Actually, the extra altitude would help with the autorotation maneuver. This is a well understood, heavily practiced procedure for all helicopter pilots. It is just bothersome to me that there appears to be no technical guidance given to the writers of this show whatsoever.
OK. Hmmmm. I still don’t see why Widmore would have her killed. Hopefully they will clear that one up at some point then.
I bet Nadia just died in a truly accidental car crash and Ben took advantage of it.
Good point. Making use of found things/people/information seems to be Ben’s strong point. How much of what is attributed to him is he actually responsible for causing to happen?
He didn’t make Michael shoot the women, he just used that, and the consequences of it, to turn Michael into his own personal taskboy.
-Joe
I think this episode gives us the biggest hint of the nature of the island. I think that:
[spoiler]The island is the site of an ancient UFO crash. The aliens aboard the UFO had four toes - hence the statue that the natives built. The electromagnetic anomaly, and a teleportation chamber with a mechanism that had to be kept chilled (because that couldn’t possibly be natural coldness) - all alien technology. The Black Rock found the place by accident, and the descendant of its captain (with some involvement of Charles Widmore) founded the Dharma Initiative to study and exploit the alien tech. But the natives of the island worshipped the alien(s) as god(s), see all the tech as miracles, and see Dharma as sacrelige.
These aliens are trans-dimensional beings, and as such, can only communicate with ordinary humans through ghosts of dead humans, who can relate to both species. Jacob is one (the only?) surviving alien, and needs spirits such as Christian Shepherd, Yemi, Ben’s mother, etc. to communicate through. The smoke monster is what happens when Jacob attempts to communicate or interface with humans directly - clumsy and wild, too full of energy to not cause harm.[/spoiler]
What do you guys think?
One minor prediction for next season: Sawyer jumped out of the plane wearing boots, jeans, and a shirt , but arrived at the island wearing only jeans. Next season, I predict he will again be wearing his boots and shirt.
That sounds like a perfect explanation. Too perfect actually, so it’s probably very wrong. I love Lost, but I’ve long ago consigned myself to the last episode being X-Files finale bad.
That way, if it’s even halfway decent I’ll be thrilled.
Final finale thoughts:
There was some general writing sloppiness I hope was due to the writers’ strike…
Ben’s obsession with Juliet seems to have disappeared. Or will he want to find the island partly to find her?
Alpert & Locke and their gang – will they still keep trying to keep Juliet on the island? What about the pregnancy problem? How will they interact with the rest of the strandees, incl. Bernard & Rose, seeing as how Rose rightly thinks Locke is a murderer?
Writers - please please don’t hook up Sawyer with useless Charlotte just because she’s there.
I really thnk Miles & Sawyer could have some terribly witty dialog together there on lost island. What a pair.
Will Locke really be able to juggle all the communication, transportation, smoke monster, food drop, and other management issues as well as Ben did? I think not.
How did monsters like Widmore and Linus happen to raise such nice daughters?
I’m still curious, as are others, apparently, Why was Nadia killed, really?
What could possibly be the similarity between Ben, Locke & Aaron & Walt that makes them so special to the island?
Nice theory there, cmkeller.
Hmm… did the Black Rock end up in the middle of the island because the island appeared under it after having been moved at some earlier time? That explains how a ship go so far inland.
The first thing I recall seeing that actor in was “3:10 to Yuma”. Have you seen it? He was a decent character-actor for that, and he has impressed me with his Lost stuff too.
Is he in any way related to Christopher Walken? Cuz I swear, they’ve got the same voice and creepy vibe.
-Joe
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned the Flash Forward timeline.
I watched with CC on and when Kate and Jack were fighting at the end of the runway Kate says “Jack it’s been 3 years…”.
So that means the Oceanic 6 have been back for 3 years, when Locke shows up in the funeral parlour (dead) under a false name.
So I’m curious to see how next season handles that much time lapse. What would the people on the island be doing for 2 years? It’s taken 4 seasons to show 100 days.
Obviously he (Locke) was around a while because he met with pretty much all of the Oceanic 6 (plus Walt).
On a side note I’m pretty sure Walt doesn’t have to return to the island. If Walt had to stay there, I’m sure Ben wouldn’t have let him leave in the first place.
Next up I’m a little confused (shocker) about the Dharma food drops. If a cargo plane can find the island on a semi-regular basis, how could Widemore not find it. If he can fake a plane crash I’m sure he could bribe some Dharma peon to find-out where all of the drops were happening.
And finally because the island has moved will they be getting any more food drops?
MtM
Yep. Good catch.
Well, first of all, speculation doesn’t need to be spoiler boxed.
Second, the producers have sworn up and down that it isn’t aliens. Of course I am the first to admit, I don’t believe a word they say.
Ben didn’t even come up with the rescue plan. It was that black woman, Ms. Klee (sp?) who orchestrated Ben’s rescue. As for blowing up the freighter, Ben wasn’t really trying to kill the people on the freighter, he just wanted revenge against Keemy and didn’t care who got hurt. By his own admission, he wasn’t really thinking clearly at that point. And that’s Ben’s biggest weakness. He can’t put aside his own wants for the good of the group. Like when he sent Goodwin to infiltrate the Tailies, hoping that Goodwin would be killed. I also have to wonder why he would send Ethan, the Others’ only surgeon, on such a mission. I suspect that we’ll find out in a flashback that Ben somehow felt threatened by Ethan. Ben shooting Locke after Locke heard Jacob is just another example of Ben not being able to put his people’s needs above his own.
I did notice, however, that Ben now seems to have resigned himself to having lost leadership. He even seems to be glad, in a way. In the Orchid he was like, “You’re in charge now, John. I’m sure you won’t fuck up as badly as I did. Now scram so I can finish up here.”
It occurred to me that Juliet couldn’t possibly know that the Oceanic 6 were on the freighter. The last she knew, Jack was running off into the jungle after the helicopter, Sayid and Kate were running after him, and Hurley was God-knows-where. No, I think she was wasted on rum because she was really hoping that she might finally get off the Island, and the smoke indicated that she had been denied rescue yet again. I expect to see a Sawyer/Juliet pairing in Season 5, with Sawyer thinking that Kate is dead, and Juliet having given up hope of ever getting off the Island.
Lastly, I’m sure that Widmore used to live on the Island, but at some point he had to turn the wheel and move the Island. That’s why he doesn’t know where it is any more.
It’s similar but importantly different than my own speculation.
I wouldn’t be suprised if:
The island is some kind of extra-terrestrial (or ancient-tech) vehicle. It communicates with its users by emodying their memories, sort of Solaris style. Hence we see dead people.
The Others are not humans, and not aliens, but rather, are AIs or subsystems of the Island’s own AI. This is why they’ve got this weird thing about finding a leader–there’s supposed to be somebody steering this thing. He/she/it is supposed to be telling the “Others” (i.e., the vehicle’s user interface) what to do. The original (non-human or trans-human) builders of this vehicle are long gone, but the vehicle’s software continues to assume (or at least, act on an inherent inner drive to want) that somebody around here is (supposed to be) running the machine.
Unfortunately, mere modern humans are not capable of understanding how to successfully drive the vehicle. (Or the user interface, or the ship itself, has been damaged.) Hence we have people like Ben and Locke being put “in charge” of something far beyond their ability to comprehend.
-Kris
I don’t think anyone believes them at this point. However, it could be time travelers from the future, rather than aliens, and there you go, we’ve weaseled that one out.
-Joe
Oh yeah, the Others do seem to have some concern for bloodlines. So maybe the Island is from the future (not from another planet or from a technologically advanced past as I speculated above) and the Others (i.e. the Island’s AI/UI) are trying to either find, or create through the manipulation of genes, the person they know will be their “pilot”, where they know this because he was their pilot in their past (our future).
-FrL-