Lost Talk

First off, SPOILER ALERT. If you're not caught up on Lost or are planning on watching it all after it's wrapped or whatever, please don't read any further. You have been warned.

So I asked you to ask my Lost questions. Because I am a nerd and a glutton for punishment. So let's try and figure all this out, shall we?

First off, Alli asks:

do you think libby is david's mother? since her old husband's name was david before she gave david's boat to desmond?
If I were a betting man, I'd wager that David's mom is Juliet. And that her and Sawyer are gonna be meeting for coffee sometime soon. They'll go Dutch.

does it matter?
Maybe?

will jack ever cut his hair?
I don't know. But has anybody else been sort of distracted by Jack's hair this season? Does it look weird to anybody else with that slight Superman spitcurl he's got going on? Has he always had that?

why is the island underwater?
Two possibilities.

1. If Jack's plan worked and the hydrogen bomb went off in 1977, that may have caused the Island to sink.

or, 2. It's because of something that we haven't seen yet and this guy's theory is totally right. (Hint: I think this guy's theory is totally right. I've been trying to say what he's said in that post all season – that the "flash-sideways" is the castaways' reward for … something*, and that it's their second chance to get things right post-purgatorial Island tour of duty – but we'll see. Every time I think I have this show pinned down, they pull the rug out from under me, roll me up in said rug and then throw me down a hill.)

I still think that Jack's season five explodo-plan was what caused "The Incident," referred to in those Dharma videos and that Daniel Faraday was being a good time-cop to the end when he talked Jack into nuking the Swan station.

Did that help?


Next up, Rose says:

you already answered some questions (thank you) but i have more!
walt is in NY, right? but where is he in this story? didn't the others say he was the chosen one? did that story already resolve itself and i just forgot it did?
Oh man, Walt. I think he's one of those things, like Libby or Ana Lucia, that were intended to be a whole lot more for the show but due to physical realities – ie. the actor who portrays Walt growing radically over the first two seasons, the actresses who play Ana Lucia and Libby getting busted for DUI – had to fall by the wayside.

The "in game," No Prize, response to this is that Ben kinda sorta gave the producers a way out when he let Michael and Walt go by saying that Walt was more powerful than they thought, so they were glad to be done with him. My feeling is that the "OMZ, Walt is soooo like powerful and stuff, dudes!" plotline is dead and that our little glimpse of him in season five was his send-off, his "happily ever after," as it were.

fake john locke (smoke monster, whoever you want to call him) was chasing that boy. that's jacob, right? why could sawyer see him?
My money would be that that was some sort of a manifestation of Jacob, though why he appeared to Flocke ("Fake Locke." Get it?) as a bloody little boy in weird Bible pageant robes instead of the way we've been seeing him is anyone's guess. I definitely got a Cain and Abel/Jacob and Esau vibe off of that whole thing, though.

As far as why Sawyer could see him and not, say Richard earlier in the episode, maybe it's because Sawyer (or "Ford," I guess) is a Candidate?

and ditto on the island being underwater. why?
See above.

And she had some more after this week's totally kick@$$ episode, "Sundown":

how are the smoke monster dude and jacob tied to the island?
I theorize a little further down. Look for the * under the questions.

why was jacob looking for candidates? is he just looking for one candidate?
See answer to above question.

who is coming to the island? who was jacob waiting for?
I think Jacob has who he's been waiting for. I think the Lighthouse trip was a ruse to get Jack thinking about why Jacob would be interested in him and his little crew.

why is everyone connected to the island?
Fate, as Charlie wrote on his knuckle wraps. The Oceanic passengers are "ka-tet," to borrow a phrase from one of the show's influential texts.

did ben make a deal with the smoke monster dude?
We're not entirely sure what happened to Ben after the fracas at the Temple, right? He was unaccounted for, if I remember correctly. Ben'll find some way to survive, though, don't worry about that.

what happened to richard alpert?
We shall see. My guess is that he was either a captain or a slave on the Black Rock, another group of people brought to the Island so that Jacob and Flocke can play their giant Backgammon game with them, each unwilling to concede to each others' point regarding the true nature of humanity.

will jin and sun be separated in the flash sideways story as well?
Jin and Sun as characters seem to be important only as they relate to each other spatially. Half of their stories have been them trying to get back together, either physically or emotionally. And since Jin was in Sideways-Keamy's fridge, I'd say that their story in this world is also going to be "How do they get back together?"

***

And that's that. Anybody else want to play? Comment away.

_______

* Maybe Smokey wins. Maybe he's the "good guy" here (or as close to a "good guy" as this show gets) and they sink the Island to protect it/destroy it. Maybe this is what Jacob wants, a la Jack's lighthouse tantrum. Maybe this sets both Smokey and Jacob free from whatever's chaining them to the Island. (Not unklike how their tenure on the Island will hopefully set the Oceanic passengers free from their personal demons, right?) Maybe neither of them is pure evil or purely good. (It wouldn't be the first time this show has set someone up as the ultimate evil only to find that they're just misunderstood, right Ben Linus?)

Maybe they're both cursed and trapped on the Island, in Purgatory, waiting to be freed. Maybe this group of castaways has just the right mix of people to set them free this time, to be the ones who finish the game whose end they've been progressing toward. Maybe I'm also full of crap. Only time will tell.