I Am DB

DEJA VU
We wake up with Jack in the jungle, in a shot that recreates the very first scene of Lost ever, right down to the music. But we quickly see that this time is different. Jack’s hair is longer. There is no Vincent the dog watching him. And he looks just the slightest bit excited and hopeful. Unlike the last time, when he ran out of the jungle, this time he runs further in (and I wondered if there was any significance to him dropping the torn note from his hand).

He finds Hurley and Kate in a lagoon, and Kate is surprisingly unharmed – not even bruised – despite laying across a few big rocks in the water. How did she manage to land there without getting hurt? When Jack wakes her up, he says they’re back on the island.

MS. HAWKING’S A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME
46 hours earlier, Jack, Sun, Ben and Desmond are meeting Eloise Hawking. She leads them into the basement of the church, where we saw her emerge a few episodes ago from a hatch-like room. Turns out it looks like a hatch because it basically is a hatch, complete with Dharma insignia on the door. The station, as she explains a moment later, is called The Lamp Post.

As they all observe the room with its huge map of the earth on the floor and a massive pendulum swinging over it, she tells them that this is how they – the Dharma Initiative – found the island. Ben claims he didn’t know about this place, but Ms. Hawking casually tells Jack that Ben’s probably lying. Jack notices a picture of the island taped to a chalkboard. Printed at the bottom is “9/23/54 – U.S. Army – Op 264 – Top Secret.” Ms. Hawking begins to explain, and as it’s a lot to take in – and pretty important stuff – I’m including it all:

“The room we’re standing in was constructed years ago over a unique pocket of electromagnetic energy. That energy connects to similar pockets all over the world. The people who built this room, however, were only interested in one.”

“The island,” says Sun.

“Yes,” Eloise continues, “the island. They’d gathered proof that it existed; they knew it was out there somewhere but they just couldn’t find it. Then a very clever fellow built this pendulum, on the theoretical notion that they should stop looking for where the island was supposed to be and start looking for where it was going to be.”

“What do you mean ‘where it was going to be?’” Jack asks.

“Well this fellow presumed, and correctly as it turned out, that the island was always moving. Why do you think you were never rescued? Now, while the movements of the island seem random, this man and his team created a series of equations which tell us, with a high degree of probability, where it is going to be at a certain point in time. Windows, as it were, that while open, provide a route back. Unfortunately these windows don’t stay open for very long. Yours closes in 36 hours.”

This is a long bit of exposition, but in the hands of the great Fionnula Flanagan, every word drips with intrigue. So my questions, which I’m sure will be answered somewhere down the line:

-She said the Dharma Initiative had gathered proof that the island existed. Why were they looking for it in the first place? How did they know to look for it? And how long ago was this?

-Who was this clever fellow that built the pendulum, and who was his team that helped him develop the equations? Why do I suspect – though I have no idea yet how it would make sense – that Daniel might be the clever fellow? It’s gotta be someone we already know; why else keep the name so deliberately secret?

-What is the connection between this church and the Dharma Initiative? Why is The Lamp Post there?

On a side note, I was especially jazzed by the notion of these “windows,” having just completed reading Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, in which parallel universes exist and can be accessed through small windows that can only be seen under unique circumstances. Those windows are in space, not time…but still. Cool stuff.

Back to the scene at hand. Desmond looks amusingly skeptical during Ms. Hawking’s speech, and he can’t believe they all want to go back to the island. For his part, he tells Ms. Hawking that he’s there to deliver a message from Faraday, her son. (Why don’t Jack or Sun react at all to learning that this woman is Faraday’s mother? She doesn’t even react much to Desmond’s news. She almost looks as though she expects this and has to put up with hearing it.) He’s about to leave, but she says the island is not done with him yet…which is too much for him.

“This woman cost me four years of my life,” he explodes, “four years that I’ll never get back, because you told me that I was supposed to go the island. That it was my bloody purpose.” He approaches Jack and says, “You listen to me brother and you listen carefully. These people, they’re just using us. They’re playing some kind of game and we are just the pieces. Whatever she tells you to do, ignore it.”

It does often seem like they are all pawns in a game…but who are the ultimate players?

“You say the island’s not done with me?” Desmond says to Ms. Hawking. “Well I’m done with the island.” And out he goes. Again, there’s little reaction from anyone to what he had to say…like the fact that he went to the island because of Ms. Hawking. That’s one thing I’ll say has bugged me about this show over the years – characters often fail to react appropriately to the revelations and circumstances they witness. Who would stand there in that room and listen to Desmond’s rant and not say, “Wait a second...what happened?” In a way, this is the same thing as my big beef with last season – the complete lack of mourning Claire did for Charlie, aside from the moment she first learned he was dead. It’s just bad writing…and all the more noticeable when everything else is written so well.

Ms. Hawking hands Jack a binder with pages of flight information, presumably related to all of these pockets of energy around the globe. She says their window will be open in a little over a day. In order to catch it, they must be on Ajira Airways, flight 316, bound for Guam. All of them.

Ajira Airways. Well, now we know how that water bottle got to the island. This is probably nothing, but I was struck by the fact that only half of the flight number is composed of one of Hurley’s numbers. Their original flight, 815, used two of the numbers, and almost every time a number is used on the show, it combines others from the infamous 4 8 15 16 23 42 sequence. Yet this one is 316. I couldn’t help wondering if this suggests a shift in the fate of the 815 survivors, as if their history is about to be altered in a significant way. It’s probably nothing, but this is how Lost has conditioned my brain to work.

Some of the particulars of Ms. Hawking’s language are important to note. “If you have any hope of the island bringing you back, then it must be that flight.” This suggests again that the island itself holds the power. And the words “it must be that flight” hearken directly back to Season One’s episode Raised By Another, in which a psychic tells Claire that she has to go to Los Angeles to give her baby up for adoption, and that she has to be on Flight 815. His words were nearly identical: “It has to be this flight.” Kinda makes me wonder if the psychic, Richard Malkin, is part of this society of people who know about the windows and the pockets of energy and the island. Maybe he’s too marginal a character for that…but the coincidence is striking. And Malkin did show up in another flashback later on – when Mr. Eko was a priest sent to investigate the miracle of a girl who survived drowning. The girl was Malkin’s daughter, and he confessed to Mr. Eko that he was a fraud who bilked people out of their money. But later developments in that episode suggest that he might have some real ability after all. Anyway…another random Lost connection? Or something more?

On another note related to Ms. Hawking’s revelations, remember the Season Two episode S.O.S., a flashback for Rose and Bernard? When he learns she has cancer, he takes her to Australia to see a healer named Issac of Uluru, who says to her, “There are certain places with great energy. Spots on the earth. Like the one we’re above now. Perhaps this energy is geological; magnetic. Or perhaps it’s something else. And when possible, I harness this energy and give it to others.” After a brief psychic examination, he says he can’t help her. “It’s not that you can’t be healed. Like I said, there’s different energies. This isn’t the right place for you.”

Lots of digressions, I know – but I love the way the show is drawing on its history as it enters these final seasons.

Another thing Ms. Hawking tells them is that they need to recreate the circumstances of the original flight as best they can, meaning (among other things) as many of same people have to be on it as it is possible for them to arrange. Which begs the obvious question: where is Walt in all of this? Why isn’t his presence required…at least on the flight, if not on the island? I was convinced all during the episode that he was going to show up. I was waiting for it in the airport, I was waiting for it on the plane…waiting…waiting…I just can’t believe that his still-mostly-unexplored-“specialness” is not going to come back into play. Maybe, like Claire, his full-time return is being saved for Season Six.

Jack asks what will happen if they can’t get anyone else onto the plane. Ms. Hawking says, “All I can tell you is the result would be…unpredictable.” I hope the show will explore at some point the significance of them all needing to return together, and not just leave it hanging. I also was left wondering why this window was their only opportunity to return. Given the many flights listed in the binder, surely it would be possible to reach the island again sooner than later. How much time passes between the openings of a given location’s windows?

PRIVATE SESSION
Ms. Hawking leads Jack into her office. (When she opens the door and turns on the light, we briefly glimpse the back of a Virgin Mary statue on her desk – just like the heroin-filled ones from the island.)

She hands Jack an envelope with his name on it: John Locke’s suicide note. Jack didn’t realize Locke had taken his own life. Ms. Hawking said that obituaries don’t usually mention it when people hang themselves. There’s a minor inconsistency here. Last season, when Sayid busted Hurley out of mental hospital and informed him of Bentham’s death, he said, “They said it was suicide.”  Who said it was suicide? How did Sayid learn of the death? Not by reading the obituary apparently, because Ms. Hawking says it wasn’t mentioned. And Jack would have known if it was mentioned, considering what effect the obituary had on him when he first read it.

Ms. Hawking tells Jack that as part of the need to recreate the circumstances of the flight, Locke must serve as a proxy for Jack’s father. Jack must take something that belonged to his father and give it to Locke…an idea Jack dismisses as ridiculous. “Oh stop thinking how ridiculous it is,” she chides him, “and start asking yourself whether or not you believe it’s going to work. That’s why it’s called a leap of faith, Jack.” (Nearly the exact words Locke said to him in Season Two when he first asked Jack to push the button in the hatch.)

THE APOSTLE
When Jack emerges from his meeting with Ms. Hawking, Sun is gone. Ben is in the sanctuary, and asks Jack what Ms. Hawking said to him. Jack says it doesn’t matter and asks in return, “Who is she? Why is she helping us, how does she know all this?” Uhh…those are all great questions, Jack. Why didn’t you ask her, when you were just in there??? Idiot.

Ben, of course, ignores his question and launches instead into a story about a painting on the wall. “Thomas the Apostle,” he says. “When Jesus wanted to return to Judea, knowing that he would probably be murdered there, Thomas said to the others, ‘Let us also go that we might die with him.’ But Thomas was not remembered for this bravery. His claim to fame came later when he refused to acknowledge the resurrection. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around it. The story goes, he needed to touch Jesus’ wounds to be convinced.”

“Was he?” Jack asks.

“Of course he was. We’re all convinced sooner or later, Jack.”

I sense more foreshadowing at play here; foreshadowing that positions Jack as Thomas and either his father or Locke -or both – as the resurrected. Jack looks one more time at the painting of Thomas touching Jesus’ wound.

Tonight’s episode deals with what happens to Locke when he leaves the island (and it promises to feature some major revelations). What I wonder – and I don’t know that we’ll get the answer tonight – is will this episode be the last we see of Locke alive, other than perhaps flashbacks? Or will he come back to some semblance of life upon returning to the island? He seems crucial to the island’s future (and it’s hard to imagine the show without him), so I have to think that he’s not done yet. But maybe this act of sacrifice – the specifics of which we’re about to learn – is his final duty to the island. Perhaps like Moses, who led the Jews to the Promised Land but was forbidden by God from entering himself, Locke’s final purpose is to lead his one-time comrades back, without the hope of being able to stay. It would be a truly bold, intriguing stroke to remove him (largely, at least) from the story at this point—not unlike what J.K. Rowling did in the sixth Harry Potter book to a certain character who I won’t mention (but c’mon, anyone who doesn’t already know who I’m talking about doesn’t deserve to be shielded from the spoiler in the first place. Seriously, the book is like four years old).

Anyway… seeing Locke to his end-point halfway through this season and then moving the show forward in the wake of his sacrifice would be quite a development. But I don’t think we’re done with him yet…

The final – and crucial – note of the church sequence is Ben leaving, and saying to Jack, “I made a promise to an old friend of mine. Just a loose end that needs tying up.”

Oh shit…he’s going after Penny.

UNEXPECTED VISITS
There’s an odd, mid-episode interlude with Jack’s grandfather, and I didn’t know what to make of it. If the only purpose of the scene was so Jack could get his father’s shoes, why bother? It seems like a waste of time. Jack must have something of his father’s already that he could have used. Why this diversion? Was it planting the seed for something yet to come? In an episode that seems to make heavy use of foreshadowing, perhaps this was another sign? The fact that Ray Shephard is trying to escape, has a packed bag, an interest in magic…I dunno. The whole thing was weird.

So was the next visit, but for entirely different reasons. This time, Jack is the visitee, not the visitor. When he arrives home at night, he discovers Kate curled up, dressed, on his bed. She looks a mess – tired, out of it. A day must have passed since she took Aaron and left Jack and the rest at the pier. She asks if he’s still going back to the island, and when he says yes, she says she’s going with him.

Jack: Kate, what happened? Where’s Aaron?
Kate: Don’t ask questions. If you want me to go with you, you’ll never ask me that question again. You will never ask me about Aaron, do you understand Jack?

He easily, quickly says yes; she says thank you; she kisses him…and I’m thinking, what?!? A little boy, your nephew, just dropped out of the picture, and you’re going to roll over and not ask any questions? What do you think, she left him with his grandma? You don’t wanna know where he is? You don’t care what happened to this three-year-old child?!? Dude…I don’t care how much you love Kate and want her to come with you. Unless you lied to her face and are planning to ask her where he is the moment the plane is in the air, then that is seven shades of fucked up.

YEAH, CAN I GET A 1/2 POUND OF SMOKED HAM, A 1/4 POUND OF MUENSTER AND THE DEAD GUY IN THE BACK?
The next morning, just after Kate leaves, Jack takes a phone call from Ben. He’s on a pay phone at a pier; his face is badly bruised and streaked with blood; his hair is wet and matted, and he’s soaked all over. He says he’s been sidetracked and asks Jack to pick up Locke’s body. Seems obvious Ben went after Penny. My hope is that when he got there and prepared to go in for the kill, he saw little Charlie, which caught him off guard long enough for Desmond to arrive, kick the shit out of him, throw him overboard and sail away at Ludicrous Speed.  That’s what I hope. Ms. Hawking said the island isn’t done with Desmond. I sure hope the Irishman doesn’t return to the island to avenge Penny. I’m still not over Claire and Charlie being ripped apart. I can’t handle the demise of Penny and Desmond’s relationship.

Jack goes to the butcher shop, where we see Ben’s friend Jill again. Her appearance is brief, so it looks like we’re going to be left for a while with the question of who she is, who her associates are (Ben had asked her about people named Jeffrey and Gabriel), and what the deal is with this network of off-island helpers who seem very much in the know. Alone with the coffin, Jack opens it up and replaces Locke’s own shoes with his father’s. “Wherever you are John, you must be laughin’ your ass off that I’m actually doing this. Because this, this is even crazier than you were.” So apparently Jack is now back to thinking that Locke is crazy. ‘Cause we know from a past conversation with Kate that after Locke got off the island and came to see Jack, he believed what Locke told him. But that was in his boozing, pill-popping phase.

Jack puts Locke’s suicide note back in coffin. “I’ve already heard everything you had to say John. You wanted me to go back, I’m going’ back.” He closes the coffin and adds, “Rest in peace.”

I suspect there will be no peace just yet.

FLIGHTPLAN
At the Ajira Airways ticket counter, Jack arranges to have Locke’s body transported to Guam for burial. As he walks away, the man in line behind him says, “My condolences. I’m sorry you lost your friend.”

This is Caesar.

Jack sees Kate arrive, but she doesn’t stop for him. Sun arrives and greets him, much to his pleasure. “If there’s even a chance that Jin is alive, I have to be on that plane,” she says. Which is great, Sun…but what’d you tell your mother, who is home in Korea with your daughter? Do you have any concerns about how you’re going to get off the island this time? Do you expect to be able to return? Cause Ben told Jack to pack a bag with anything he wanted in this life; he’d never be coming back. Was that just because of what Jack must do to fulfill his own destiny? Or is this a one-way ticket for all involved? Why didn’t anyone ask Ms. Hawking about that?

And speaking of Ji Yeon, this would be a good time to bring up a fine point from reader Kathy W., who was irked that Sun’s daughter wasn’t required to return to the island too. After all, Sun was pregnant with her when she left. Shouldn’t the kid be right in the thick of the mystery? A fair point…

Jack and Sun are stunned to see Sayid across the terminal, being led by a woman to a security checkpoint. She flashes a badge and they go through.

This is Ilana.

Although I didn’t know how Sayid came to be there, my initial reaction to this appearance was that he was trying to recreate the day of Flight 815, when he was detained by airport security because Shannon, at her bitchy best, reported than some Arab guy had asked her to watch his bag while he went to the gift shop.

We next see Hurley, obviously out of jail and sitting in the terminal, reading a comic book. He was reading a comic on Flight 815 too. This time, he carries a guitar case. Is that supposed to represent the guitar case Charlie was traveling with?

Jack approaches Hurley, clearly happy to see him, but surprised. He asks how Hurley knew to be here. “All that matters is that I’m here, right?” answers Hurley, who seems uncomfortable to see Jack.

As Jack boards the plane, Sayid sees him and leans forward, looking as if he wants to say something. But then he glances at Ilana seated next to him and thinks better of it. She notices his movements, notices Jack, but then faces front.

Jack is happy to see everybody, but Kate, Sayid and Hurley all seem on edge. Something is going unsaid. None of them seem to acknowledge that they know each other. Caesar is there, seated across from Hurley. And just as the doors are about to close, Ben arrives. Sayid sees him, and this time his face registers…what is that look? Relief? Surprise? Whatever it is, he seems unable to do anything in his present situation. Is he handcuffed? I can’t tell, but if so, that would be another recreation of Flight 815, when Kate was handcuffed by the federal marshal.

Unlike Sayid, Hurley’s reaction to Ben’s arrival is vocal.

Hurley: Wait! What’s he doing here? No no, he can’t come!

Jack: If you wanna get back, this is how it’s gonna have to be.

Hurley: No one told me he was gonna be here!

Ben: Who told you to be here, Hugo?

Jack tells the concerned flight attendant that everything is fine, looking to Hurley. “Right?” Like an irritated teenager telling his parents what they want to hear, Hurley says, “Yes, Jack, I’ll be fine.”

The flight attendant hands Jack an envelope, telling him it was discovered when customs checked his cargo. It’s Locke’s note, and as she hands it to him, Caesar is framed directly in the background, watching. Coincidence? Not a chance.

Ben takes his seat across from Jack, and when Jack asks what’s going to happen to everyone else on the plane, Ben responds – in that way only Ben can – “Who cares?”

After they reach cruising altitude, Jack sits down next to Kate and marvels at the coincidence that Sayid and Hurley are there, and that they are all back together. Does he really think they just happened to be on this flight? Does it not occur to him that they were somehow notified, which might then lead him to wonder how they were convinced to come? Kate’s buzzkill response is, “We’re on the same plane, Jack. It doesn’t make us together.” Just then, the captain introduces himself over the intercom…and the hits just keep on coming: it’s grizzly chopper pilot extraordinaire, Frank Lapidus.

Jack asks the flight attendant if he can speak to the captain, and moments later he is greeting a clean-shaven Frank, who says he picked up the Ajira gig eight months earlier and has flown this route many times. He asks why Jack is going to Guam, but then looks into the cabin and sees Sayid. And Kate. And Sun. And Hurley. “Wait a second…we’re not going to Guam are we?”

Some time later, Jack is back in his seat, and Ben is reading Joyce’s Ulysses. Jack asks Ben how he can read. “My mother taught me,” he answers drolly. Of course, seeing as his mother died in childbirth, I don’t think she taught him much of anything. Even in his sarcasm he can’t be honest! (But now that I think about, as a boy on the island, Ben met his dead mother in the jungle once. Maybe they got together occasionally after that for poltergeisty home schooling.)

Jack asks if Ben knew Locke killed himself. Ben says no, but doesn’t seem to react with surprise or emotion at all, making me think he did know. Jack wonders if he (himself, not Ben) is to blame for Locke’s suicide, and Ben assures him that he’s not – for what that’s worth coming from Ben. Ben moves to another row further up to give Jack privacy while opening the letter. The note is brief. It reads, “Dear Jack, I wish you had believed me.” It is signed “JL.” Then the plane starts to shake. It grows worse, and soon we hear the same noise that accompanies the flashes on the island. We see the white light….

DEJA VU REDUX
…and we’re back where the episode started…which was already back where the whole series started. Jack in the jungle, getting up, dropping a torn piece of Locke’s note from his hand as he runs toward Hurley’s cries for help. In the lagoon, Jack wakes up Kate, and together with Hurley, they wonder why none of them remember crashing. There is no sign of Sun, Sayid, or Ben (or Locke). As they prepare to split up and look for the others, they hear a noise. A Dharma van drives up on the ridge overhead. The driver emerges, rifle pointed down at the new arrivals. It’s Jin. In a Dharma uniform.

Whoa.

 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-Now that our friends are back on the island, how long before we learn more about Eloise Hawking? And speaking of which, remember when Desmond was living in a monastery making wine with the monks? The head monk had a photograph on his desk, and in that photograph was himself…and Ms. Hawking. Does that monk, and his church, have a connection to the Dharma Initiative, like Eloise and her church? And just what is her connection to the Dharma Initiative? If she is indeed one and the same as Ellie from the Jughead episode, how did she go from being an Other with Richard to a Dharma dame? And as for Desmond, was his fate already in motion even then? Remember, as he was preparing to leave the monastery and resume his normal life, he helped a visitor load several boxes of the monastery’s wine into her car. That visitor was Penny, who told the monk that her father had sent a check for the wine in advance. The monk said to thank her father for his generous donation.

So to sum up: Ellie was an Other with Charles Widmore; Ellie might be Ms. Eloise Hawking; Ms. Hawking operates out of a church; Ms. Hawking is pictured in a photograph with a monk in England; Charles Widmore supports this monk’s monastery. Are we seeing the pieces of a network reveal themselves?

-You may be wondering why I brought up Caesar and Ilana before we even know them by name. In my first message of the season, I mentioned that we’d be meeting two new people who are said to factor into the overall arc of the show in a big way. Well, we just met them. According to Damon and Carlton, they will be recurring characters this season with the likelihood of becoming regulars next year. So I highlight them now because we haven’t only seen their faces for the first time; I believe we’ve seen their influence as well. Sayid is obviously in some form of Ilana’s custody, and I have little doubt that she and Caesar are somehow responsible for Kate and Hurley being there as well…which means they are responsible for Aaron’s current whereabouts. Are they also responsible for Lapidus flying this particular plane? We saw in the preview for tonight’s episode that Ilana talks to Locke at some point after his return. And Caesar definitely knows something about Locke’s suicide note. Who are these two, and who are they working for?

-It appears that the plane did not crash, but rather that it got caught up in one of the flashes. Did the plane continue toward Guam, with only those who are supposed to be on the island staying behind? We’ve gotta figure that Caesar and Ilana will be on the island. What about Lapidus? I hope so. That guy rules.

Entertainment Weekly’s Doc Jensen suggested another possibility regarding the fate of Flight 316, which I liked…though I’m not sure I believe it: “Remember back in Season 3, when the Others made Kate and Sawyer do hard labor on Hydra Station Island? According to Lost lore, the thing that they were helping to build…was an airplane runway. So…what if instead of getting magically downloaded out of the sky by The Island like Jack, Kate and Hurley, Ben’s Ajira contingent merely landed safely on that runway? What if the very reason that Ben wanted to build that runway was because somehow (Jacob? Time loop? Precognitive powers?), he knew that one day he would need it?!”

-I’m less curious about why Jin is in a Dharma uniform – I can pretty much make an educated guess about that one – as I am about how he happened to be on that ridge at that moment, almost as if he expected somebody to be in the lagoon below. What was he doing there?

-Did it bother anyone else that no Ajira flight crew asked Hurley to stow that huge guitar case? He just had it sitting in the seat next to him!  That’s so not regulation…

Also from the EW.com files, Doc Jensen was answering reader mail, and addressed a question about Locke continually getting wounded in the leg after the island restored his ability to walk again. Here is his answer:

“It’s interesting to note that Locke loses his legs whenever he gets put on a new path — and, perhaps, sometimes as a karmic scolding for deviating from the path he’s supposed to be on. Locke succumbed to the temptation of chasing after his cruel, criminal father — and he got tossed out a window. Locke got caught up in the Hatch’s weird drama — and he got his legs crushed under the Blast Door. What happened right before Alpert gave him his mission to bring the Oceanic 6 back to the Island? That’s right: shot in the leg by Ethan. Every time Locke’s hero’s journey gets rebooted, he’s delivered back to a square one: Busted legs. But then he takes the leap of faith, and he’s healed anew.”

I would add to that list Locke’s legs failing him when he and Boone discovered the cargo plane in the tree canopy…but I can’t remember the specifics of that event, so I’m not sure if it fits Doc Jensen’s theory. Anyway, kinda neat.

LINE OF THE NIGHT
“You tell me, Jack, you’re the one that got to stay after school with Ms. Hawking.” – Ben

Tonight’s Episode: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham