Wading in the Velvet Sea

Through The Looking Glass, Darkly

Since I never, ever get anything right when I come up with my weekly theories, it’s always good when I actually get one of them right. And since there’s no way you’ll remember, I’ll point you in the general direction. The gist is this: I figured out fairly early on that Naomi was in fact NOT working for Penny Widmore. My theory was that she was actually working for her father, Desmond’s nemesis, Charles.

Now, tonight, we didn’t actually learn that Naomi worked for Charles…but we did learn that Ben was scared beyond belief by her presence, indicating that she was part of group of people who would “destroy” the island. Whether Ben meant that this people would reign fire and brimstone along the countryside, rendering all on the island their mere slaves, or if Ben merely knew that Wal*Mart was looking to expand to new markets, we’ll never know. Now, we’ve seen over the past two seasons just how unreliable a narrator Ben can be, making him the more psychotic version of Tristram Shandy, but in this case, he ostensibly was correct.

What we can surmise, judging from this episode, is that this island is pretty damn hot property. We’re talking, like, The Hamptons times 47 or something. Big time demand. We’ve got an island of natives and believers hunkering down and staking claim to it, we’ve got the Hanso Foundation eager to exploit it, we have a freighter 80 miles off-shore zeroing in on it, and we have some Portuguese dudes in the Antarctic looking for it on behalf of Penny. My theory, which I hope bears out (as opposed to the ones I hope don’t? Beats me), is that Naomi worked for Charles, and that Charles has been tapping Penelope’s life, found out about the sky turning purple, and sent in the troops.

We know definitively that Penelope did not send Naomi there, which leaves only Charles with the ability to have that photo, the location, and the psychological makeup of the inhabitants to send in Naomi. And by inhabitants, I mean not only the Lostaways, but the Others, as well. It’s been my running theory that in the wake of the Purge, The Widmore Corporation, once partners with The Hanso Foundation, essentially took over the island in a, wait for it, wait for, HOSTILE takeover. See what I did there? With the “hostile”? Damn, I’m smooth.

But why? Why now? That’s the $6 million dollar, 3-seasons to answer question. Why co-opt the island? Why forcibly remove The Others from power?

Because that’s what I believe we’ll see happened. Jack called for help. Help came.

Only it didn’t help at all.

I Do Appreciate You’re Being Round

On my podcast last Sunday, I listed five possible things that would happen in tonight’s episode. Three of them actually happened (Charlie dying, Walt appearing, a good chunk of people leaving the island). I also went onto say that I would have ventured that EVERYONE got off the island by episode’s end (which would be a huge game changer indeed) except for the fact that Jacob was so recently introduced. And Jacob’s no Paolo-type character here. Jacob didn’t say, “Help me get some toilet paper!” after all.

Locke’s role on the island going forth will be that of Island Protector. It’s why we saw him leave the group after being unable to kill Jack before Jack could call for help. The Island, through Walt’s image (I’m not ready to say it was actually Walt just yet), knew of Widmore’s impeding arrival, knew of the corruption that would take place both on and to the Island, and sent Locke as its messenger/hero to save the day. And that’s what Jacob meant when he asked Locke to help him in the cabin two weeks ago. Locke’s sole purpose from here on out is to protect the Island. Eventually, who knows, he might be able to like, shoot somebody. It’s a skill that may come in hand, probably. Most likely. OK, most definitely.

If Season 3 was about The Others, Season 4 is going to be about The Island. Its history, its makeup, its properties, its influence. Why does the mind matter so much on this island (just a clever way of asking why there’s so much mind over matter on this island)? What makes the Island tick? (Lord, I sound like a quasi-mystical Match.com here). Why was Ben so insistent on protecting this island from the outside world? And most importantly: why is the ISLAND so insistent on protecting itself from the outside world?

Bad Vibrations

Turns out the purpose of the Looking Glass was not, in fact, to serve as a type of “Stargate” for the Island, which is a huge relief to me personally because I freakin’ hate “Stargate” in all its 87 iterations. It was, at least in Ben’s eyes, a last line of defense. At some point between the Purge and Oceanic 815 crashing, a schism occurred between those on the Island and those off of it. Problem is for those off, that it’s next to impossible to truly get to the island. Only a few people know the way on or off, and methinks Ben kept that little kernel of info a secret.

The Looking Glass, then, was something so important that it forced Ben, who hates just about more than anything to be called a liar, to lie to his own people about its status. Ben stood in power for so long by compartmentalizing information, telling people either only what they needed to know or needed to hear (whether it was true or not). Season 3, among many things, so the inevitably fall of his house of cards. But here’s the thing: his despair at the end of the episode was real and genuine. His almost inertia after getting the holy hell beaten out of him by Jack showed just how much he knew he could no longer talk his way out of his corner anymore. He truly believed Jack would give him the phone, which is why he ordered a FAKE murder before rendezvousing with our Moronic Leader.

As for the codeword “Good Vibrations”, it was a nice touch on many levels. First, it locks the “Looking Glass” hatch clearly in the late 60’s, around the time the hatches were built. It ties into the hippy dippy nature of the Hanso Foundation, who would have enjoyed playing this and “White Rabbit” on their 6-string guitar after daily trips to the Arrow Station. And it also alludes to the unique electromagnetic properties of the Island, and the assumption that these properties could eventually produce “good” results that would change the Valenzetti Equation.

Course, wouldn’t you know it, Mikhail dropped a bomb on the proceedings as Desmond’s vision came to pass: he flipped the switch, the light went off, Charlie drowned, and Claire got off the island along with Aaron. Just one slight problem with that outcome.

Aaron’s now dead.

Days of Future’s Past

The mystery of this episode’s “flashback” was simple: What was in the press clipping? What would drive Jack to try and commit suicide? What could have pushed him to the brink?

The show used the audience’s perception of the flashback narrative device to throw us for a loop, once we may not recover from for a while: everything involving Grizzly Jack happened AFTER they were taken off the Island. After getting a “Golden Pass” from Oceanic 815, he flew as many LA to Southeast Asia/Australian flights as he could, trying in vain to correct the mistake of using Naomi’s phone. But only when he saw a clipping in a newspaper, a small 3 paragraph or so article, did he truly slip and fall into suicidal mode.

About halfway through the flashbacks, we see Grizzly Jack attend a funeral viewing that only he showed up for. The person inside the casket is a mystery, but from an overhead shot, we can see that no more than a toddler could ostensibly be in that coffin. At the time, I didn’t think too much of it, but again, this was pre-brain oozing. Now I have time to think about it.

And here’s my take on why Ben was so scared, why Locke was so adamant about Jack not making the call, why Walt suddenly freakin’ appeared out of nowhere, why Jacob said “Help me!” two episodes ago, the whole point of the online “Lost Experience” last summer, and why Aaron’s body will soon be buried somewhere in Los Angeles.

Ready? Deep breath, y’all. We’re diving to the Looking glass station, fanwankingly speaking of course.

(Last chance. This is seriously long.)

As mentioned earlier, it’s been my assumption that the Widmore Corporation worked with The Others: feeding them info, providing supplies, things of that nature. But I don’t think this was always the case. In fact, it’s quite possibly the case that some sort of arrangement was worked out, after the fact, in a way that would be mutually beneficial to both parties. After all, the labs were all still there, still functional, and the Others had knowledge of the lay of the land. Just avoid Smokey, Charles Widmore said, and help us solve this little Valenzetti problem.

After all, according to the “Lost Experience”, an evil subset of Hanso, run by Thomas Mittlewerk, in association with people from Widmore, were still trying to see Hanso’s initial dream of saving the world work. Problem is, at least as far as we’re concerned, is that Hanso was too much of an idealist and not capable of making hard decisions for the greater good. In Mittlewerk’s eyes, according to the game, these hard decisions involved things like killing off 30% of African tribes in order to observe specific genetic markers. Oh, and all these experiments? Taking place in present time, not decades ago. (The protagonist, Rachel Blake, actually showed up at ComiCon 2006 in character to assail the producers of "Lost" for glorifying the Hanso Foundation. Trippy stuff.) No one really figured out why the game took place in 2006 as opposed to 2004, the year the show takes place in, but after tonight, it makes a bit more sense.

Ben and the Others soured working with Widmore after a while, and Widmore was none too pleased with Ben, especially after his obsession with pregnancy started. But what to do? The Island was a fantastic defensive position, and Ben had the sub and the working knowledge to get to and from the Island. But he knew that could last forever, that technology would eventually catch up with the island’s properties. After all, even though the island had been there for millennia, nothing lasts forever.

So he takes two women aside and positions them in the Looking Glass, with the sole job to jam any signal leaving the island via the radio tower. Their sole mission is to be the very last line of defense against the Widmore Corporation, who Ben now realizes is a huge threat to the Island, to Jacob, and to the way of life he so dearly enjoyed. He also plans for a runway to be built, which ties into a project in Canada (obliquely mentioned by Mikhail in the Looking Glass) in order to sidestep Widmore completely. Widmore, in turn, is furious, can’t believe that Ben’s turned on him, and sees no way to continue important research in the one place on earth that it’s possible to do so.

Until Desmond comes along.

We can understand Charles’ boatrace as a way to send a spy, basically, into the heart of the enemy. A spy that if he can’t track, his daughter, in love with him, certainly could. The thing I’d never figured out: how did Penny get so much access to so much money to find Desmond? Wouldn’t her father get suspicious? Turns out he may have used her to find the Island the way the Yellow Man in “Sin City” uses Hartigan to find Nancy Callahan. (Don’t worry, I won’t write the rest of this review in faux Frank Miller-isms.)

In the meantime, Ben gets busy forming a society of his own that can sustain life on the island.

When Desmond finally turns the switch at the end of Season 2, he gets immediately into action, and gets a freighter as close as he can possibly associate with the anomaly. The freighter still can’t “see” the island, but Naomi is sent on a one-way trip to use Widmore’s new-fangled, boy oh boy you can get reception with this bad boy ANYWHERE, cell phone. Widmore wasn’t about to send in Naomi with say, the cell phone I own, which doesn’t even get reception from my cubicle at work. That plan would be, in the words of Aristotle, “totally sucktastic”.

When Ben hears about the phone from Mikhail a few episodes ago, this sent off triggers in his head that Charles was coming to collect, that his time was possibly up. He tells Richard to continue onto the “temple”, a clue that indicates Ben is appealing to the powers of the island to help the pregnancy issue resolve, and indicates just how deeply he wants to commune with the island in the way that Locke does so naturally. So he sets up a final ploy to convince Jack that the boogeyman is coming to collect, only by now he’s the Ben Who Cried Wolf, soon to be Ben Who Got the Snot Beat Out of Him.

As for what happened between the time Jack called the freighter (dude, have you NOT learned by now to not trust guys in boats near the coast of this island) and that final shot of Jack and Kate outside LAX at an indeterminate time later to discuss returning to the island? Here’s my insta-theory, subject to change every week until 3 years from now.

The Widmore cronies come on to the island and immediately gather up pretty much everyone. There’s soon an incursion during which multitudes of doctors, physicians, mathematicians, and other folk descend to the Island thanks to Widmore’s deep pockets and determination to change the Valenzetti Equation, no matter what the cost. Losties and Others are separated, jailed, put into camps, tested. The ones still useful to the project are kept, the ones useless are sent home, paid off, and told to keep quiet.

But after all, who would believe a story like theirs, anyways? Doomed to a life knowing that some of their friends are left behind to be treated like lab rats, those who got off, including Jack and Kate, live half-lives, wondering what would have happened had they just listened to Ben and Locke.

And then Aaron, poor Aaron, the baby born on the island, unable to live in the real world, his body unable to truly adjust to a non-Island life, died. Sure, they might have taken him to the best facilities, and ran all sorts of tests, but nothing worked, and no one believed anything his mother said about special vaccines from an organization no one has ever heard of, and we're so sorry, Claire, but there's nothing we can do for him, the doctors all said one by one by one. No one who made it off the island showed up to the funeral. No one wanted to own up to the selfish shame of wanting to get off the island, only to have it all turn out so horribly wrong. No one but Jack, who is so bad off he almost committed suicide upon reading about Aaron’s death.

The end.

And on THAT happy note…

Final Thoughts

I’ve barely touched on a host of things (The HurleyMobile mowing down Ryan, Jin’s supersperm leading him to be such a poor shot, hell, Charlie’s amazing heroism in general) due to just how jampacked this episode was. I’ll leave that to this weekend’s podcast, and future, intermittent “Lost” essays throughout the summer and fall. There’s so, so, so much to chew on, as the show just narratively exploded its boundaries, and too much speculation could prove to be fruitless. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun as hell.

We’re left at LAX, some unknown amount of time after the “rescue”. Jack’s turning slowly but surely into his father, who is now ALIVE, apparently (a conundrum I don’t even want to get into at this point, given that it’s after midnight and the oozing won’t stop from seeing a made-up Kate talking to Grizzly Jack about how they should have never left the island). An unknown number of people must have gotten off the island, enough to fill a room with 25 or so seats, and an unknown number remaining on the Island, including one John Locke.

And Jack wants to get back.

Why?

We’ll find out in Season 4.

***

I’d like to take a quick second at the end here to thank all of you who’ve read my reviews and/or listened to the podcasts this season. It’s meant a lot and I’ve enjoyed hearing your feedback. Keep this site bookmarked and please, if you haven’t, subscribe to my podcast feed so you’ll always get the latest updates. Both of those will be updated off and on throughout the rest of the calendar year, leading up to next season’s 16-episode season.

Thanks again, and I look forward to your comments below.