Yep, that’s exactly right. You can’t repel metal by “reversing the polarity”.
But, one thing no one has brought up yet is that the earth’s magnet field does reverse polarity from time to time. In fact, it appears that we’re not too far away from the next flip. Scientists are constantly monitoring earth’s magnetic field and, IIRC, there are some places in the Souther Hemisphere where the field is especially weak right now. I’m not sure if the writers are going to try and tie that into the story line, but it would be interesting if they did-- put some credible science in this program.
Based upon the final episode, I believe we’re going to have four distinct groups at the beginning of next season, similiar to having the Tailies and the original Losties at the beginning of this season.
The four groups are:
The Hatch: Desmond, Locke and Eko trapped in the hatch.
The Outsiders: Penelope, the Chess Players, and Michael/Walt
The Others w/ Kate, Jack, and Sawyer.
The Losties in their camp.
Hurley, Sayid and the Kwons might take their time getting back to camp as well.
My predictions for the beginning of next season: Michael/Walt get rescued by the Chess Players and tell everything to Pen. Pen trying to find and rescue Des will be a major plot. Desmond, Locke and Eko will be alive and trapped in the Hatch and it will take time for them to get out. This will merely be a subplot. Nothing much will happen at the camp, as most the leadership is elsewhere. Hurley will run into Sayid and the Kwons and they will try to rescue Jack, Kate, and Sawyer from Henry Gale and the Others, possibly getting captured as a result. We will spend most of the early season with the Others and learn a lot more about Hanso and Dharma. When the Hatchies escape, we will rejoin the Camp and they might begin to wonder what happened to Michael and Friends and they will start looking for them.
Early in the second season, Desmond told Locke and Jack that after his boat got wrecked, Kelvin had come running out of the jungle saying, “Hurry, hurry, come with me”–after which they went to the hatch, he watched the film and so forth.
But that’s not the way it was shown in the flashbacks. Desmond didn’t walk to the hatch on his own; he was barely conscious and Kelvin dragged him to the hatch. Could be that Des just doesn’t remember exactly how it transpired or he’s constructed a memory. (Of course, it would have helped if he’d told more about Kelvin and the failsafe from the beginning…but we had to be kept waiting all season.)
Some wackos break into your hatch, steal your gun, shoot your computer, hold a gun on you, and demand that you tell them your life story, what are you going to say?
“We saved the world together for a while, and that was lovely. Then I followed Kelvin and bashed his brains out against a rock, so here I am, all alone.”
“We saved the world together for a while, and that was lovely. Then Kelvin died, and here I am, all alone.”
Er, uh, what are they good at? Are they an intrinsically nice group of people who get along with each other and promote good will? If so, why didn’t they show themselves to the selected Tailies and ask them to follow them to their enclave? Are they good at subterfuge, double and triple crosses, and other skulduggery? I need more information on them.
And what is going on with the Black Rock? That ship seems to have been forgotten.
I kept expecting a “White Rock” of some kind to appear, based on those black and white stones they found in that cave with Adam and Eve early in season one. But Adam and Eve and the whole Black/White motif seems to have been dropped.
I think so. He was going through the stack of papers before coming to his conclusion that the button was a Very Important Thing, and now that we’ve seen the System Failure stuff, I’m convinced that’s what he saw. Why he didn’t explain it to Locke… who knows. But nobody explains anything to anyone here, anyway.
Yay! The return of the “multiple groups of Others” theory! My favorite!
I am rooting for a whole reality-mindfuck thing to happen at the beginning of the season, where we learn that The Others really have the noblest intentions (though all the bone-crunching, neck-snapping, kidnapping, punching and shooting of our heroes will make it a tough sell), and the Losties are somehow presented convincingly as being the “bad guys.” Even if it’s not that extreme, I want to believe that the kidnapping of the kids, at least, turns out to be for the kids’ benefit, and they aren’t using them for ooky experiments or anything. Maybe they even send them back home? :dubious:
As for the 4-5 distinct groups having different stories, it sounds reasonable. But it also sounds incredibly cumbersome to script. When Season 2 started with The Rafties, the Hatchies and the Tailies (with the Beachies more or less forgotten), it got tedious real fast. I didn’t start enjoying the season until the groups all came together.
With such a large central cast as it is, to juggle all these different locales (plus the outsiders, now!), I cringe at the thought of bouncing around among separate groups for weeks and weeks.
…and while we’re speculating/fantasizing about S3, here’s what I would like to see, and think could work:
Michael and Walt are not seen again until mid- to late-season. Just when we think they’re gone for good, they become big players in whatever happens to finish up the season, possibly by joining up with the Outsiders. Cons: too similar to this season, where Michael disappeared for several episodes, then we go back to find out what happened.
The Others take Jack, Kate & Sawyer back to Otherland, where they are taken to a gumdrop house on lollipop lane. Eventually, we find out what they are up to. Perhaps they explain how Walt is actually the Island’s Damien. They kidnapped him to protect the other Losties from him (though why they blew up the raft is another wrinkle in the “Others are Good” theory), and only when Michael showed his utter lack of moral compass they were only too happy to get rid of both of them. Or not.
The Hatch didn’t explode, and everyone survived. Not sure what I’d like to see happen, here, but somehow or other, “pushing the button” is no longer necessary or relevant. I still want the BAE (big-ass electromagnet) to be functional in some way, though I have no idea why I’d miss it if it were destroyed.
Locke somehow redeems himself. I want the old confident, knife-throwin’ Locke back. Perhaps this experience has taught him humility and gets him past his daddy issues so he can go back to being a new, improved Zen Locke.
Sawyer and Kate do the nasty. Naked. A whole episode. Naked!
Jin and Sun, too.
Not all together, mind.
Eko learns to freakin’ say something when it will, like, save lives and stuff.
Make that “everyone” learns.
I couldn’t care less about the whole Penelope/Desmond story line. My hope is that it is more or less dropped, or it is closely tied with The Others or some other Island-based story. Once we go off-Island, we inch ever closer to hideously complex mythology stuff.
We’ll learn that Libby was indeed affiliated with Hanso/Dharma, and why she was in the hospital with Hurley.
The tearful CFL/Alex reunion.
Sayid = naked!
I have a feeling we won’t know whether or how Hanso managed to get all these people onto Flight 815, or if/how they engineered the crash, until the FINAL season.
Didn’t Fenry tell Michael that if he followed the given compass heading he’d “find rescue”? That struck me as a very odd phrase to use, and I wonder if “rescue” is going to turn out to be another “black rock”-- maybe there’s a place on the island called “Rescue” or something. Why not say you will “be rescued”? Anyway, just wondering if anyone else found that odd.
It seems the Others were specifically shopping for Hurley, Sawyer, Jack and Kate. What special appeal did these Losties have for the Others to order them by name? What will these people bring to the Others’ community?
I can see the first Tailies falling under the Others’ influence and populating their community since they were traumatised by the crash and by their sudden abduction. However, how will the Others make the captured Losties join their group and not make trouble or try to escape? It stands to reason that these four are the leaders of the Losties and direct the actions of the group, generally speaking. Could it be the Others wanted the rest of the Losties to stay away from them, but the Others plan on attacking the rest of the Losties, since their leadership was taken away from them?
I really don’t understand Charlie’s behavior after he left the hatch. Regardless of what may have happened that we didn’t get to see, it was apparent that Locke was inside and Eko was alive but injured. I’m not sure if he was aware Desmond or anyone was in there with Locke.
He just casually sidles up to Claire and says, “Meh, nothing happened but wook at me I have a boo-boo, waah” Why didn’t he tell anyone what happened, why not gather some people up to go to the hatch to make sure Des, Locke, and Eko were ok? I know Charlie’s a weasley little hobbit but that was just odd.
I thought that kicking heroin would make him somewhat decent. Nope, he’s still an asshole.
I hit submit too soon. I wanted to add that I don’t think that Penelope is actually looking for Desmond. My guess is that she may be aware now what kind of crap her old man is up to, perhaps knows of his involment with Hanso and whatnot. Maybe she knows “of” the island and that there is or was research going on there but doesn’t know “where” the island is. She may know it’s linked to some sort of huge electromagnetic anomoly, and given her money, she hired a team to help locate it. They find the anomoly, they find the island. Perhaps she wants to bring her father down. She may have eventually found out that he blocked Desmond’s letters from prison. Who knows?
When Pen answered the Brazilian’s phone call, did I see a picture of her and Desmond on her night table?
At the end of the finale, I turned to the guy who was watching it with me and proposed pretty much that exact idea: What if this is, on some level, an insiders’ view of how and why bad guys are bad guys? The Losties don’t trust one another, they don’t talk to one another, or when they do they lie; they scheme and deceive behind one anothers’ backs; they’ve gotten several of themselves killed; they’ve destroyed the hatch through sheer monkeylike ignorance; they’re self-absorbed and incurious to the point of dysfunctionality; their leadership is horrible, fighting with itself over who gets to bed the fertile female; ad nauseum.
I mean, they’ve got themselves a mightily popular show, and viewers are so hooked that the network is over a figurative barrel with respect to putting pressure on the showrunners. At this point, the creators have probably a full season to do whatever the hell they want with the story before ratings suffer and the showrunners lose their leverage. Why not try something wild like turning the tables on the audience and revealing our “heroes” as the jackass antagonists of the piece?
It’s inland and rotting.