According to Lostpedia, the hieroglyphics at the very end of the counter mean ‘underworld’ according to one of the producers, and ‘die’ according to other authorities. The failure sequence itself isn’t translated.
He was alone the whole time? No other planes/boats crashed and their inhabitants died since then? Also, wouldn’t Jacob speak to him during these times?
Yeah, but why would they have made the symbols for those words from hieroglyphics? That, and the answer to most of the weird stuff is probably going to be, weird for weird’s sake. Which is not very satisfying, to me anyway.
Remember, the Dharma school children are learning about Egypt in their classroom. On a blackboard when Jack confronts Roger Linus, we see all sorts of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
What is Ben’s “magic box” that can produce anything? How did Locke’s daddy aka original Sawyer get onto the island? Was he Smokie?
You have got to be kidding me.
-Joe
There is no magic box. It was a metaphor. Ben sent a bunch of his off-island goons to run Anthony Cooper off the road in Florida, knock him out, load him into a submarine, and sail him over to the island. He did this because he felt he would need leverage with John Locke, who was becoming troublesome. He did the whole “magic box” explanation because Ben, throughout his history as a character, has always obfuscated information about the island, in an attempt to create mystery and confusion and then set himself up as the single person who understands everything - thus making himself indispensible no matter what happens.
Why do we currently use an old Spanish symbolfor the entrance to a graveyard as a warning on bottles of shit you shouldn’t drink? Why not just put, in plain English, a big red marking that says “POISON?”
Why do we dot our everyday writing with random abbreviations of Latin phrases (exemplia gratis, e.g., or id est, i.e.) instead of just writing “for example (f.e.)” or “that is (t.i.)?”
In the mid-1800s, the Geneva Conventioned recognized a color-inverted version of the Swiss Flag as the international symbol for protection; today folks in Western society universally see this symbol and know it indicates medical service. Why?
.svg){kind=link}
Languages and cultures leech together. In LOST, it is a clearly and definitively established fact that Island culture has an Egyptian influence, in the same way that Western culture has Latin and Spanish (and many other) influenbces. So when they designed a system and needed a way to say “you’re fucked,” they chose an idiom that was part of their culture - Deafcon Penguin turned out to be a symbol that basically says “you’re fucked” in Egyptian, in the same way that the skull-and-crossbones is a symbol that says “you’re dead” in Spanish. As the Islanders were influenced by Egyptian myth and culture, this is perfectly consistent, reasonable, and requires, to me at least, no further explanation - it’s certainly not “weirdness for weirdness’ sake,” unless you’ve already made up your mind to apply that criticism to everything regardless of whether or not it actually applies.
Richard was stranded in 1867 or soon after. Before air travel, survivors would have to arrive via ship, and we don’t see much of ship wreckage other than the Black Rock.
As for Jacob, he didn’t seem too pleased to see Richard, sorta annoyed in who-did-MiB-send-this-time. I doubt they had too many wild boar BBQs together
…pretty sure the guy you’re responding to has been shrieking “IT’S ALL A CON!” since early season 2.
So, that mind was made up in 2005 or so.
-Joe
To be fair, that first meeting was Richard being tricked into trying to kill Jacob. Besides, while there may not be all that many ships sitting on the island, I’m guessing (not a nautical expert here) that a ship being tossed bodily into the middle of an island is pretty rare. They’ll probably break up and sink out to sea.
I don’t think Richard was sad and alone the whole time, but even if he wasn’t it might have some serious psychological effects if everyone you meet dies horribly shortly after you meet them!
-Joe
The temple’s pretty old and pretty solid, not to mention Jacob’s statute itself. I don’t think it’s absolutely definitive that Richard was alone on the island (other than Jacob and Smokey) even from the beginning. But if he was, the first of those that became the Others could have shown up very soon after. What we do know is they were already well-established by the '50’s. Probably they’re older than that.
–Cliffy
Libby in the mental institution.
I’m the guy that was criticizing the fact that every episode, in whatever season it was, was about the characters conning each other. Fortunately the writers worked that out of their systems.
Anyway, not the same thing as criticizing the show for weirdness with no satisfactory explanations.
And based on what Evangeline Lilly said on Letterman last night, I’m not expecting the ending to be very satisfying.
Maybe she’s conning you.
They’ve actually covered that now. Of course, we don’t know if she was always in there because of the twin time lines or if she was in there because of a retcon involving the twin time lines, but it seems to have been dealt with.
-Joe
Did they ever explain how Ben was able to summon/control Smokey? It somewhat made sense back when the Smoke Monster was supposed to be the equivalent of the island’s guard dog. But since Smokey is now the same person as the Man in Black, it stopped making sense for me.
I don’t think Ben was in control of Smokey, rather he just allowed Smokey access to Dharmaville by draining that water.
That is consistent with his “don’t get them wet” warning for both Flocke…and the Mogwai!
They did? Unless you meant “as of last week’s episode.” It’s pretty clear now that Smokey has been pulling a “long con” on the candidates for some time now. And he managed to take out three of them at once, so it didn’t work out too bad for him.
What did she say? So far all the cast members have been very positive about the ending (of course, it wouldn’t be very classy to badmouth it at this point), so I’m very curious what she said to make you think this.
I’m also bummed that I missed seeing that interview because, while Kate Austen annoys me to no end, I would run away to Hawaii with Evangeline Lilly in a heartbeat.
Good point about Smokey’s long con.
She wasn’t negative about the ending. It was just my feeling, from what she said, that things weren’t going to be wrapped up as neatly as I’d prefer.
Video is here:
Draw your own conclusion.