Or was it built that way because the prop guys didn’t have enough time or enough energy to finish it?
Neither. If you wanted to keep people or things out or in, there wouldn’t be any ladder at all.
More reasonably, it’s just in poor repair, hence the broken rungs.
Or the lower ones have melted into slag, due to the fire breathing dragon down below.
But I’ve said too much…
Perhaps the Hatch Dwelling People are very tall.
Alternately, someone could have removed some of the rungs, to prevent ingress or egress.
Nope. You see the tree branch rebound after the bird’s take-off. It wasn’t a roc. 
They didn’t just remove rungs. The ladder just…stops. No rungs, no rails, no nothing. Like something very strong had ripped it down. But there is no evidence of damage to the shaft wall…no ripped brackets, damaged cement, etc.
As for the phoenix…works for me!
Late to the thread, just watched it. I only have one burning question. What’s up with Sawyer’s hair?
I find myself more and more distracted by this. What’s Sawyer’s hair going to do this week???
I know his hair is kinda long, but now he has it tied back. Was it really long enough to do that?
It just seems like Sawyer’s hair is the only hair on the island that changes.
Would you believe a pissed-off flying giraffe?
That’s not what I saw, after rewinding and watching it frame by frame. YMMV.
I just got to watch this today. Holy crap.
I’ve read this whole thread and all I can say is, who cares about ladder rungs and birds?!?! Those creepy dudes took Walt!!
Maybe it’s because I have an eleven year old troubled boy child of my own, but that literally churned my stomach when they took him.
I know Walt isn’t the typical cutesy lovable tv kid, but he has tugged my heartstrings from the git go. The kid gets taken from his natural father, raised by a too-busy-for you mom who carts him around the globe, all the while with a step father who clearly only put up with him to keep getting laid by his high power attorney wife.
As bad as that life was, it was all he knew, and then THAT gets ripped away when mama dies. Top all that off with being stranded on bizarro island after a terrifying plane crash and you have one pitiful-just wanna-hug-him little boy.
I didn’t get worked up about Clairs baby because
- I had no time to get attached
- it was pretty much a no-brainer that he’d be brought back safely.
But man…Walt. Michaels cries for him, that tore me up.
Ladder, rungs, whatever…Locke will still find a way to get down there and explore. He’ll spend weeks putting enough vines together to form ropes and lower himself down if he can’t talk anyone else into helping. He’s into this island–literally.
or egrets…
Note the Oceanic 815 Theory Board.
[nitpick] My recollection is that the Marshall was told the gun case had to go “with the crew’s luggage”. Not necessarily in the very front of the plane.
**Oslo. ** The exact words were, “You’ll have to stow this in the crew luggage compartment in the front.” TWoP verifies this.
I have something I need someone else to verify.
46:01 into the finale. After Kate drops the dynamite in the hole to free Locke. I froze the screen to get a better look at that explosion. A freeze frame of Locke in the hole and Jack and Kate recoiling from the smoke. I think I see something – make that maybe two somethings – in the smoke. Are those two sets of bulbous round eyes?
Can anyone else verify?
Nah. As we all know, there was no latch on the outside. So, the last person/thing/entity to enter the hatch closed it, descended 7 steps, and
AAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
[THUD]
Ooooh, interesting! I see what you are talking about – I don’t know if they are supposed to be eyes or not, or just patterns in the wisps of smoke – but that’s definitely interesting!
Not really. There are two lighter patches in the smoke, making an impression of eyes, but I can’t get more details.
I went back and re-watched ep 1. The reason was to try to find out if there was a clear idea that the writers, back then, knew where they were going, as related to where we are now. It looks that way, but I’m not throwing in my verdict before seeing the second part of the pilot.
There were three instances that jumped out:
- The sound effect from the TCM includes the rattling chain, something I didn’t notice back then.
- There was a foreshadowing or two when Kate helps to patch up Jack. He tells the story about when he conquered fear, the time when he messed up in surgery and soemthing went wrong with the spine and nerves of a sixteeen year old girl (his future wife?), and Kate replies that she’d have run away. Jack replies: “You’re not running now.”
- When Locke smiles at Kate, as she’s taking (stealing) the boots off a corpse, he opens his mout hand there’s an orange peel - Godfather reference? I didn’t think about it in that way back then, but given how the Locke character has evelved…