Lower Decks

We all knew it was coming.  With LOST, you’d always had that fear inside that anyone could go at any time.  From Boone’s untimely death in the first season and Shannon’s surprising death in the sixth episode, we knew that no one was safe on the Island.  And with the shocking double murder of Ana-Lucia and Libby in season two, we discovered that the writers will do just about anything to move the story along.  But with the end of the tunnel officially in sight, the writers decided to let it all go, and they made something perfectly clear.

They’re no longer playing around.

I’ll be honest.  After six years of watching the show, I watched Jin, Sun, Sayid, and Lapidus die without shedding a tear.  When it was happening, three beloved characters (and a fourth main character) were killed in a matter of minutes, and it all made sense.  Sun and Jin were able to die together in a nice display of love, and after spending most of the season enveloped in the Dark Side, Sayid was able to prove himself to be a “good person” and sacrifice himself for the greater good.

But then they all reached the beach, and Hurley started to cry.  And it finally hit me.  Jin and Sun were dead.  After spending three years working to find each other, crossing through time and space, from the Island to the Real World and back again…they were dead.  Ji Yeon is left as an orphan.

And Sayid was dead.  The man who spent all this time trying to tell the world that he’s a good man – trying to tell himself that he’s a good person – and trying desperately to find happiness – finally had to sacrifice his life for all of that.  Sayid had become one of my favorite characters in years because he seemed to be the most tortured and the most complex.  And despite everything, Sayid was always willing to put the group ahead of himself (until he became “claimed” and everything changed).

Hurley has always been the soul of the show, and he simply expressed the thoughts of the group.  Three original cast members and more than a fifth of the season six main cast killed in one act of the show, so it was okay to cry.  It was okay to be sad.  Even though the deaths “made sense” and weren’t as tragic or surprising as others in the show’s history, it was still emotional to watch.  As always, it’s a good idea to follow Hurley.

Now why did they do it?  Interviews with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse explained that they needed to show the fans that the Monster was the villain.  This, of course, throws out any idea that the Man in Black is simply a misunderstood guy trying to get home.  No matter what his motivations are, the guy has done unforgiveable acts, and he’s someone who needs to be stopped.

And with only two episodes before a super-supersized finale (it’s up to two and a half hours now), it’s nice of them to go ahead and tell us that this guy is someone we should hate.  And killing Sun and Jin (Sayid was pretty much a goner either way) was the right way to do that.  They’re huge characters who have an emotional hold on fans but much smaller significance to the mythos itself.  No one ever figured that Sun or Jin would figure into the endgame so, as a writing move, it made sense to kill them off as further motivation for the fans and the characters themselves.

So where do they go from here?  The rest of the characters are probably going to side with Jack at this point, I assume.  With Kate shot and Sawyer unconscious, there’s probably not going to be a lot of complaints.  But considering how quickly the Monster was able to get through Widmore’s defenses, you have to wonder how anyone is going to be able to combat the Monster’s attacks.  How can he be stopped?

Which leaves me with two questions.  The first question is what happened to Widmore?  He had his pylons arranged around the Island to protect himself from the Monster – how was Sayid able to get through?  We know that the pylons are not only lethal to the Monster but also to humans (okay, so it didn’t kill “Patchy” Mikhail, but the characters certainly thought it did), and it didn’t look like there was any way around them on the beach of the Hydra Island.

And Widmore left some defenses around the Ajira plane (although apparently he didn’t inform them that the Monster couldn’t be killed by bullets – when are people going to learn?), but he left the sub pretty much unguarded?  It seems like Widmore’s plan involved Desmond in some way, but it doesn’t seem like he had any sort of backup plan.

And my second question is why can the Monster kill certain people (Eko, Nikki, Paolo, the Pilot, the whole crew of the Black Rock, etc) but not others (the candidates, it seems)?  It would certainly explain why certain characters (Locke and Jack) were able to miraculously escape from the Monster certain times, but what makes the candidates so special that the Monster can’t kill them?  Was it Jacob touching them?  And, if that’s the case, how is the Monster going to try and kill them now?  His “good boy” routine is obviously no longer going to work.

It definitely makes for an interesting last stretch since the On-Island cast is significantly thinned, and everyone seems to know the score at the moment.  But we certainly have a lot of Monster/Jacob/Island questions that have to be answered before we can move forward, though.

We still have Desmond out there in the well somewhere, and apparently the Richard/Ben/Miles expedition to blow up the Ajira plane didn’t work (or hasn’t arrived yet).  Because I don’t think they’re the ones who put the C4 in the plane because I don’t think the Dharma barracks had that kind of ammunition.

Two episodes left?  Even with a 150-minute finale, there seems to be a lot left to deal with.

In the flash-sideways universe, we got a bit more.  Jack is able to save Locke’s life, and Jack is even able to come up with an experimental procedure (that Locke is a “candidate” for) that could save Locke’s ability to walk.  But Locke refuses to let Jack do it.

This, of course, doesn’t sit well with Jack, who goes off to discover what makes Locke so unwilling to take a “leap of faith.”  And from alt-Bernard to alt-Anthony Cooper, Jack slowly discovers that Locke blames himself for the accident that took his legs, and Locke doesn’t want to get off from the injury that he feels is his punishment.  It’s a twisted and depressing counter to the “main” Locke’s feelings on destiny – alt-Locke seems to think that it was his destiny to be paralyzed.  So there’s no reason to fix that.

We also learn why Locke and his father are on good terms in the sideways universe.  Instead of being pushed out a window by Cooper, Locke was paralyzed in a plane crash that Locke caused.  It smelled a little bit like Boone’s accident (that crushed Boone’s leg) based on the cause of the accident and the method of it.

But it does leave the question of what happened to Anthony Cooper – we know through officer Sawyer’s investigation that Cooper was still the main suspect in the death of his parents.  So we know that, at some point, Anthony Cooper posed as Sawyer.  And if Cooper was a con man before, did he stop being a con man to be on good terms with his son?  Or was Cooper still planning to con John but didn’t get around to it?

And I’d still like to know how John and Helen met if it wasn’t at the anger management meeting.  And if it was, did John actually forgive Cooper for stealing his kidney?

We probably won’t get the answer to a lot of those questions, but it’s still fun to speculate.

The big question brought up by the sideways universe is why Jack and Locke aren’t able to see the “other” universe.  Charlie was “converted” simply by looking at Claire.  Faraday had the same thing happen when he saw Charlotte.  Desmond had to nearly drown in order to see things, and it took a kiss from Libby to change Hurley.

It seems like people who died on the Island are more easily “awakened” to the changes in the timeline, but living characters (Desmond and Hurley) have also been changed.  Heck, Sun was able to recognize Locke relatively easily, and she was also alive at the time.

So what gives?  It doesn’t have to do with living or dead characters, and it doesn’t seem to have to do with candidates or non-candidates because Hurley (candidate) and Charlie (non-candidate) were both awakened.  Jack noticed the scar on his neck, and he forgot about his appendix surgery.  He also recognized Kate at the airport, but all the interactions he’s had with Oceanic 815 passengers hasn’t really opened his eyes quite yet.

Awakening Jack and Locke is probably the key to all of this, and you have to think it will happen sooner rather than later.

So we’re closing in on the finale.  It’s going to be a bittersweet next couple of weeks, but I look forward to seeing what’s going to happen next.