What Exactly Has Been Going ON

The purpose of this entry is to remind us all of what has happened on Lost so far. Undertaking that feat would take hundreds of printed pages to do so I am just going to hit the highlights, particularly moments from last season that I believe we might need to know for this coming season. My next blog entry will use this one to help explain my hypothesis for this climactic final season.

Before we delve into this I want to take care of a few housekeeping items. Occasionally for quick references I might use Wikipedia.com or Lostpedia.com. It should be noted that I do not view these as scholarly and absolute but this is just a blog and I will use the reference section on the two sites to make sure what is mentioned is factual. Using these sites make it quick and easy to check things (so long as they are used correctly) and will help in the discussion.

Season five (last year’s season) proved to be a total game changing performance. Since Lost has been scheduled since 2007 to end after six seasons I expected the fifth season to be a stall, however, it was anything but that. The producers decided to introduce a new form of narrative. For the most part they abandoned flashbacks and flashforwards and told the story from two timelines’ perspectives with half the cast in 1977 and the other half in 2007.

The season began with those who remained on the island flashing through time on the island. What I don’t understand is did only our survivor flash through and not the Others. Even Juliet who had been an Other flashed through time with our survivors. Why was she not immune? Does anyone else think Jacob might have had a hand in the time traveling of our characters? A famous line from the series does say, “What if everything that happened here, happened for a reason?”

Anyway, those left on the island ended up residing on the island from 1974-1977 by integrating into the DHARMA Initiative. This was an incredible way to allow the viewers a more detailed picture of what the DHARMA Initiative was about. Those who escaped the Island spent the first half of the season figuring out how to get back to the Island and once they returned some were split between 1977 and 2007. Those in 1977 spent the remainder of the season trying to figure out how to get to the correct timeline to reunite with their other people.

In short, let’s sum up some of the mysteries we have gotten major light shed on or altogether resolved during this past season.

The purpose of the DHARMA station The Arrow was revealed to be a place where defensive strategies were developed.

We have gotten closer to seeing the temple.

We have seen more ancient sites on the Island including some ancient tunnels, some of which that lead to the Smoke Monster’s lair.

We learned how Rousseau got to the Island, that the monster is what she thought was the sickness and how Montand lost his arm.

Radzinsky was shown to be the mastermind behind the Swan. We knew this name because he worked with Kelvin Inman (who made Sayid interrogate his own people during Desert Storm) in the Swan station. Inman went on to work with Desmond in the Swan as well and told him about Radzinsky.

It seems that John Locke was only ever “special” because he said he would be and people such as Richard Alpert believed him. He self-promoted himself like none other. (This all happened before Locke was born due to the time skipping effects of the island.)

We saw that John Locke may not have been resurrected on the Island but he was when he first became paralyzed.

This season we finally saw how John Locke died, as a pawn in an increasingly dark plot by some unnamed ominous, presumably evil figure.

It was finally revealed how Dr. Chang lost his arm as already alluded to in the old DHARMA station films we saw in Season 2.

Apparently Jacob has the Others in his service as well as Ilana and her people who are off the island but knowledgeable about it. Have they been there before?

The cabin was burned.

The four-toed statue was finally seen in all of its glory and revealed to be of the Egyptian goddess Taweret.

Jacob was finally seen as well as his apparent rival. Also, Jacob was documented as having a “touching” history with many of the survivors of Oceanic 815.

Jack and all those in 1977 just detonated the hydrogen bomb in order to keep the Swan station from ever being built and thus hoping to unravel time so that their original flight from 2004 would land safely and none of the misery from the last 3 years of their lives would have ever take place. Ignorance is bliss! Or did they create the incident that we heard about in the Swan’s orientation video?

Jacob was killed by Ben Linus under the orders of Jacob’s nemesis who has apparently been posing as Locke since Locke’s corpse came back to the island midway through the season after himself being killed by Ben.

While all of these mysteries are very fun an entertaining Lost, at its heart, is a character show. On that note perhaps the most important thing to take away from this season is the change in character dynamics, most importantly Jack. The season two premiere entitled, “Man of Science, Man of Faith” has aptly encompassed the relationship that existed between Jack Shephard and John Locke respectively. Jack has to see things to believe them, does not believe in destiny or anything that is out of the ordinary. Locke is not afraid to embrace the mysteries of the unknown and has faith in the island’s power and will. However, due to Locke’s death, letter to Jack, and Jack opening his eyes to things, he slowly started to become a man of faith as season five progressed. It will be interesting to see how this dynamic carries out through the final season.

Next week I will use much of what was just covered to make my hypothesis and theorize about what we can expect this year. Until then, Namaste.

Steven