5. Lighthouse

Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections: Lost: Season Six: 5. Lighthouse
Aired February 23

Writers: Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof
Director: Jack Bender

Guest Cast
Mark Pellegrino: Jacob
Hiroyuki Sanada: Dogen
eronica Hamel: Margo Shephard
Dylan Minnette: David Shephard
Dayo Ade: Justin
Sean Kinerney: Dogen's son

Jin and an unlucky Other get to find out just what has been happening to Claire for the last three years.

Hurley, meanwhile, gets instructions from Jacob to bring himself and Jack... somewhere. Hurley's vague on the details.

In the parallel universe, Jack has a teenage son and is having an issue or two with him.


Notes:
-Jack episode
-A couple major differences or the alternate Jack: he had his appendix removed as a child and he has a teenage son named David. We don't know who the mother is yet.
-Dogen is also in the alternate timeline. He's the third Other to show up.
-Hurley continues to involuntarily use his ability to talk to dead people in seeing Jacob
-Jacob has Hurley tell Jack "You have what it takes" a play on the opposite phrase Christian used to tell Jack as a child.
-Claire was taken by the Others at one point and submitted to the same test done to Sayid in What Kate Does.
-Claire's "friend" is none other than the man in black/"Locke"/Smokey.
-Hurley and Jack return to the caves from season one. They also find "Adam" and "Eve" again.
-The Island has a lighthouse, which Jacob used to watch the people he brought on the island.
-Thus far, season 6 has followed the season 1 order of character-centric episode. Pilot and LA X were multi-centric, Tabula Rasa and What Kate Does were Kate, Walkabout and The Substitute are Locke, and White Rabbit and Lighthouse are Jack.
-The church where Sawyer attended his parents' funeral is one of the buildings seen briefly in the mirrors of the lighthouse as was the location where Jin and Sun were married.

Unanswered Questions:
Who does Jacob want to come to the Island? How was the signaling mirror able to reflect places in the outside world? Why doesn't Jack remember details from his life such as his appendectomy? Who is David's mother?
By ScottN on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - 3:12 pm:

[next day spoiler bait]
[next day spoiler bait]

Man, Claire really went psycho, didn't she?

I can't recall from the end of S4, did Claire know that Kate was watching Aaron (pre-chopper), or did she disappear, just to hang out in the cabin with Christian?


By Josh M on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - 6:00 pm:

I don't think so. Claire left with "Christian", Sawyer took Aaron, and the next time we saw Claire was in the cabin.

The only other time I remember Claire showing up was in Kate's dream where she told Kate not to bring him back to the island.

Which now throws that dream into an interesting light. If that dream wasn't Claire, then it might have been Jacob or the MIB. And why wouldn't they want Aaron to come back? Hmmm.


By Josh M on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - 6:02 pm:

BTW, upon seeing the lighthouse, I couldn't help but think of Luigi's past comments of the island being a "Room of Requirement". How true that's become.

It's interesting that it's lampshaded here by Jack and Hurley wondering why they hadn't seen it before. Maybe it wasn't visible until now.


By Luigi Novi (Luigi_novi) on Thursday, February 25, 2010 - 7:21 pm:

Wow, that's some memory, Josh.

But I don't quite get the lampshade metaphor. A lampshade makes a bright light somewhat more tolerable. What do you mean by that here?


By Josh M on Thursday, February 25, 2010 - 7:34 pm:

Lampshade hanging.


By Luigi Novi (Luigi_novi) on Friday, February 26, 2010 - 12:52 am:

Ah, okay. Like when Peter David mentioned in one of his columns on writing about how the writers of Die Hard 2 address the implausibility of the same situation happening to the McClanes by having both of them repeatedly express incredulity at it. Thanks. :-)


By Andrew Gilbertson (Zarm_rkeeg) on Friday, February 26, 2010 - 7:06 am:

Well, Jack made it onto my "Really want to shove a pointy stick through his head" list (a.k.a. The Michael and Kate List, so named for it's top two contributors) again (at least his second entry; the first being when he threw the last pages of a one-of-a-kind manuscript by a now-dead writer- essentially some non-survivor's final legacy- into a fire just to tick off Sawyer; isn't that roughly equivalent-minus the historical significance, of course- to finding a copy of Shakespear's 'Love's Labors Won' in the basement and setting fire to it because the janitor annoys you?) by smashing the lighthouse mirror.

Especially because he was being absolutely unreasonable, demanding answers from a dead man, before completing his task, and ignoring the potential usefulness of this strange mirror; in fact, I was very curious to see what name was written on 108. Honestly, it ticked me off so badly; too often lately it seems like the show itself is ready to give us some answers, resolution, or advance the overall plot... and the characters seem to be ACTIVELY WORKING AGAINST US to prevent that from happening. (I will admit that when I started shouting at the screen "Yeah, we know his son's gonna turn out to be a piano prodigy- stop cutting back to this, no one CARES!" I may have been overreacting just a bit.) :-) I must admit that I was really hoping against hope that Hurley would finally flip out and punch Jack in the face- that, or Christian would show up to Jack for just a second, long enough to say "Well, you're never getting any answers now, jerk."

Hmmmmm... maybe watching this show isn't good for me... :-)


In any event, clearly we have quite a story to explore wit Claire- how did she go from being with Christian (squarely in Jacob-territory) to being in False-Locke's camp (the other side)? Or have we been deceived all this time, and Christian is working with False-Locke/Smoke Man instead of Jacob? And why has Claire developed so suspiciously close to Ruseau? She looks and acts the same, has a similar camp set up, and even the same obsession; ironically, because Ruseau actually SAW them take her baby and thus had good reason for it- but Claire seems to be copycating her exactly. Is that meant to imply that Ruseau was also infected and crazy, but we couldn't tell because circumstances conspired to give her mania credibility? Or is the similarity due to anything else?

Glad we saw 'Adam and Eve' again; they remain Lost's biggest unexplained mystery to me. (I still like the idea that they're Rose and Bernard, but I think they're a little too old for that, and they had the light and dark stones- like False-Locke's scale, implying a Jacob/Smoke Man connection). The whole episode seemed like a season one callback; though maybe, with Hurley talking about 'being like old times' and all of the references, a little too blatantly obvious an attempt to regain the season one spirit as the producers have said they're trying to. Seemed like it was trying too hard to me.

I love that they used Hurley to send a shout-out to the audience, as usual; in this case, I think they were making fun of the fan theories that I read on the net all the time with the 'what if we traveled way back to the past and these people are us?' bit; since I've seen similar theories espoused seriously online.

I do hope that the lighthouse is the last 'structure we never found' on the island. It's big, but it's not THAT big...


By Andrew Gilbertson (Zarm_rkeeg) on Friday, February 26, 2010 - 7:29 am:

Forgot the other big question- who is coming to the Island? My money is on:
Whidmore, Walt, or the Dharma founder.
Others I've considered are:
Desmond (though I hope the ending we got for him after beating up Ben was his ending; it was a good one)
Someone from the parallel timeline
Locke (not that that would make much sense)

Though knowing LOST, it's probably someone else entirely; and judging by their lazy pace of wrapping things up, it's probably someone new entirely. :-)


By Josh M on Friday, February 26, 2010 - 9:33 am:


quote:

Zarm rkeeg: Well, Jack made it onto my "Really want to shove a pointy stick through his head" list (a.k.a. The Michael and Kate List, so named for it's top two contributors) again




I'm surprised it took this long. :-)


quote:

Zarm rkeeg: in fact, I was very curious to see what name was written on 108.



The folks at Lostpedia freeze framed it and saw that it was a crossed out name, "Wallace". I don't know if that will play a part or not.


quote:

Zarm rkeeg: How did she go from being with Christian (squarely in Jacob-territory) to being in False-Locke's camp (the other side)? Or have we been deceived all this time, and Christian is working with False-Locke/Smoke Man instead of Jacob?




I think that that's a very real possibility. Consider, in Cabin Fever Claire is with Christian in Jacob's cabin when Jacob is not. Christian claims that he can speak for Jacob.

In The Incident, Ilana's group discovers the ash circle around the cabin to be broken, something that causes them considerable alarm and Ilana believes that someone else has been using the cabin.

The man in black has shown to have a tendency to take the forms of definitely one and probably two dead people to manipulate others. He took Locke's form in the second half of last season, and likely took Yemi's form in ? and The Cost of Living.

The only thing I'm wondering is if it's always been MIB as Christian. The reason for this is, though the MIB has stated he cannot leave the island, Christian appears to Jack in Something Nice Back Home, which kind of starts Jack's "broken" spiral. Perhaps there's a way for him to appear to those connected to the island without being able to leave it. It might explain Kate's dream of Claire in There's No Place Like Home, too.


By Andrew Gilbertson (Zarm_rkeeg) on Friday, February 26, 2010 - 9:53 am:

"I'm surprised it took this long." - Josh M
Oh, I'm sure it didn't- this is just when I started deciding to keep track. :-) I think Hurley, Sun, Jin, Desmond, and possibly Claire are the only ones who haven't made it onto that list at some point or another (Charlie was so close, but for that kidnapping Sun/kidnapping Aaron nonsense); though some of the early heavy-contributors like Sawyer have transformed into much beloved characters. (Forget the Jack/Kate stuff they try to shove down our throats, Hurley and Sawyer are clearly the heroes of the show from season 3's finale-onwards.) :-)


"The folks at Lostpedia freeze framed it" - JoshM
You are a braver man than I... heck, I haven't even posted on Nitcentral about Lost 'till now, I've been so spoiler-phobic... :-) (Of course, it didn't help that I just started on the show last October and have been marathoning 5 seasons on DVD, making me more spoiler-vulnerable than most... :-) )

Christian as MIB's pawn... or MIB as Christian... casts a disturbing light on the 'So It Begins' Mobisode, raises questions about his 'You can go now' appearance to Michael, and just plain... fits, somehow. Jacob as we see him doesn't seem like the type to use Christian as a messenger... Hmmmmmm...

In addition, the MIB has been seen to be the only one with a thing for the dead, reanimating, etc.; Yemi, Locke, potentially Sayid and Claire (if she did indeed die when the rocket hit her house)... Christian would fit the pattern. Meanwhile, Jacob's never shown any such tendencies...

Hmmmm... very good point, though, about Something Nice Back Home... could we have been seeing 'real' Christian and MIB Christian interchangeably, one of whom DOES speak for Jacob? Was the Christian in Something Nice more of an hallucination, coincidentally? Or is there some connection, as you suggest, to those that leave the island? Hmmmm...


By Andrew Gilbertson (Zarm_rkeeg) on Friday, February 26, 2010 - 9:57 am:

I wonder, also, if the dead-person manipulation will be used against Sawyer in the form of Juliette at some point. (I like the Sawyer/MIB pairing; they seem set up for a true battle of wits, because MIB can't seem to fool Sawyer's con man instincts...)


By Josh M on Friday, February 26, 2010 - 10:15 am:

Oh, I did forget one more piece of evidence that the Christian on the island is working with or is the MIB. Claire mentions that her father told her that the Others had Aaron, something we know to be false.

Something that's also interesting about Jack's sight of his father in Something Nice Back Home, which I had to look up screecaps to confirm, but when Jack sees him he's back in his funeral attire, i.e. the suit and white shoes. Throughout seasons 4 and 5 when he appears on the island, he's not wearing this, he has on a blue, striped, button down shirt. I don't know if that's significant or not, but it might be worth noting.


Add a Message


This is a private posting area. Only registered users and moderators may post messages here.
Username:  
Password: