I honestly don't think this show will last more than 3 or 4 seasons total. Fans will either get frustrated about the lack of answers or the answers will be revealed too quickly and people will stop watching. Then ABC will relegate it to an awful timeslow (say Saturday nights) and then finally cancel it blaming poor ratings. I love the show but the situation above is exactly what happened to another mysterious and hugely popular ABC show: Twin Peaks. I hope I'm wrong though as I love Lost (and Twin Peaks for that matter!)

Another one.

I think if they used General Mills cereal, GMs would be paying ABC, not the other way around.

Is it possible that Henry and their prisoner flew in on the balloon as the replacements to run the hatch, but the real Henry died on impact or in some other way? Then, when the prisoner gets captured by people who are not a recognized part of the Dharma Initiative, he uses a cover story and a different name until he can figure out who has overtaken "his" hatch.

If this all were true, it would make sense that he would know exactly what numbers to enter into the computer while Locke was trapped under the door. The guy is just too weak looking to be an 'Other'. Those guys are trained fighters - this guy definitely looks like he is more equipped to enter numbers into a computer.

Then why would he be wandering the island?

Maybe he buried that guy, went searching for the hatch, and got captured by Rousseau's net? I have no idea - just a thought.

I would think they purpose would be clear - find out how much they know, how many there are, etc. The "Others" would clearly have no idea of how many people there are (since Ethan is out of the picture), so they needed another insider to infiltrate and gather as much information as possible. Like I said before, they severly underestimated this group and will now see what happens.

I think, for the most part, others who have been brought to the island have been easily taken care of. This group, though, is different. Perhaps too much for the Others to handle.

This could make for an interesting battle.

Not true. Ethan successfully infiltrated their group, then took Claire and returned to the Others. He would have known exactly how many there were. And even if that wasn't true, they've demonstrated that they have superior stealth skills. They wouldn't need to have another person infiltrate the group just to get a head count.

Of course they might have sent someone to find out how much they know. But I'm sure they know exactly how many people there are.

It could also be possible that Sayid, AL, and Charlie are lying/framing him. Maybe Sayid dug up the grave, maybe he didn't, we didn't actually see him, AL or Charlie dig up shit. And they didn't look very dirty from digging. Maybe Sayid got the licence from "David Gale" when he beat him down in the infirmary for some reason? Maybe AL had it and they are framing him? Maybe the real David Gale's body is by the baloon, and another body is buried underground?

The thing is that I just don't buy it, it seems way too sloppy for "David Gale" not to cover his tracks like this, and just leave a dead guy in a grave with full ID on him, he seems way to smart for that, thats like leaving a damn murder weapon at the site of a murder. I may be way off on this, but for some reason I am just not buying it. Besides this is Lost, any fucking thing is possible....

i mean shit Jack could fall, crack his head open on a rock, and a damn alien could fly out of it in a tiny spaceship and I probably would't be that shocked.

Maybe there are different flavors. There needs to be some kind of label. More importantly why do they print their own playing cards?

I saw those and was hoping to see the oceanic logo on them. Airline cards. do any of them even do that anymore?

Handle in what way? I don't think the others (the Dharma people) aim to kill anyone. Certainly people will get killed while they conduct their "experiments", but if their aim was to rid the island of the crash survivors, it would have been done by now.

I think the Dharma people are running a genuine social experiment of some sort (albeit a totally inhumane one). I don't think they harbor any ill will for the specimen in the study. The only acts of agression we have seen were from Mr. Friendly, who were the Dharma people in disguise. Perhaps all the abducted survivors (who were said to be "good" and in a "safe place") were not suitable for the experiments and thus taken off the island.

Yes, it's not out of the question for someone to be allergic to wheat, and diabetics would want to know about the sugar content, etc.

I'm still not convinced that Mr. Friendly and the "Others" are people from Dharma.

Hopefully Locke, Jack, and Sayid are smart enough to realize that Henry was there to infiltrate them now. Since he didn't run away when he had the chance, that seems the only real explanation at this point.

I'm curious about this as well. Is it possible that "the others" and Dharma are two different groups?

Early on it seemed the others were simply there to snatch them away and take the "bad ones," but then you have Mr. Friendly (posing as an other/native but could be Dharma) making veiled references to them not being their actual enemies ("you 'think' we're your enemies"...etc) and taking more of an experimentation angle. It's all being somewhat obscured by the idea of people masquerading as "others" and such, but it is possible Dharma and the others/natives/refugees are enemies and the Losties are in the middle of it?

I'm trying to come up with a better angle for this though...maybe we need to profile each of the "others/dharma"-related people (Danielle, Ethan, Mr. Friendly, Henry, etc...) and see if it looks like there are other possible factions.

I could be wrong, but I'm convinced they are the same, because:

1. We say Mr. Friendly outside the operating room Claire was in. He was without beard, but it was Mr. Friendly (I don't think they would recycle actors like that).

2. Kate found the makep kit, clothing and faux beard. It was a very similiar beard to that of Mr. Friendly's.

Yeah, that is certainly the best evidence to the contrary, but some of the speech they use seems to imply that they aren't the islanders' real enemy. Either we are more insightful than the average viewer and have already figured out that the twist is that Dharma and the others are the same, or they will throw something different at us. I'm just trying to gather what the alternatives might be.

I see what you mean. I took the "not your real enemy" as meaning perhaps they were more of a danger to themselves (which I think is the case). Or perhaps the island itself is the real enemy.

The mythology of the others originates with Rousseau. Alex was taken by the "others", and we now know that those others are in fact Dharma. Ethan was Dharma, as were the pirates on the boat who took Walt.

Aside from the crash survivors and Rousseau, have we witnessed anyone who has not be shown to be part of Dharma? I cannot think of any. Perhaps the people stealthily walking through the woods (with the teddy bear)? But in that case, we've not seen enough to know anything definitive.

I think they're two quasi-related groups. I'm thinking we have Dharma corporate who does things like:

- Put Desmond in the hatch
- Drop supplies near that same hatch
- Fly the real Gale in by balloon

The Others were at one point Dharma employees, Dharma test subjects, or both. I think something went down on the island (they went crazy, they were possessed, who knows) and they are now not in contact with corporate. That's why Desmond doesn't appear to know what the others are up to or what they want, which is why he wouldn't have just embedded with them like fake Henry Gale or the guy with the tail survivors did. That's why corporate dropped supplies into survivor territory, not others territory.

There is an alternative explanation for the supplies, of course. A united others/Dharma coalition may need to make sure the survivors survive, which is why they put the food there for them.

Wow. I don't think they are trained fighters at all. In fact, I think they are all academia of some sort part of the overall Dharma project.

Here's an interesting pic I ran across on a myspace forum for Lost. I don't think I've seen this one posted here yet. This pic is in regards to "Henry" and may be considered a spoiler by some.
http://forum.myspace.com/index.cfm?f...6D0FFA22004840

I don't mean kill, I mean manipulate. There are some people that would probably go right along with whatever was thrown at them. This group, however, seem to be the type that are going to dig deeper and find things that they weren't supposed to find.

I would guess that most people would have seen the balloon and grave and been "ok, there they are" - not thinking to dig up the grave. But this group did.

I also venture that Rousseau's group was like that, and that is why they are all dead except for her. Easily driven mad in the situation, whereas Jack and company have not "played" how they were expected to.


added: what was Desmond doing before he came to the island? Didn't he say he was getting ready for an around-the-world race?

Not to mention, why would he take the OTHER guy's identity? If they were both supposed to fly in to man the hatch, he could more pausibly make up a story with his own background and say they were on a joint expedition. Too unneccesarily complicated to be what's going on with "Henry Gale".

I considered that too. However if he was able to show that Cooper was dead, and he was his legitimate heir WITH THE KEY, shouldn't he be able to get into the box? I mean if I die, does that mean my saftey deposit box is inaccessible to my heirs and relatives indefinitely?

That's kind of what I'm thinking.

Remember when Danielle told the Losties that the "monster" was a security system? Ever since then, I've thought that it was protecting certain areas of the island from the "Others." And while seeing Mr. Friendly and Ethan together in the medical hatch started to convince me they and Dharma were the same, I'm still not sure.

Heck, our Losties have control of a hatch - why couldn't the "Others" have taken control of the medical hatch from Dharma?

Here's my best latin interpretations of the map. Even though this doesn't need to be spoiled, I will do so out of respect to those who don't want to know anyway:



For those of us geeks who want to try and correct the above, please let me know, I'd like it to be definitive.

If the island/Dharma/Others/whatever can make Locke walk and Jin's little jins swim straight again, it/they can probably handle wheat allergies or diabetics.

I still say I don't think there's any hidden meaning behind all the Dharma branded items. It just adds to the general mystique of the show.