Can anyone confirm her phrasing?
I’m beginning to think that “the others” are aliens. They could have caused the crash of the airplane, and they could be doing some biological experiments on animals. Something is “special” about Claire’s baby and they want it. Claire also thought she was on the pill, so maybe “the others” are the reason she got pregnant in the first place.
I don’t think Ethan is Alex, unless Alex was raised by “the others” and is now more or less in league with them.
Oh, I forgot to add.
The anagram deal with Ethan Rom is very reminescent of “Rosemary’s Baby”, no? And remember that the old guy’s name was Roman something-or-other?
Anagrams can be fun AND misleading at the same time! 
And in Claire’s first dream there was something wrong with Locke’s eyes!
I may be reading too much into that.
That’s been mentioned. One was white and one was black, like the stones that Jack found with Adam & Eve.
Count me as one who thinks the “psychic” was simply a blackmarket baby merchant. Claire’s freind tips him off and brings her over, the psychic cons her into selling her baby to anonymous Americans, and then the plane coincidentally crashes. Perhaps as some sort of wish fulfillment after Claire had second thoughts about giving up the baby.
No kidding. The full-on freakout she was having when she woke up from the first nightmare raised the hairs on the back of my neck. That’s a hell of a committed performance.
I’m not going to bother to speculate further about what’s going on. Why? Because (1) I’m starting to believe that this show will somehow manage to continue surprising us no matter what we come up with, and (2) you guys are doing fine without me. 
It’s enormously fun to watch the show and then hit the thread to see how you’re rationalizing the new developments and forecasting the next revelations. “Other man”? “Rupture of membrane”? Genius.
Man, this is great. I will be so disappointed if the show falls apart as it continues, X-Files style, but I’ll enjoy it until then.
That’s one of the fun things about the show. It’s ambiguous. Maybe the whole shocked refusal thing was an act to set up the baby-sale transaction. Or maybe it wasn’t. We don’t really know yet; either intrepretation can be justified by the available evidence.
This kind of dithering will get frustrating if they keep it up too long, but based on our questions thread it seems like they’re making a point of letting the mysteries linger just long enough before replacing them with new mysteries. Neat.
That would suggest that the title of this episode is actually “Raised by an Other” not “Raised by another”. But who would be the one referred to in the title? Perhaps Ethan?
Agreed.
Could the psychic have just been a set up for a baby broker? Maybe. On the other hand, why was he so insistant on that particular flight? And on yet another hand, why send her there telling to hand her baby over instead of making up a line like “It’s not safe for you in Australia!”
Assuming the psychic was real, I think the blurry thing was more a point where the future could go two ways and the “right” way was for Claire to raise her baby. I wonder if her baby will be delivered on the Christmas episode…
So now we’ve met two people who weren’t on the plane. Good thing I saved the 11/18 episode on my PVR, I will need to review Crazy French Lady’s dialogue to see how/if it meshes with Ethan.
FWIW, when Ethan said he was from Ontario, I too thought he was referring to the California city, not Canada; notice when Locke was asked his hometown he said “Tustin” (also a city in Southern California). It makes perfect sense that a plane from Sydney to LA would have quite a few passengers from SoCal.
But now here’s another question: How would Ethan have known the plane was flying to Los Angeles, if he hadn’t been on it? One would assume that he couldn’t just sidle up to a survivor and ask, “Say, that plane that we were both on, where was it headed to?” I suppose he could possibly read a luggage tag, but that would presume a level of knowledge with the outside world that seems implausible with being stranded on a remote island.
Furthermore, even if he did find out the plane was going to LA, why say he was from Ontario? There’s about 80 suburbs of LA, why choose that one? Is there an Ontario in Australia?
Now that I’ve beaten that topic to death, let me submit a thought on Claire’s nightmares: that they’re just nightmares. There’s no boogieman out to get her . . . or at least there wasn’t, until Ethan showed up. Her nightmares were just a pretty slick red herring for the producers to throw to us while the real threat lay elsewhere.
Also, re: the psychic: we’re going to be seeing him again, I’m pretty sure of it. (In fact, it’s my guess that we’ll be revisiting everybody’s backstory as the season goes on; Sawyer’s, Kate’s, and Jin’s certainly left some questions up in the air.) But I don’t know how much he was involved in a ‘plot’ that brought everyone to the island, I got a little confused there. Did he insist on sending Claire to LA because he knew the plane would crash and she would survive it, thus leaving her safe to raise the baby alone?
Perhaps it was a typo because the baby is going to be raised by an playful sea mammal. “Raised by an Otter”, there could be so much fun with that…
Oh, and Ontario is one of the few LA 'burbs with an airport…
That’s an interesting thought. Until it happens, though, I say he was a baby merchant.
I think he insisted on that plane because Claire didn’t know the baby buyers and vice versa. To maintain everyone’s anonymity, the buyers were simply told to look for a very pregnant woman coming off of a particular flight.
Or the psychic bit was real, and he sent her on it because he’d “seen” only that it would be lost. I think if he *was * psychic, it’s likely that he put her on the plane thinking she and her dangerous babe would be killed, not stranded as survivors.
That doesn’t logically follow as a certainty, although it’s a strong possibility. It’s also possible that the miscreant had some motivation for withholding his right name from the other survivors and simply introduced himself under a psuedonym.
To the Ontario, California (was gonna say CA… but that’s just as ambiguous) crowd:
But didn’t Ethan himself say he was from Canada? I have it taped at home, I’ll go watch it again, but I do remember Hugurley* making a crack at Canada (“Canada, oh. Nice… umm…”).
*I like Hurley better than Hugo… but that is a bad way to mesh em together. Anyone got a better one?
Well, even though I don’t actually believe in psychic powers AT ALL . . .
From the show’s perspective, I think you need to take his premonitions seriously, not ambiguously.
He insisted totally vehemently that it be her and her alone that raise the baby. Then, he’s like, “Oh I was wrong. Go to LA, there’s a great family there” while insisting again that she be on a specific flight.
It would have been easy to call a family in LA and change plans.
Also, of course, neither of the lawyer’s pens worked. Two pens. We’re intended to believe there were “higher powers” making her get on that plane.
And, why LA? If the guy was tricky baby-merchant, surely he could have found a family in Australia for her.
Last of all, why have the setup for her story be a tricky baby-merchant? The fact that she got on a plane because of a tricky baby-merchant isn’t interesting. It’s interesting that someone had premonitions about her evil baby and obviously, premonitions about the plane crash and her surviving it.
The show can only spell it out so much for you without flashing into the psychic’s mind showing a plane crash.
Claire believes the psychic. That’s enough to keep the story moving and to perhaps lead to some sort of self-fulfilling prophesy.
The producers have said that the show it isn’t about the supernatural (I’m paraphrasing). Unless they’re pulling a Mark Burnett on us, then that means we have to look for plausible explanations for events. Like you, I’d place psychic phenomenon outside that realm.
The possibility that supernatural forces are at work is interesting. We’ve been given hints that they night be. But it isn’t certain.
It IS more interesting if the guy was on level. Hell, it is MORE interesting if he wasn’t a psychic before her and only THEN got the powers; explaining his freaking out the first time. Think Whoopie Goldberg in Ghost.
BUT, if he was a scam artist, there is a logical reason for him to insist she take a certain flight.
Though I am beginning to come around that he was a true psychic, his insistence that she take a CERTAIN flight could have easily been part of the con game. When you are hosing a naive, pregnant girl who believes in psychic powers, “go to LA” is less convincing than “You must be on this flight or your baby will fall to certain doom.”