Look How Far You've Come

Quick Hits (cont’d.)

• A refresher on Locke’s alias, Jeremy Bentham.

  

  Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. Bentham’s position included arguments in favour of individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the end of slavery, the abolition of physical punishment (including that of children), the right to divorce, free trade, usury, and the decriminalization of homosexual acts. He also made two distinct attempts during his life to critique the death penalty.

  That falls nicely at odds with his actual namesake, John Locke, who was a believer in “natural law,” and any rights a man had were God-given. A Man of Faith to Bentham’s Man of Science.

• We get the names of our two mysterious tag-a-longs from Ajira 316, who’ve I’ve heretofore referred to as “Arabic guy” and “law lady.” Caesar and Ilana, if you please.

  

  The name “Ilana” is of Hebrew origin, and its meaning is “tree.” [Baby Names]

  

  They are both, presumably, agents of Widmore.

• We learn Ajira 316 crashed on the Hydra island (I’ll call it “Island Minor”), confirmed when we see Locke staring across the ocean at “Island Major:”

  

  And later when Caesar is reading through the folder marked with the station’s logo:

  

  I’m not sure there’s any reason to spend a lot of time figuring out why they crash-landed there instead of Island Major, but it might be something to file away for future reference.

• We open the episode in a heretofore unseen office in The Hydra, with Caesar looking around for anything of interest, though not of the survival tools variety. He raids some file cabinets and finds a copy of the same map we’ve seen in a past season (can’t place the exact season or episode at this moment).

  

  He also finds a whacked-out time/space diagram, one that likely defines the mathematical pattern by which the Island moves through time and space.

  

  I wouldn’t be surprised if it was drawn by Faraday himself, a decade or two, or three, ago.

• Caesar glances at an issue of LIFE magazine dated April 19, 1954 sitting in the office, its cover adorned with an explosion referred to as “THE AWESOME FIREBALL” of a hydrogen bomb test.

  

  A nice little bit of context to put the U.S. Army’s eventual presence on the Island in, along with Jughead the Wonderbomb.

• The billboard Abaddon and Locke drive past after letting the herd of goats cross the road caught my attention, but I’m not sure what value to assign it, if any. “Noire” is French for black. Perhaps we can take that a step further by contextualizing it as “darkness.” A darkness Locke is being led to by Abaddon; a “realm of the dead,” if you will?

  

• Nice of Ben to take Jin’s ring into safekeeping (for later manipulation).

  

• Walt seems to be doing alright without his father, attending school at the “Fieldcroft School” in New York City. Locke doesn’t ask him to come back to the Island with him, telling Abaddon he’s “been through too much” already. That seems like a strange tack for Locke to take, as I expect him to hold to his instructions to bring everyone back to the Island.

  

  Walt tells John he’d been dreaming about him being back on the Island and surrounded by people who want to hurt him. One of Walt’s many paranormal abilities is apparently precognition. I have to think we’ll see more of Walt, perhaps with him unleashing his full potential at one point. They’ve laid groundwork for him since early in season 1, and I’d hate to think that’s not going to pay off in some way (I’m envisioning him standing at the top of a mountain on the Island shooting fire from his fingertips and lightning bolts from his eyes at all those who dare go against him and his fellow castaways.

• We learn the canoes used a few weeks back were actually three in number, the third having been taken by Lapidus and Sun, I’m guessing.

  

  I think that also pretty much answers who was pursuing Sawyer, Juliet and company in the canoe chase as well: Caesar and his cronies.

• Let’s add this to the Eye Shot archive:

  

• I mentioned the writers may have taken some liberties with the original obituary as written in season 3, substituting the luxurious Westerfield Hotel for the “Tower Lofts,” and I’m not sure where the “survived by a teenaged son” came from. Did Walt come forward and claim to be his adopted son?

  

click here to continue…