LOST: Jughead

In this world of change, nothing which comes stays, and nothing which goes is lost.
-Anne Sophie Swetchine

Aaah, Des and Penny, your kid Charlie is super cute! (And very sweet of you to name him Charlie- I assume its after rocker Charlie and not Penny's dad Charles). Please oh please stay together through everything and avoid googly-eyed Ben so he doesn't kill Penny! I'm a little bit nervous, because there was definitely a sense in this episode that Penny knows something, or has some foreboding- she was fairly somber throughout, ans yes she had reason to be, but it was at times that didn't always make sense like when Des was talking to Charlie about Scotland - "Also where he broke her (Penny) heart," and, "you forgot to tell him about his grandfather." Maybe she is more aware of what lies ahead than we know. Perhaps she knows what her dark fate will be if she goes with Desmond, but she would rather go then be without him. It seemed like more than just women's intuition or previous experience. I love how quickly she knew that Des was lying.

Never been a huge fan of Widmore, but I do believe the man really does love his daughter. It was cool to see Widmore so young on 50s island. I wonder if we will see him at different ages as the island jumps through time and I wonder if it is his apparent temper and issues with authority that got him kicked off the island, if that is what happened. From how well established he is off the island and Penny having no memories of the island (as far as we know), he must have been off it for quite some time. Really, I mainly just really want to know the Widmore/Ben connection. Widmore just gets more and more crucial to the plot: his funding of Daniel's work and paying for the medical expenses of the Teresa Palmer girl. I wonder if we will see more of that girl. Is she like Desmond and can exist in different times in her mind? Will we see her on the island at some point though her body is in Oxford? Daniel, as far as we know, doesn't seem the type to hurt someone intentionally, so if he was using her for an experiment like with the rats and tried to send her brain to another time, he must have been pretty sure of himself. We did see a little bit of a darkness in Daniel this week though, which I liked. I have been getting a little bored by his quiet, passive, I'm-super-smart-and-its-not-even-worth-trying-to-explain-things-to-you attitude. I wonder if we will ever find why/how was he involved with a hydrogen bomb in the 50s - 'You just couldn't stay away, could you?' and, 'I assume you've come back for your bomb.' - were they just assuming that he was one of the people who put the bomb there?

Wow, bold words with that admission about Charlotte there Dan. (Though if I were her I would be super annoyed with you not telling me what the heck was happening to me when you obviously know. Charlotte never seemed like the type who would just let something go, so I think she must really trust Dan.) I am fairly indifferent to her as a character, but I hope she doesn't die for your sake, because she did seem rather surprised and pleased by your declaration, and it appears that you have been unlucky in love in the past. Plus, we still need to find out her story of being born on the island.

That Other girl, Ellie, who Daniel said, 'looks a lot like someone he used to know,' is undoubtedly the younger version of Ms. Hawking. Is she then his mother and did he realize it? I don't think I will ever again be surprised by anything we learn that Dan knows. I wonder how long it has been since Daniel has spoken with his mother since he didn't know she was in California in real time. I also wonder how much he really knows about who his mother is and her connection with the island, assuming his mother is Ms. Hawking. Did she and Widmore gets 'exiled' or whatever at the same time? Maybe Penny and Dan are siblings. (I know, its stretching... ;)

I am digging the Sawyer and Juliette dynamic more than I expected to- they are both such smart asses. ;) I think it would never have worked if it was Sawyer from Season One and pre-island Juliette, but they have both changed so much, him getting softer and her getting tougher, that it might really work. Now we just need Jack to be himself again for Kate- getting rid of the beard was a HUGE step in the right direction there buddy. Also, the tripwire that Miles saw too late... is it super morbid of me that I get a wicked kick out of random survivor extras getting killed off ;) I want more Miles back story- creepy with him talking to the dead American soldiers in the grave they walked over. (Also, Daniel wasn't shocked by this, so I guess he is aware of Miles' skill- it was unclear before).

The theory of Fate: From the very first season of LOST, it has become more and more apparent that the main characters of Oceanic Flight 815 were 'chosen' to end up on the island. Through the seasons we've discovered connections between the passengers that they don't even know about, and we've begun to learn more about the Others and the interesting fact that they know so much about all of the passengers. It seemed that our main characters were hand-picked by the Others, or some other group in some man-made plot and that the crash was an intentional thing by some group or other to get these people to the island. We have since learned it was in fact Desmond not pushing the button in the hatch in time that caused an 'electromagnetic buildup' that caused the plane to malfunction and crash. We have also met Jacob and the Smoke Monsters and learned of the islands healing powers and some of its mystical history and that it is sort of a living (and thinking?) entity on its own. As far as we are aware, during the first four seasons of LOST the island stayed in one Time until Ben turned the wheel. So for the Others to get knowledge of all of the passengers so quickly, did someone from the future come to them before the crash even happened and explain to them what was going to occur? Are they simply very well networked so that when people chance upon the island they can deal with it and protect the island? The more we learn about the Others, the less in control of things they actually seem to be- they don't seem to be calling all of the shots, they are assisting the Island which seems to be come kind of tool of Fate. We have learned that Fate cannot be changed (though Desmond is a wild card). Have The Others discovered a way to be one step ahead of Fate? Maybe the Others, by 'tracking' Fate, are helping it along to some degree. It doesn't run smoothly though because people make their own choices and emotions get in the way and can be affected by the choices of others. So, though Fate is 'fixed,' it can come about in a multitude of different ways. Perhaps the master plan of the world was thrown off somehow by the Dharma Initiative trying to harness the islands powers and now Fate has found a way to put itself right again with this particular group of people. Perhaps the island jumping around to different times isn't completely random- perhaps Fate/The Island is jumping to specific times so that the people can fix/change things and put everything back on track the way it is supposed to be. Perhaps it is jumping to times where things can be arranged to allow for the Oceanic 6 to return. Maybe all of our castaways are just tools of Fate. I don't think they were necessarily born into this destiny, but because of they way there lives went they became the people that Fate needed. Questions: If Fate is fixed, why is it so reliant on Ben and Others? Mrs. Hawking said that if Ben can't get them all back to the island in 70 hrs, 'God help us all.' Also, everything sort of came full circle with Locke in this episode and it seems he is really only the chosen one because he believes it and because he showed up in the past and made Richard aware of him for the future. That is awfully sneaky and frankly kind of lazy/ingenious of fate, letting Locke essentially create his own fate, though it was Fate's plan all along? Plus, Richard didn't seem to be aware of time travel- did they not know about it until Dharma discovered the wheel? Aaaaah, the mind reels.


Enough of my ramblings, here are some thoughts of others:

Could the Numbers ''4 8 15 16 23 42'' correspond to the length of the castaways' shifts in time? If the first shift sent the castaways from January 2005 to the day the drug plane crashed on the Island (presumed to be the late '90s or early '00s), that could be a four- or eight-year jump. If the second shift took them to a point in time after the Hatch imploded and drug plane crashed, that could be a 15- or 16-year jump into the future, and if the third shift took them to the Desmond era, then...uh...okay, I'm losing the math. But this is cool. I want it to be true!
Notice that Widmore says that everything Ben has, he took from him. In essence, in this confrontation, Ben represents the Dharma Initiative, and Widmore represents the Others. Dharma came to the island, unwanted by the original inhabitants, and one of them became the leader of the Others. Widmore apparently thinks Jacob's decision to make an outsider their leader was a mistake.
Hawking's son, Daniel Faraday, went to the island on Widmore's freighter. Charlotte Lewis, also from the freighter, claims she is on the island looking for the place where she was born, which almost certainly makes her parents Others as well. And a popular theory going around right now is that Miles Straume was the infant son of Pierre Chang and his wife that we saw in the season premiere. If these assumptions turn out to be true, that means that all three of our key Freighter Folk are the children of either Others or members of the Dharma Initiative. All three of them have past ties to the island. And all three of them are now traveling through time, putting them in the position to encounter their parents in the past. (Daniel met his mother in this very episode.) And let's not forget Penelope Widmore, another Other descendant, who now could be on her own path to the island alongside her husband. Widmore sent a freighter to find the island, but tellingly, he wasn't on it. He told Ben that he intends to take ownership of the island, but he never said anything about traveling back there himself. Hawking is helping Ben get the Oceanic 6 back to the island, but her language ("seventy hours is what you've got") suggests that she won't be joining them. Is there something preventing this older generation of Others from returning to what is presumably their place of origin? We saw a slightly new shade of Widmore in his warning to Desmond at the end of their encounter (easily my favorite scene of the entire hour; Desmond's barely contained fury practically jumped off the screen), when he asked him to deliver Faraday's message to his mother and then "get out of this mess." It felt to me like the one altruistic thing he's ever said to Desmond. Widmore wants to protect his daughter from Ben, of course, but there was also the way he described the situation as a "mess" that had a very long history. It felt like a man of war who's tired of fighting and wants to keep outsiders from getting caught in the crossfire.
Now that we know the Others killed these U.S. military men who came to the island to test a hydrogen bomb, it's obvious that the Others took their uniforms, guns, tents, and other equipment and used them as their own. So none of the names on any of the uniforms the Others are wearing are their own names. They're the names of the soldiers they killed. We've seen the Others take possession of the things outsiders have brought to the island before, such as the Barracks built by the Dharma Initiative. This appears to be a longtime practice.
The janitor told Desmond that he wasn't the first person to come poking around in Daniel's old lab, trying to find out about his work. So who else has been there? (Ben?)
Richard told Locke that they have a very specific process for selecting their leadership, and that process begins at a very young age. We've already seen Ben undergo part of this process, and Richard's travels off the island to visit young John Locke were also parts of it. I can't help wondering who else has undergone this process. Anyone we know? Or maybe someone who lived a long time ago, and had only four toes?
Why was Alpert present when Locke was born? Because Locke told him when it would happen, and Alpert went there as a way to determine if Locke was telling the truth. This must have semi-blown Alpert's mind, since he continued to visit Locke over the course of his youth - and this helps explain why the Island Originals all thought he was so special... because he is a freaking time traveling, future predicting "old guy"! mean that Locke really isn't that special or "chosen"? If the Island Originals only think he's special due to his time skipping, is he really the best choice for the future leader of the Others? (They haven't addressed it for a while, but it always seemed to me that perhaps Aaron is the one who is supposed to be the future leader- maybe Locke is just the guy they need right now to help make that happen since Aaron is to small to understand it yet)