LOST: Theories/questions/comments (non-episode specific and spoilers galore)

Ok–I’m rewatching LOST. First time I watched it, I devoured the episodes so quickly that I didn’t have time to digest them.

Here’s some stuff I’m noticing;

  1. Kate’s magic horsie had a white skunk-stripe down it’s butt starting in it’s mid-back. Is that the same horsie that the Others were using this (or last?) ep?

  2. Locke was an obsessed, stupid (I saw the “kidney swipe” thing coming the minute daddy mentioned it), whiney loser. UNTIL he got to the island. When the island fixed his legs, it gave him a whine-ectomy. He became the cool, zen, great-white-hunter, backgammon guru, all-father we saw in Seasons 1 and part of 2. He discovers The Hatch (put there by the Dharma guys) and obsesses over it, rather than the island itself. And even with warnings (Boone’s death, temp loss of legs, Eko telling him the story of Josiah and the Temple) he obsesses. To the point where the Island turns him back into a whiney loser.

  3. All the Dharma stuff we’re getting in the current eps is nice, but I’d love to know more about the DeGroots, Hanso, Mittleworks, etc. Think we’ll get any more about them?

  4. There was a lot of talk in the earlier eps about “good people” and “not good people” (from The Others)–their standards didn’t make much sense. If anyone was “a good person”, Rose is/was. But she wasn’t on the list.

Could “good” mean “a good candidate for Otherization” as opposed to “nice”?

  1. People keep saying that “Henry Gale” wasn’t supposed to stick around more than three eps, but he stole the show and they ran with it. Anyone know how his arc was supposed to end?

More as I come up with it.

Sam Austin (Kate’s non-dad) looks exactly like Locke–look at the eyes, nose, cheeks and chin. (He has more hair, but so did Locke, once)

I mentioned this in the other topic, but I don’t think Boone was killed to stop John from opening the hatch. Instead, when Boone died, John went back to the hatch and started pounding on it. Desmond was about to kill himself, but he took this as a sign and then he didn’t. So the Island killed Boone so Desmond would keep pushing the button.

Something I’ve been wondering about lately: what is the significance of the fact that only 5 of the Oceanic 6 returned to the island? Or that Walt hasn’t returned?

What happened to Claire? What is Jacob? Is Christian Shepard alive, a ghost, just part of the Smoke Monster, or what? How is it that Richard Alpert is immortal?

The writers have said that there is a non-supernatural explanation for everything that happens in the show. Have they abandoned that idea now that we have people coming back from the dead, time travel, people who can communicate with dead people, etc?

Have Walt’s magic powers ever been dealt with? And how did Walt type messages to Michael on The Swan’s computer? Wasn’t he being held by The Others? And for that matter, was Walt Otherized?

They abandoned that idea in the first episode when an invisible monster started knocking down trees and eating pilots.

During the first season, the monster sounded vaguely mechanical though.

But it was still an invisible monster. Mechanical or not, MechaGodzilla (that’s invisible) is not possible through a scientific explanation.

[quote=“Fenris, post:1, topic:492859”]

Ok–I’m rewatching LOST. First time I watched it, I devoured the episodes so quickly that I didn’t have time to digest them.

Here’s some stuff I’m noticing;

I don’t know about that, but Widmore’s horse probably wasn’t the only one on the island. We saw a horse outside the Flame, too.

Probably. Maybe not until next season though.

Yes. I think it has two meanings–good candidate for Otherization–or might perform necessary surgery on Ben. :stuck_out_tongue:

I think it was supposted to be a very short arc–they knew they needed a Ben character, but hadn’t really worked out that Gale was Ben until after we’d met Gale. IIRC, that’s what they said in a podcast. So Gale was supposed to be a guy the losties found, who advanced some plot points, and then was killed or escaped.

Right, that’s what I heard originally too. “Henry Gale” was always an Other, but he wasn’t the leader of the Others until Michael Emerson proved too awesome for words.

I’m still stuck on Anthony Cooper.

In one of the DVD extras, the producers confirmed that his appearance on the island wasn’t the result of any sort of magic–the others staged an accident and abducted him.

What I wonder, though, is why they thought that was necessary. Do all Other leaders have daddy issues? Ben killed his dad, perhaps in response to a similar requirement. Who was Widmore’s dad? And Alperts? Did they meet similar fates?

Every-FRIGGING-body on this show has Daddy Issues. EVERYone.

Jack? Daddy’s an overbearing drunk
Kate? Real daddy has the hots for her and she killed him.
Hurley? Real daddy ran off.
Sawyer? Daddy murdered mommy then committed suicide. Plus Lo
Waaaaalt? Has Michael for a daddy. Or that douchey white guy mom ran off with. Either way
Ben? Daddy was abusive. Also, Ben murdered daddy.
Charlie: Dad wasn’t supportive.
Locke? Dad was a scumbag con-man who was responsible for the murder of Sawyer’s parents.
etc

The question is "Who doesn’t have daddy issues?

Locke’s daddy.

I disagree-I think The Island wanted the button to be not-pushed so that whatever the force was would be freed/released. Given John’s incredible downward spiral after the hatch was opened, the reverse doesn’t make much sense. It seems to me that the Island was desperately trying to tell Locke “Hey, stoopid! Stop focusing on the damned hatch and get back to ME!”

PS: Justin–I realized that right after I posted and edited the question out–you’re fast man! :smiley:

PPS: Eko’s little braid-beard is really, REALLY stoopid looking.

PPPS: Was Abaddon one of the drug guys in the Eko backstory ep? I thought I caught a glimpse of him.

There was about 3-5 weeks following Desmond leaving the Hatch where the Losties were pushing the Doomsday button. We keep seeing early '70s computers with reel-to-reel storage in the background.

Who’s changing the reels? How do they know when to? Or how to? None of them (except maybe Rose/Bernard/Locke) are old enough to even remember what a reel-to-reel was?

Also–it’s clear the Dharma guys WANTED to keep the electromagnetic anomaly locked up. So why didn’t they program the computer to automatically generate the doomsday numbers instead of being punched in?

It made sense when it was a psychological test to force them to push the buttons. But when we learn that being late for pushing the buttons causes planes to fall out of the sky and the Swan gets destroyed when the push is missed, why not generate a script that does it automatically?

We’re probably going to get more insight into the Swan in the season finale, but at this point there seems to be more to Dharma’s interest in the anomaly than simply wanting to keep it discharging regularly for safety reasons. We also know that Dharma considers the numbers to be special somehow, so there may even be a sort of superstitious spiritualism about having someone enter them directly, which for some reason people come to believe will “save the world.” And remember the “missing” tape footage warning about the Others trying to trick the people manning the station via the computer, and how it could lead to another “Incident?”

I don’t think Abaddon was in Eko’s backstory, but I could be wrong. I don’t see anything on any of the usual profile sites.

I think his first appearance in the story was with Locke at the hospital where Locke was getting physical therapy. Obviously Widmore would know about John Locke from meeting him back in the 1950s, though whether he was fully clued in on Richard’s interest in Locke we don’t know. Clearly he’s also been keeping on eye on Locke, and when Locke miraculously survives that fall, decides that he’s special enough to make contact with.

Abaddon’s first actual appearance on the show is, I think, when he’s prepping the Kahana team with Naomi. Now that Abaddon is dead, and given that I liked his character so much, I’m even more pissed about Season 4 being cut short, because you can bet we would have had a couple more creepy Abaddon scenes out of a longer season. Then again, Lost has really benefited from the sort of ticking clock that could have made Season 3 and the later half of Season 2 much more focused.

I’m still interested to know why Ethan wasn’t more surprised that Locke knows who Ben is when he meets him in Season 5, in what we presume to be around 2001/2002 or so. Dharma is gone by this time, so Ethan could only assume that Locke is either a Widmore goon who’s flown onto the Island, or an innocent person who’s done so. If the former, you’d think he’d want to bring Locke in for questioning. If the latter, the fact that Locke knows about Ben… well then you’d also think he’d want to bring Locke in for questioning.

That still doesn’t make any sense. If nothing else, set the failsafe at 96 minutes with the heiroglyphs rolling over at 100 minutes. If nothing’s done, THEN the machine takes over and pushes the button automatically at 108 minutes.

And why’s the timeframe so narrow (4 minutes between warning and doomsday)?

Hell, even if they HAVE to push the button between 108 and 112 minutes to avert doomsday, why not give them a two or three minute window and have the machine failsafe them at 111 minutes?

Thanks for the link though buddy! :slight_smile:

I’d forgotten how deeply, deeply annoying Michael was. I’m glad he’s dead and I’m glad his actor was such a douche that he won’t ever be invited back on the show*. I really hate shrieky characters.

Also, I’d forgotten what a gigantic dickhead Jack was back in his doctor days–I just saw the ep. where he couldn’t save the old guy. His dad told the old guy’s daughter. And rather than allowing the woman to deal with her emotions (anger/disappointment/grief/loss/betrayal), Jack had to go there to get absolution from her–sorry Dr. Dick, her emotions are more important than your oh-so-fragile ego.

*He accused the producers of being racists for killing Michael off.

I agree it doesn’t make a lot of sense; that’s just what they said. :wink:

To be fair to bitchy Michael, African American characters seem to have a pretty short lifespan on this show: Rose is pretty much the only one that hasn’t been killed or dropped out of the storyline within a season and a half of being introduced, and she’s pretty much been only a guest star in terms of how often she appears.

I think that’s too bad, even if I don’t really blame the writers/producers for why some of those things happened (except for killing Abaddon, you bastards!).