Rose & Bernard / Black & White… hmmm…
The Lostpedia reference said he thought they had been dead for 40-50 years, based on the decomposition of the clothing.
Yep, seemed pretty obvious to me that Juliet killed the first one, then James killed the second one. He looked surprised because he heard a shot, knew that he hadn’t fired, and a quick check revealed he hadn’t been shot, so who did? Cue the cut to Juliet.
Damn. Missed that. OK then did it look like they sped up the camera to anyone else while Sawyer raised and fired?
When we met him, Mikhail claimed to be the last survivor of Dharma. He had made an agreement with the Hostiles in which they let him live (in return for something I can’t remember right now.)
Of course, he could have been lying, so I put this in the ‘as yet to be determined’ file.
p.s. Kelvin claimed to be Dharma too, But the flashbacks he was in were about three years pre-crash and the purge was 12 years pre-crash. I don’t think he could have been in the hatch for nine years, so we have a precedent for this type of lie.
This is the one thing that bugged me the most. Even if they have met young Ben and it just didn’t come up in last night’s episode, it still seems like a really conspicuous thing to omit. The show knows that everyone will be thinking it, so I’m assuming it will come up next week when they have to introduce Jack & co. to Dharma life. Otherwise, it’s a weird hole about such an incredibly important, influential character.
The thing about Charlotte doesn’t bother me so much since we’ve already established that the island works on its own clock. Perhaps the little red-haired girl is Charlotte and her mother simply faked her birth date when they moved back to the real world since her actual birth year would be incongruous with the way time passed differently on the island.
The Bernard & Rose thing bothers me a little, though, and I’m hoping it’s addressed very soon so it doesn’t feel like the writers have relegated it to a oops! loose thread they forgot to tie up.
The thing I am most keen to find out about this show is just exactly who the Others are and what they are up to. (Probably most of the other show’s mysteries are answered once one knows the answer to this one, anyway, so I guess it’s natural to glom on to this question in particular.)
I was trying to make a list of all the things we do know about the Others. Care to help me add to it?
–They are looking for a leader from outside their own number.
–They have a very strange sense of justice. (They strike me almost like they’re trying to pretend they understand fairness and promise-keeping and things like that, but really have no clue how this kind of thing is supposed to work.)
–They have no obvious culture of their own, but instead adopt the cultural habits of others. (We’ve seen them adopt a millitary culture, a biker culture (the two that were killed in this last episode anyway), a suburban culture, a culture something like that of third world bandits (that’s the way I characterize the Season One Others), and perhaps others. It’s not clear to me whether this is some kind of tactic, or whether there’s something deeper going on.)
–They typically don’t want people to be on the Island (though they occasionally bring people to help out with specific issues).
–They are human beings, at least biologically.
–At least one of them, apparently, does not age.
What else goes on this list?
My own favorite theory, which is almost certainly not the writers’ theory, is that the Others are artificial intelligences, constructed to be biologically (basically) human, who function as the control system for a crashed vessel of some kind, and who are trying to find a way to follow (in many ways conflicting) directives to protect the ship and find a captain for the ship. The people we spot sometimes who are supposed to be dead or mere illusions are more constructed artificial intelligences. Visitors to the island find these artificial intelligences eerily familiar because the intelligences are designed to adapt themselves to whoever might be piloting or crewing the ship. But the ship wasn’t really designed for humans, and the humans visiting the island really can’t come close to understanding what it is the intelligences are trying to get out of them, no matter how much the intelligences try to “adapt” to the humans’ way of thinking.
No theory attached to this, but if you look at the shot of the desk Ceasar is ransacking in the last episode, you can see what looks like one of the dolls Ben got from Annie as a kid on it
http://lost.cubit.net/archives/2009/02/5x07—user-requested-images.php#more
This would presumably place Locke et al after Dharma since I’m guessing this tags it as Ben’s desk.
Richard Alpert = R.A. = Ra
Jesus Moly, man, I hadn’t put that together!
Of course! There’s an explanation for the eyeliner after all!
Thanks for pointing this out. Even if the rest of your post was a stretch, this is not. There seem to have been Egyptians on the island at one point, as we see from the Temple and from the Statue. And these Egyptians would have worn eyeliner (I gather, anyway, from pop images), and so Richard either was one of them or he borrowed the habit from them.
-FrL-
And Hurley was painting the Sphinx!
Sure, but… the thing is, the actor playing Richard isn’t wearing eyeliner. That is actually just the way Nester Carbonell naturally looks. Cite.
Our god is the Fun god
Our god is the Sun God
RA Ra Ra!
Coconut telegraph. 
Well, whether or not the actor is wearing eyeliner doesn’t matter, since a character on the show ‘accused’ him of it, then the character Richard Alpert could still definitely be wearing it.
The whole Egyptian thread y’all are proposing I think is hitting pretty close to the mark, especially since the portal goes to Tunisia, which was pretty accessible to the Egyptians.
No way that Hurley’s Sphinx picture was just random. There’s something there. Though I’ve always held to the idea that Richard is immortal Centurion character from countless stupid crucifixion stories. Or Cain. Or whatever.
The place was, indeed, Ben’s office when he was over in the Hydra during Season 3. There’s even an entire “deleted” scene in that very same room where Ben tries to convince Alex to forget about her boyfriend.
But see it’s not that convoluted. It really only seems convoluted when we come up with these crazy theories about changing the past and so on.
We have one rule: What happened, happened, and you can’t change the past. Now I know what you are about to say, “But Daniel could be lying, and then he changed the past!” Well, we have no reason to think he’s lying, because he’s been a pretty honest guy. He sometimes doesn’t give the whole truth, usually because it be over everyone else’s heads or the truth is horrible. And he didn’t really change the past. Desmond only just now got that memory, and he doesn’t have any other memories about being in the hatch going “okay, when I get off the island, I gotta find Daniel’s mother.” I think when Daniel flashed away, the whole thing “reset” and Desmond went back to acting if the whole thing never happened.
As for Charlotte, there’s three possible answers:
- It’s not Charlotte (which I doubt, that’s a pointless misdirection)
- It is Charlotte, and her Mom lied about her birthdate (Ben didn’t have any clue about her being former Dharma).
- It is Charlotte, and when they left the island, they screwed up the bearings and time jumped a few years into the future. (Also possible, but we would never really know.) My money is on number 2.
And for Ben knowing the castaways, do you remember random people from 30 years ago when you were a teenager? I don’t remember people from a few years ago. I doubt teenage Ben had any real interaction with any of them, maybe Sawyer. Of course, being the sneaky bastard he is, he might remember. He does always seem to be one step ahead of everyone. He honestly did not seem surprised when the plane crashed and he knew exactly where to send Ethan.
One last point, Richard walking into Old Dharmaburg by himself was probably one of the coolest scenes in the show.I’m starting to wonder, we know Richard is ageless, but can he even be killed? He is the calmest dude ever, he might be really immortal. We’ve never seen him get hurt, have we?
Well, if nothing else it would place them after Dharma since, you know, the Dharma stations have been built…
-Joe
I think ThirdCultureKid meant “after Dharma” as in “after all the Dharma people had been killed and Ben took over their property such as this desk”.
Oh, and I thought Ben knew personal details about the lostaways from his communications (Mikhail’s) station where he spied on everybody, in addition to those sneaky trips he and bearded guy took off the island with those hidden passports.
Mikhail admits to lying about being Dharma, but says everything else he told them was true.
I’m think they landed in the post 815 crash era because we speculate that it was 316ers shooting at them in the canoes. That was after the camp had been built, right? Lot of speculation, but probably not wrong.