Lost Premiere: How's That Flash-Sideways Deal Working Out For Our Favorite Castaways?
(SPOILER ALERT: If you didn't watch the show last night, you are dead to us. Move along, move along!)
At the beginning of last night's Lost: THE FINAL SEASON premiere, Juliet's successful (ah, but was it?) detonation of the Jughead bomb cleaved our narrative in twain, setting the Lostaways loose in two separate timelines: the 2004 "flash-sideways" reality, in which Oceanic 815 lands safely in Los Angeles to allow everyone to carry on with their lives, and one that flung our characters forward to 2007, where they're coping with a world in which twitchy physicist Daniel Faraday's egg-headed plan to nuke the timestream back into alignment seems to have failed spectacularly. While it's probably fair to assume that these two timelines will dovetail at some juncture over the coming 17 episodes, for now Jack, Sawyer, Hurley and the gang are carrying on along parallel paths, oblivious to the fortunes of their other-planed selves. Ahead, we take an inventory of where each of our players stands in each timeline, and try to evaluate which reality proves a better roll of Fate's* Yahtzee dice. (*Old-fashioned Fate, not Man-in-Black-style fate. OR IS IT?)
John Locke
2004: Back on Oceanic 815, a re-paralyzed Locke chats amiably with Boone (hi, Boonie!), as he flies back from a successful walkabout in the Outback. (Of course, Locke could be lying; in the original-original timeline, he was refused his chance at adventure because of his paralysis. In the new-original timeline, he very well may have enjoyed his Australian vacation out in the wild. Right.) Upon landing, he consoles Jack, upset that the most inept baggage handlers in the history of aviation have misplaced his father's body, with some perspective: "They didn't lose your father, they just lost his body." Jack, after tactlessly asking Locke how he wound up in a wheelchair (Hey, man, where'd you get the sweet chair?), offers him a free spinal surgery consult. He is, after all, a gifted spinal surgeon! Locke tells him not to bother, it's irreversible. Jack shoots back, "Nothing is irreversible," as balloons suddenly fall from the airport ceiling, fireworks detonate all around them, and a man carrying an oversized blank check made payable to THE THEME honks a party favor in Dr. Shephard's face. Locke has also lost a suitcase full of knives.
2007: The bad news: His lifeless body lays face-down on the beach, where it's gawked at by Richard Alpert (who blinks so furiously with disbelief at the corpse that his eyeliner is totally ruined) and an agog mob of Others. The also-bad news: The Man In Black has seemingly possessed his body, tricked Ben Linus into stabbing Jacob in the heart a few times, and is now poised to launch a murderous rampage across the island. The piling-on-bad-news: The Man In Black seemingly possessing his body is not only the Smoke Monster, but says a bunch of really nasty, withering things about the sad old man who used to live in his shiny new host-shell, even revealing the heart-wrenching, pathetic last though he might have vocalized were Ben's hands not crushing his windpipe: "I don't understand." In a word: [soft sobbing].
Advantage: 2004. Even if 2004's God Complex Jack botches his spinal surgery and leaves him paralyzed from the neck down, that still seems better than having some evil smog wearing your body like a cheap suit.
Jacob
2004: Dead on the submerged, post-Jugheadalyptic island? Crisscrossing the globe to pursue his first love, touching strangers during meaningful junctures in their lives?
2007: Stabbed in the heart by Ben Linus, a fairly undignified way to go, especially considering the angry, downward strokes Ben used, and the orgasm he achieved by dispatching the God Who Ignored Him in such a personal, violently erotic way.
Advantage: 2004. (For now!)
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Comments
Fan-bloody-tastic.
This is awesome. And interestingly, "Agog Mob of Others" was the name of my band in college.* Great post.
* in one of my alternate realities
for the record (haven't you guys ever heard of Lostpedia.com) sun was pregs in 2004, had the baby and Ji Yeon is now 2 years old. which is why Sun commented on the potential playdate with Aaron.
Wait, was that a joke, about 2007 Sun and Jin? She had her baby on the mainland after she escaped, they haven't seen each other in three years? Guess some could consider that happily married?
Great comparisons. Looks like 2004 was better for most of them, especially the English language. 🙂
Yet, don't you remember 2-3 years passed between when pregnant Sun left the island and when she returned on flight 316? Her daughter was left in Korea (presumably).
I thought Sun had her baby off the island and is not pregnaut in 2007. Also, I think Jack's father's coffin was lost in transit by the Island, meaning Jack's Father's spirit is destined to become part of the island even submerged.
Loved this:
The English Language
2004: Everyone seems pretty happy with it.
2007: Angry Temple Keeper “doesn’t like the taste of it on his tongue.”
Advantage: 2004!
Is it to be assumed that the temple dwelling others consist, at least in part, of all of the survivors of the crash that were kidnapped in the very beginning? Was Walk kidnapped by a different group of others? Were Michael & Walt the only two original survivors not shown on the parallel 2004 plane?
I just answered, somewhat, my own question...Boone's sister was also not on the parallel plane.
I would say it was more of a "man in a Locke suit" rather than him actually being in Locke.
Also no Ana Lucia, Eko or Libby in the alterna-flashes. And I can't really imagine why Shannon wouldn't have come back with Boone b/c of the island bomb.
Who is the "Man in Black"?
Haha, nice kicker at the end.
No one seems to have pointed this out yet, but Sun and Jin seem to not only be unhappy, but unmarried in 2004. (No wedding rings, and the guard at security addresses her as "Miss Paik.")
If Jacob, Richard, and Ben all died in the 1977 blast, then they wouldn't have been around to manipulate everybody else's realities to get them to the island in no-crash 2004. Only the puppet strings Jacob pulled before 1977 would still be in effect - Sawyer's folks' murder-suicide; Kate smirkingly taught "not" to steal; Jack's illegitimate half-sister sleeping out her daddy issues Down Under; his drunk, hypercompetitive surgeon-dad raising him to follow in his footsteps before wandering off to die on a daughter-seeking bender; all the generational conflict among the powerful Widmore, Faraday, and Paak families. Maybe that explains why some of the crew ends up on the plane in alternate 2004 and some don't.