Lost (Possible Spoilers)

As usual, I am SO NOT clicking that link ... says "Sneak Peek" right on it...

(sigh)

Some people never learn.

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Yeah, I'm not sure if these are necessary. I think we can all find this stuff if we want it, and it seems like most of us are trying to avoid it.

This is the first time I've clicked on this thread because I don't want spoilers

I'm not watching this season yet anyway. I wait til they're on Netflix and watch them back to back. I HATE waiting.

I'll admit, the links aren't as bad as the text ... because, in email notifications, spoiler tags don't show up so it's way too easy to get those notifications and end up reading something I did NOT want to see....

Still, I agree -- there are tons of places online to get Lost spoilers, and I always thought that the "Spoilers" in the title thread here referred mostly to the fact that, if a person was behind in the viewings, he might read things beyond his last point of contact with the show. In other words, that we were discussing freely what had already aired.

Kinda like a movie thread with spoilers -- telling what has already been shown onscreen.

Yeah, i like this as a discussion thread, if i want to know anything more i can google it. Not really constructive input.

As for 'Recon' early responses rated it quite low but I enjoyed more than 'Dr Linus' kinda. Sawyer's character didn't have the dramatic arc of Ben and wasn't as revelatory as it could have been (next week should be a blast though, even if a lot of Richard has been gleaned or strongly speculated already). Liked the charm of Sawyer being a cop, could almost have been a spinoff in itself. Wasn't sure on Charlotte, seemed more like they were just throwing her in to cross her off the cameo list.

The aspect of them all seeing their reflection in FS is something might have to be back and look at and see if it has any more relevance and how Sawyer smashing it can relate to OT (like Ben saw a light behind his reflection).

Thought Zoe was Desmond at first and sat upright, disappointment.

Interesting that Widmore isn't overtly aligned to Jacob but the barrier indicates against MiB (Yoda ). In regard to his relevance, I think his purpose will be more to serve as catalyst to the candidates but not so important in himself.

Good to see Sawyer is pulling a con on MiB. Though the logic for him going there in first place seemed a bit dubious and redundant to me. I guess MiB is possibly pulling a bigger con. Maybe Kate will turn? After all, how is Sawyer gonna sail a sub!?

Thought it was interesting MiB went to Kate whilst she was crying in the trees which have normally repelled him on past encounters.

Jin seems to be getting a single obligatory line per episode which doesn't amount to much more. Would like to just see him and Sun meet up and something happen already.

ot liking Claire's character atm, or more buying it- her actions aren't very logical- ok, she's mad and that but her and Kate isn't working for me. Jumping from friend to enemy and not really seeing any purpose to her.

It's annoying that a lot of what MiB says has to be taken with a grain of salt so in regard to his Mother story it could tie into to two theories bouncing around. One that Aaron is Jacob and two that Jacob and MiB are (or were) one entity with one crazy Claire as their mother.

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It's not a link. It's a video. Shouldn't that say "As usual, I am SO NOT going to play that...says "Sneek Peek" right on on it..

Anyway, just don't watch those if you don't want to. All those sneaks peeks are are just 1 minute teasers. You see stuff in the promos, it's almost the same thing. To each their own.

The email notification had a link -- that's where I first saw it and did not click on it.

And honestly, can you please just not post them? Especially anything in text, since, as I mentioned, it shows up without spoiler tags in the email notifications we get.

If we want them, we can find them. Wouldn't it make more sense to come to this thread to, ohhh, I dunno, discuss the actual episode?

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Pyro ... I liked this episode because of the fun twist of seeing Sawyer as a cop (and Miles as his partner). Seems as if Miles's flash-sideways was contained within this episode too ... including the fact that it seems as if he can sense things about the LIVING this time around.

Yeah, I felt the same way about Charlotte ... and about some of the other cameo-type appearances in the flash-sideways stuff. Almost as if the writers have a checklist of all the past characters and made sure they could check them all off by the end of this season.

Definitely liked how this episode ended -- with a great setup for next week. And frankly, I'm not so sure we know exactly WHO Sawyer is conning at this point. He promised Widmore something, then came back and TOLD Locke/MiB everything. Is he double-crossing MiB then and will stay with Widmore, or is he just keeping all his options open? Did he tell MiB the truth because MiB knows him to be a liar?

And, with that "mother" story MiB told, are we going to see that MiB was indeed originally just a person who got sucked into being the smoke monster somehow ages and ages ago? The same time as Jacob did?

Also, did we ever get an explanation for why Jacob was so easy to kill? I mean, Ben barely stabbed the guy and poof! he's dead? How has he escaped death for so long if that's all it took? I feel like I'm forgetting or missing something important there....

Yeah the episode to give me a S-E Grin in several parts like Miles' appearance, "LeFleur!" etc

Heh re: Jacob, all we have is that word- 'loophole'. Some theories are it had to be the Leader of the Others, it was because Ben was 'healed' at the Temple, someone had to do it willingly and only the Leader of Others could have an audience. Suppose the question conversely asks why Sayid couldn't kill Flocke. Dogen doesn't seem to be able to lie directly and he did initially call for Jack and Hurley before resorting to Sayid, suggesting MiB lied to Sayid about Dogen's intentions. Also don't buy he couldn't do it because he managed to speak- i think Dogen's gist was Flocke is very manipulative so don't let him speak and offer you something. Think ultimately it will be do with scales, like Ben was turned into good but his scale was too evil and Sayid was turning to evil but his scale had also tipped that way.

Re: MiB's mother, if we do see him as just a 'man' and somehow explains his transformation, i think that would be a lot harder on the writers part to come up with something we can swallow opposed to just having an ambiguous origin. I'd be happy with him as Aaron's evil half if they go that way but have trouble thinking of any explanation of his power that i'd buy.

Aaron's evil half? I don't buy that at all -- how does that work if Aaron is only three? Do you mean then that Aaron is a sort of spinoff of MiB? Wow, see, this sort of thing just seems so out of the blue compared to the previous five seasons.

Then again, frankly, a lot of these little odds and ends of this final season are starting to feel as if they really are using a checklist -- of characters to bring back, of loose ends to try to tie up.

And boy, they'd better tie up the whole Walt being special storyline somehow. I'll give up on the Libby line (her being in the same hospital as Hugo) in order to answer what was up with Walt.... But they'd better not ignore stuff like that in order to start adding in weird new info on Aaron and others....

I'm enjoying each individual episode this season, but I have this underlying fear that it's just not going to feel like the right ending(s). Like a lot of what they present will feel tacked on in this last season without enough foreshadowing earlier.

It's one of the more outrageous theories out there is that- Jacob and MiB are one person that's been split into a good half and an evil half (clues: the scales being an INSIDE joke, explains why he can't kill himself, old friend got tired of my company etc). Lots of speculation is that Aaron is Jacob, i'm guessing it's mostly stemmed from the resemblance and the importance placed on him. I was just using the mother anecdote to connect the two theories. Obviously if Aaron managed to come back to the Island he'd have to time-travel and get exposed to some serious Exotic Matter and Negative Energy from the Island.

As for Libby, how about she works for Widmore/Jacob and was in these places to make sure certain people followed their roles to getting to the Island.

Walt, maybe it's just because he was a child (read: innocent, perfectly balanced internal scale) AND had Hurley/Miles-esque abilities. Could potentially bring out Locke from Flocke with their connection? Who knows

I could see the Libby-working-for-Widmore thing as an explanation. That'd actually be a quite simple way of wrapping that up. It doesn't overly bother me but it's one of those loose ends that floats around on Lost forums as something a bunch of folks still mention to this day.

I guess part of the reason this all feels so weird is that we've HEARD of Jacob for five seasons but it wasn't until the tail end of season 5 when we finally saw him (and MiB) and now it seems they're both rushing headlong (well, the two sides) to become full-orbed personalities that we're supposed to care about. I have to keep reminding myself that Jacob has been rather unseen for five seasons and that it's a bit odd that once he came out of hiding, so to speak, he was everywhere at once for a while.

I hope these endings are tied up nicely and not just made into slip-knots.

No, because the punctuation isn't quite right and you spelled "Sneak" incorrectly.

Libby will return - Walt will not.

I can see them using Libby in the Hugo episode but I feel like Walt is just a red herring at this point, and is too old to use in the flash sideways.

I liked Sawyer's episode, but I can't agree that it was better than the excellent Dr. Linus. I do feel some overall disappointment in the show creeping in though, I must say - just doesn't seem like it's going anywhere.

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I think you're likely right about Walt, but that's not really fair. And, they did use the older Walt in semi-recent episodes (when Locke left the island to try to get everyone to come back), so we've seen him older. That wouldn't be that much of a shock, and at this point if they wanted to go back to a younger Walt, they could probably get away with using a different actor who looks similar to the earlier Walt and we wouldn't complain. Or, at least, *I* wouldn't complain.

I think this whole series will be fun to rewatch once this last season is out on DVD (I have the other five seasons) -- kinda like BSG -- much faster so that one can get a sense of the ebb and flow of character arcs. Yoda's done that up to this last season already. I did it with season 1 and part of season 2 years ago...

More random thoughts! Mostly in response to the above:

• I think Jacob was easy to kill because he was willing to let himself be killed. He didn't seem surprised or disturbed by the fact that it was happening.
• Agree with Seds; yes on Libby, no on Walt. But we'll get some kind of explanation regarding Walt -- just without the actor himself on screen. Not sure if this bothers me a lot. It's probably the one significant piece from early-on that was fairly obviously discarded, but I'm not sure they had much choice.
• The writers can't really win, because I've seen both worry that they won't explain enough (or aren't explaining things fast enough) AND criticism that they're just checking things off a list at times. I know this isn't a direct contradiction, but it's obviously going to feel like one of these things to a lot of people no matter what.

Re: Widmore. Yeah, clearly not on MiB's side, though I still think it's more likely he's out for himself (like Sawyer), rather than loyal to Jacob. But we'll see.

Definitely noticed the mirror thing as well, Pyro. I was wondering about that, as well as the significance of the mirror breaking. Does that mean one Sawyer will be different, at his core, than the other?

Found it interesting that he's still looking for Anthony Cooper. I think it's safe to say that he'll find him and, whether or not he kills him or arrests him will reflect what he does on the island. I think Sawyer's agnosticism in this whole affair is probably a bad thing; for him, at least.

Re: MiB's mother story. I think it's truthful. I don't think it hurts anything to have him be a man, though. I think he can have an ambiguous origin AND have been a man, provided we learn that he was just a replacement for another of his kind, much like we all assume Jacob is.

Random speculation that I would enjoy seeing come to life: I know it's been said before, but I like the idea that MiB's looking for a replacement, too. Not to carry on any task, but simply so he can leave (mirror Desmond in The Swan). The new twist on this is what it says about him in contrast with Jacob: he hides his goal, whereas Jacob is looking for a willing replacement, rather than a dupe. The two mirror each other again.

This seems at odds with the standard idea of Jacob = Fate and MiB = Free Will. But as I explained earlier, that really isn't being handled consistently, anyway, and I feel like a counter-intuitive revelation may be coming.

Jacob's last words and thoughts in regard to Ben indicate choice/Free Will, and MiB's words about how it "always end[ing] the same" in "The Incident, Part 1" certainly seem to align him more with Fate. If the two of them really do embody each principle -- and I'm not convinced they do -- it really isn't clear which is which. I have to think this is either because a) they haven't actually told us yet, or b) they aren't meant to embody them and we're not meant to be trying to associate them with one exclusively at all.

As for Jacob being willing to die -- Remember a week or so ago when Ben said that to Miles and Ilana ... and Miles contradicted him and said that no, Jacob had hoped right up till the end that he'd been wrong about Ben. That he was hoping Ben wouldn't do it.

Sounds to me it was something like a test -- and that Ben failed. That's when I started questioning Jacob's supposed willingness to die, since Miles can hear what Jacob was thinking just after he died.

I think what is annoying me about this season is this (and I hope I can express it properly): We've spent the past five seasons becoming really invested in all these island Lostie characters (and some of the Others, as well). REALLY invested in them. Things like references to Jacob and the Smoke Monster were secondary concerns -- things that were "happening" to the Losties, but not characters we became invested in to any appreciable degree.

And suddenly, here we are in the final season, and we're being bombarded with all these details about characters that weren't really characters to us until late in season 5. Before that, they were merely parts of the circumstances set against our true concerns -- the original characters.

SO, my frustration lies partly in watching the writers infuse the final season with all this stuff about Jacob and MiB and a dead Locke (oh, how I wish the real Locke were still around and blowing stuff up to stay on the island!) ... and I feel we're losing some of the oomph of great character development in favor of this odd overarching story of Jacob vs. Smokey.

Meanwhile, all I really wanted to know was whether my favorites truly live happily ever after -- along with some answers about the weird stuff going on on the island. In that order. I think that's a gut-reaction (since I really do want answers to the weird stuff), but I think emotional gut reactions are important in a series like this as it wraps up.

Well, hoping he won't do it and being okay with being wrong aren't mutually exclusive. I think it's also important to note that he hoped he was wrong, but didn't necessarily think it.

Anyway, he seemed pretty at peace with the whole thing. As always, he seemed perfectly calm and on top of things. He's never been perturbed by someone doing something other than what he instructed or wanted. When Jack broke the mirror and failed to set the dial to 108, he didn't care, saying that the person he wanted to help find the island would find it anyway. He doesn't strike me as a guy who's unprepared for anything.

I dunno, while there's a lot of speculation about Jacob and unLocke, are they really getting a lot of attention in the show itself? The focus is still overwhelmingly on the Losties; they just having far more bizarre and momentous things to react to. How they respond to these circumstances (and, most of all, which side they choose) is really about them, after all, and it's about them in a very final and important way. When we saw Sayid end up with unLocke (presumably), did we think "chalk up one more for the unLocke Army" or did we think "he really is a killer after all"? I thought the latter, first and foremost.

I like the whole thing, because while character development is good on its own, this gives it more consequence. In the quote above you point out that, before, things were happening to them. And now, the sum of their lives and those circumstances are informing their ultimate decisions. I think that's fantastic. After having things happen to them for five seasons, the way they choose to react is now driving not just their own story, but the entire story of the island. In that sense it kinda feels like the focus is more on them than ever, because there's no more gap between their personal journeys and their discoveries about the island.

I'm not sure how it could be any other way: the stakes have to rise, and when they do the characters have to pay a lot of attention to them. The only way island-y stuff could still be a secondary concern to them (and therefore, to us) would be if nothing hugely important was going on.

I'm sure a fair number of people would be happy with any ending where characters X, Y, and Z come out clean in the end. But as you say, it's gut-level stuff. I think that kind of ending would only be satisfying initially, and everything I've heard from "Darlton" indicates that they're thinking about the show's long-term legacy, and that some tough choices will be made.

As much as I want someone like Sayid to find redemption, I think it's more realistic and satisfying to have him devolve the way he has, just as I think it's more satisfying to have Ben find redemption that he doesn't really deserve. The cast is just too big to have a universally happy ending...we care about a good dozen people, if not more, and they can't all be safe or all choose the right side. It would really cheapen the stakes and the consequences of their actions in retrospect, I think.

Sure, I see what you're saying -- but what are we all discussing the most? MiB and Jacob and their natures and what's actually going on there with them. And on the Lost forum I frequent, that's also the hot topic this season. Not so much on the individual characters (except as people like this or that character more than the others).

So, I see your point, but I also see too much anecdotal evidence that Jacob and MiB are consuming more of the recent discussion than I would have liked.

Yeah, I'd definitely have to agree with you there. It's funny because the fan communities' focus is kind of at odds with the show lately. The last three (!) episodes haven't really revealed anything huge about how the island works or what all the fuss is about. Instead, they've just been about showing us where various Losties are coming down on the Jacob/unLocke decision, and a lot of fans are kinda amusingly annoyed with it.

I think this has probably always been the case, though, if not to this degree. It's just more visceral, I guess. "How the hell did a polar bear get on a tropical island?!" will always be more innately and broadly intriguing than "Wow, check out the way Sawyer's romantic experiences a decade ago helped inform his personal relationship with Kate!" I kind of think of them as symbiotic, though; I think the character stuff allows us to care about silly things like Smoke Monsters and time travel, sometimes without anyone noticing. They make talk about the mysteries of the island more, but they probably wouldn't if they didn't first care about what happens to everyone.