LOST: Namaste, Brotha, He’s Our You
Mar. 27th, 2009 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spicedogsThe past two episodes of LOST, 5X09 (Namaste) and 5x10 (He’s Our You), basically introduced the audience to the life on the island during the DHARMA Initiative (DI) days in the early, to mid-70s.
Our time-traveling castaways who were left on the island found themselves in 1974. A few lies about their sudden appearance on the island saved their lives and gave them an opportunity to join DI and thus become contributing members of the society. As we learned in Episode 5X08 (LaFleur), Sawyer, renamed himself LaFleur and is the head of the Security Department, with Jin and Miles working for him. Juliet became a mechanic, who later on successfully performs a caesarian and thus delivers baby Ethan. And, we are yet to learn of Daniel’s fate.
Meanwhile, the Oceanic 6 board Ajira flight 316, which was bound for Guam, and find themselves back on the island (Episode 5X06: 316). But, by a twist of fate, Ben and Sun were left in the present era, right along with the other passengers and the captain of the plane. Kate, Jack, Hurley, and Sayid were hurled into the past (1977).
At first, Kate, Jack, and Hurley are found by Jin, leaving Sawyer with a new headache: How to account for these new people to the DI without having them accused of being hostiles. To their luck, the submarine, which was filled with new recruits, was due to arrive within a few hours of the Oceanic 6 arrivals on the island. Sawyer brilliantly slipped his friends into the submarine roster and introduced them to the DI members as new recruits. But soon enough a new headache encounters poor Sawyer: Sayid was found in the jungle, alone, still in handcuffs, not just by Jin but by another DI member. Consequently, Sayid had to be introduced to the society as a hostile.
We learn that, although, DI members are fully advanced in the sciences, they are still barbarians when it comes to their fear
and their treatment of the so-called hostiles. Sawyer tries to convince Sayid to pretend that he was an unhappy hostile—a hostile who was ready to shift his loyalties to the DI. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, Sayid didn’t cooperate. Not even the extraction of truth via the "truth serum" ( hallucinogenic drug) made him change his mind. Instead, he went on to cause havoc. After meeting up with young preteen Ben, Sayid was under the impression that his mission to return into the days of the DI was to stop Ben from surviving into the future. Can one alter the past, without causing much damage to the future?
I really don’t know in which direction LOST is going. Time travel is a very delicate subject to tackle. According to Mrs. Eloise Hawkins in Episode 3X08 (Flashes Before Your Eyes), destiny cannot be changed. What is supposed to happen will happen. And if there’s some tampering with the present, then there’s a course correction and the final outcome will still be the same. Daniel Faraday (who, at this moment, according to the fan consensus is Mrs. Hawkins’s son) informed us that the past cannot be altered. What happened will happen. It cannot be undone.
Ben, however, seemed to always act as if he knew what the future outcome of each step would take. It is as if he, too, time
traveled and knew what the past and the future were. For example, during Season 3, he was having Kate and Sawyer work on building a runway for airplanes in the middle of the jungle. And that runway was used by the pilot of Ajira Flight 316 to successfully crash land the airplane. Why else was Ben building that runway? After all, travel to the island was always via submarine.
Oddly enough, in Episode 4X09 (The Shape of Things to Come) just after Keamy kills Alex, Ben stares in total disbelief for a half a minute, which considering that he just witnessed the murder of his daughter is quite believable. But the statement, "He changed the rules," uttered right after the shock of seeing his daughter’s murder was phasing away was, as we heard him say it, a puzzle. Now, as the episodes of LOST are unraveling, the statement makes more sense. At first, I thought that it meant that Widmore (Ben’s arch enemy) changed the rules of war between them: "Thou shalt not touch my family." But now, I am beginning to think that the actual rule changed was "Thou shalt not alter any part of what is destined to be."
There’s a possibility that Ben visited the future and saw that Alex was alive. Hence, he was confident in negotiating with Keamy. He knew that Alex was not in danger. But Widmore changed the rules. He commanded to Keamy to kill Alex, leaving Ben powerless about the outcome of the future. It’s just a theory. I am sure that this theory will be debunked in no time. The powers to be of LOST are geniuses when it comes to reading our minds.
Anyway, I digress, because where I was going with this essay was not to talk about Alex and the fatal end of her future. What I really wanted to touch upon is to discuss time travel and its consequences.
If both Hawkins and Faraday are correct, then nothing that is happening in the past with the survivors of Oceanic 815 is affecting the future that we knew while watching the first 4 seasons of LOST. But that’s not true. If they return to the past and
start living as if they belonged in the past, they are affecting the future. Just look at the way DHARMAville looked like in 2007 when Sun encountered Christian. It was not looking the same way as it did when the survivors left it in 2004. For example, it was a dark, dismal, and abandoned town, with all their signs and buildings broken down.
To say that the survivors were needed to create the so-called incident is to say that the survivors were always there. We have to consider, if the Oceanic 6 were not from the past originally, then they had no business going to the past. To imply that they were the reason the so-called incident occurred, which, in turn was the effect of the DI’s fall is preposterous in my humble opinion. If in reality the Oceanic 6’s return to DHARMAville was the reason of the DI’s demise, then the Oceanic 6 had to be always be there—even if they were not yet born—to be able to be affective in the DI’s fatal future.
Now, of course, it’s quite possible that the Oceanic 6 were originally past DI members who escaped into the future and were now needed to get back to re-create the past they altered by leaving the DI in the first place. This theory is just too awesome. But I doubt that it would be the way LOST is going.
There’s another possibility, for which were given lots of hints: alternate reality (parallel universe). Parallel universe is used in science fiction stories about time travel. Supposedly, there are other portals one can enter and, depending on the choice taken, the universe around the characters unfold differently. Here are some examples of such hints in LOST:
Speaking of Desmond’s good-bye greeting, I came across another possible theory of LOST—that of a gigantic electronic game played by some people whom we are yet to meet. Each time a certain level of achievement is attained, the new level takes the player to a different world whereupon different skills are needed to solve the game. Should LOST’s storyline take this route, I shall be very disappointed. However, even in this case Desmond’s "See ya in anotha life, brotha" makes sense. After all, in many electronic games, you have many "lives" to allow you to stay in the game.
At long last, I shall terminate this long-winded essay by saying that I wish the producers would drop the endless quadrangle (Sawyer, Juliet, Kate, and Jack). We are tired of it. The island is the protagonist and its story is what we want to see. I cannot stand it when the stupid romance is introduced. Let’s not lower the level of this great story by dragging it into the soap-opera world.
Till next week or the week after, see ya in the next life, and namaste.
Artwork and screencaps by Spicedogs.
Screencaps are available here: http://picasaweb.google.com/spicedogs
Our time-traveling castaways who were left on the island found themselves in 1974. A few lies about their sudden appearance on the island saved their lives and gave them an opportunity to join DI and thus become contributing members of the society. As we learned in Episode 5X08 (LaFleur), Sawyer, renamed himself LaFleur and is the head of the Security Department, with Jin and Miles working for him. Juliet became a mechanic, who later on successfully performs a caesarian and thus delivers baby Ethan. And, we are yet to learn of Daniel’s fate.Meanwhile, the Oceanic 6 board Ajira flight 316, which was bound for Guam, and find themselves back on the island (Episode 5X06: 316). But, by a twist of fate, Ben and Sun were left in the present era, right along with the other passengers and the captain of the plane. Kate, Jack, Hurley, and Sayid were hurled into the past (1977).
At first, Kate, Jack, and Hurley are found by Jin, leaving Sawyer with a new headache: How to account for these new people to the DI without having them accused of being hostiles. To their luck, the submarine, which was filled with new recruits, was due to arrive within a few hours of the Oceanic 6 arrivals on the island. Sawyer brilliantly slipped his friends into the submarine roster and introduced them to the DI members as new recruits. But soon enough a new headache encounters poor Sawyer: Sayid was found in the jungle, alone, still in handcuffs, not just by Jin but by another DI member. Consequently, Sayid had to be introduced to the society as a hostile.
We learn that, although, DI members are fully advanced in the sciences, they are still barbarians when it comes to their fear
and their treatment of the so-called hostiles. Sawyer tries to convince Sayid to pretend that he was an unhappy hostile—a hostile who was ready to shift his loyalties to the DI. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, Sayid didn’t cooperate. Not even the extraction of truth via the "truth serum" ( hallucinogenic drug) made him change his mind. Instead, he went on to cause havoc. After meeting up with young preteen Ben, Sayid was under the impression that his mission to return into the days of the DI was to stop Ben from surviving into the future. Can one alter the past, without causing much damage to the future? I really don’t know in which direction LOST is going. Time travel is a very delicate subject to tackle. According to Mrs. Eloise Hawkins in Episode 3X08 (Flashes Before Your Eyes), destiny cannot be changed. What is supposed to happen will happen. And if there’s some tampering with the present, then there’s a course correction and the final outcome will still be the same. Daniel Faraday (who, at this moment, according to the fan consensus is Mrs. Hawkins’s son) informed us that the past cannot be altered. What happened will happen. It cannot be undone.
Ben, however, seemed to always act as if he knew what the future outcome of each step would take. It is as if he, too, time
traveled and knew what the past and the future were. For example, during Season 3, he was having Kate and Sawyer work on building a runway for airplanes in the middle of the jungle. And that runway was used by the pilot of Ajira Flight 316 to successfully crash land the airplane. Why else was Ben building that runway? After all, travel to the island was always via submarine.Oddly enough, in Episode 4X09 (The Shape of Things to Come) just after Keamy kills Alex, Ben stares in total disbelief for a half a minute, which considering that he just witnessed the murder of his daughter is quite believable. But the statement, "He changed the rules," uttered right after the shock of seeing his daughter’s murder was phasing away was, as we heard him say it, a puzzle. Now, as the episodes of LOST are unraveling, the statement makes more sense. At first, I thought that it meant that Widmore (Ben’s arch enemy) changed the rules of war between them: "Thou shalt not touch my family." But now, I am beginning to think that the actual rule changed was "Thou shalt not alter any part of what is destined to be."
There’s a possibility that Ben visited the future and saw that Alex was alive. Hence, he was confident in negotiating with Keamy. He knew that Alex was not in danger. But Widmore changed the rules. He commanded to Keamy to kill Alex, leaving Ben powerless about the outcome of the future. It’s just a theory. I am sure that this theory will be debunked in no time. The powers to be of LOST are geniuses when it comes to reading our minds.
Anyway, I digress, because where I was going with this essay was not to talk about Alex and the fatal end of her future. What I really wanted to touch upon is to discuss time travel and its consequences.
If both Hawkins and Faraday are correct, then nothing that is happening in the past with the survivors of Oceanic 815 is affecting the future that we knew while watching the first 4 seasons of LOST. But that’s not true. If they return to the past and
start living as if they belonged in the past, they are affecting the future. Just look at the way DHARMAville looked like in 2007 when Sun encountered Christian. It was not looking the same way as it did when the survivors left it in 2004. For example, it was a dark, dismal, and abandoned town, with all their signs and buildings broken down. To say that the survivors were needed to create the so-called incident is to say that the survivors were always there. We have to consider, if the Oceanic 6 were not from the past originally, then they had no business going to the past. To imply that they were the reason the so-called incident occurred, which, in turn was the effect of the DI’s fall is preposterous in my humble opinion. If in reality the Oceanic 6’s return to DHARMAville was the reason of the DI’s demise, then the Oceanic 6 had to be always be there—even if they were not yet born—to be able to be affective in the DI’s fatal future.
Now, of course, it’s quite possible that the Oceanic 6 were originally past DI members who escaped into the future and were now needed to get back to re-create the past they altered by leaving the DI in the first place. This theory is just too awesome. But I doubt that it would be the way LOST is going.
There’s another possibility, for which were given lots of hints: alternate reality (parallel universe). Parallel universe is used in science fiction stories about time travel. Supposedly, there are other portals one can enter and, depending on the choice taken, the universe around the characters unfold differently. Here are some examples of such hints in LOST:
Title of Episodes
1X05: White Rabbit
3X10: Stranger in a Strange Land
3X30: The Man Behind the Curtain (alluding to the stories about the Land of Oz)
3X22: Through the Looking Glass
5X04: The Little Prince
 |
Books (shown, read, or mentioned by LOST characters)
A Brief History of Time (3X07: Not in
The Chronicles of Narnia (
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (4X05: The Constant)
A Separate Reality (5X10: He’s Our You)
A Wrinkle in Time (1X18: Numbers)
Perhaps, the show is heading towards exploring parallel universes. Then, the premise that what was done cannot be undone can still be true, but if and only if, you take the original portal. Once, you take a different portal, a different outcome will be experienced. In this case, Desmond’s constant good-bye greeting, "See ya in anotha life, brotha," makes good sense.
Speaking of Desmond’s good-bye greeting, I came across another possible theory of LOST—that of a gigantic electronic game played by some people whom we are yet to meet. Each time a certain level of achievement is attained, the new level takes the player to a different world whereupon different skills are needed to solve the game. Should LOST’s storyline take this route, I shall be very disappointed. However, even in this case Desmond’s "See ya in anotha life, brotha" makes sense. After all, in many electronic games, you have many "lives" to allow you to stay in the game.
At long last, I shall terminate this long-winded essay by saying that I wish the producers would drop the endless quadrangle (Sawyer, Juliet, Kate, and Jack). We are tired of it. The island is the protagonist and its story is what we want to see. I cannot stand it when the stupid romance is introduced. Let’s not lower the level of this great story by dragging it into the soap-opera world.Till next week or the week after, see ya in the next life, and namaste.
Artwork and screencaps by Spicedogs.
Screencaps are available here: http://picasaweb.google.com/spicedogs
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-28 01:13 am (UTC)*cries and stamps foot*
It's my own fault. :/
no subject
Date: 2009-03-28 01:16 am (UTC)Sorry.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-28 01:19 am (UTC)It's no big deal.
My sister's DVR crapped out and only recorded half the epi. I have the other half on the DVR and will watch it tonight.
It's my fault! XD
no subject
Date: 2009-03-28 06:41 am (UTC)I agree: I`m fed up with this quadrangle too.
I don`t think that "that of a gigantic electronic game played by some people whom we are yet to meet. Each time a certain level of achievement is attained, the new level takes the player to a different world whereupon different skills are needed to solve the game..." is the way Lost is going to be, it will be very unlifelike (am I right?..) and I always hope that producers have great scripts.
At first I thought that rules between Ben and Widmore forbid kill members of their families, but... your teory is more interesting than that.
I believe, destiny (in Lost) really cannot be changed and whatever hapened, happened, And lost will not stay too long in 70s, but, on the other hand, it seems that the rest of season 5 will be devoted to the life in 70s. This mysterious "Incident" will explain a lot, maybe this incident will be about collision of two time periods or characters of two different time periods?.. I`m confused: closed disk.
I agree that Ben knew everything about O6 (subway)
and I think... Do you remember when Ben locked Kate, Sawyer and Jack in cages, maybe he wanted to protect them from their future(or past?..) themselves?..
no subject
Date: 2009-03-28 08:08 am (UTC)I always thought it was curious that the 06, save Sun, were sent into the past and meanwhile Ben and Sun end up in another time entirely.
I initially thought that Sun did not make it because she was never supposed to come back, thanks to Locke's promise to Jin. And Ben never made it with the rest because...well...Ben was never supposed to get on that plane. I think he cheated.
Think about how Ben got on at the very last second, right when they were closing the doors, knowing full well he wasn't supposed to go (even Hurley said so). This is a man who is always where he wants to be. Could you imagine him showing up for a flight late unless he wanted to? He knew once he ran in so late no one could leave. Hence Hurley's little fit.
Anyway, I'll respond more tomorrow. This is a lot to think about.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-28 03:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-29 02:58 am (UTC)So yes, I also heartily agree that Ben has had foreknowledge of many things that have occurred on the island, which is how he manages to remain so calm and seemingly "fatalistic" about everything that happens to him. All except the death of Alex, which I sincerely believe, came as a huge shock to him ... and which begged the question, why is that the one thing he didn't know? And, then, of course, what exactly is/was his relationship with Widmore, since it's implied that he's the one who changed the rules? So I think you have actually hit on the answer here: Alex wasn't meant to die, but somehow Widmore has figured out how to alter Destiny. Now wouldn't that be the ultimate power play??? (Talk about a "God complex"!)
I also think that, in addition to travelling off the island, Ben has time travelled before, which would explain why he thought to ask the hotel clerk what year it was. Probably the first question he asks every time he checks in (accompanied by that cute little, squinched-up "I hate to bother you" face).
Yeah, I wouldn't put it past the writers to debunk your theory, but it makes more sense than anything I've heard or thought of before, and (well, based, admittedly, on the performance of an actor who admittedly has no idea how whether he's even a "good" guy or a "bad" guy!) I have no doubt in my mind that he was 100% confident that Alex would not be harmed. (Besides, there are only so many ways they can resolve the story; somebody is bound to hit on the correct answer eventually. They can't keep changing it just because someone has finally figured it out, especially at this late stage! Not to diminish their obvious cleverness, as we all know, even "Hamlet" would eventually be crunched out randomly by a roomful of monkeys with typewriters. ;))
Just one little quibble: You said, "Just look at the way DHARMAville looked like in 2007 when Sun encountered Christian. It was not looking the same way as it did when the survivors left it in 2004. For example, it was a dark, dismal, and abandoned town, with all their signs and buildings broken down." I noticed that too, but don't forget that the island actually sank under the water and went ... somewhere else, following a huge white-out. That alone's gotta cause a few lamp posts to fall over! ;)
Also, although I wouldn't disagree with you on the idea of an alternate reality (yes, I agree there have been a lot of hints pointing in that direction; that's a pretty good list!), I also wouldn't be surprised if it turned out the writers are basing the events on a theory of circular time--that the 2004 crash survivors actually had been there before and didn't remember because it hadn't happened yet, that they always were destined to be the authors of their own destinies. (Say that three times fast!)
Part 2 (ran out of space)
Date: 2009-03-29 02:58 am (UTC)I also wouldn't be in the least surprised to find that it is all an electronic game (a la TRON ... or that episode of the Twilight Zone I wish I knew the name of), in which the "avatars" are sentient, yet don't realize they are merely game pieces. (I'm a big fan of Blade Runner--original title, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"--and the placement of one of its main actors, William Sanderson, in this past week's episode could be another hint at the idea of sentient "robots.") The idea that this is a huge game could also explain the "voices" in the jungle ... that is, it's the avatars' "users" whose voices they are almost-hearing! Especially if you read the transcripts of some of those barely audible conversations, you get the idea that someone "bigger" than them is watching and very vested in the outcome of their actions. (Of course, this would be a fairly unoriginal idea, so I kind of hope it doesn't go that way unless they manage to put some really original twist on it.)
And amen to dropping the quadrangle already! ;)
Oh, also, thanks, Shalimar for reminding me what Ben said when he left, that whoever moves the island could never come back. (On the other hand, he could have been lying about that!) That could be another reason he's being thwarted in his attempts to return, although it also seems to me that anyone who was originally on the island in 1977 can't go back since that would put two of them in the same time and place!
Namaste.
On the other hand ...
Date: 2009-03-29 03:04 am (UTC)