(If you don’t watch LOST, these posts will be torturous to you. I apologize in advance. Just skip them and come back on Wednesdays, where I will try to make it up to you.)
My brother Jordan and I are back to discuss a few things related to episode 6 of LOST’s final season, “Sundown”.
(Jordan’s thoughts will be the ones in blue)
one note before we start. Jordan mentions this down below, but the writers have confirmed that Kate’s last name was written on the cave wall and was crossed out. (the clip was mistakenly left on the editing room floor) So “51 – Austen” was on the lighthouse wheel, not crossed out and it was on the cave wall, but it was crossed out.
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Season 6, Episode 6, “Sundown”
My 10 biggest Observations/Questions/Thoughts
1. Why didn’t Dogen kill Sayid? With a scalpel to his neck he sees the baseball hit the ground and he stops as he thinks of his boy. But was that a reminder of a deal he had made not to kill anyone (explaining why he didn’t kill Sayid with the pill either) or was it just a reminder of the fragility of life?
I am clueless about this one. I hope we are going to get a little more backstory on Dogen but they are running out of time. I actually just read an article where Carlton and Damon mention that there are things they won’t be able to answer that they wanted to answer because they have barely any time left in the series.
2. One other thing about Dogen. Lennon made it seem like it was more than just the ash that was keeping Smokey out of the temple. Lennon said it was Dogen himself, and once Sayid killed Dogen it was a free for all. Makes you wonder how much power the ash had to keep smokey out in the first place. Not really sure what was so special about Dogen that his mere presence kept Smokey out.
Yeah hard to tell if Lennon is just misguided or if he knows something that we don’t know.
3. We certainly learned a lot more about Sayid in this episode. For instance, Miles confirmed that Sayid was actually dead for 2 hours and it was something other than the good Temple people who brought him back. I was wondering how the “darkness” could have taken over Sayid during those 2 hours since he was in the temple, but then I remembered the muddy temple water he was drowned in. Was it that muddy water that gave him the infection? Or did he get the infection out in the jungle and because the temple spring was muddy it did not cure him of it?
Ooh, good question. Was it the muddy water, or did the muddy water fail to cleanse him. I’m leaning towards the muddy water because Dogen said something like “There could be side effects” Jack told him to do what he had to do.
(and don’t you get the impression that 4 years ago the writers were like “wouldn’t it be nice to have someone who talked to dead people? Yeah, let’s have dead people appear to Hurley and talk to him…and let’s create another character who can just be near a dead body and hear what it’s saying.” Almost feel like that’s why Miles was created, but hey, it works.)
I don’t think this is entirely wrong. But I think that the writers wanted to blur the line between life and death and make us question what being dead really is.
4. Interesting that Sayid accepted Dogen’s challenge to go stab Smokey Locke in the heart. It was Sayid’s last “stab” at being good. It didn’t work, of course, but it showed that Sayid’s “scale” really was tipped in favor of good, despite being a “bad man”. At least it was…by the end of the episode it becomes clear that the darkness it starting to tip the scales, and it seems like there’s nothing that can be done about it.
I feel like Sayid is such a follower. The last thing I remember him doing for himself was going on his one man adventure after he tortured Sawyer in season 1. He’s been doing other people’s wishes ever since. That might be an exaggeration, but doesn’t it seem like he is so easily manipulated? Ben had running around the world shooting random people and Sayid came crawling back after every execution.
5. Dogen said Sayid needed to kill Locke before he spoke, but Locke did get out a sentence before he was stabbed. I kinda think Dogen wasn’t being literal and that it didn’t really matter if Locke spoke or not. Either way it seems Sayid was on a mission that couldn’t be accomplished.
My guess is that Dogen wanted Evil Locke to kill Sayid. He knew that Locke could talk him out of it so he told Sayid to just run in and stab him knowing that he couldn’t actually kill him. Dogen assumed Locke would strike back right away and slay him.
6. Where did Flocke leave Sawyer? Last we saw them they were in the jungle right? There’s some folks out there who believe Sawyer shot himself in his drunken pity party back at his house in New Otherton and that he’s been infected and brought back to life like Sayid. Not sure I’m down with that theory, but it is interesting to keep in the back of your head.
Definitely not down with that theory. They have been building Sawyer up in recent seasons, I don’t think they would just pull the rug out from under us at this point, but it is Lost so who knows. He probably sent Sawyer off on some mission that we will see this coming tuesday.
7. When Smokey said to Sayid, “Take it, I won’t bite.” it sounded an awful lot like the Serpent in the garden saying “C’mon, Just take a bite.”
Excellent.
And I’ll revisit this in a minute, but why didn’t the black smoke kill Kate on the temple rampage? Just because she was in the pit with Claire, didn’t mean she was safe did it? Did Claire specifically ask Smokey not to kill Kate so she could find out if Kate was responsible for Aaron’s disappearance? Or did Smokey not care about Kate because he doesn’t see her as a part of the temple clan?
Hmm, seems there are a few possible answers.
1. Smokey didn’t notice Kate because she was in the pit. Not likely.
2. Smokey passed over Kate on purpose because she was with Claire. Likely
3. Smokey passed over Kate because she wasn’t Temple Folk. Likely
4. Smokey passed over Kate because she put lamb’s blood around her front door.
Seriously though, if Smokey isn’t exactly what the Angel of Death looked like then I have been picturing the AoD incorrectly all these years.
8. Pretty sure the writers won’t go back to this now, but all those years that Ben Linus thought he was talking to Jacob, was he really talking to Smokey? At some point Ben’s name was crossed off and he wasn’t a candidate. Makes me think of when Jacob said to Ben, “what ABOUT you, Ben?” and then Ben killed him.
I think that they might touch upon this at some point. Maybe a confrontation between Flocke and Ben where Flocke reveals that it was him all along and not Jacob. If they never talk about it again, I will assume that it was the Man in Black in the cabin all those years.
9. Remember back a few episodes when Smokey took Sawyer to Jacob’s cave? Who knows how many lies Smokey told Sawyer in that conversation, but I’m thinking one of them was that the cave was Jacob’s. I think that was a lie, because I think the cave was Smokey’s. Think about it, we just saw Jacob’s lighthouse and all the candidate’s names he had scrawled on the wheel. Why would he be keeping track of the candidates in two places? And wouldn’t it make sense that Jacob’s list was in a lighthouse and Smokey’s list was in a cave? Light and darkness, white and black, lighthouse and cave.
GREAT theory.
Plus think about this. At the end of the episode we see Kate joining up with Smokey’s group, and Smokey gives her a look like, “huh, I didn’t expect you to be with me, but okay.” (at least i think that’s what the look was). Remember who’s name was nowhere to be found on the cave wall? “Austen”. We saw on Jacob’s lighthouse wheel that she was a candidate AND that she wasn’t crossed off yet. What if, for some reason, she is not on Smokey’s radar as a potential candidate?
Is it a fact that her name wasn’t on the cave wall? Tough to get a look at every name on there. But I guess it is possible that Smokey is behind on the list of candidates…Just found this on Lostpedia “According to an interview of Carlton Cuse with IGN, Kate Austen’s name and number, 51, does appear in the cave, but “unfortunately was not given a close up, and it is crossed out.”
Hm…well this adds even more credence to that theory. Kate’s name is crossed out in the cave but not in the lighthouse. So if the cave belongs to Smokey, then he doesn’t see Kate as a potential candidate, but Jacob does.
10. And finally, I feel like we got our first big clue as to what is happening in the alt-timeline. It feels like what we’re seeing is what these characters would ask for if they were offered a deal by Jacob or Smokey.
Jack, with all his daddy issues, would want a chance to be a good dad and in the alt-timeline he has a son. Sayid would want a chance to be with Nadia (he even tells Smokey that in the jungle) and he gets to be with her. Hurley would want to be the luckiest guy in the world instead of the unluckiest. Claire would want to be with Aaron, and what do you know, in the alt-timeline the adopting couple doesn’t want him.
Interestingly enough, Locke is still in his chair in the alt-timeline, but he seems to have a good relationship with his dad and with Helen, so he gets what he wants. As for Sawyer and Kate, not sure. Sawyer doesn’t seem like a con-man in the alt-timeline and Kate claims to be innocent.
What does it all mean? I don’t know. Some have guessed that the difference between the two timelines might be that the original timeline is Jacob’s and that this alt-timeline belongs to the Man in Black. Not sure if I’m on board with that. But in the original timeline Jacob touches the lives of our LOSTies (and not just them…he also offers a deal to Dogen to bring back his son and to Juliet to have her sister be cancer-free) and we see how that plays out.
Now in this alt-timeline it seems that Jacob hasn’t touched their lives. It seems like the Man in Black has given them what they wanted, only making a deal with the devil isn’t always what you think. Jack might be a good dad, but his dad is still gone. Sayid is with Nadia, but she’s married to his brother. Locke has love, but is still in his chair. It seems like a better reality than the original, but will it stay that way? I don’t know. This is a different take on the alt-timeline than what I offered up last week, but both of them have their holes.
Either way, i thought sundown was an awesome episode with an amazing ending, and more than ever it feels real that there are only 12 hours of the show left.
Good thoughts here. It could go hand in hand with what you said last week. That they are showing us how the series plays out after the finale. Maybe it comes down to a conversation between Jack and MiB or Jacob and he asks to go back and have the plane not crash and the last scene is that scene on the plane and they land in LAX. It makes sense because Lost has done something like this before. They show us the effects of an action long before showing us the action take place. Its like they fill in the blanks before they even create them. So if the last scene we see isn’t the last thing that happens chronologically we shouldn’t really be surprised.
Also, I think that Jack would choose this alternate timeline where he has a good relationship with his son, over going back to having his dad around so he can try to mend that relationship. Jack can either try to go back and heal whats been broken so many times, or he can use the knowledge of his relationship with his dad to create a healthy one with his son, which would be a great way to show his deceased father that he really loved him and wanted this type of relationship with him. Remember the converstion between Jack and his Dad right before he marries Sarah. I think it was in one of the mobisodes (that were confirmed as canon) but its Jack and his Dad sitting by the pool talking about a watch that Christian’s father gave to him. He talks about how his relationship with his dad sucked.
I’m starting to think that this entire series is just an epic Father’s Day card.
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Tonight…Episode 7, “Dr. Linus” (just 13 12 hours of LOST left)