They’re back. Back where they belong. Back where we want them. Nearly 21 months after Jack first bellowed the words "We have to go back!," the Oceanic 6 (minus Aaron, and don’t ask why, or Kate won’t kiss you) finally undertook the perilous journey back to the place they never should have left — back to The Island, back to their "mythic estate," to borrow a phrase from James Joyce’s Ulysses, which last night’s episode had the audacity to namedrop.
For now, we only know of three who successfully fell to Earth — allthe way to The Island’s Dharma Initiative past, no less. There’s Jack,blinking awake as he did in Lost’s very first episode, but thistime looking not hopelessly lost, but gloriously born again. There’sKate, whose motivations for making the return trip were deliberatelykept from us (all the better for a future flashback episode, my dears).And there’s Hurley, whose carry-on baggage included a new comic book(one of my all time favorites and a certifiable masterpiece, Y: The Last Man, written by Brian K. Vaughan, who also happens to be Lostproducer) and a guitar case — a token of Charlie, required to completethe set of symbolic talismans needed to conjure some portal-openingmagic.
As for the fates of Ben, Sayid, Sun, and pilot Frank Lapidus — not tomention John Locke’s corpse and those two mystery characters hauntingbusiness class like ghosts (more later) — I’m sure they’ll turn up soon.I’m banking on them being the Mystery Rafters who were using thecastaways beach camp and then later fired on Sawyer’s outrigger a fewepisodes ago during one of the Left Behinders time flash adventures.(The proof: Sawyer and co. found an Ajira Airways bottle in one of theboats.) And how about this for a crazy theory: Remember back in Season3, when the Others made Kate and Sawyer do hard labor on Hydra StationIsland? According to Lost lore, the things that they werehelping to build… was an airplane runway. So… what if instead ofgetting magically downloaded out of the sky by The Island like Jack,Kate and Hurley, Ben’s Ajira contingent merely landed safely on thatrunway? What if the very reason that Ben wanted to build that runway was becausesomehow, someway (Jacob? Time loop? Precognitive powers?), he knew thatone day he would need it?!
It was certainly an episode explicit and implicit with deep thoughtsand wild possibilities, but they were all in service of an ironicmission: Bringing Lost back down to terra firma. “316” — that wasthe title, and for many more reasons than one — was a proverbial pilotepisode for a whole new chapter of the show. It effectively returnedthe series to a place where all fans — the in-too-deep geeks like me whowant meaty mythological disclosures, as well as the normal people whojust want powerful, character-driven stories — can find some commonground appreciation. By reuniting the castaways in the setting we allknow and love, and by conspicuously omitting key details from variouscharacter arcs (Why did Hurley change his mind? Who was that woman withSayid? How did Ben get roughed up?) that will surely require sometraditional flashback storytelling in order to fully reveal. Lost’s time traveling, time looping Back to the Future fifth season has now gone all Season 1 on us. (More to come in a few hours. In the meantime: Talk!)
Did you see next weeks promo!
http://spoilerslost.blogspot.com/2009/02/episode-507-life-and-death-of-jeremy_19.html
I nearly cried!
and if thats what they are giving away…well then, it will be a great one! i think jack, kate and hurley are in the 70′s (time zapped) and the rest (ben, locke, sayid, sun and the 2 newbies) are in the present time having just crashed or crash landed as Doc suggests. i think they will be seperated though.
Oh. My. God. Where is Aaron??!??!?!??!?! why was ben beat up? is there a connection? maybe claire appeared and took him back herself via underground Christian connections? i dont know, but i love it!
i for one am really worried about penny’s health
I think the woman with Sayid was a Federal Agent. Since they needed things to be similar to when they found the island, they needed someone to be in custody (Kate last time). Also (and this is just a theory), they may have needed a pregant woman, hence Kate sleeping with Jack. (again, just a theory).
Last season, Ben vowed to Charles Widmore revenge for killing his daughter. When Ben called Jack to tell him where to find Locke, he was calling from a marina. Did Ben follow Desmond to try to kill Penny? Did Desmond and Penny do that to him? What ever happened to the Matthew Abbadon character from last year? And where are Rose and Bernard?
I believe we are going to see Abbadon next week. I like your theory about Ben. I was thinking though that he paid Sayid a visit and the meeting was “unpleasant” as promised by Sayid
If they were trying to recreate the first flight as much as possible, what bothers me is that no one thought to get in touch with Walt. Forget a proxy guitar case, something borrowed from Christian Shepherd, a new federal agent, whatever– Walt was actualy ON Flight 815 himself. Does that bug anyone else? I’m really hoping for some meaty Walt storylines soon, not just random cameos. There’s still so much to tell!
Frank Lapidus had the best line of the night….”we are not going to Guam are we??” he delivered it flawlessly!!!!
First of all…
Lisa and Nala – Great thoughts!
I myself was more interested in the man in line behind Jack. Could he be a Widmore assasin out to get Ben?
The season has definately improved from episode 2 “the filler”.
Jack: Ben how can you read?
Ben: My mother taught me.
Uproariously funny, until you remember Ben’s mother died in childbirth (or did she?)
Wasn’t Hurley last seen in Police custody. How did he get away?
Didja notice what Ben’s in-flight reading was? James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. In myth, Ulysses was the Greek captain who had to travel for decades to get home from the Trojan war.
And Joyce originally wanted the book to be printed with a spiral binding, so that the reader could start on any page and continue reading until the ended up back where they started. Sound familiar? (Also the first line of the book is “…riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s”. In Lost, Adam & Eve are the skeletons found in a watery grave, yet unexplained.
GAWD! I love this show!
I’m hoping that Ben is all beat up b/c he tried to kill Penny, but was not able to– and got it handed to him by Desmond as a result.
And if the island isn’t finished with Desmond yet- perhaps while sailing around the world, he just so happens to crash on the island.
Like he did last time.
William – Remember when Ben was talking to his lawyer? The guy said that they were able to prove that Hurley was still in the nutty bin when the guy was killed in his car, and the rest of the evidence was cirrcumstancial.