I’m the luckiest guy in the world. 
About the pill – it could very well be BOTH poison and medicine. After all, a fair number of cancer drugs are poisons, it’s just that they kill cancer cells more quickly than non-cancer cells.
So maybe the deal is that the poison would have been mainly absorbed by the ‘dark seed’ and kill it leaving Sayeed weakened but ‘cured’, but since Jack isn’t ‘infected’, the poison would have worked on Jack, killing him.
Or…I dunno. But really, if the point had been to kill Sayeed, well, they had him strapped down and helpless. A knife, a club, whatever.
Thank you! I was trying to place the face for Mac.
At least now we see Claire again on the island and a bit of where she’s been.
By the way, how many episodes are in the can for this season? (Or how much longer are they filming?)
Wow, you nailed exactly what bugs me about Kate.
Ben: “We’re the good guys”
The Others probably can’t knowingly kill Sayid, but if Jack does it, well then, it was Jacob’s will.
He said something like, “It will only work if he takes it willingly.”
Either he was feeding Jack a line of bull (a test for Jack as well?), or there was indeed something more mystical than mere poison in there. Because, yeah, if he just wanted to kill Sayid he probably could have found time to slip it in between the electric shocks and the poker-branding…
I’ve got to say this was a weak episode. I agree with the person who said that Kate-centeric episodes tend to be a little boring.
Seeing Ethan again makes me wonder if we’re going to see Ben in the alternate timeline.
I thought Aldo died during the beach raid a couple seasons ago, but apparently not.
I’m afraid for Jin, now. If Claire has the same “sickness” that Rousseau’s lover had, then Claire could turn on Jin at a moment’s notice. She might even be planning to lead him to his death.
Maybe. I was pretty sure that’s shat she said, but I just watched it again, and I’m willing to admit I may have read too much into a semi-intelligible exclamation.
can we make any rational analysis/conclusions based on prior episodes that all of the original losties were “brought to the island” (i.e. wound up on that flight) not through Jacob’s actions, but through MiB?
jack was there because pops was dead - doesn’t seem nice
locke was there because he got kicked off his tour - doesn’t seem nice
kate was there because she got arrested - doesn’t seem nice
et cetera.
contrast to how Jacob brought them back to the island…
hmm?
Oh, and also… any way that’s that’s not Jacob’s cabin, but MiBs/smokey/esau/flocke’s cabin?
and the smoke ring is meant to keep him in there?
I’m left wondering if Christian is a manifestation of Esau or Jacob or some third possibility.
I mean, Esau seems to be suggesting that he is trapped away from his “Home” but appears pretty much anywhere on the Island that’s not protected by ash circles. So it would seem to suggest that he’s trapped on the island.
Christian, on the other hand, has shown up off-island (appearing to Jack at the hospital, and to Michael on the boat outside the Island’s “time bubble”). and we have definitely seen Jacob off-island, influencing Hurley to come back and interacting in various ways with other Losties.
If the “sickness” is a darkness inside that grows… and we see from the last few seconds of this ep that a darker Claire is running loose, setting traps and whatnot… then I’m starting to think that Rousseau had the sickness. Perhaps it was the sickness that actually made her kill her lover & travel companions in the first place. Rousseau tortured Sayid, set traps, hunted down people… you only saw her soften up a bit when she got to see her kid.
Maybe Claire won’t turn on Jin if she needs him for some reason, much in the same way that Rousseau didn’t turn on Sayid or Hurley and eventually helped them in their War on Others. She wasn’t exactly singing Kumbaya and handing out Girl Scout cookies and hugs, but she only turned on people who she thought would kill her first.
Just a thought.
And now I’m subscribed. See what I did there?
Or, he just can’t kill him like Esau couldn’t kill Jacob without a loophole.
I think we’re supposed to assume Jacob was responsible for it because of the scene in the finale where MIB is pissed with Jacob because he won’t stop bringing people to the Island. The Losties are just the latest in a series of pawns in Jacob’s quest to . . . do whatever it is he’s doing.
But yeah, the writers could just be screwing with us again. Or maybe both Jacob and MIB have brought people to the Island for different purposes.
I was disappointed in last night’s episode. Kate meets Claire by shoving a gun in her face and taking her hostage . . . and a few hours later they’re BFFs. What are they, 13? And we learned virtually nothing about the Others, even getting to hear yet another mysterious character say there’s NO TIME TO EXPLAIN, JUST DO WHAT I SAY. (I at least credit Jack for not fallling for it this time.) On the other hand, Josh Holloway got a great scene, and I liked Hurley’s zombie bit.
They’d better get things rolling next week, though. I’m starting to get worried.
Question for the panel:
Is it pretty much understood that Jacob is “free will” and Flocke/MiB/Esau is “fate/determinism” ?
All I heard the past week, leading up to last nights episode, was that the last ten minutes would set the stage for the whole rest of the season. So… what do we have in the last ten minutes?
I’ll start with the obvious… the reveal of Claire and where she may have been hiding out (for how long now?). The where being… in the jungle like out dear CFL.
Well, at last year’s Comic Con, Lindelof and Carleton said that Jacob has never taken the form of anybody else, so ‘Christian’ is definitely not him. I’m voting Esau, especially after the creepy way Claire was acting when we saw her hanging out with Christian in the shack after abandoning Aaron, plus the knowledge that she’s been ‘taken over by evil’.
Wasn’t Ethan’s last name Rom, at least when we met him as an adult in previous seasons? His birth name was Goodspeed (son of Horace and Amy), but once he became an Other, he apparently changed his name. So no Othering in the flashsideways past.
Not likely in my view. It seems clear that these “infections” and “zombifications” occur when a person dies or is very near death. Sayid and Ben appear to have been “claimed” when they were near death (dead?) at the Temple and with the way Claire is acting now and how she was acting when we saw her in the Cabin with Christian that she was “infected” when he was nearly (actually?) blown up in Keamy and the Mercs attack on Little Otherton. Remember Claire started out fairly normal when Sawyer rescued her and carried her to safety, but as they fled through the jungle she got more and more odd and detached before eventually abandoning Aaron and leaving with Christian (Esau?). Also remember that Miles was giving Claire strange looks and attention when they were fleeing, just like he was giving Sayid in the Temple.
Long story short, it seems that we’ve seen this before. And the whole deal with the injections has everything to do with the pregnancy and not the “infection”.
Not likely. The psychic was probably just Jacob’s way of drawing people to the island or it was just the island drawing people to it in it’s own bizarre way. We haven’t seen any reason to think that Esau is anything more than an opportunist.
I think the Ash is either ash from burnt banyan trees or just ground up tree material. We’ve seen Smokey turned away or at least restrained by just two things on the show, the Ash and those trees. I think they are one in the same, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the pill made of it.
I’m going with the others in that it is just an indication that it’s part of the loophole. Jacob and Esau can’t kill each other and presumably their minions can’t be ordered to kill them either. Sayid needs to be persuaded to take it willingly as to not violate the rule or else it won’t work (or will violate the rule to some horrible consequence) to kill the infection by Esau.
I concocted a theory that Jin is already infected. It has a lot of holes with the time Jin spent in 1974-77 with DHARMA and flashes through time, but follow me here. As I mentioned above Sayid, Ben and Claire have all apparently been “claimed” at the time of their near deaths and Jin also had a near death experience during the explosion on the boat. Perhaps he did actually die or maybe he was saved by Esau or whatever this “infection” is and claimed too. Maybe that’s why crazy jungle Claire saves him there. Maybe they are on the same team already.
As I type this another though occurred to me that maybe Locke too was infected or claimed when he was shot by Ben. He was lying in that mass grave presumably dying and then he’s healed and recovered with little explanation. We all assumed that this was just a mechanism of the islands healing powers on steroids but that always seemed like it stretched plausibility too much, especially when you consider the number of people who have been shot on the island and not healed. So, maybe much of John’s craziness in the last few seasons and his apparent change in attitude prior to his death had more to do with being infected than with him just going all native.
It would be very interesting if we were to learn that much of the drama on the island and with the Losties (especially some of the more irrational behavior) ended up to be a coordinated effort by some single driving force behind these “infections” of Losties who have “died”.
I will note that there seems to be 3 totally distinct versions of this “infection” or “zombification”.
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People who are officially dead and who’s corpses are still on the island who end up being impersonated by Smokey. Locke and Christian are the most obvious and I think Yemi and maybe some others qualify.
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People who are near death and get saved at the last minute through some healing process. There are no corpses laying around and they spend at least some time in between where they are still mostly in control of themselves. Sayid and Ben seem to be the most obvious, and in my theory Claire and Locke might also qualify.
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People the Monster dragged into the temple (killed?) who come out crazy. Mostly I’m thinking of the French team. Not sure if there are any other. These guys might belong to the other groups, but the French team seemed to act much more aggressively and less mysteriously than the guys in category 1. We see the armless guy in the tunnel, but it’s not clear if their bodies are being mimicked like Locke or if they are resurrected like Sayid.
All in all, it’s not clear if all these changed/possessed people are on the same team or not. Maybe one type is Esau’s work and one is Jacob’s. Maybe they all are one in the same. Maybe both “gods” can do either one based on who controls the temple at any given time.
Whatever, this is the heart of my theory on how things will be explained in the long run.
I think the implication is that it was both. It was apparently Jacob’s cabin for a while, and Richard would visit and get instructions from him. Then at some point the ash ring was broken and Esau got in and Jacob bailed. At this point Esau was probably impersonating Jacob and this was when Ben and Locke visited. It’s unclear if the cabin has any specific power or meaning, I’m thinking not. It was probably just a rendezvous point that was used for deception.
Maybe that revelation supports my theory about the infections being the key. Perhaps the reveal of Claire will lead to an explanation of what’s happening to Sayid now and what may or may not have happened to Locke and Ben in the past. Maybe the infections will serve to explain a whole mess of the "Why"s the show has created. Alternatively, it could mean that the reveal of Claire will lead to a reveal about Aaron.
Re-watching the last 10 minutes now. Will check back in after.
Yes. I agree. She is dead in the 2007 timeline, but Claire has not “taken her place” if you catch my meaning. I thought the poster was saying Claire had replaced her in this timeline.
But we do not know if the forumula is made from the same ingredients and made injectable.
At least Jack was curious this episode. Asking questions. Demanding answers. Unfortunately, he is so out of practice, it leads to self-poisoning.
Jacob seems big on choice/free will.
If Horace died in the blast, who would be there to get a dying baby Ben to the hospital?