Damon Lindelof, one of the talented writer’s for TV’s LOST sat down with The Hollywood Reporter this past week to talk about the show’s 2-hour finale. The full text and video interview can be found here, and I thought I’d spend a few minutes going through the cliffnotes, and adding some of my own ideas and wild theories.
This is one of those episodes of LOST that moves so quickly you barely have time to catch your breath, and when our normal LOST viewing party was canceled at the last minute we rushed already breathless to plunk down in front of our TV, just in time. I don’t think we ever really caught our breath until the credits rolled. Despite a pattern of only answering approximately zero to one question per episode, the pace of this week’s “The Last Recruit” was indeed staggering, and a lot went down even if we didn’t learn a whole lot about the over-arching plots.
LOST has always been about balance. Whether it’s a balance between good and evil, a balance between two leaders—John Locke and Jack—or a balance between the Survivors and the Others, it’s always been about balance. This week’s “Everybody Loves Hugo” seems to be striking a balance in a new way.
Last night’s LOST was an absolute mind trip and I loved it. For the purposes of time—it’s tight this week—I’d like to completely skip the recap aspect of my review and get right down to the cold hard theory.
My thesis: The flash-sideways timeline occurs between the time that Juliet sets off the hydrogen bomb, and the survivors wake up, on the island, in the present day (2007) timeline.
Tonight’s episode is going to be about Desmond. We know this from the bagpipes in the preview and can surmise it from the fact that Desmond arrived on the island as the “package” last episode.
I thought, first of all, that Desmond was going to be an important chess piece in a game that Charles Widmore was about to play with Jacob’s Nemesis. Remember, to leave the island the Man-in-Black needs all of Jacob’s candidates to go with him. Or, possibly, he needs them dead. Desmond is a candidate. But, there’s more to it than this, I think.
Remember, Desmond recognized Jack on the flash-sideways Oceanic flight. That means that Desmond has some kind of memory of knowing Jack previously. That means that perhaps Desmond is aware of the real timeline going on simultaneously. Why? Because Desmond has had flashes like this before and perhaps he’ll recognize this flash-sideways for what it is.
The previews for this week’s episode have talked about a “path” being found. Putting two and two together, in an episode about Desmond perhaps the path that’s found is a result of Desmond doing, or remembering, or realizing something. If he figures out what the flash-sideways is all about and if he somehow figures out how to right it all, then there’s our path. Poof.
The writers did say that sometime, about half-way through this season, the two timelines would merge about become one. Could we perhaps see that tonight? And does Desmond have something to do with it. I think quite possibly, yes.
Not only is Desmond important to Widmore as a bargaining piece, and something to prevent the Smoke Monster from leaving the island, but perhaps Widmore also knows what’s going on with the two timelines and needs Desmond to make things right. Then again, perhaps I’m completely off-base, but that’s half the fun of LOST: making these wild predictions.
The path, of course, could be something entirely different but at this point in the season, given what we know about the two timelines merging, I’d venture that this is what we’re up for.
If last week’s Richard-centric flashback episode was a different kind of LOST, and it was, then this week’s “The Package” was a lot of the same old, same old. But for a show that, by last estimate, was drawing over 10 million viewers per episode, the same old is clearly working well.
This week’s episode moved along the Jacob/Man-in-Black plot quite speedily while still, in true LOST fashion, revealing only scant details surrounding the billion other questions that fans have.
This week’s episode of LOST, “Ab Aeterno,” was what I imagine LOST fans everywhere have been waiting for this season. Answers. Ab Aeterno, which is Latin for “since the beginning,” was an almost full-length flashback episode telling the story of Richard Alpert, the never-aging adviser to the Others. Unique, in that it was almost an entire episode devoted to a flashback, it also significantly advanced the Jacob/Nemesis plot and answers scores upon scores of questions. Let’s do this…
