S
SP
SPO
SPOI
SPOIL
SPOILE
SPOILER
SPOILER A
SPOILER AL
SPOILER ALE
SPOILER ALER
SPOILER ALERT
* This was pretty much the episode that the people who didn’t like last week’s episode wanted instead: Following the various bands of characters around as they drop exposition on one another on their way to getting where they need to be, physically and mentally, for the finale. Indeed, I’ve already seen a couple of things from nerd-friendly mainstream-media people that indicate, in spoiler-free fashion of course, that this was a whoo-boy episode for them.
* Me? Other than voicing my sinking suspicion that I’m never gonna see Walt again goddammit, I don’t have a ton of stuff to say about this episode. As a discreet, hour-long unit of television, I prefer last week’s intensely acted, emotionally violent, “Long ago there were two sons” creation fable. Now, obviously at this point in the show, and for several earlier seasons besides, none of these episodes are really just a discreet, hour-long unit of television, so that’s probably neither the fairest nor the most germane standard to hold it to. Still, that’s where I’m at.
* So what did I like about it? The violence, mainly. Not ashamed to say it! I’ve written about the appeal of violence on the show before–I remember mentioning it in my thing a few things back about how I like this show as a narrative genre drama, and all that entails, rather than as some kind of elaborate crossword puzzle. But I think it was last week’s episode that really crystalized that this is a show about violence as much as anything this side of Deadwood. With a few exceptions, it’s about how the Island took people who’d made choices that hurt people emotionally, or fallen victim to choices that hurt them emotionally, and gave them choices that could lead them to hurt people or be hurt physically. It’s about murder as much as a superhero comic is about the big fight with the supervillain. In this case the supervillain is the Monster, and watching him murder his way through Richard and Zoe in no-nonsense split-second fashion now has all the weight of that shot of the Man in Black gripping his game box in the middle of his leveled village and seething with insane rage.
* Plus, Ben finally gave Widmore his comeuppance. Because this show is rivaled only by Gossip Girl in its infatuation with characters who lie all the time, I’ve got no idea whether we can believe a word Widmore said in this episode regarding turning babyface, but I did at least think he and Ben would forge a tenuous alliance. I thought so right up until the moment Ben apologized to Widmore for leading the Monster to him–I really assumed Ben had quickly conspired with Widmore to lead Fake Locke into a trap and blow him up with the C4 or something. Anyway, I think the presence of the Monster sort of distracted from the potentially epic feel of a final Ben/Widmore showdown, but in a way, that’s probably how it should be. Ben’s not an epic-confrontation kind of guy. He’s more a “shoot him repeatedly when he’s not looking” kind of guy. As with Widmore’s supposed switch to the side of the angels, I have no idea if Ben’s (presumably final) heel turn is for real or a ruse, but that’s certainly the fun thing about Ben.
* Well, it was Jacob’s cave, how about that.
* Hey, wait a minute, Fake Locke got Ben on board (maybe, at least in theory) by promising him the Island. But our cliffhanger ending was Fake Locke telling Ben he’s going to destroy the Island. If I were Ben I’d get nervous at this point, especially standing right next to that well.
* One thing I’ll say for all the chess-piece movements in this episode is that the final confrontation ought to be fairly clear-cut at this point, simply because there are so few people left. You’ve got Ben and the Monster, you’ve got Jack and company, and Miles and Desmond and Claire are out there someplace. I suppose there are still Widmorian scientists on Hydra Island, but I can’t see that making much of a difference.
* Sinister Sideways Omniscient Desmond is a scream. Man, he took Dr. Linus down like wo. It was nice of him to involve Ana-Lucia, although I was hoping for Mr. Eko.
* Sideways Rousseau cleaned up good! Love her love connection with Ben.
* I wanted to write out a couple of things here because I can’t remember if in the past I’d only written them in comment threads. First, everyone convinced me last week that I was wrong about the Monster’s origin–it’s not just some independent Monster mimicking the Man in Black, it’s the Man in Black trapped in Monster form. That was confirmed by Jacob last night, so good call, everyone.
* Second and most importantly, I no longer think that the flashsideways characters will have to choose to sacrifice their happy lives in order to stop the Monster in the real reality. I think their happy lives are their reward for having stopped the Monster in the real reality. The flashsidewayses are the show’s happy ending. Sideways Desmond’s mad scheme to show everyone the other reality isn’t an attempt to get them to relinquish the sideways reality, it’s a way of drawing their memories of their Island-influenced lives into their current lives, so that all of that will still matter, but now they’ll be able to move past it.
* Why could no one on the Island have babies? Why was Walt a big deal? Why did the Others act like murderous assholes all the time if they were working for semi-benevolent Jacob? Why did Ben and Widmore have their falling-out? What was up with the Cabin, the Temple, Dogen, the ash, and other apparent Monster-containment devices? Will the elusive #108 ever show up, or was that just Desmond all along? What were the rules that bound Jacob and the Monster, or Ben and Widmore, and were they really rules that couldn’t be broken, or were they more of a guideline than a rule in the grand Venkman tradition? See you Sunday!
Of all your questions at the end, the ones that have been bothering me the most as this season has rolled on have been the ones about the various Others and their motivations, and I think we got a kind of an answer tonight on that. When they were in the house getting the C4, I took Ben’s “It’s what I thought was for summoning the monster, but really he was summoning me” or some such to mean that Ben has realized that the entire time he was communing with Jacob, he was really talking to the Man In Black via the cabin. I mean, originally we’d expected Jacob to have been in the cabin, but the only person we ever really saw there was MiB as Christian. Is it too much of a stretch to think that by the time Widmore had come to power, direct contact with Jacob had been suspended and Ben then convinced some of the Others that he had a pipeline to the main man when really he was just seeing some smoke and mirrors from Smokey?
That certainly doesn’t answer a lot of other questions about the Others from why they took Walt to why the stewardess and kids from the flight were shifted from Dharma-ville to the temple to a whole bunch else I’m forgetting now, but in general the idea that MiB moved in to start fucking with Jacob’s “chosen people” as far back as the ’50s and that his influence messed a whole bunch up as Jacob put all his focus into calling the crash survivors to the Island isn’t super implausible to me.
My problem with the show at this point is becoming that those vague half answers that kind of solve the big problems are only going to cut it if the emotional payoff and final sense of closure from the finale is really, REALLY fucking solid. They’ve got one hell of a landing to stick here to make me feel like all the stuff that they didn’t have time to get to was worth passing over for a slow rollout on the sideways reality.
And I’m feeling you on the idea that said sideways reality is going to survive in the face of the final battle on the Island, but again, it’s going to be a hard pill for me to swallow, especially since the show’s been pulling me closer and closer to feeling that a bleak ending will fit so much of this much better when all is said and done.
Sunday night’s going to be fucking crazy.
I don’t mind saying, Sean, that will all due respect to the show itself, I do believe a large part of me will miss your thoughts on each episode and the discussions fostered here maybe more than Lost itself.
I’m kind of trying to brace myself not to try and over-analyze what’s not in the finale and what’s left unanswered to too great a degree lest I tank my enjoyment.
But of course I’ve still got thoughts. 🙂
First and foremost for some reason was that I just had a feeling Richard was destined for a quick, violent death and not a drawn out one. Just knew it somehow.
It feels right that Ben is closer to the side of the devils or at least ambiguous going into the finale. I definitely don’t see him making it out alive. The question is whether he’ll ultimately redeem himself trying to take out Smokey or if one of the good guys will get to take him out as payback for all the nastiness over the past six seasons (I could see Sawyer or Kate or even Desmond getting the nod as it’s a nice “sub-boss kill” when we know Jack has to be the one to do or die against Smokey).
That was a really nice moment between Ben and Richard after Richard said he buried Alex.
Ana Lucia’s role was perfect as you could totally take it as an almost meta commentary on how little she ultimately meant to the show after a disproportionately large build; she really was the first major addition after the initial cast and ended up being a pretty big let-down. For a second I was really thinking she might be Jack’s baby mama.
I think Kiel’s right on as far as why Ben’s Others acted as they did, as Ben thought he was taking orders from Jacob, but was really getting jerked around by Smokey and pulled the rest of the crew, even Richard, into the ruse with him. I am somewhat curious why Jacob wouldn’t intervene if he wasn’t getting regular updates from Richard, but I’d buy Kiel’s “he was busy with the crash” explanation since it’s likely the only one we’ll get (and it works fine). I think this also explains why Jack, Sawyer, Kate and Hurley were on that list back at the end of season two as Smokey was hoping to get Ben and company to nip the most promising candidates in the bud back then…which makes me wonder if Jacob didn’t have something to do with Ben needing Jack’s help, thus ensuring their survival.
Rousseau did clean up fine, Sean, but I fear she was not the coup de grace your ongoing observation of Lost’s most important trend needed (it peaked with Charlotte in my opinion).
If we don’t get any sort of Walt resolution in the finale, my imagined explanation will be that he could have served as a “fail safe” in the same way Desmond can and thus Smokey wanted him controlled/gone.
Now Sean, if you get bored at work tomorrow, I demand a Gossip Girl Thoughts on the season finale for old time’s sake!
I would have totally gone for another running-over of wheelchair John Locke.
I’m right there with you, Tom!
Here’s something that confused me: are the two groups of characters left matched-up time wise, or is one ahead of the other? I think I’m confused because basically Richard, Miles and Ben wandered around for a day or so doing nothing, but I can’t be certain.
Kiel:
* Oh, you’re totally right about that having been the Monster in the cabin the whole time. I never had any doubt about that. But for some reason I never took the next logical step and thought to myself “Well, the reason the Others have been such murderous assholes for so long is because they’ve actually been receiving instructions from the Monster.” Go figure! Thanks for making that connection for me.
* But here’s the interesting thing: Ben admitted to Locke that he’d never actually seen Jacob–which means he’s never seen “Jacob,” i.e. the Monster pretending to be him, either. So I wonder what’s going on there. We know his dead mother appeared to him as a kid and was the person who steered him to Richard and the Others back then, but was she the Monster in his mom’s form (my assumption), or was she a ghost, as was the Man in Black’s slain mother when she revealed the truth about the world beyond the Island to him way back when? Or was that the Monster too? Sheesh.
* Plus I don’t really have much of a handle on how direct Richard’s contact with Jacob was over the years. I got the sense that there wasn’t very much of it, but I’m not sure.
* You’re right about the finale needing a very satisfying emotional payoff to compensate for the apparent vagueness of most of the big answers we seem to be getting–by which I mean not that, I dunno, we never find out who was shooting at them in the outrigger last season or stuff like that, or that we don’t know what biochemical process causes the light at the heart of the Island, but, you know, stuff about the basic motivations of large segments of the Island population and such, explanations for their behavior, that sort of thing.
* BUT! Maybe it’s just a question of recalibrating my expectations. This was a show where I sort of expected plenty of loose ends, but also getting the fundamentals nailed down. But if the fundamentals don’t get nailed down, if there’s still room for interpretation even on them and not just “How did the Lighthouse work” and such, I can probably live with that. I certainly have for a couple other shows I can name, which leave off with mysteries bigger than any they’d had over the course of the shows themselves. I just need to adjust.
Ben:
* You’re too nice.
* Spot-on call-outs of various cool moments.
* “Jacob was busy setting up the crash people” is indeed a good explanation for his malign neglect of the Others. I’m just curious as to how far back that stretches. Of course, this kind of raises the question of how much of the castaways’ miserable lives, which Jacob says is the reason he brought them to the Island, were his doing.
* Sideways Charlotte is definitely next-level. Who’s even left to see in cleaned-up mode–Dark Tina Fey?
* Yeah, I’m sure we can come up with any number of explanations why Walt seemed so important and then got ditched. I think the main one I’d go with is “the writers fucked up,” but there are certainly in-story things we could figure out.
Tom:
* EVERYONE wanted Locke to get run over again. Can you imagine how many points Desmond would have racked up in Flashsideways Death Race 2000 for hitting him again?!?! Still, I’ll settle for an Adam Sandler-style Severe Beating of a High School History Teacher.
* I think groups are square, timewise, yeah.
Quick random thought: there’s only one character in the sideways who doesn’t exist in the main universe.
…What if David Shepard is “The Island” in the sideways, and Jack is protecting him? Who would that make his mom?
Given his penchant for subtle melodrama (does that make sense?), I would not be shocked if Ben’s “I’ve never seen Jacob” as him having seen Smokey-as-Jacob for years, realizing he was hoodwinked, and overcompensating in his glumness. On the other hand, didn’t he admit to Locke at one point he’d never seen Jacob period?
I think timeline-wise it’s possible Ben/Richard/Miles were a bit behind the rest at the beginning of last night, but they’re all synched up now.
Speaking of which, should we question whether or not Richard is really dead or was that pretty definitive? I think it probably was. Does that mean Smokey *can* kill folks who were touched by Jacob, just not candidates?
Also, how the heck is Miles still kicking? Good on that guy and his self-preservation instincts. I figured fro awhile Lapidus was gonna be the token “I can’t believe he made it” character by finale’s end, but it’s gotta be Miles, yeah?
So let me offer up another theory on the Sideways world: What if it’s not paradise or a trap, but instead a sort of waiting station (Purgatory if you want)? Something about how Hurley asked about Ana Lucia and Desmond said she wan’t ready coupled with the fact that Hurley doesn’t seem alarmed that Libby is dead in the old reality got me thinking this way. What if Desmond is gathering them all so they can move onto yet another world where they get to remember both of their lives then pick and chose (basically Heaven)? And maybe Jack is the one who has to make the sacrifice and stay behind so we get both theories?
Not sure how that would benefit whatever plan Widmore had and/or stop the Monster and it’s a bit of a longshot, but I do know our host loves “third ways”…
Whoa. That’s…that’s something, Justin.
It would tie into my theory of parenting being the main theme of the show, too!
–Ben’s Beatdown was a terrific moment for both actors, and gave us some nice scenes of Ben, Alex, and Rousseau.
–Alex’s burial scene was lovely (though I was convinced Miles was freaked out because he was hearing the voices of all the purge victims.)
–Loved Action!Ben, tromping through the jungle in khakis and oxford shirt, with his carryall and rifle. That has always been one of my favorite images in the show, conveying Ben’s acquired competence, but also his ungainly, clumsy self.
–“It’s just chalk on a wall, Kate.” The one line I loved from the meeting with Jacob.
–Side-Kate flirting with Side-Sawyer. Awful, unconvincing.
–The sitdown with Jacob. I can barely express how much I hated this scene. Jacob promises to tell them what everyone died for, and his answer is that he created a monster, and the same old apocalypse his mom told him about. And then he justifies summoning everyone because their lives weren’t perfect before the island, and they needed the experience to get it together. And the losties all fall into silent agreement. They were flawed, so Jacob gets to do whatever he wants.
–They needed the island as much as it needed them? So the Kwons needed a watery grave, and Sayid needed to be killed twice, and Boone needed to get crushed by a plane, and Shannon needed to get shot, and Charlie drowned, and Eko smoked, and Ana-Lucia and Libby murdered, and Michael and Arzt blown up, and Charlotte time-whipped, and Naomi stabbed, and Juliet nuked? And everyone else on the plane died in the crash. They all needed that? They were all flawed and unhappy? Fuck you, Jacob.
–Jacob brings all of these lost souls to an inescapable island, and traps them there with an unstoppable killer. He watches a bunch of them die in their futile efforts to escape, and then professes to giving them the choice he never had. This strikes me as a tad… disingenuous. And kind of monstrously self-justifying.
–The campfire scene, to my great disappointment, also seems to set up Jacob as a reliable truth-teller, whose only transgression was tossing brother down the well. All the rich ambiguity of last week, suggesting that Jacob’s own knowledge of the island was just as fragmentary and cryptic as the clues he offered others, appears to be non-operative. It’s destiny, apocalypse, faith, and turtles all the way down. I hope it goes a different way, but I don’t like what’s being set up.
NON-SPOILER SPECULATION:
–I think Jack’s offering of himself is a feint. If there must be a new Jacob, I don’t think it will be him.
–That said, I don’t even think there will be a new Jacob. The more I see Lost as a story of escaping old patterns, the more I think it has to end with the cycle broken– no prisoners; no wardens.
— So the finale is going to center around a concert at the museum. I am going to assume that young Shepherd, young Dogen, Faraday, and possibly even Charlie will be performing.
–Might we even see a different Widmore/Ben climax in the sideways-verse?
I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong about the Miles/Purge victims thing, Simon. Richard cut Miles off before he could give his answer. Good catch.
The “line of chalk” bit was good. And wow, when you put it all hat way, Jacob is indeed a tremendous dick. But then, he’s certainly far from perfect as the guy who caused the problem in the first place. Still…
My officemate just raised an interesting point: If Kate’s name was crossed off because she became a mother, is that the same reason Sun’s name was crossed off (presuming it was hers and not Jin’s)? Along that line of thinking, why would Jin becoming a father not give him a pass?
“Along that line of thinking, why would Jin becoming a father not give him a pass?”
Because being a father is not the same as being a mother. It’s the same reason why, whenever I do something stupid as a father that makes my wife look at me sideways, I tell her, “Sorry – I’m not a mother.”
Let’s not forget that Sawyer has a daughter, and Jack was raising Aaron until he and Kate split up.
Who let Desmond out of the well? I think that question might be driving some of the on-island timeline confusion. It doesn’t seem like any of the groups we’ve been following have had time to throw him a rope. That leaves… Claire? Rose or Bernard coming out of retirement?
If you’re looking for possible stealth candidates to take over when Jack screws up, don’t discount Ben. Jacob touched him during the murder, and it would explain the “hope I’m wrong about Ben” thought that Miles heard in Jacob’s ashes.
I kinda figured Sayid tossed Desmond the rope when Smokey sent him to finish him off, yeah?
I thought about that too, and then promptly forgot it! Sayid says specifically he left Desmond in the well, to Jack. Here’s hoping it’s Walt! (I know, it won’t be.)
Possible Miles got to him? He had a decent lead on Ben and Smokey.
I reckon it was Rose and Bernard who helped Desmond out. It’s the sort of thing they would do.
Were they intentionally going for a Survivor vibe when Jacob sat around his burning ashes? Because that was pretty funny.
Apart from that, I loved this episode, because it had loads of Benjamin Linus’ Blank Stare, which is one of my absolute favourite things in this entire series. And it had that scene where Desmond just unloaded on Ben. Lost always does excellent punching scenes and it was great to see the flashback to that earlier brilliant moment where Des beat the shit out of Ben in a righteous rage to protect his family.
I always thought Widmore would die a fairly pitiful death, because he wasn’t as important as he thought he was and went out like another pawn in Ben’s back cupboard. But I hope Richard isn’t totally gone – it seems so unfair that he goes this far and doesn’t see the end.
Still, I have no more questions and am primed for the end. I have no idea what could happen, although I think it’s unlikely that Sawyer is getting out alive. He does blame himself for what happened on the sub and his sacrifice would be the ultimate tragedy. Nobody wanted to get off the island more and he came so close several times, but he never did.
–I’m with Simon–no way is Jack still the new Jacob when the series ends. My money’s on Sawyer or Ben, or possibly the “now nobody ever has to be Jacob again” angle.
–Also, Simon, I think the complaints you raise about the campfire scene are both extremely valid AND part of why I like both that scene and the show in general. Jacob is both disingenuous and self-justifying, but that doesn’t mean the things he’s telling them aren’t true. The ambiguity is still present, because of what we know about these characters and their history, even when the Losties are agreeing with Jacob. We don’t have to accept that Jacob’s way is the right way, even if Jack does. (I mean, the “choice” Jacob offers them–I think Jacob knew full well that Jack would offer himself, and the only reason Jack does so is because he’s finally drunk the island-destiny Kool-Aid–he makes the “choice” because he believes he has no choice.)
–By the way, I admire the hell out of the restraint it must taken all involved not to have Jacob say “Before you came here, you were all…lost.”
–Goddammit, the Ben/Danielle/Alex scene was so beautiful, and so heartbreaking, for like seven different reasons.
So is Fake Locke planning to throw Desmond in the swirly light waterfall and blow up the island? Cos, that throwing Desmond in the well thing didn’t work out so well before, you know.
Oh, and Richard is so not dead yet. No body, no death. Haven’t you nerds learned anything from reading comic books? (That counts for Capt. Lawnmower Man, too.)
Longtime reader, first-time poster! I kind of hope Ben and MIB have an expository heart-to-heart while they are walking through the jungle in the finale. That could explain TONS of questions about the Others motivations, actions, etc., and the nature of the cabin.
Also, while I liked the way Ben took out Widmore, I do feel like the show left a lot hanging about Widmore and his motivations and history. Widmore and his freighter were set up as THE big adversary in season four. What was he after? Why was Ben trying to stop him? What were “the rules” between him and Ben? Why was he trying to help Locke get everyone back to the Island before Ben killed him? And did he really have a change of heart after Jacob visited him? (Did Jacob even visit him?)
My faint hope is that he and Ellie were planning to set up the Sideways all along and his motivations will be explained with the revelation of what the Sideways really is.
Justin:
* Wish I could remember who suggested this–it might have even been someone int these very comments–but I definitely came across the idea that Jack’s incongruous sideways son might be the Monster. So the idea that David is something besides just Jack’s son is an intriguing one.
Ben:
* I don’t see the show doing Purgatory. That said, it does seem like Desmond is gathering people, ostensibly for something they must all work together to do, which suggests that what he’s up to is more complicated than just individually opening people’s minds up to their other selves.
Simon:
* I don’t read Jacob’s ends-justify-the-means speech as an endorsement of this point of view by the creators of the show, and I certainly didn’t get “Wow, you’re right, our lives sucked, thanks for sucking us into your vortex of mass murder” from the castaways’ response. If anything, I think the creators mean us to understand that Jacob was placed in a terrible predicament and handled it the best he could, but that was pretty terribly–which is how our own castaways have handled their own situations, in the main. And at this point, I think the remaining foursome are just kind of beaten down and in shock, and unable to muster much inclination to argue with the undead demigod. In the end, I think you’re right and our castaways will prove themselves Jacob’s better by not playing the game anymore.
Eric:
* Stop being such a shitty father. Your kid might grow up to be the world’s most stubborn doctor.
Hilker:
* Now that I think of it, the whole parent thing is hinky, since Claire was brought to the Island when she was nine months pregnant and Michael when he had just received custody of Walt. So who knows.
* Who let Desmond out of the well? As Justin points out, it can’t be Sayid since he said Desmond would be in the well. I’d say maybe Claire, but it seemed like this came as a surprise to the Monster, so unless she’s gone rogue, not her. Maybe it was Miles, since as Ben said he did have a good lead. But Justin’s joke suggestion has me hoping Walt has gone undercover as a Widmorian and is now free to operate on his own.
Bob:
* I actually think it’d be kind of rich for Richard’s centuries of servitude to end that unceremoniously.
Gardner:
* Nice take on the campfire scene.
COOP:
* Gotham City really could drastically reduce its supervillain recidivism rate by draining all the rivers so that criminals who plunge to their “deaths” into them can’t be “carried away by the current.”
Pat:
* Welcome! And don’t sweat your initial triple-post–that’s not your fault, it’s the fault of my horrendous comment system.
* I’ve got to assume Ben will have it out with the man/monster who made his life so miserable before all is said and done, yeah.
* And you’re right, there an awful lot of Widmore-related loose ends: the schism with Ben, the “rules,” why he couldn’t get back to the Island before, what he was initially after before he changed his tune (if that ever really happened), whether Jacob visited him, and of course everything pertaining to Eloise too.