I watched the episode again. Alpert did raise a slight objection to Ellie, but Ellie dismissed the objection and basically told everyone to move ahead. Ellie is calling the shots through the entire thing from the time they decide to go to Jughead.
So, it looks like Ellie is the boss of Alpert. Whether that power is hers alone or as a perk of being Widmore’s main squeeze, I don’t know.
It also appeared to me that Ellie was giving orders to Widmore. Widmore objected to her bringing Jack and Kate to Jughead, but she basically overruled him. Also, and this was more subtle, I noticed she didn’t invite Widmore to accompany them to Jughead. It wasn’t an explicit order to remain back at camp, but it seemed like Widmore deferred to her.
I’m kind of thinking that, at least in 1977, Ellie is the leader and Widmore is *her *second-in-command, and Widmore doesn’t become the leader until Ellie leaves.
Re when Daniel is born, I find this telling:
Follow the Leader transcript | Lostpedia | Fandom
This, by the way, is his only objection to Ellie’s taking the crew to Jughead. I see your point, Meltdown. You might be right. I’m not convinced, but I see what you are saying.
Locke bossed Alpert around, too. Alpert isn’t in charge. As Ben notes, he’s a sort of advisor.
A side note: the tunnels under Dharmaville leading to Ben’s house that allow him to call the smoke monster now somewhat make sense; the tunnels existed beforehand and Dharma built over them for some reason.
Who had Ben’s house before Ben did? Did that person know about the tunnels? Was Ben’s access originally a way for the Others to access the Barracks?
I don’t believe we’ve ever found any of that out.Lostpedia is mum as well.
I’m not sure that Ben’s house leads to the main part of the tunnels. We saw him crawl theough a hole that only led to the smoke monster messaging puddle. I think that Dharma built the house around the door to try and study it. Do we know who lived there in '77? I’d bet good money that Horace or Chang lived there
They’d have no way to detonate that nuke most likely. Nuclear weapons are complicated things that require a very precise set of things to go exactly right for them to work. In hollywood, it seems like if you give a nuke a jolt it’ll blow up (the most comical example I can remember was some made for TV movie called, IIRC, atomic train). But to detonate it, it would have to be armed properly and go through the proper detonation sequence.
The only way hitting it would work is if it had a pressure fuse on the nose and it was armed. It was a test bomb hanging off a platform so I don’t suspect that would be the case. Although I suppose a remote rig could be set up to drop the bomb from its suspended position and the impact would detonate it.
The other issue is that with hydrogen bombs the tritium and other gasses in the second stage tend to degrade over time and need to be replaced. If this bomb was sitting around for decades it’s not likely to function as a two stage (fusion) weapon. The first stage (“atomic bomb”) may still work but since that stage is essentially a starter for the fusion reaction it would be something of a fizzle. Still a big bomb, but not enough to wreck the island probably.
I also enjoyed the way she said “bottom”.
I’m with Frylock, I think Daniel’s ranting where those of a mad man. I think he was in desperation territory.
The following spoiler simply provides the title of the finale episode, but out of consideration, i will box it.
The title of the finale is “The Incident”, so I am thinking that means that the very incident which caused the need for the button pushing, which Desmond failed to push, which brought down 815, which, etc. will be the bomb itself. Others here have speculated this same thing. But I find it amusing that Daniel’s variable speech likely was, as Frylock suggests, a signal from the writers that Daniel was in crazyville (which is two towns over from Dharmaville!)
He also touches her stomach in the village when they are discussing what to do.