a.k.a. “Shooting Kids & Blowing Up Hydrogen Bombs”
Now that season 5 is almost in the books, it’s about time to shift our attentions to the ultimate end game of the series, and how these last couple of episodes will set the table for the story the writers want to tell next year. Finding one’s purpose and fulfilling a destiny have been thematic elements throughout the series, and have certainly been front and center this year, nicely juxtaposed with the more scientific elements of time travel.
Hurley searches in vain for his destiny: a giant crate of Ho-Ho’s.
Locke and Jack, in particular, have struggled mightily to find their purpose; one actively seeking it and the other denying it. Both of them seem to have finally found what they think they were meant to do, but are we certain it’s truly what they should be doing? Locke killing Jacob and Jack detonating a hydrogen bomb…it just doesn’t feel right. I still find it hard to believe that they can prevent Oceanic 815 from ever crashing, sparing them all the misery of the last three years, regardless of whether Jughead is detonated or not. As Eloise told Desmond once, the timeline has a way of “course correcting.” That, of course, implies the future is set and everyone has their destiny. And despite all Faraday’s analysis and feeling to the contrary, it may not be possible to change one’s own destiny. After all, wasn’t it his destiny to return to the Island and die at his mother’s hand?
With one episode remaining, I’m not sure whether it’d be a good thing or not to find out exactly whether or not Faraday’s theories are true, and the future can be changed. If everyone’s path is set and can’t be changed, how would you keep your audience engaged? I have a sneaking suspicion the final shot of this season may be of Jughead detonating and/or the Incident occurring at The Swan. We may not find out right away if Faraday was right or wrong. This would undoubtedly result in all manner of swearing and remote-control-throwing in living rooms across the country.
1. Ok, I agree, I, too, am sick of Kate. I like the “new” Sawyer as he is with Juliette. Let’s hope this “love quadrangle” does serve some real purpose, and isn’t as you describe, “for us ladies”….but the whole “Mother”/pregnancy thing with her, Sun, Ales, and the Others, etc, and Juliette in the lab in the future and coming to the island, has to have some purpose. Also, speaking of Mothers and Fathers, there is also as noted by many, that there is a “Father” issue thing going on with many of the characters as well….maybe it’s a whole “family” thing. So other things besides redemption and destiny are prevalent.
2. What is the possibility that Locke is now becoming a manipulator himself, and only telling Ben he is going to kill Jacob? Maybe that is not his original intention…but he wants Ben to think that it is, so that he can get Ben to do ????
3. In the flash forward of Season 3? Kate says to Jack, “we aren’t supposed to go back”. Maybe when Kate gets back this time, (if she does), they accomplish something and flash on the “mainland” the way they did when the donkey wheel was turned, and then Kate, Juliette and Sawyer flash thirty years ahead when we see them in the previews back on the island.
4. And, finally, I like your music idea. Remember BSG uses notes to find “earth”, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind use tones as well?
5. Oh, yes, one last piece, I think one of the biggest “mysteries” I want to see resolved is who and what Richard Alpert is….Jacob, maybe? So, maybe that’s why Locke tells Ben he is going to kill Jacob, so that Ben will tell Alpert.
6. I hope in the end that Ben is truly a “bad guy”, cause I can’t stand him!!!!!!
The CGI submarine was horrendously embarrassing.
Is it reasonable to assume that Ben’s “girlfriend”, (when he was a boy)got on the sub with the other Darma people in 1977, and then she comes back? Or do you think she could be related (like maybe Juliette’s sister?) to someone who comes back to the island in the future?