on Facebook. If nothing else, you’ll be amazed at how many of my status updates are about Batman.
I’ll see you back here in 24 hours for “Across the Sea”. Expect a fair degree of freaking out.
