That's fair. I guess like most things right now, it's meant to be ambiguous until we find out what direction the show is heading. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised one way or the other.

Nice setup episode.

I like how the writers always surprise us. Everyone thought that Jacob (or Smokie?) had taken Sayid and now it seems he's infected.

Same with the side-flashbacks everyone has theories and at the end the writers will come with something different.
My theory is that they will live like separate realities and losties in the island and NC losties in the "real" world having different lifes. Losties in the island become Others of course. And they may hint how this separate realities happened.

I thought this show was terrible filler. I had many problems with the plot (not to mention that there are now 15 hours left to explain everything).

1. If Sayid needed to die, then why didn't they just shoot him instead of forcing poison on him or letting him off the table?
2. How would torturing Sayid prove anything?????
3. Why in the world would the police show up at the hospital looking for Kate (aka Joan Hart), ask Claire if she's seen her and then immediately leave when she says "no"?? Nice investigating.
4. Do we really need a whole new set of characters here in the last season to figure out? Shouldn't the bad "others" have been revealed last year or the year before?

I'm afraid that we're going to be left with more questions than answers after this is all over. I get the fact that it's parallel universes played out simultaneously, but I have NO interest in the non-plane crash Losties and truthfully, the plot playing out on the island has been lame so far too.

More Locke and Richard going forward please.

I agree, this was a disappointing episode.

We had 20 minutes of Jack and Dogen talking in circles. The acting and chemistry between them was great, but, Dogen could have told him everything immediately, instead it takes Jack swallowing the pill, to tell him.

Why are the temple others being so mysterious, when obviously they need and want the Losties help?

We had 20 minutes of Kate running through the woods after Sawyer.

And we had 20 minutes of off-island Kate, which was boring. Some nice touches off-island, but boring.


Glad they got this episode out of the way early on.

Maybe shooting him wouldn't work. He already came back from one gunshot wound. Since they said he had to take the poison willingly, maybe the only way an 'infected' person can die is by their own hand.

If the 'infection' has something to do with Smoky being in him, maybe those tests were meant to reveal it to them. The first test was putting what looked to be ash on him, which is what people have been using to protect themselves from Smoky.

It wasn't handled completely realistically, but who's going to think a murderous fugitive decided to stick around a hospital to comfort someone they'd just car-jacked at gunpoint? I can't see any reason for the cops to assume Kate was still hanging with Claire.

This could well turn out to be a legitimate complaint, but I'll wait to see where it goes.

Are you sure they're the bad ones?

They're all the same.



On an unrelated note, how does Ethan exist in the NC storyline when his parents met on the island only because of the Others?

Also, how the heck does Ethan become part of the Others?

Assuming the bomb going off caused the new timeline, he was born before that happened.

Ben recruited him from Dharma.

Definitely a weak episode. We saw nothing of Locke and Richard. Just more of the typical Lost frustration:

Jack: "I want answers now, who are you people"

Others: "We'll explain everything"


And of course, nothing gets explained.

Hard to be, everything is so ambiguous. You can't tell what the motivations are behind what they're trying to do.

Correct. Thanks for clarifying that about his dob.

I think you're right, and I think that this answers a lot of questions. Notice that the writers didn't directly tie all of these events together by having a character say "Here's what happened!" but gave us enough to piece everything together. I think we can expect a lot more of this type of thing from the rest of this final season.

Also, it's interesting that the "infection" was a hot Lost topic that people debated a lot during the first season, then it got kind of forgotten and brushed off for about 4 years, and now it's back as a central plot point.

No master plan, eh?

Yes, and yes.

I think the episode did show us that "What happened, happened," is still true to a degree. Even though they aren't on the island, Kate is still tied to Aaron's birth, as is Ethan. Preventing the crash isn't changing things.

It all makes sense now!

I call them the "bad" Others because that's how Ben referred to them back in S3 or S4....

Maybe but Jacob had to die by another's hand. I highly doubt they plan to explain this minor plot issue if they can't even explain where Christian or Claire have been for the last year and a half.

Agreed, but they could have asked her questions about Kate's appearance. Maybe about anything she said, if Claire is ok, etc. The scene should have faded out instead of them walking out no smarter than when they arrived. It was poorly done and took me out of the episode.

I'm just being nit-picky because we only get 15 more hours and I expect 5 star episodes each and every week from here on out. This was 2 stars and felt more like S2 than a series finale.

I believe we have already been introduced to them, or at least heard of them. My money is on them being the remaining crew of the Black Rock.

at Claire's ridiculous hair at the end of the episode. Continuing in the great Lost tradition, and right up there with Jack's infamous crazy weasel rug in that flashback in an earlier season. It kind of offset the shock of the cliffhanger for me, because guffawing out loud tends to do that.

This episode may have marked Josh Holloway's finest moment on the show (so far). It made up for all the scowling/glowering in the premiere.

Also, it now appears that MiB can take over or possesses unburied dead bodies but can also assume the appearance of the dead (see: Locke).

What's the difference? Locke is unburied dead, as was Christian.

If thinking this through doesn't give you a headache, you're a better man than me.

I think it's a lot simpler. Like I said last week, there is only one timeline. The bomb reset everything (the original 815 does not crash) and we're now flashing back and forth between 2004 and 2007 in the SAME timeline.

As for why the 2007 Losties seem to have retained their memories, I had to think about that for a bit. And I think the answer is in Faraday's explanation in that "Whatever Happened, Happened" episode. Although the timeline has changed, the characters have still experienced the (now altered) past and retain their memories. But there is a whole new back-story as to how they came to the island in this timeline and that's what the flashbacks are (slowly) going to reveal.

That's my guess anyway.

Perhaps it has something to do with dying on or off the island? Maybe he can take the form of dead bodies that come to the island but can only "infect" those that die on the island?

That's been my pseudo-theory, as well...

With Claire, Sayid, Christian, etc., it appears as though he's actually possessing the dead body via "infection." With Locke, the dead body exists separately and MiB has only assumed the appearance. Whether this difference is important or meaningful, I have no idea.

Gotcha. Except for all we know Christian and Claire's bodies (assuming she's dead) could be somewhere on the island, a la Locke's.

The Sayid angle, however, puts a wrinkle in that theory of mine.

Oh well, bring on next week, I say...