Good point. I wasn’t happy when I originally saw that. Part of it’s because I don’t like the idea that, given the “can only take the form of the dead” rule, the Smoke Monster can download memories, figure out whose dead, and then make an appearance as that person. Memories are notoriously fickle and easily deceived. The other part is that I really want the seemingly urgent desire of Amy to bury the Other’s bodies to be something more than just a desire to see them given a dignified end.
My only way around that now, though, is the idea that a ghost must be on the Island for the Smoke Monster to take their form.
I think the smoke monster was telling the truth. I see your objections as just more evidence that the writers have been making it up as the go along, one long unending series of retcons.
Who cares if the show isn’t internally consistent as long as we get good character development from the flash sideways? At least we’ll get definitive answers to the core mystery, which of course didn’t even get introduced until this final season. Ugh.
If they don’t explain what ‘5025’ means, it will prove they were just making everything up as they went along and don’t really care about giving us loyal viewers the answers we deserve. I demand that the finale include a pre-recorded scene of the young Walt discussing the toy plane with Jacob, Eko, Ilana, Widmore, Lapidus and Ana Lucia, or I will be forced to declare the entire series a complete failure.
Your sarcasm is ridiculous. People aren’t demanding all the small little details - the show is going to leave huge, gaping plot points on which we spent entire seasons ambiguous or unexplained.
Dharma didn’t have any mad martial arts skills. They were a bunch of mooks and most of them couldn’t fight (or shoot) worth a damn. The people who demonstrated excellent hand-to-hand fighting ability were all Others - members of the group administrated by Richard Alpert and led by Charles Widmore and eventually, Benjamin Linus. Why are the Others exceptional hand-to-hand combantants? Well, we haven’t really been told that, although there are a few episodes left and I’d suspect that there is more to learn about that group. But I’m comfortable saying that: (1) they have abilities somewhat beyond the human norm, by virtue of their closeness to the island; and (2) they probably engaged in some hard-core hand-to-hand combat training - if you were part of a group that believed its entire purpose was to protect a small piece of land against invasion, and that you alone stood between the entire world and absolute destruction, you wouldn’t take some tae kwon do or whatever?
Which what who? Ethan, Goodwin, Mikhail, and Juliet have all been shown to be excellent (though not supernaturally excellent) fighters, consistently and throughout. The Dharma morons from Season Five (Radzinski, Horace, etc) were not Others. Whose skills have vanished?
Not counting Ben, yes. Everyone who was part of the original Dharma initiative was murdered by the Others, with the assistance of Ben.
I still don’t understand why people keep asking this question. So, OK, imagine you’re part of a group who is tasked with protecting a particular island. This island is extremely difficult to find and to leave, but it’s not impossible. One of your enemies for some time is a group of folks from Away who, whatever their failings, are astonishingly well-funded. Among many other things, this group maintains a radio station with which they communicate with their people on the outside, including scheduling regular shipments of supplies to be used by the group on the island.
You kill all of these people.
In the aftermath, your Russian communications expert gets into the radio station and figures out how everything works. Do you:
(1) Have him tell the off-island compatriots that you have killed their friends and colleagues, so stop with the food already, thus ensuring that the off-island folks will know something went wrong and potentially fund a new expedition, probably better-armed, and possibly using the actual military of the United States, to kill you and take back the island;
Or
(2) Have your guy tell their guys that everything’s five by five, keep sending those food drops, no need to visit, see you all soon, Namaste, Comrade?
I don’t buy this explanation though. It’s clear (from the 1974-77 period) that mainland Dharma has somewhat routine contact, including submarine trips to the island, people arriving, people leaving to have babies on the mainland (I seem to recall they usually sent people to the mainland, though as Ethan Rom and his mother survived, it wasn’t as essential as in “our” time).
The mainland Dharma members would, presumably, be a little confused as to why this all had to stop all of a sudden.
Oh, and of course I would still like to know why in 2004, women died if they got pregnant while in 1974 they didn’t.
“Hello, incoming Dharma-ites, and welcome to Craphole Island! My name is Benjamin Linus, and I’m the acting head of Human Resources here. It’s good to have you. Don’t worry about the uniforms; we’re pretty easy going here. Now, we’ll get you to work in just a few minutes, but first we have this brief orientation video to show you, which will give you an idea of what we do here, and how we do it. Everybody have a seat, and Dr. Rom will fasten your safety harness.”
I mean, do we really need to see this happen to understand that it happened? The Others killed every living member of the Dharma initiative and then took their places. They literally moved into their houses. They took command of their stations. Why would mainland Dharma have asked any questions?
I would like an answer to this, as well. There has not been even a nod at one. But again, there are five episodes left.
Except Locke kicks the everloving shit out of Mikhail when he’s impatient to go see Jacob. Granted, Mikhail had had a bad day before the encounter, but:
So had Locke; and
That never seemed to matter before.
Unless Kelvin was lying, Radzinski was in the Swan pushing the button long after the purge. Kelvin considered himself Dharma, too. Of course, we never really met Kelvin or Radzinski during this era. It’s possible that:
I think Kelvin was a stooge. He arrived at the island and was indoctrinated into the Swan.
Any reason to not suspect that Radzinski wasn’t in there at the time of the purge (it was his pet project after all) and believed that it was, in fact, a very real death sentence to go out there?
To: Radzinsky
From: Ann Arbor
Subject: Your comeuppance
Due to lack of other suitable candidates, you are being reassigned. Climb your bossy ass into the bunker and press the button until you can find a replacement. Douche.
I think Jack only asked about his first sighting. But yeah, clearly the off island Christian sightings can’t be Smoky. As for the on island ones, probably mostly Smoky.
We only see the circle of ash unbroken around the cabin the first time Ben goes there. After that we see the circle by itself, the cabin having vanished, and the cabin without ash. The final appearance when Ilana goes there shows a broken circle.
On the contrary, the whole thing seems to have been orchestrated by Smoky from the beginning in order create his “loop hole”.
I think impersonating only requires an unburied body, whereas scanning is used to see memories. Probably without the scanning, he could take the form of the dead person but not realistically portray their personality and knowledge.
There was a webisode that shows “Christian” telling Vincent to wake Jack up that takes place just after the plane crash. So maybe Smoky scanned Jack while he was still unconscious.
I’m pretty sure by ‘smoke zombie’ they meant not a smoky impersonation, but instead ‘infected with the sickness’.
I think this was partly just trying to meter expectations. No matter what they do, there will be fans who are unsatisfied with the answers they get. I think they do intend to answer what they consider to be legitimate mysteries, it’s just that their list might not be the same as every fan’s. They do seem to be answering some random mysteries that I didn’t think would be addressed (Shannon’s inhaler, the Whispers), so I have some hope…
Yes, but not about his allegiance to Jacob or the island.
Jacob. As he told Ilana, although he was partly annoyed that Jacob never called for him, the thing that made him turn against Jacob was that he didn’t save Alex, Ben let her die due to his loyalty, and Jacob didn’t seem to even care.
About?
They were all Widmore people.
Maybe so he could hitch a ride with them. Maybe because he thought the island wanted them back. Not sure.
Because Locke revealed how to get back to the island, so he didn’t need him anymore, and he was a threat to Ben’s leadership.
What are you referring to?
They were visions of Walt, sent by Walt, who was shown to have some psychic powers.
An avatar of the island, caused by drugs.
Still a major mystery. I really hope they clear that one up.
They made a big deal about MIB having her cross. Maybe it had enough of her dead DNA on it.
Yep. It would have been nice of them to have mentioned it on the show. Would have been fairly easy to do. I think some reference to ‘synchronicity’ would neatly cover the numbers-luck, numbers-appearances, and coincidental character crossings in one fell swoop.
Some of more and some of less importance of course:
How did a polar bear get to Tunisia since Chang had Dharma not break through the wall to the cave? Why did the Orchid stock cold weather outfits if they hadn’t been in the cave?
Why did Chang have false names in the orientation films?
Why was the Swan still up and running long after the purge, why did Ben pretend to not press the button, why was Radinsky exploring stations he should already know about, how did Inman get recruited so late, why did Radinsky splice the film and hide it in The Arrow?
Real purpose of Pearl?
Did Jacob intend for Dharma to be there?
Why are the food drops continuing?
Why is the temple marked as a Dharma site on Ben’s map?
Why are some of the stations so far from base camp (Staff, Hydra, Arrow, Flame, Pearl - it’s clear why the Swan, Orchid and Tempest need to be where they are).
What was up with the ‘quarantine’ and injections?
Why wasn’t the number pushing automated?
Why was the Pearl exterior salted to make a circle?
Since all babies were born before the Incident, I’m guessing it’s the energy from the Swan station.
Gee, I dunno, maybe because they killed every living member of the Dharma initiative and then took their places, literally moved into their houses, and took command of their stations?
Dharma was organized and regulated from off-Island by the Hanso Foundation. I have a hard time imagining why the stateside Hanso/Dharma folks would just shrug their shoulders at the fact that they had not personally seen or heard from anyone on the Island in like 10 years. (Except possibly some mysterious radio transmissions from this Russian guy nobody could identify who keeps assuring them everything’s peachy, really, we promise, keep those food drops coming!) It makes much more sense that after the Purge, Dharma abandoned the Island completely, leaving only the two guys in the Hatch to push the button. (Why that whole process wasn’t mostly automated, as **jackdavinci **noted, is another good question. Like many people, I assumed it was all a psychological experiment; when it turned out to be real I thought, “Wow, what an amazingly stupid and inefficient system for making sure the world doesn’t asplode.”) This is why the food drop is such a loose end – it doesn’t seem to make sense based on everything else we know about what happened to Dharma.
As for why some of us are still wondering about Dharma in the first place, remember how they played up the Hanso/Dharma mystery all through season 2, with the orientation films, shady glimpses of Alvar Hanso, etc? We were obviously supposed to wonder about Dharma’s origins and motivation. Then we got the time travel business, where we actually got to see Dharma in its prime, and Sawyer even becomes head of security (which was totally ridiculous, but oh well). This was exciting at the time, because at last we would finally learn . . . umm . . . almost nothing. No Hanso, not one mention of the Valenzetti equation, nada. The Valenzetti explanation for the Numbers was a pretty cool idea, IMO. Sure it was sci-fi technobabble, but it worked well enough in the context of all the other weirdness. Why they didn’t work it *into the actual show *somehow is beyond me. We could have learned loads of stuff about Dharma from Dr. Chang or even Sawyer, but we never really did.
