Wading in the Velvet Sea

Last Torture in Paris

This week’s flashback did nothing to illuminate anything on the Island other than Sayid’s psyche. Not a condemnation, just a statement of fact. Some flashbacks hint to activities or character on the Island; others serve to explain character motivation on the Island. And tonight’s flashback served to answer Danielle’s question as to why Mikhail, the faux-Dharma Initiative member, should be kept alive.

The answer lies in the forgiveness of a woman Sayid torture in the Republican Guard before becoming a cook in Paris. Her forgiveness called into focus the choice she (and Sayid) (and, really, all of us) have at any given moment to do what is right, or, to quote Dumbledore, what is easy. Killing Mikhail would have been easy, and perhaps in justifying in an “eye for an eye” type of way, but Sayid’s heart is no longer able to justify such an action.

Interestingly enough, this flashback also served to explain just why Sayid knows when people are lying: he’s shown in this flashback to be quite the expert liar himself. Until the end of the episode, I forgot the momentary recognition in his eyes when he first saw the women he tortured. His insistence of innocence was equally as persuasive as Mikhail’s insistence of his status as “the last living member of the Dharma Initiative”. Sayid was clued into Ben long before most, he spotted Sun’s lying earlier in the season, and tonight, his barometer for bull once again came in handy.

Purge-atory

Most interesting of note tonight concerns the revelation that the Dharma Initiative and the Others are totally separate entities. Until now, it was hypothesized by many that the Others were the last remaining remnants of the Dharma Initiative, but tonight put that theory to bed. Even though Mikhail lied about his own allegiance, I believe that the story he told was in fact correct and can be treated as canon. The Others, a group of people who predated the Dharma Initiative’s presence, destroyed the Dharma Initiative’s people (in what some might call an “incident”), leaving behind only the hatches as remnants of the group.

Course, that all sounds well and great, but leaves a few hundred questions in its wake.

Let’s start with Marvin Candle, the man on the other end of the chess game. (A chess game, mind you, with black and white pieces. No wonder Locke was attracted to it, given one of the first things he does on the island is play backgammon with Walt.) Among his various warning/options is one concerning the “hostiles”, aka, The Others. So the Dharma Initiative may not have initially known about the Others, but eventually settled upon protocols to deal with them, or, knew of their presence, but tried to do their work amongst them anyways. Marvin et al also established stock responses in case various forms of communication were breached, a series of “if, then” video clips based off of electronic feedback from within the island. Oh, and let’s not forget all that C4 laced underneath the Flame station as the ultimate last-ditch protocol.

Getting back to Season 2 for a second: when Jack, Sawyer, and Locke run into Tom as he held Kate hostage, Tom said something to the effect of, “This is OUR island…and the only reason you’re living on it, is because we LET you live on it.” In Season 3, Ben states that he’s lived on the island all of his life. Tonight’s timeline fills these statements in. Couple this with the four-toes statue from the end of Season 2, coupled with the Black Rock (a Magnus Hanso-owned ship in the 19th century), and you have the following, tantalizing possibility:

The Others are in fact all the descendents of the crew of the Black Rock.

Alvar Hanso was looking for a way to stave off the apocalypse. He had the Valenzetti Equation, knew the implications, but more importantly, knew about the Island, due to his family’s history with it. That’s the only reason he knew where it was. Problem is, the people on the island had different ideas about saving the world, since the island, for all intents and purposes, WAS the world. The protocols, the food drops, the insane level of paperwork that went into the project: a good majority of these seem designed to keep The Others out of the loop or to avoid them entirely. The Others did not abide by this. Not on “their” island. An island with a population that can be traced back to, and here it comes, ladies and gents, Adam And Eve: the corpses found in Season 1 in the caves.

(Probably nowhere near correct, but it would be kind of cool if it were, eh?)

Get a Klugh

As to why Miss Klugh was there…well, she rode on horseback from the village, most likely, to keep Mikhail company. But why? There’s the real rub.

I had assumed all along that Miss Klugh would in fact be in charge of the children’s “re”-education, given her involvement with Walt in Season 2. In fact, her role seemed quite central to The Others as a whole. Which of course begs the question: what were the two of them protecting?

We know that Mikhail “saw” Locke et al in the Pearl Station. He possibly called for backup, which led to Miss Klugh’s reassignment by Ben. And the thing they were hiding, the information she possessed, was so valuable that she ordered Mikhail to kill her. Given the nature of murder in Others’ society (as evidenced by the trial of Juliet), we can either assume 1) that was one ginormous favor Locke did the two of them, or 2) the trial of Juliet was one helluva elaborate ruse.

Given Juliet’s flashback, and given the handy nature that “well, we’d know all the answers if only Locke hadn’t done gone blowed ‘em all uppity up” affords the writers, I will opt for Option 1 in this case. The Flame’s primary purpose, according to Mikhail, is communication. Protecting the Island is Priority Number #1 for the Others. In fact, of all the stations to start the purge, this one seems the most likely. Knocking out the Dharma Initiative’s communications devices would be a crippling blow for The Others to deal. Problem is, they couldn’t knock out ALL communication, and so, have kept a constant watch at this station ever since. After that, they probably went hatch by hatch, wiping people out or driving them away.

The one station they left in tact? The Swan. Why? Because the Swan serves their purpose. The electromagnetic anomaly helped to hide the island. Preventing the outflow of communication wouldn’t do much good if the Island were, say, visible from space, or by radar. So that stayed put. Hell, it’s why Ben most likely entered the code when Locke was trapped under the blast door. When Ben called the hatch a “joke”, he didn’t mean the button per say, but the whole Dharma Initiative, the pox upon his homeland.

Smokey the Cat

I mean, that was the Smoke Monster, right? We can all agree on that? Ok, good, moving on.

Parting Thoughts

“Enter 77” gave us “Lost” lovers a lot to chew on. You saw my initial chewing up above. I am happy to here any and all theories/corrections/”Oh McGee, you’re full of it” as you see fit to leave in the comments below. One thing I’d love to hear from you about: what’s Danielle’s real story? I have a few thoughts I want to sort out for the podcast this weekend, but we’ve seen too many things for me to take her accepted story at face value. Her relationship with the Others is going to be truly revealed by the end of this season, mark my words.

Few more questions to ponder:

Is the glass eye found in the Arrow Station in Season 2 Mikhail’s?

Could the show get more meta than Sawyer’s “Who the hell are you?” to Nikki?