Lost: Dead is Dead (where's Paris?)
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh yesssssssssssss
that RULED
60 minutes of massive ruling
Brief preliminary thoughts:
- Favorite moment may actually have been Caeser getting shot. I hated that guy and it was so sudden and perfect.
- Wait no, favorite moment was probably Desmond tackling Ben and beating the piss out of him.
- I loved Ben’s complete contradictory statements to Sun and Locke about everything that was happening. He’s such a wondrous liar, I have no clue which was the true one.
- My theory about Ilana and the other folks getting all weird on Lapidus: They were infected by the monster like Rousseau’s team had been. That’s why the monster was busy and didn’t answer Ben’s summoning.
- Awesome to finally see Ben stealing baby Alex.
- So much good Widmore dirt – need to rewatch a few times to fully grasp it all!!!
yeah, just… so much to take in! so goooood!
Comments
Was it just me, or at the end did Ben seem almost frightened/confused that he was allowed to live? It was as if he expected/wanted to die. I thought that was an excellent bit of acting on Michael Emerson’s part.
Part of that might have been the fact that he has to follow Locke now. I am fairly certain that is the last thing he EVER wanted to do.
It looks like a nifty bit of role-reversal now with Locke having the answers and Ben playing 20 questions.
Caesar getting shot was out-fucking-standing. I yelled “FUCK!” so loud I scared Gosia and Lauran.
I totally thought the same thing about the survivors getting infected by the monster and him being busy.
My favorite thing about this episode (amongst many many little favorite things) was that essentially we got to see Ben as a human being. We saw fear. We saw regret and sadness. We saw doubt when he couldn’t bring himself to shoot Penny.
Such a fucking perfect episode.
We learned something amazing about Ben Linus: he’s never known a goddamn THING about the Island.
On closer inspection, we can see what we believed to be his slowly unfolding and densely layered master plan is nothing more than the reckless and impulsive scrambling of a quick-thinking man constantly flying by the seat of his pants. Maybe he knows a few things that Jacob has told him, but it ain’t much.
If anything, Ben is the living embodiment of the reckless and impulsive decisions that created him. The survivors living in 1977 made hasty decisions that built the sociopath who would one day rain misery down upon their heads. Amazing how little random and unplanned choices create ripples that lead to enormous changes. These influences, being a victim of terrible violence as a child, has also left Ben curiously paralyzed when it comes to harming innocent children.
And sooner or later, these unplanned outbursts are going to swing back around to bite us in the ass. Impulsively decide to save an innocent child instead of killing it, and you’ve defied an order that will set things tumbling along. You’re now at odds with your leader, soon you’ll have to exile him to keep yourself alive, and he’ll eventually return to your door with the blood of that very same child dripping from his hands. Keep spinning, keep your options open, keep reacting… but it’s not gonna do any good. Despite what he thought in that split-second when he decide to spare the life of Rousseau and Alex, he was only delaying the inevitable.
Ben doesn’t know that. Ben doesn’t know anything. All he knows is that he loves the Island nearly as much as he loves himself. He sees the miracle of a resurrected Locke plodding with relentless certainty towards a goal he seems to fully understand, and it fills him with a toxic mixture of fear, confusion, and awe. Locke’s the real deal and Ben (possibly Widmore) is just a tin god. He’s the Trashcan Man to Locke’s Randall Flagg, the Gollum to his Frodo, the Darth Vader to his Emperor.
I’m really glad to see the obnoxious Caesar get shotgunned in the chest (fuck, what an annoying dick), but I can’t help but think it was another impulse that changed the game. Now we’ve got another beach full of weirdly cryptic psychopaths.
Lost – solved
Statue/cave drawing – Egyptian god Anubis (Jackal head)
Smoke monster – Greek god Cerberus (three headed monster.. indicated by “Cerberus vents” on the blacklight map in the hatch where the Temple is located – notice the smoke monster splits into “three heads” sometimes)
Island – Mythical “lost island” of Mu
Boo Yah.
Anyone really think Caeser is dead? I’m saying he survived some ridiculous way despite taking a shotgun blast to the chest. I mean, we never really saw the body after that. If he is dead, there is still a backstory on him as I’m thinking him and Illayna were in cahoots.
Julia said:Lost – solved
Statue/cave drawing – Egyptian god Anubis (Jackal head)
Smoke monster – Greek god Cerberus (three headed monster.. indicated by “Cerberus vents” on the blacklight map in the hatch where the Temple is located – notice the smoke monster splits into “three heads” sometimes)
Island – Mythical “lost island” of MuBoo Yah.
The Cerberus and Anubis things have been pretty clear, but I’ll have to read some serious wikipedia about this Mu you speak of! Hadn’t heard of that yet.
Got to do my lunchtime rewatch. Here are many more thoughts (there are a ton of them):
Here’s something else I just thought of (really, I could’ve put this together before this episode but i didn’t really think about it until what we saw last night)…
So we’ve known Ben abducted baby Alex in 1988.
But the DHARMA Purge apparently happened AFTER 1988. Here are 3 reasons why off the top of my head:
1. Obviously the Others weren’t living the in DHARMA barracks yet in 1988.
2. Horace died in the purge and Horace’s ghost told John he’d been dead for 12 years (2004 – 12 = 1992).
3. Kelvin, who worked with Radzinsky and then Desmond in the Swan hatch, was in the Gulf War. So he wasn’t on the island before 1991. And DHARMA wouldn’t have recruited him if they were already dead.
So if Ben was still living with DHARMA and only moonlighting with the others in 1988, who was taking care of baby Alex during those 4 years? He certainly couldn’t just bring her back to DHARMA camp and say he found her in the woods.
Also, that makes me think that the fact that they showed you young Ethan with Ben was to indicate that they were sent to kill Rousseau was some kind of initiation that Widmore was trying to pull on them to make sure they were both worthy of leaving DHARMA to join the Others.
- So if Widmore was freely leaving the island (during which time he fathered Penny), he could obviously get back to the island then. So what is so special about how the exiled him that he couldn’t return again after that?
- I caught 2 of the numbers towards the end. On the mysterious silver case being moved around by Ilana and the amputee dude from Dexter, there was a big AA823 on the side.
- Speaking of Ilana and that other guy, they have guns now. I think they’re likely the crew who took the other boat and started shooting at Sawyer’s crew during that brief boat-rowing timeflash. We should see that scene again soon.
- Do you think Widmore was banished because smokey judged him and he failed the judgment (because he wasn’t acting in the island’s best interest)? Or is death the immediate sentence for losing at People’s Smoke Court?
- Ben had a ton of great lines last night, but my favorite may have been when Widmore asked “How did you get this number?!” and Ben almost cut him off to very happily say, “doesn’t matter!” and then just immediately continued talking.
- Charlie Hume is friggin’ adorable.
- I thought it was interesting when they approached the temple that Ben said, “We built this wall to keep people like you out.” He said WE built it, as in The Others. But that wall is covered in heiroglyphics and I would’ve guessed it was much older. Unless that was a clue that The Others have been around since the Egyptian stuff (so then why are they mostly white folks?)
The thing that stood out to me the most upon rewatching was Locke’s demeanor. He is now so completely sure of himself and I’m getting the impression that his resurrection has given him some kind of limited omnipotence and he’s slowly coming to grips with exactly how to access this limitless information. Some examples:
- When Locke & Ben had the “why did you kill me” conversation, Locke ended it with, “I just wanted an apology.” I really got the impression that he already knew what Ben was telling him and that was indeed the only reason he brought it up.
- He quite correctly and confidently called Ben out about the real reason for his judgment.
- Ben said to him, “You don’t have the first idea what this island wants” and he replied with a calm, “I don’t?”
- Obviously, he immediately “just knew” where the temple was.
- Early on in the episode he said to Ben, “No sense in killing me twice, right?” with a wry little smile. It was as though he also already knew what Smoke-Alex later revealed about Ben’s intentions.
That last point brings me to an interesting question. There were clearly a bunch of scenes with some ambiguity included with the intention of making the viewer think that new-Locke might only be “alive” because he’s another manifestation of Smokey. I’m leaning towards those just being red herrings to get people thinking rather than actual hints that it might be the truth about Locke’s state. Largely because Smoke-Alex threatened Ben to not try to kill Locke again (that’d seem kinda pointless if Locke were some kind of unkillable smoke beast apparition).
On the other hand, I do still think Christian is a smokey manifestation. He also seems omnipotent with relation to the island, but he seems quite creepily different from Locke. Like that time he teleported out to the boat before Michael exploded, for example.
The Mu article on wikipedia was pretty interesting. One of the more intriguing parts was:
“Churchward claims the king of Mu was Ra and he relates this to the Egyptian god of the sun”
RA = R.A. = Richard Alpert?
“Do you think Widmore was banished because smokey judged him and he failed the judgment (because he wasn’t acting in the island’s best interest)? Or is death the immediate sentence for losing at People’s Smoke Court?”
My first thought when I saw ‘smokey’ encircle Ben and then the various flashbacks was “Holy Mr. Eko moment” Eko knew right off the bat that “Yemi” (sp?) wasn’t in front of him, thus he was killed. Ben actually beleived that was Alex, until he was slammed against the wall.
Also, in terms of Caeser, he is in one more episode, the first part of the two part season finale airing May 13th, so he could be dead. And rumor has it that we will find who ‘Jacob’ is at the finale as well.
I definitely was getting some strong omnipotence vibes from Locke during the whole episode.
Also: Ben will die. Possibly by Locke’s hand? Regardless, he will die. He told Sun to tell Desmond he’s sorry if he never makes it off the island. Never show a gun unless you plan to have it go off. So Sun will tell Desmond that Ben said he’s sorry. Why Ben is unable to… well… I think the only thing left for his character to do after this whole arch is over is to die.
Ben has no desire to ever leave the island. He doesn’t have to die for that to be true – he’s always wanted to stay and be a part of it. I’m not saying he won’t die, but I don’t see your reasoning as leading to his death.
Ah shit! Spring break started yesterday and I was away from any television for a while. Plus, with all the celebrating, I just kinda forgot! Thanks for the pick-up, Bill!
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck this is television!
hahahahaha are you watching it now?
Banned Bill said:RA = R.A. = Richard Alpert?
This makes a ridiculous amount of sense. Best episode in a really long time.
Wow. RA = R.A. That’s really awesome.
I think Ben was spared by the Smoke Monster precisely because he didn’t do everything in his power to save Alex’s life, his own grief over this notwithstanding. Widmore said that Jacob (and ergo, the Island) wanted Rousseau and Alex dead. Ben impeded this and slowed down the inevitable, but it eventually came to pass. If he had unwittingly continued to stand in the path of this happening, the Monster probably would have annihilated him.
It’s a fact that this Monster takes the (possibly corporeal) form of the dead, but I think Locke is Locke. Everyone has always told him that he was “special” and here he is, an unfettered miracle. I don’t think he’s omnipotent in the traditional sense, but I do think he’s sensing a great deal more than everyone around him. In a way, he’s like Dr. Manhattan (the creators always gush about how The Watchmen is a huge influence on their writing). Locke is still puppet, he’s just a puppet that can see the strings. Which is something that Ben claimed to be, but we now see that he never was.
I agree with Hutch that Ben will die. I think he’s gonna end up sacrificing himself so he can take Locke with him. While Locke will probably get events spinning in the right direction, it’s possible that he’ll mess things up and someone will have to stop him from ruining it all. As we’ve seen Locke is powerful in his own right and capable of amazing things, but a Grade A failure at everything he’s ever done.
The time line stuff is all messed up. It doesn’t make sense. Having Ben steal the baby and not kill Danielle was set up as a parallel to not killing Penny, and it was nice (particularly since it shows his humanity and how he didn’t want another child to lose his or her mother as he did), but it really messes up the time line. The purge happens in 1992. Danielle was shipwrecked in 1988. Why is Ben already a member of the others? And if Widmore has been trying to find the island for 20 years, that means he was banished in 1987. How is he on the island in 1988? I don’t get it.
Ethan doesn’t make sense either. He should be 11 in 1988, but he looks older. And he looks much older than 27 when the Losties first get to the island. They have a lot of explaining to do.