• After seasons’ worth of teasing, the Temple is finally revealed, and it’s….well, it’s a temple. Kind of a Mayan-looking one. Some folks, myself included, theorized that the Temple wall might have been built to hide the Temple because it was anachronistic – maybe even futuristic. It’s kind of a relief to find that it is what it sounds like.

• As Kate escapes from the Marshall via the ancient art of Countertotheforehead, she runs into both Sawyer and Claire. We haven’t seen Claire since Season 4, and we’ve still got no idea what happened to her. We don’t even know if she’s pregnant in this “off-Island universe.”

Cindy: “I know who they are. They were on the first plane – Oceanic 815, along with me.”

• A whole new group of Others populates the Temple. In addition to “turban Other,” there’s also “Pai Mei Other” and “John Lennon Other,” among a bunch of other Others (ugh) and some familiar faces – namely, Cindy the flight attendant and the two kids from the tail section. John Lennon Other is actually named Lennon, apparently, so that’s appropriate.

• I’m assuming that when Cindy refers to ‘the first plane,’ the second plane she’s referring to is the Ajira flight. Does this mean that the Temple Others anticipated it? Merely witnessed it?

• Hurley keeps the entire group from being gunned down by telling the Others that Jacob sent him with a guitar case – which is exactly the sort of bizarre detail that makes this show so much fun. And speaking of bizarre details: how about that ENORMOUS ANKH?

I’ve talked briefly about ankhs before (We see the statue of Taweret holding one, Amy’s first husband had an ankh necklace). The shape of the ankh may relate to the shape of the castaways journey – up along the central stem and forward in time (birth through post-crash events), looping back along one side to the center of the ankh (the 1970s) toggling right and left between “alternate universes,” and looping back up along the other side of the ankh to present day again. Did that make sense? It makes sense in my head, but that’s no guarantee.

• For no discernable reason, Jacob hides one of his infamous lists inside of this enormous hand-carved wooden ankh. I find that hilarious. The list appears to contain the names of the people standing there before them – all of whom were touched by Jacob in the Season 5 finale. Are these Jacob’s “candidates”? Will the Others need to test them to determine who the “reincarnation” of Jacob is?  Judging from what Lennon says to Hurley, and by Sayid’s status at the episode’s end, I’d say that’s a definite possibility. Why are they all in trouble if Sayid dies? Let’s talk about that a little further down.

• Back in the off-Island universe, Jin’s bag is searched at customs and he’s discovered to be holding a large amount of cash secretly. In this “universe,” is Jin the one planning to leave Sun? Is he the one secretly capable of speaking English? And is the Paik watch the same watch from the first season? Or is it different?

Lennon: “Pick him up. Get him to the spring.”

• One of the questions this episode answers is “how did Richard heal Ben Linus?” Apparently, he did it in the spring – apparently a kind of combination Lazarus Pit/Bethesda Pool/Fountain of Youth/Pet Semetary hybrid. Back in the Rewatch column for “He’s Our You,” I mentioned the weird Pet Semetary undertones of Richard’s words, and that undertone remains here. What do we learn?

• We learn that the Temple contains a “spring” which possesses water and/or “power”/energy capable of healing people and of bringing them back from death. In order to achieve this, a person must effectively be drowned for a specific amount of time. It’s implied that this process risks serious potential side-effects/consequences (there’s that Pet Semetary echo), though we don’t really know what this means. Maybe it explains what happened to Rousseau’s men, and how they ‘changed.’ If the process isn’t timed correctly, maybe the person ends up “damaged,” psychotic. Maybe this explains Ethan’s temperament.

As I mentioned above, I believe that the Island acts in part as a kind of battery, “storing” the souls/energy of the dead who reside there. Having died, I’m guessinf that Sayid’s ‘soul’ passes into that ‘battery,’ and the spring offers a means to both physically heal the body and reconnect the ‘soul.’ What’s the time limitation about? My guess is that it’s meant to ensure that the right “soul” ends up in his body, and not someone else, or that the person comes back unchanged. If any of that is true, the question becomes: has Jacob’s “soul” entered Sayid during this process? Has he “reincarnated” as Sayid? That’s left for us to agonize over til next week.

• John Lennon Other points out that the spring’s water isn’t clear, which is ominous. Is it somehow tainted? Did Jacob’s death trigger some change in it, reflecting the shift in Island power?

• Note the irony of Sayid the torturer being “mock-drowned” in this scene. Jack attempts resuscitation just as he did in the pilot, and with Charlie, but here it’s to no avail. Sayid is dead. Sayid looked awfully Christ-like when they took him from the water, huh?

• I have no idea what the Temple hieroglyphics suggest.

• John Lennon Other performs effectively the same service for Pei Mai Other as Richard did for Jacob – bringing his word to others. Pei Mai tells Hurley that Sayid was “beyond saving,” which is, again, ominous. Does this mean that someone else, possibly Jacob, is inhabiting Sayid? Or is this a more philosophical comment?

And what does this say about Ben Linus’ experience in the Temple? Is Ben really “himself” after Richard takes him there? Richard pretty much tells us that he won’t be – that he’ll “always be one of us.” Does Richard mean this literally? Did young Ben literally become “one of them”? And if not, can we attribute some of Ben’s darkness to the “risks” of the pool?

• When the Others learn of Jacob’s death, all hell breaks loose and what has been up til now a fairly slow-boiling episode rockets to full-on life. Again I ask: what effects does Jacob’s death really have? It seems to “free” the Smoke Monster/Man in Black to act, where before he could not.

Lennon: “Prepare the ash!”

• Awesome.

• In a mirror of Season One, the Others send up a flare just as the castaways do when they’re triangulating. They’re communicating “distress” to Richard and any Others elsewhere on the Island and fortifying their defenses as if they’re expecting an orc army.

Ben: “You’re the Monster.”
Anti-Locke: “Let’s not resort to name calling.”

• Anti-Locke points out that he didn’t “make” Ben do anything to Jacob, again reinforcing the theme of free will. And then Anti-Locke utters what is probably the single saddest line in Lost’s history: “Do you want to know what he was thinking while you choked the life out of him, Benjamin? What the last thought that ran through his head was? ‘I don’t understand.’”

The Man in Black seems to have full knowledge of everything Locke knew, down to his last thought (of course, he could be lying about that, but I doubt that he is). That, in and of itself is creepy enough. We’ve seen the Smoke Monster “scan” people before. Can he only do this with the people he’s scanned? Or with any of the dead on the Island? If the Island does “store” the dead like some kind of eerie organic handdrive, is he pulling his information from that place?

What’s creepier, though, is the implication that Locke, whom a lot of us loved, died so terribly and so confused. When the Man in Black talks about how Locke was the only one who realized “how pitiful the life he’d left behind really was,” there’s true contempt in his voice. We’ve seen how cynical this man is already, courtesy of the Season 5 finale. Now, he seems openly disgusted.

So what is it that the Man in Black wants? Why did he kill Jacob? To return home, apparently. In two of my Too Much Information articles on Back To The Island, I talked about the Man in Black and his potential goals and motivations. I theorized at the time that the MiB wanted “freedom,” which seems to be the case. So what’s “home” for this man? Some point in time? The distant future? Another world entirely? A nice doublewide trailer somewhere in Utah?

Great Hurley Line: “Goodbye dude. If you ever want to talk – I’m around.”

• Miles seems to sense that something’s up with Sayid, but he won’t say what it is.

• By the end of the episode, Sawyer’s gone from wanting to kill Jack to wanting him to suffer on the Island with the rest of them.

Locke: “They didn’t lose your father, they just lost his body.”

• In what’s maybe the best scene of this very long, very stuffed premiere, Jack and Locke meet in the off-Island universe. Both of them have lost something (which is true on a lot of levels), and in their time together they connect in a way that they never did on-Island. It’s genuinely touching, and the notion that Jack, who helped a woman walk again when all involved said it was impossible, may try to help Locke walk again is one of those after-the-fact obvious twists that I can’t believe I didn’t see coming. Giving Locke his card gives our favorite dead man the means to contact Jack again. I hope that happens soon.

• I love that what Locke loses are his knives – an echo of the instrument he wrongly chose from Alpert as a boy. Is that symbolic of a change in off-Island Locke’s character? Will he become the leader the Island needs?

Anti-Locke: “Hello, Richard. It’s good to see you out of those chains.”

• Did we just get confirmation of Richard’s place on the Black Rock? It sure seems like it. I’ve theorized that, rather than slaves, the Black Rock may have been hauling criminals to the then-penal-colony of Australia. Having Richard turn out to be an ‘ex-con’ would be appropriate, given the number of criminals among the castaways.

• Alternatively, the Black Rock might have come bearing an 18th century version of the Dharma Initiative, of which Richard may have been a part. Whatever the truth, Anti-Locke easily smacks the crap out of him and hauls him away. To be “changed”? To be interrogated? To be killed?

Anti-Locke: “I am very disappointed. In all of you!”

• Maybe one of the most important lines of the season. What does the Man in Black/Anti-Locke mean by this? Is he disappointed in humanity as a whole? He sure seems to be. The parallels between this character and mythical archetypes like Lucifer and Set continue to apply.

• We end with the Others wanting a private conversation with Jack, but whatever that’s about has to take a backseat to Sayid, who rises up like Lazarus from the grave and croaks, “what happened?”

Hell if we know, Sayid. My guess is, you don’t either, and that your memory’s been partially wiped by your experience, just as Ben’s was. Are you actually Sayid at all? Has Jacob “reincarnated”? Or have you come back “damaged”? There’s a reason the Ramones didn’t want to be buried in a Pet Semetary, after all.

We’ll get more information (and probably new questions) in a week. Which is way too long. Sorry for the length of this one, folks. Next week will be more manageable.

*****

If you enjoyed this column, please Digg it using the button provided below!

To view the complete Rewatch archive and related articles, please visit Back To The Island.

To talk about/join the discussion about Season Six, jump onto the Message Boards.

Sawyer: “If she dies, I’ll kill him.”

• Ominous, part II.

• Charlie and Sayid appear on the off-Island Oceanic flight, with Sayid on his way to see Nadia (and putting him in more-or-less the same position he was in originally), and surprisingly casual about things like kicking in airplane doors. Charlie’s the one in the john, an echo of the way he ran to the bathroom and dropped his heroin into the toilet. Only here, Charlie’s not breathing, an echo of the moment in Season One where Jack finds him strung up courtesy of Mad Man Ethan. So, Jack decides to do an emergency tracheotomy with a pen, an echo of the moment in the first episode where Boone goes pen-seeking for him. Luckily for Charlie, Jack fishes the blockage out by hand – and discovers a baggie of heroin. In this “off-Island universe,” Charlie apparently ran to the bathroom and swallowed his stash, rather than trying to flush it. The effort almost kills him, and it gets him arrested.

• Sawyer calls Cindy the flight attendant “Earhart,” as in “Amelia Earhart,” who I talked about in conjunction with the sweet old lady in Juliet’s Dharma Cabana back in Season 3.

• Back to the “huh?” of Juliet. When we last saw her, she was plummeting down an open shaft, straight down into the earth. Here, she’s a few feet beneath the Hatch wreckage but her injuries are still fatal. Also in the “huh?” department: Juliet tells Sawyer that it didn’t work – that she hit the bomb and they’re “still here” (which is true, in that they’re on the Island, but untrue, in that they’re in “present”). Not long after this, she’ll apparently tell Miles that “it worked.” Huh?

Hurley: “Can you fix Sayid, Jack?”
Jack: “No.”
Hurley: “Then you’re gonna have to let me do it.”

• Jack’s character continues to evolve. He flat-out admits his inability to fix things here, and cedes control to Hurley.

• Bram and the other “shadow” people bring Ben into the statue to confront Anti-Locke, and we get a massive reveal: Anti-Locke, aka the Man in Black, IS the Smoke Monster. We’ve suspected this for a while, but having it confirmed is amazing.

• Bram and the “shadow” folk apparently function in part as Jacob’s bodyguards (they also echo the mercs sent by Widmore to the Island), but when it comes to battling sentient columns of smoke, these guys are as ineffective as Keamy and company (and less lucky, to boot).

Anti-Locke: “You’re free.”

• Interestingly, Anti-Locke doesn’t set out to kill Bram and crew. He offers them a chance to leave, telling them that they’re ‘free.’ I’ve talked before about the Man in Black’s motivations, and I’ve suggested that his freedom was a major motivation for the character. It’s nice to see that confirmed here, at least in part.

• Anti-Locke and Superman share at least one quality: they’re both bullet-proof. Does this suggest that Anti-Locke’s “true” form is made up of metal? Say, a compressed swarm of tiny nano-machines? I know that the writers have said nano technology isn’t at play, but they said that about time travel at one point, and look how that turned out.

• Anti-Locke seems to vanish, just as he did in the Temple with Ben. He literally disappears, which suggests alternatively that “he” is not actually the Smoke Monster, but maybe a projection of it, originating from the same source.

• Smokey pushing his way into the statue’s chamber is pulpy greatness. Watching as the Monster wipes the floor with three armed men I’m reminded again that for all the high-falutin’ hot air I expel over this show’s “depth,” I also love just how unabashedly weird and sci-fi it’s become.

• Bram dies a particularly gruesome death (yay!) and we learn that the ash we saw sprinkled around the cabin was meant to keep Smokey out – something I’ve talked about before, most recently in the Season 5 finale column. Whatever the “ash” is, it serves as a kind of magical “ward” and prevents Smokey from crossing it. In effect, it’s a primitive ‘sonic fence.’

What’s in it? I’m assuming metal of some kind. Given Lost’s fondness for referencing other sources (again, shades of the “ocean of the stream of stories”), I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it contains iron and/or salt – both of which, so legend claims, able to repel the ‘supernatural.’ It’s also possible that the ash is connected to the Island’s volcano, which was conspicuously mentioned, then never mentioned again. Did the eruption of the Island’s volcano destroy most of the Island and sinking the rest, ala Krakatoa? There are some parallels to be drawn. Krakatoa is a volcanic island located in the Sunda strait in Indonesia – the same general location of the crash previously given by Oceanic Airlines. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa was cataclysmic – equivalent to 13,000 times the nuclear yield of the Little Boy Bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion was heard as far away as Australia, and it destroyed 2/3’s of the island. Since then, new eruptions have built a new Island. Is any of this relevant to the show? Who knows!

Great Anti-Locke Line: “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”

Juliet: “We should get coffee sometime. We can go dutch.”

• I think what we’re seeing here, in Juliet’s final moments, is similar to what we saw happen to Charlotte just before she died. She sounds as though her ‘past’ consciousness is speaking. Rather than slipping forward or backward in time, I suspect Juliet’s consciousness is slipping sideways – to a reality where, potentially, she and Sawyer get the chance to start again. Will we see the other side of this implied conversation before the season ends? Is this what gives her the conviction that “it worked” after all?

Charlie: “Shouldn’t have let that happen, man. I was supposed to die.”

• Charlie may simply be talking out of a suicidal state of mind here, seeing as he’s a druggie in handcuffs and all. But his comment echoes both Charlie’s eventual death as well as the times in which his death was delayed. Does that include the moment in Season One where Jack revives him after he’s been hung?

• Eventful flight! Now Desmond’s disappeared. Jack looks around the cabin, but he’s nowhere to be found. If theory 1 about Desmond’s presence on the flight is correct, he may have just moved back to his original seat, or gone to the loo. If theory 2 is correct, he may have literally vanished from the plane.

• The slow-mo montage of the Oceanic passengers disembarking mirrors the slow-mo montage of the passengers boarding the plane from Season One.

• Hurley’s guitar case and Charlie’s guitar case appear to be one and the same. It’s taken from him as he exits the plane.

• The sight of Locke, still paralyzed, lifted into a chair, is sad, sad stuff. I’m loving O’Quinn’s work in this episode, but I’m hoping the real Locke gets a second chance when all is said and done – and it looks as though that may happen.

• So far, this episode’s been compelling but a bit unwieldy. In that sense, it’s not unlike Season 5’s premiere.

• Miles’ character continues to get more interesting, and more sympathetic. Watching him with Sawyer there’s none of his trademark snark. He’s respectful of his “boss” in a surprisingly touching way.

• Oh, for cripes’ sake…as if things weren’t already mysterious enough, Jack’s father’s coffin has vanished, again confirming the importance of Christian Shephard to the story in some weird way. Why is Christian gone? In this off-Island reality is Christian somehow still alive? Is his body still on the Island aquarium?

• Montand was reading Soren Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling,” a work of philosophy dealing with the Biblical figure Abraham, and the Binding of Isaac, found in Genesis 21:1-24. Through the story of Isaac’s binding, and in the guise of a fictional meta-aware narrator, Kierkegaard explores questions of faith and devotion, of good and evil. He proposes that humanity needs to come to terms with the concept of infinite transcendence (and here there’s an echo of ‘consciousness expansion,’ which I talked a fair amount about in the Season Rewatch columns). As “faith requires a total and constant engagement of the individual’s selfhood with regard to God’s existence, this means that we believe truly only when we do not shun acts that understandably generate fear and trembling both as to their nature and consequences.”

The Binding of Isaac, in which Abraham is ordered by God to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah. I’ve spoken about this story before, in my Rewatch columns. Moriah was the supposed location of the Temple of Solomon, ‘the first temple’ of the ancient Israelites. Solomon’s Temple was built to contain the Ark of the Covenant, and to provide a place for his people to sacrifice to God. Moriah is also the location of the Foundation Stone, the location where the Biblical Jacob was to have dreamed about his famous, namesake Ladder, which I discussed here (S3, Catch 22). In real life, the room directly below this Foundation Stone is called “the well of souls.” I’ve theorized that there may be an actual “well of souls” on the Island. If so, I suspect it lies beneath the Temple, just as the real well lies beneath the Stone. Sayid’s strange spa treatment may help to suggest that this theory has some basis. I’ll talk about it shortly.

• The discovery of Montand’s body confirms that he never made it out of that hole, and suggests that the Man in Black may have lured the rest of them down by impersonating dead Montand.

• Hurley, Jack and Co. come across the hole in the floor that Ben made when he fell through into what looked like a kind of shrine to Smokey. The group passes around it, and continues through the passage. The geography of this is interesting. Smokey appears to Ben in that underground chamber, and apparently impersonates Alex to convince him to follow Locke. So, Smokey can approach fairly close to the Temple, can pass under it’s wall, perhaps through the crack in the foundation (as it seems to have passed through the gap in the ash at Jacob’s cabin – suggesting that the wall around the Temple might also function in part as a primitive ‘sonic fence,’ designed not just to hide the Temple, but to protect it.

Clearly, though, if that’s the case it isn’t working. So why couldn’t Smokey/the MiB attack the Temple before Jacob’s death?

• Hurley’s group is separated and subdued by the Others, accompanied by their now-trademark Whispers. Here’s to hoping we learn something about those before the season ends.

• I think “turban Other” is my favorite-ever extraneous Other.

STILL MORE, AFTER THE PAGE BREAK! (Hang on…we’re almost there)

LAX (S6, ep. 1)

“He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different color, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity; and Iff explained that these were the Streams of Story, that each coloured strand represented and contained a single tale….The Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And because the stories were held here in fluid form they retained the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories….It was not dead, but alive.” – Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Jack: “Looks like we made it.”

I think the word we’re looking for is “wow.”

I watched the premiere with friends, and while we all agreed that the episode started out feeling as though it was searching for the next gear so to speak, by its second hour it was hurtling along on rails.

Writing a recap column for this is actually intimidating. Where to start? How much to analyze? I set a two hour time-limit and went to work, covering what I think is interesting in brief bullet points. I’m sure I’ve missed a lot. I encourage you to point that out in the comments. It’s simply not possible for me to go into as much detail as I’d like and still have this up for you to read anytime soon. Apologies for the length in advance. Despite the time limit, I still managed to make this too long. It’s been split by page breaks to make things easier on you. From now on, expect these on Thursday. I’ll need the breathing room.

All screencaps come from losteastereggs – my thanks to them for their work. 

Thoughts:

• I’d guessed that as a result of the Jughead detonation, Jack and Co. would either return to the original Oceanic flight, or return to the Island’s “present,” alongside previously-deceased castmembers. Looks like those of us who did so were half-right.

• As of the premiere we have no idea whether the “off-Island” events constitute a parallel universe, a parallel timeline, the ‘true’ timeline, or the dream of an autistic child named Tommy Westphall. That being the case, I’m reluctant to label the off-Island events we see as an “alternate” universe. For the sake of keeping myself sane I’m going to be referring to the two “universes” we see tonight as “off-Island” and “on-Island.”

Off-Island, Jack’s back on the original Oceanic 815 flight, and the flight does not crash. Even prior to the turbulence that the airplane successfully passes through there is concrete evidence that the off-Island universe is different from the one we’re familiar with from the Season 1 pilot. Jack’s got long hair, for one, and not the buzz-cut he was sporting when the plane originally went down. He spills the drink he’s attempting to make at the first sign of turbulence, which doesn’t happen in the Season 1 premiere. Jack and Rose’s roles on the plane have reversed – on the ‘original’ flight, Jack comforted Rose. Here, Rose comforts Jack. Their dialogue is more-or-less the same, but their behavior has changed.

This recalls instances we’ve already seen during the series where small details have been intentionally altered from scene to scene, or from episode to episode (think of the picture frames that Miles passes on his way up to deal with a ‘ghost’ in his first appearance on the show, or the way that Sayid’s threat in Season 5 changes between episodes). If Lost’s ultimate contention is that parallel universes do exist, then the writers have written themselves an enormous and clever “get out of jail free” card for continuity issues and bloopers on the show. It’s not a mistake, its evidence of a parallel universe!

• It’s more than possible that I’m reading too much into things (it wouldn’t be the first time), but it seems to me that Jack seems to have some kind of un/subconscious awareness that something is wrong/different/puzzling about the off-Island universe. In my Rewatch column for The Constant, I suggested that if the Jughead reboot were successful, the combination of electromagnetism and radiation would serve to hurl the castaways’ consciousnesses ‘back’ through time, giving them a kind of ‘déjà vu/past life’ instinctual knowledge of everything  that had happened to them. As far as I can tell, that theory is still potentially in play, but in this “off-Island universe.”

Rose: “You can let go now. It’s okay – you can let go.”

• Rose’s words here echo Christian’s – “let it go, Jack.”

• Jack steps into the airplane bathroom for a moment and spends a few seconds checking himself out in a mirror. I’ve spent a good amount of time in the Rewatch columns talking about the concept of “mirroring,” and how this show’s characters, events, dialogue and themes tend to reflect, or ‘mirror’ each other. Jack’s moment of reflection here could be seen to literalize that concept. There’s a lot of mirroring going on in this episode, and I’ll point some of this stuff out as we go.

• Is that a cut we see under Jack’s shirt collar? Blood? That’s odd, to say the least. It’s clearly significant, but it’s unclear as to how or why.

Jack: “Do I know you from somewhere?”

• Desmond! Everyone’s favorite Mutual Friend is, for some reason, on the Oceanic 815 flight in the “off-Island” universe. Jack’s question again suggests that he has some un-subconscious memory of Des. Why’s the Scot there? There are a few possibilities off the top of my head (and again, please add your own theories in the comments section!):

1) Desmond never crashed on the Island in the “off-Island” universe, and as a result, somehow ends up on the Oceanic flight. If the jughead detonation worked (and it’s still up in the air, which is maddening, but very par-for-the-course with this show), the effects of that ‘reboot’ would be vast and far-reaching. Changing a moment in time as key as ‘The Incident’ wouldn’t just prevent the Oceanic flight from crashing, it would also potentially alter aspects of the castaways’ lives prior to the crash.

In the ‘off-Island’ universe, the Island is an apparent non-factor (we’ll talk about this in just a moment). Without the Island, Desmond never becomes shipwrecked. Without the Island, Widmore and Hawking have no reason to involve Desmond in their plans. Those plans directly resulted in Desmond attempting to sail around the world, which lead to his crashing on the Island. For all we know, in this off-Island universe, Penny Widmore doesn’t even exist.

And this would explain why Jack and Desmond don’t appear to recognize each other, since their meeting at the stadium in Season 2 came about due to Desmond training for his around-the-world race.

2) Desmond, who Daniel claimed was “uniquely and miraculously special,” is on that flight for an as-yet-undisclosed reason – possibly in service of Jacob, the Island, or some time-mending mission.

• The title of the book Desmond is reading on the flight is “Haroun and the Sea of Stories,” by Salman Rushdie. Here’s what I can tell you about “Haroun” and its potential relevance to Lost:

The book was written for Rushdie’s son, who told his father that he should write something for children to read (continuing Lost’s established habit of including children’s books as thematic keystones to the mythology of the show). It concerns a professional storyteller and his son, who travel to a land “where all stories are born.” It’s been my theory from the beginning that Lost’s Island is just such a place. I believe that within the fictional world of Lost, the Island is meant to be responsible for many of the myths and legends we tell here in the ‘real world’ – the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, Narnia, Neverland, Eden, Underworld, Shambala….on a thematic level, the Island is the ‘birthplace’ for all of these stories and many more, either directly or indirectly.

During the events of “Haroun,” the main characters foil an attempt to taint or pollute “the oceans of the stream of story,” a place described in the quote that heads this column, where all stories originate from, where they combine and form new stories – a place very much like the Island. Rushdie’s description of a shifting, multi-colored tapestry recalls the tapestry that we saw Jacob literally and figuratively weaving in the Season 5 finale, and the Ocean itself also resembles “streams of time,” intricate and overlapping.

• Lost’s tradition of truly terrible CGI continues! We fly from Jack’s window on the Oceanic flight, down through the clouds and into the water directly below, passing a school of fish and racing along the ocean floor. As we move, we see the Dharma pylons, the Dharma barracks, the swingset where Daniel met a young Charlotte and Ben pushed his young daughter, a Dharma shark that’s been labeled on the side of its tail (is this the same shark we saw in Season 2?), and finally, the statue’s foot. The Island is underwater, and from what we’ve seen, it’s sunk within the past 30-40 years.

Putting aside the fact that the majority of this looks like a second-rate cut-scene from a video game (I mean, jesus), this is enormously cool stuff. You can argue, probably pretty persuasively, that introducing this much new mystery to the narrative at this point is a bad idea, given how many questions still need to be answered. But judging from the rest of this episode, answering questions isn’t going to be a problem.

• The Island’s submersion immediately recalls Atlantis, Plato’s fictional and fabled “lost continent.” Why is the Island underwater? Did the detonation of jughead sink it? Dharma was in existence when the Island went under, so the timeline arguably matches up. Somehow, I doubt it’s that ‘simple.’ I’ve got a suggestion about this below.

• In a double-mirror of Season 1, Kate finds herself up in a tree in the on-Island universe, where it appears as if the detonation did NOT work. It’s a double-mirror because (a) Kate loves her trees, and spends a fair amount of time in Season One clambering around in them, and (b) because the body of the Oceanic pilot, Seth Norris, was discovered up in a tree at the end of Season One’s first episode.

• In the aftermath of the detonation, Kate’s hearing is blown out, and she’s disoriented. I thought something had gone wrong with the sound on my television last night, and actually got tense over it. I am a nerd.

• Miles will comment later in the episode that these are the same symptoms from the “flashes,” indicating that the detonation jumped them forward in time (and potentially “split” them, the way that atom bombs split atoms). However, it’s also worth noting that the effects are similar to what we saw Locke experience after the Hatch implosion. Everyone here gets to keep their voice, though.

• Kate and Miles discover that the Swan Hatch has been built, and that it’s now destroyed. They’ve “leapt” forward past the point in time where Desmond turned the failsafe key, again reaffirming that the detonation did not seem to work. Those tunnels leading away from the Swan are unfamiliar to me. I assume they lead off to the various areas we saw in Season 2?

Sawyer: “It’s your fault, you son of a bitch!”

•  Sawyer’s journey on this show goes from inspiring to ominous during the course of this episode. We’ve watched James Ford/Sawyer/Jim LaFleur evolve from selfish, misguided and solitary to selfless, centered, and open. The death of Juliet and the failure of Jack’s “divine” plan seems to have sent him (pretty justifiably, unfortunately) over the edge. He and Jack have always had a complicated, contentious relationship, but something seems to shift inside of Sawyer here, and it doesn’t bode well for his future.

• Off-Island, Kate is still very much a fugitive, and we get to spend a little more time in the company of Marshall Edward Mars, who I always enjoyed seeing on the show. There’s another moment of potential recognition between them, but it seems as though Kate was just looking for a good lock-picking tool. That kind of sums up Kate’s relationship to Jack in a nutshell, actually.

• We see that Sawyer is also on the off-Island Oceanic flight, and that he’s also sporting his current do, not his original, shorter cut. Maybe this is supposed to have meaning, but it seems to me that Lost may have simply wanted to steer clear of bad wigs.

• Hurley is also on the off-Island flight, and his life appears to be significantly altered. Does the sinking of the Island mean that Hurley will never hear Leonard reciting The Numbers? Hurley still wins the Lotto, Numbers or no Numbers, suggesting that certain events will always occur, and that The Numbers may have changed what was “supposed” to happen.

• Arzt! His first appearance here serves mostly to dump some overly-jolly exposition in our laps, and it’s the first moment of the episode that feels “false” to me. While I’m happy to see Arzt back, the actor playing him hams it up too much for my tastes. Your mileage may vary.

• Ironically, Hurley calls himself “the luckiest guy alive.” Was it the presence of The Numbers that altered Hurley’s luck for the worse? Was it the involvement of The Island? Will Sawyer pull a con on good ol’ Hugo?

• Hurley’s massive headphones reappear here for the first time in forever. Does this mean we’ll be seeing some montages set to tasteful, acoustic music? Spare us, Lost!

• The sound signifying the change between off-Island and on-Island events is different than the sound used for the flashbacks.

Sawyer: “You think if an atom bomb went off we’d still be standing here?”

• Good point, Sawyer. All evidence points to the castaways moving forward in time, which would have taken them away from the explosion.

• It’s still weird to hear Jin talking in smooth, complete English sentences.

Sayid: “When I die…what do you think will happen to me?”
Hurley: “Just try not to talk, dude..”
Sayid: “I’ve tortured more people than I can remember. I’ve murdered. Wherever I’m going, it can’t be very pleasant.”

• Watching Sayid die, convinced of his own damnation, is emotional stuff. And his plight is a direct mirror of young Ben’s plight in Season 5, lending serious dramatic irony to the proceedings. Like Ben, Sayid has been gutshot. Ben was shot by Sayid, and fittingly, Sayid was shot by Ben’s father. Like Ben, Sayid is beyond medical help. And like Ben, he’s about to receive a very strange and potentially ominous gift.

• Philosophically, Sayid’s questions here are the very questions that, depending on your point of view, lead humanity to either explore the idea of an afterlife, or to invent it. I’ve suggested that, while the Island may not literally be purgatory, it can function that way metaphorically – more specifically, I believe that the writers in part intend the Island to have formed the basis of belief in the concept of “underworld,” a pre-Christian notion of the afterlife.

Hurley: “I’ve got a gun! And I know how to shoot it!”

• Hilarious.

Jacob: “Hello, Hugo. You got a minute?”

• Jacob appears to Hurley as a ‘ghost,’ which is all kinds of brilliant. It helps confirm that Jacob wanted Hurley back on the Island so that Jacob could communicate his wishes after his death. It might also help to confirm a theory I’ve been harboring: that the Island “stores” the souls/energy of the dead in some way.

Jacob appears to be genuine here – not a manifestation of the Man in Black (who’s shown concurrently with these events). If that’s the case, it indicates that some of the ‘ghosts’ that we’ve seen on the Island may have been autonomous – not manifestations of the Man in Black at all. What does this say about the ‘ghost’ of Christian?

• Back in the off-Island ‘universe,’ Sun and Jin are shown to have ‘regressed’ back to their pre-crash terrible marriage, which is sort of heartbreaking. If the point of these off-Island glimpses is to reinforce the fact that things wouldn’t be ‘better’ with a reset, so far its working.

• Interestingly, Jin’s hair HAS changed off-Island. Huh.

Boone: “If this thing goes down? I’m sticking with you.”

• Our favorite total incompetent returns to the show in style, and I’m surprisingly happy to see him. In this off-Island version of events, Boone’s trip to retrieve Shannon from Australia was unsuccessful, and he’s traveling alone, seated in the same row as John Locke. That’s appropriate, since Boone was essentially Locke’s ‘acolyte’ during his time on the show. In another echo, Boone’s just as admiring of Locke here as he was during the first season. Their “are you pulling my leg” exchange is gold.

• Hey, Frogurt! Great sleep-mask, there, buddy.

• Terry O’Quinn was wonderful as John Locke, Island-prophet. He’s even better as the Man in Black/Anti-Locke. O’Quinn gets the opportunity to flex an entirely new set of acting muscles as his character’s con is revealed here, and it’s a fantastic performance.

• The camera lingers over Anti-Locke as he cleans Jacob’s blood from his knife. Is there a reason that he first wipes it on his pants, and then cuts a swatch of rug free to clean the rest? Is he just really tidy?

• Why didn’t Jacob fight back, as Ben asks? If folks are right, it’s because he sacrificed himself, ala Christ, Ra, Aslan, and countless other “dying god” archetypes. His appearance to Hurley seems to confirm this. As with Sawyer, something appears to be shifting in Ben Linus. Will the lemur-eyed leader of the Others walk a path of redemption this season? If he does, it’ll be a complicated one. I suspect that Ben, like Caliban or Gollum, will be a tragic ‘hero’ at best when all is said and done. When Richard asks him what happened in Jacob’s foot-house, he tells Richard to “go inside and find out,” indicating that the character is as twisted as ever.

• Locke orders Ben to bring Richard to him, alone. As we’ll see by the episode’s end, Locke needs Richard – for what, we don’t know. And speaking of Richard, why doesn’t he go storming into Jacob’s foot-house as soon as he sees Locke’s body?

• There’s a terrific sense of legitimate confusion on the beach. Sun and Frank have NO idea what’s going on, and Frank’s distrustful of everyone. Ilana and Bram are apparently trying to enter Jacob’s chamber, and from what I can make out of his conversation with Ilana and Bram, he seems to be keeping them from running in to protect Jacob. What up with that (cue man-in-tracksuit)? I’ve suggested in the past that Richard is maintaining some kind of security protocol when it comes to the rules for seeing Jacob, and that sense is stronger than ever here.

• This is the first time that Ben sees Locke’s dead body, and he’s legitimately shocked. Ben’s been behind the eight-ball since his re-arrival, lead by the nose via Anti-Locke’s prompting. He’s still a conniving weasel, obeying Anti-Locke’s instructions and lying about Jacob.

Hurley: “How’d you die?”
Jacob: “I was killed by an old friend who grew tired of my company.”

• One of the answers I’m most looking forward to learning this season involves the relationship between Jacob and the Man in Black. Were they actually friends? Were they the Jack and Sawyer, Jack and Locke, or Locke and Ben of their time?

• Jacob looks troubled by the sight of shot Sayid (alliteration!). Was this unexpected? Or is he contemplating the magnitude of what needs to be done?

• Jacob tells Hurley to take Sayid to the Temple, and that Jin will know where to go – to “the hole in the wall where he was with the French team,” and letting us know that Jacob’s been keeping track of the castaways on their time-trips, just as the Man in Black was. He tells Hurley that his group will be safe there – something we’ve heard before. When the mercenaries attack the Island, Ben sends Alex and Rousseau to the Temple, calling it “a sanctuary,” and raising the question of why Ben, Richard and the Others live in tents at various places on the Island when there’s a giant motherfunkin’ Temple populated with a bunch of new Others.

• Why does Jacob instruct them to use the tunnels, when we saw Richard use a door when he carried Ben? No clue.

MORE AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!