On Lost: "Follow the Leader"
Last night's season finale set-up episode titled "Follow the Leader" was nail-biting fun. The last line summed it up perfectly: "I'm going to kill Jacob." Why was that line so much fun? Because I guarantee not one of you out there expected the resurrected John Locke to say that. That quote solidified the fact that while we may theorize and have our ideas, the powers that be are steering this ship and we the viewers are along for a very turbulent ride.
Last night showed two different people making a stance with rather serious implications. Developing for a while was Jack wanting to detonate the hydrogen bomb "Jughead" to erase the past. The second one was Locke's blind side reveal of his desire to kill the apparently omnipotent Jacob. What I felt from viewing this episode is that both leaders' journeys seem to be two sides of the same coin. Jack is no longer the "Science" countering Locke's "Faith." Jack feels it is his destiny, much like Locke has felt for all 5 seasons of the show, to blow up "Jughead" and right all of the "wrongs" of the past 3 years for our Losties.
Now comes the debate: Is this the right thing to do? Is this the end that the viewers want to see? Will detonating the bomb actually cause "The Incident"? Why does Locke need to kill Jacob? What are the true repercussions for theses actions? How will they continue into next season? I, for one, love how the writers set up all of this suspense over these decisions, leaving us hanging till the finale to see what decisions they make. This is masterful storytelling that will definitely split viewers in fractions of what they think the decisions and outcomes should be.
What do you think? What do you think is going to happen? There are a lot of possible theories as to what will happen. Let's take this week until the finale to throw out our theories and see which ones will actually come true.
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I believe that Locke wants all of the other to go with him to show them that Jacob doesn't exist. That's what he meant when he said he was going to kill him. Unfortunately Jacob does exist. Locke is a little too confident that he is all knowing. That will knock him down a peg or two. It will be a great place to end the season.
The most annoying thing to me this season is the fact that they have not addressed where in the heck is Claire and why did she disappear???!!!!!!! She has left behind a baby for goodness sakes...and no loving mother (as Claire is) would leave behind her baby and just take off into the jungle without a dang good reason...
Patience, patience. This is too big an issue to be ignored forever.
Let's step back a bit. Compare LOST to other dramas on TV. Typical TV: A crime (usually a murder) gets committed, a red herring or two is thrown in, the crime is solved - repeat. As infurating as LOST may get sometimes, nobody can say its formulaice.
About the H-Bomb conundrum. The bomb goes off, the island is destroyed, the plane doesn't crash, then there's no Jack to destroy the island so the Island isn't destroyed? The 'game' is to grasp the show's internal logic - but that assumes the internal logic holds up to scrutiny. I still don't know why Jacob would look like Jack's father, for example.
If the bomb blows up the island and the island is destroyed, how is Daniel Farraday's mother supposed to give birth to him?
Jack's father, Christian, is just like Locke, down to the shoes. They both arrived dead on the Island and were resurrected. ( Christian resurrected? hmm ) Why? I dont know but neither of them are Jacob. We'll find out soon.
I have a feeling the Jacob answers will be as difficult as predicting that inside the hatch would be a guy pressing a button and listening to Mama Cass records.
I think Daniel has already been born in the 1977 timeline and is living off island (obviously somewhere in America, since both his parents are British). Ellie is 40 years old in this timeline, and Daniel is certainly older than 30.
Sorry but Jacob is Cpt. Jacob Bird, captain of the Black Rock. This has already been confirmed.
Sorry but Jacob is captain Jacob Bird, captain of the Black Rock. This has already been confirmed. Spoiler end.
This season started out well but it has become increasingly inane and uninvolving. The nuke is the last straw, a very lame plot device. I was happy to see spacey, one-note "actor" Jeremy Davies finally die, at his mother's hand no less, tee-hee, but am jonesing for Hurley to be the next "celebrity" corpse. He is absolutely the most mind-numbing character among the regulars. I'd also like to see the balding creep & the rat-faced creep (who also plays a creep on Mad Men) who beat up the handcuffed perfect couple Sawyer & Juliet beaten to a pulp.
Please explain why you watch "Lost" in the first place if you don't like the show or its characters. I do, however, completely agree with your last sentence =0)
We dont even 'blink' when LOST is on....seriously...
if you do...you might miss something that wont be explained for a whole season!
Lost is great, and keeps my creative juices pumping, but when death is not final, and time means almost nothing, then the drama and emotion has lost to the writers' need to reconcile bizarre plot twists.
Frankly, I have enough of the Sawyer - Juliet - Kate - Jack romantic questioning. It's not a soap opera. It's time to move on. Sawyer and Juliet need to stay together. I could care less what happens to Kate and Jack. They could get together, stay apart, or die and put us out of our misery.
No! Too many have already died!
Guns don't kill people. Writers do.
And the comedy is subtle yet superb in it's witty charm delivered by Hurley. Trying to lie that he wasn't from the future. Hurley couldn't get his birthdate/age right nor answer who was the current president of 1976. Finally he gave in and stammered, yeah we're from the future. lol!
I'm a Hurley fan, but I found that scene to be incredibly stupid. It made me think of a 16 year old kid trying to talk his way into a bar with a fake ID, but he didn't bother to memorize any of the info on it.
Shouldn't memorizing your birthdate and maybe a few relevant facts about the current year been the first thing the Ajira losties did when got to Dharma??
I respectfully disagree. Hurley already showed the extent to how important the past "historical facts" are to him, when he was caught "authoring" Empire Strikes Back. lol
I don't think Killing Jacob is an adversarial plan at all - I think Jacob wants to be killed. That's what his "Help me" to Locke was about, and why the island/Jacob seems to be guiding and protecting Locke via Walt and the smoke monster. I think that Jacob is someone who's sort of trapped in time and wants to be put out of his misery. This fits with his semi-visibility, the weird repeating vision of Horace outside his cabin, and his affinity for people that are half-way between our world and the after-life.
Jack detonating a 25 year old H-bomb seems a little far fetched, but if anyone can do it - it's Sayid! Also, I think if they do manage to alter history it won't be a lasting change. People are variables, but fate has a course, as illustrated by Desmond's many attempts to save Charlie. Perhaps detonating the bomb somehow gets them stuck in a paradox and they end up between diverging time-lines until Locke can merge them back together in the present. I think Jack would made a good Jacob, and it would explain why Christain and Claire seem to be entertwined with Jacob.
Anyone remember that scene in Bill + Ted where they're in jail, and they make a plan that when they get out they'll remember to go back in time and plant a key inside the cell? Then they look and wah-la, there's the key!
loved this episode which has set next week beautifully.
I really don't like Jack's plan at all....really guy...I know your a surgeon but unless you have a copy of
"Controlled Nuclear Explosions for Dummies" on you....I suspect your surgical abilities might not help here.
the discussion about changing the past is interesting...yeh...Jack's life would perhaps better and yes..x number of people would live ...OTOH...the Kwons would be childless and in a failing marriage, Bernard would loose Rose to cancer, Locke's still in his wheelchair, Kate's off to jail and Claire still wouldn't be raising Aaron. there's been discussion that Kate's being selfish about not wanting to change the future but I would argue Jack's being a bit selfish here too..
Oh Lost writers...great fake out with the shooting of the Other's redshirt...I bet there were Kate haters cheering...if only briefly.
OTOH...I'm glad she didn't get hit.
Locke killing Jacob....going to be interesting to see who Jacob turns out to be won't it.
in conclusion...death to anyone who tries to interrupt me next wednesday evening...really ...I mean it..
This was, without a doubt, the best episode of the season. I'm not sure that I fully understand Jack's plans... First, how would he know how to detonate an H bomb? Is there just some button you press? Second, why would the "others", mainly Richard, ever want to help Jack destroy the island? All the others have wanted to do was protect and defend it, no? I get why Hawkings would (guilt for killing her son), but why Richard? And once Whidmore finds out about this (if she didn't already tell him) why wouldn't he try to stop them? Also, aren't there so many other ways to stop the events that lead to them crashing... How about just actually killing Ben, or destroying the swan station itself before its fully completed? Also, if all these events that are happening in 1977 already happened (think back to when Faraday told Desmond to get his mother to help them), these events should already be in Richards memory. He said he watched them all die on the island, did Ben kill them wit hthe rest of the Dharma Initiative?
Another question, will I get fired from work for taking so much time out of my day to think and talk about Lost? We'll see!
Well, all he has to do is detonate the TNT warhead in the nose, that explosion will set off the Uranium A-bomb in the middle, which will then detonate the Plutonium H-Bomb at the back. That's why Jughead is so heavy, it's actually 3 bombs in one single casing, the TNT detonator actually being the most massive component.
I love that this show leaves me absolutely flummoxed sometimes. This is not a show for the incurious or the intellectually lazy.
a..greee......
if you like a story wrapped up neatly this is not the show for you at all...
Time cannot be changed, Faraday's assertions aside. Jack's mission is a fool's errand. Locke has better odds of killing the spirit that is Jacob than Jack has of changing the future. Keep in mind, the presence of any of the original Oceanics means that some of what it happening is 'past', while some of it is 'present'. If jack does manage to set off the bomb and change the future, what happens to him then? Kate? Sawyer, Hurley, Sayid, Juliet, and everyone else from the future are all experiencing their reality in the present tense, despite the fact that some of them are back in the seventies. I suspect that this is going to be part of the major conflict for the final season, the time changers versus anyone who doesn't want to change time. This also makes me wonder if the strange group of people who keep asking "What lies in the shadow of the statue", since they don't work for Ben or Widmore, might be the crew of an Oceanic member who left the island in the 70s and then tried to influence things decades later.
Something tells me that they won't touch upon the other ppl from that second flight (the "What lies in the shadow of the statue", THE SAME PPL WHO KIDNAPPED MILES IN THE VAN A FEW EPISODES BACK) until next season... Next episode must be about Jack and Syaid trying to detonate the bomb vs Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley & co trying to stop him and also about Locke killing Jacob, which is crazy. I dont know why, but something tells me we've already met Jacob at some point. He's either Christian or just manifests himself into people (Christian, Walt, Charlie, Ben's daughter)...
Another question, if the "smoke monster" basically told Ben to follow Locke no matter what, and Locke is going to kill Jacob, that must mean that the smoke monster and jacob are not one in the same, or affiliated at all.
wow i need to get a life.
my theory on the strange group......reconstituted Dharma folk coming back to retake the island...
I've been a fan of Lost since day one and this intricate episode was full of faith, trust, deceit, jealousy and a potential cat fight between Juliet and Kate! My theory about Jacob? Jacob = Locke and in order for Locke to become Jacob is to kill him. I CANNOT wait until next weeks season finale! Oh, as much as I've adored the sexy Richard Alpert, he seemed quite evil in this episode....but he also received ALOT of screen time. Love the sexy!
Funny, I thought Richard was much more sympathetic in this episode, and figured that some of his aloof strangeness in previous episodes was because of the fractured-timeline exchanges with the Oceanic 815 group. I'll have to watch the ep again to check it out.
Last night's ep seemed to be very focused, as well, on showing that it's all our beloved people who, in the past, caused most of the things we have already viewed: Locke propelled Richard to the plane to save him from the bullet wound, Eloise Hawking knew, even as she pushed her son out the door, that she killed him in 1977, Sayid didn't finish the job and now adult Bed is out there with a vengence, etc etc. It was fascinating, because it showed that a lot of theories, as well as our way of thinking about a lot of those moments, were wrong!
It's starting to seem that while Richard does have something special about him, it's not an omnipotence, nor does he have control over time; he does not seem to know much of anything beyond his own 2 hands and thoughts, so while it's true he has not aged a day since 1954 (which I am pretty sure is the earliest moment in the natural time line when we see his face) he is not a time player, he is not pulling strings behind the scenes, etc.
Locke's statement about killing Jacob could be taken many ways, because we can't yet be sure what Locke REALLY thinks Jacob REALLY is, or is not.
LOST me Baby!
Yes and most confusing is why did Richard go back in time to visit a young Locke and he doesnt even remember it??? I'm hopelessly lost....
Now you are confusing me. Are we even sure that Richard went back in time? Since he doesn't seem to age, it is possible that he is experiencing time linearly. Maybe he was visiting many children at the time searching for "the one". If that is the case he might not have a great memory of Locke, since Locke did fail the test.
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