Lost Discussion Group: One More Week Edition

Only six days to go! Oh no! I have only recently gotten addicted to Lost, and this past weekend, my girlfriend and I had Lostapalooza 2009, during which we made it through Season One and part of Season Two in two days.

So if there's any way you could ask ABC to push back the premier for another week or two, I would be extremely grateful. I mean, we have only six days to make it through 2 1/2 seasons? We've only made it to the episode where crazy Anna Lucia is searching for "Henry's" hot air balloon. Oh, the drama!

I'm pretty sure you have that type of pull with ABC. Right? : )

@James,
It would not surprise me one bit if the island has been moved to a Tunisia desert hundreds (maybe thousands) of years ago. Charlotte's polar bear corpse dig looked pretty old, and it was in Tunisia . . . where Ben wound up last season. If I'm right, maybe the island kind of moved locations, "dropped Ben off," and then skipped times. Kind of like a skipping stone on the water: it skips a few times, usually unpredictably, and then sinks.

I'll get the ball rolling by talking about "when" in the most general terms possible - past, present, and future.
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Past - Based on the ComicCon video of Pierre Chang, it sounds at least that Farraday is in the past. But he wasn't on the island, but near it. If the island went to the past, it would make sense that Locke, now in the present, would know what happened, having lived through it, and could just leave the island and find the 06, telling them they had to return to the island by going back in time (DeLorean optional) and preventing the bad things.
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Present (2005) - It's all but certain that the island moved through time, not just space.
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Future (later than 2008)- When Ben moved the island, he got sent like 10.5 months into the future (and into Tunisia). So maybe the island moved in the same temporal direction. And that would explain why Widmore wouldn't be able to find the island, because it hadn't appeared yet (this is assuming that Ben's warning to Widmore was of the "you are unable" kind and not "I'll never let you"). Locke somehow goes back in time, finds the O6, tells them they have to go back to the island BUT NOT NECESSARILY time travel to do so, because they can just wait around for the island to appear. Or they can go into the future.
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Future (2008) - BUT maybe the island reappeared between Ben's confrontation with Widmore and Locke's departure from the island. Let's say, 2007. Then, Locke could have gone off the island without the use of time travel (by following a special bearing) and found the 06, telling them they must return to the island without having to time travel, because it's there.

dang it, that smiley face thing happened again! that's supposed to be an 8 followed by a )

@Matt, re: Daniel - We've seen in previews what appears to be Daniel walking on the beach to Juliet and Sawyer. We've also seen what appears to be Daniel in a cave that looks suspiciously like the cave Ben took to get to the frozen donkey wheel (though there may be many of these caves deep down... remember the concrete under the Swan?). I suspect that everything out to and including the freighter wreckage/survivors moved with the Island, and Daniel gets back with his red shirts and has a "WTF just happened" moment with Juliet and Sawyer. He then is free to explore, and he finds a cave like the frozen donkey wheel cave, and it's through that cave that he gets pulled back in time.
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I like the way they described the flashes. It implies that we're going to jump around the spectrum of time, with a relatively even spread of when we're going to be watching. Hopefully that means we won't have too much Kate.
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After finishing S4 again this week, I'm believing more and more that Widmore was the Island Master before Ben. He would have been, if not involved with, aware of Richard going after Locke when he was born. He still would have had ties to Mittelos when they tried again when he was in high school. After Ben became the Island Master (I'm inclined to say that this happened before the Purge, though how long is hard to say), Widmore knew the Island wanted Locke, so he sent Abaddon to Locke's hospital to make the connection there to try to get Locke to the Island, so Ben would be rejected. It definitely doesn't feel like the perfect theory to me, but parts of it seem to fit the puzzle.

I'm pretty sure it is in the past, based solely on the idea that by moving in the past, we get a glimpse (eventually) of "how" the people on Oceanic Flight 815 were all "manipulated" (if not explicitly, at least implicitly) to be on that flight, by Mrs. Hawking and others.
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Remember Locke - "we were brought here for a reason." And Jack - "live together or die alone." By sending the island-survivors to the past, they see that they HAVE to get on that plane, and themselves play a role in ensuring their past selves are on the correct "time-path/fate-path" to make it onto Flight 815. They realize that ALL of them must get on that flight because they all needed each other to survive, and what needs to be done to make it so.

By the way, I just watched Fire and Water, the episode where Charlie goes nuts about baptizing Aaron, last night....some AMAZING hints at what was to come in Charlie's future, particularly when his mother gives him a piano and says something like "Play us a tune Charlie" and "One day, you'll get us out of here" thanks to his playing.
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Unfortunately, his initial sheet music was NOT Good Vibrations, which would have been simply AWESOME.

@Dave - that's a good point about Daniel. And I should have kept in made as far as the ComicCon videos, that they don't necessarily mean anything right away (the 07 one didn't come into play until the S4 finale, for example).
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According to Jeff Jensen over at EW, there are a few episodes that will be particularly helpful in unpacking all this time-travel stuff: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20251960_2,00.html
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As a side note, James, can you establish a LDG policy about when the "present" is? Is it with the O6 in 2008? With the Island, whenever it is? After reading that interview you linked to, without guidance my brain will explode!

@Dave -- interesting idea, and one that I hadn't thought of but your post inspired me about -- what if there are (at least) TWO donkey wheels?
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By spinning his, Ben pushed the island "slightly" into the past and in a new location, but he was catapulted 10.5 months into the future into Tunisia (under the theory that the offset for moving something as huge as the island even a minute into the past would require a much larger time/space jump in the opposite direction by the much smaller Ben).
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Later, Faraday finds another OPPOSITE wheel. He pushes this and the island jumps into the FUTURE and a different location, but Faraday is jumped MUCH farther into the past (where he joins Dharma, eventually dies, etc.). The place/time the island jumps to after spinning this wheel, though, causes some bad stuff to happen. John is forced to spin the Ben wheel to return the island to equilibrium, and also to get the Oceanic 6 back (for some reason)...
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As a theory goes, it has some holes and needs some work....

@Chad - I love seeing those old episodes, because at seemingly random parts, your eyes get huge and you take a huge gasp because of some crazy foreshadowing.
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@Matt - that's a good idea, to clarify terminology. If Cuse and Lindelof are really describing time as jumping around evenly, it might even be a good habit for us to try to avoid words like past/present/future, because what if we go into Black Rock past, Dharma past, pre-Dharma Island past, etc.
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As for when the Island moved to after Ben moved it, I think that the Island appeared the same time Ben did. I think Locke was sent away (perhaps through another cave/device similar to the frozen donkey wheel, except instead of moving the Island through time and space, it just moves the person?) and had to live in the real world for some time in order to wait for the O6 (and Walt/Michael) to get back.

So... did my most recent post donkey wheel on you guys too? I see it as being posted at 12:48, but I definitely posted it a while ago. Weird.
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As for multiple donkey wheels, I was more taking the line that there are multiple space-time sensitive locations on the Island. The FDW happens to be the trigger for moving the Island in space and time. Perhaps another space-time cave is for moving the person in the cave through space and time. And yet another would be for moving just the person in the cave only through time (Daniel getting back to Dharma times, and perhaps home again). That would also explain all the concrete under the Swan. The DI thought they could drill down into the space-time magical goo and utilize it, and they screwed something up. When they built the Orchid station, they knew to get close but not too close.
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I'm thinking the wheel Ben turned is a true last-resort measure (hence the Adam and Eves building the donkey wheel, so people don't accidentally trigger it). But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense that there are other space-time sensitive locations deep down in the Island.

There's a number of ways it could work out:
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The Island could indeed have traveled into the future, and the Islanders could see some worldwide post-apocalyptic setting; they later find out that the disaster was due to Dharma using some doohickey in the Island's future, but that world's past.
Locke then uses the FDW (or similar technology), the Island travels back some number of years, Bentham arrives in the world well before 815 (Hawking's & Alpert's groups could both be operating off information given by Bentham X number of decades ago - if assuming Others = Dharma was a bad move, why are we now assuming Hawking always was against Alpert?), and bides his time building his forces until a)the O6 return and b)someone in his science team tells him when the Island "lands" again. Presumably Bentham's enemies do not realize he is Locke until he starts trying to get the O6 to return.
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Or take the opposite tack: The Island ends up in the distant past. Various bits of information about that world's future/the Island's past spreads beyond the Island, and is kept in written format / oral histories for however many centuries.
-Side note that occurs to me:-
How about this: Magnus Hanso will be a central mythology character, because he was the first person on The Island who can understand the "sacred texts" written in (the to the ~1800s Islanders) unknown English! I said his ship's log was a red herring before (the only time anyone can't find the Island is only during the time periods when it doesn't exist in our timeframe), but that was assuming linear time - the log could reveal that Magnus ran across this "future prophecy". Hell, Charles Widmore could have thrown his yacht race just to get Desmond on The Island, since the log told him this had/will happened.
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For all we know, the pattern of outside invaders to The Island is people deciphering these notes "from the future" (although written in their past) and investigating. In any case, things go bad enough that Locke uses the FDW again, ends up in the Island's future (but before 815 by some number of years), and waits for The Island to land.
Given that the entire time The Island spends with Locke on it is in the past in this scenario, the disaster has to be limited in scope to The Island itself (though, again, I think the most likely cause of their disaster is the people Jack/Ben gather together to go back to The Island to save them from said disaster).
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Personally, since the few mentions of the scope of the danger seem limited (Jack/Ben have not said everyone on Earth dies if we don't go back), I would think it almost has to limit The Island to traveling into the Past; whether various manipulations were the result of Bentham-era meddling or reading the "ancient texts" has yet to be seen.

So I've been wondering about the significance of Tunisia. We know that the donkey wheel deposited Ben there. We know that the skeletal remains of a polar bear were found there. Charlotte Lewis, was super excited about the Polar Bear find. I, for one, have long suspected that Charlotte had been to the island before. The before time would have been Dharma or earlier. We saw a Dharma video in which we heard Faraday talking to Dr. Candle. In this video Dr.Candle acknowledges they are going to die. Charlotte and Faraday have some kind of spooky unspoken relationship. Here's what I'm wondering. Was Charlotte present for the purge? Did she use the donkey wheel to escape to Tunisia? How did she know to look for Polar Bears in Tunisia? Which gets me to wondering if someone, say Charlotte, can have existed in the Pre O6 Dharma past and exist in the Post O6 Dharma past? Wouldn't this necessarily create a Paradox? Which would in turn introduce time monkeys. (Dr. Who shout out) Is that why Ben cannot return to the island?

Ok, I'm confused... if the Island moves to the past, how do the O6 go back? What do they go back to? Or are we assuming that the Island gets moved regularly, so it eventually gets moved into the O6 future? That just seems too messy. Is it possible to have multiple Islands? I'm inclined to say no, because that could also get messy. I know Lost isn't exactly the best place to use Ockham's razor, but considering what we've been shown, it makes the most sense to me that when Ben moves the Island, he shows up at the same time the Island shows up.
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It also makes sense to me that there is a means to move someone off the Island through time and space without moving the Island itself - unless the DI moved the Island with the polar bear, it seems more like the bear was an early test of the strange properties of the Island.

I don't think that Locke moves the island in order to show up in 2008, and here's why: Ben says that "all of you [O6, plus walt/desmond/frank?] have to go back" and "we're gonna have to bring him [Locke], too" he is leaving himself out. Now, I know this is taking his words at face value (sorry, shara) but there's no reason why he wouldn't say "we" if he also had to go back; I just see it as too insignificant a lie/truth-twisting. Couple that with the fact that Ben says (and, I think, believes) that "whoever moves the island can never come back". So if Locke has to go back, and whoever moves the island cannot, that means Locke can't have moved the island.
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This leads me to think that the island doesn't necessarily move again. If that is the case, I wouldn't be surprised, but I'm leaning towards not. My guess is that Locke physically departed from the island, just like how Ethan, Richard, Ben & Michael/Walt all have in the past.

@tyrantking - I don't follow you turms "Pre O6 Dharma past" and "Post O6 Dharma past." Are you implying that somehow time changed when Ben moved the Island? Ms. Hawking is very clear in stating that what happens happens. I'm not sure how there could be a paradox there.
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As for Charlotte, I think she was born on the Island and somehow removed from it, either as a baby or as a child.

@Matt - In the interview James posted above, Damon Lindelof states, "When Ben says that whoever turns the wheel is never allowed to return to the island, is that a rule or is it a law? Those are two entirely different things. One would basically say, it would be impossible for him to get back to the island, no matter how hard he tried. The other would say that he could get back to the island, but if he did, he would be punished for it." I think that's a pretty heavy hint that it's the latter: he can get to the Island, but there will be some sort of punishment or price to pay. Maybe he's thinking that bringing everyone back will be his ticket back in. Nonetheless, I don't think Locke moves the Island.

@tyrant - Yeah, what do you mean by that? Time & time travel in Lost do not function like ("SPOILERS") in Back To the Future, where Marty can go back and change the past. It's more like in Terminator, where John Connor can send his friend Kyle back to the past to become his father, so he can grow up and send him back to the past...

Tyrant, you missed that Charlotte's decision was based on "where she was born"; it's unfortunate it aired just before the whole "Locke's dead and lets make him not dead", because there are all sorts of things the come up with that statement. It also vindicates those few people (I wasn't one of them) who thought her arrival on The Island was a bit too jubilant; she indeed was happy to be back.
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Most likely interpretation:
Charlotte was indeed born on The Island.
Almost certain:
With her age, Charlotte was almost certainly born pre-Purge. Therefore:
The childbirth bug has not always existed.
The Purge was not total; there are indeed people all over the world who know where The Island is and what happened to it. (Yet Mikhail continues to wear a Dharma outfit, so not everyone is up to date...)
Less certain, but still likely:
Charlotte was spared since she was a child; see also the mercs "breaking" the rules by killing Alex. Whether The Rules were declared before or after The Purge is still unknown (I am leaning towards before).
This then puts Ben's motives for grabbing the 815 children, Cindy, etc. into doubt. Was this done solely to follow The Rules? Is the entire good people list a sham? If so, why is it that The Others' rank and file do not know of the truce / The Rules?
Plausible, but not really certain:
Charlotte is an archeologist; she became interested in the field remembering the ancient ruins on The Island.
She noticed the stylistic similarities between those Island ruins and various spots in the Tunisia area; she then later read legends about mysterious people/artifacts showing up in the region throughout time and put the pieces together when the bear corpse was unearthed.
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I personally consider Charlotte's statement to be the equivalent of the "boat grenade" of Season One's finale - just like the boat grenade was a handmade, shoddy thing that belied that The Others had the funding of the vast Dharma initiative, Charlotte's little comment results in a lot of interesting conclusions. Now that I think about, Season Two's finale showed us the Four-Toed statue, and all the conclusions that follow from that (the Island's history goes back hundreds, if not thousands of years, etc.). Which makes me wonder about Season Three's boat grenade - sure, the flash forwards change things up, but they don't make us rethink half of what we've assumed up to this point. What are we missing from that episode? Or is it just that "getting off The Island" isn't the whole story?

I disagree with the near certainty that there are people all over the world who know where the Island is. I mean, Widmore has how much money at his disposal, and he seemed to work pretty hard to get his team to the Island, only to have it move.

@Dave - I think the DI did use the Tunisia bear to move the island at some point. We know the bears were trained to solve puzzles/mechanisms to some degree. I don't think that precludes there being other ways to move a person off the island through time/space without the FDW, but having Ben and the bear pop up in the same area seems to point towards a common cause to me (rather than two separate experiments/mechanisms producing the same resulting location).

"and he seemed to work pretty hard to get his team to the Island"
There's no actual evidence of that. Let's take a look at the details:
During Michael's time on the Freighter, they were anchored nearby and killing time, even _before_ Naomi went to scout out The Island (and subsequently crashed). I'd also point out that no one told Faraday the bearing to use to get on/off The Island. There is no evidence that the Freighties did not know exactly where to go, other than those vague comments in prior episodes- and the only one who says this (prior to The Island actually moving) is Ben (see the shara rule).
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(Standard disclaimer that The Island was highly unlikely to have moved post-Purge: First, a building is on sitting on top of the FDW, so either The Others rebuilt the entire structure (extremely doubtful) or the FDW hasn't been used post-Purge. Also note that the Dharma food drops continue operating.)
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Then there's Widmore's comments that The Island belonged to him in the past; can you really have ownership without knowing the details of where it is?
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Frankly, I take the combination of those factors and continue to come to the conclusion that all the (pre-FDW) "you can't find The Island" comments are complete hooey. I'm open to evidence to the contrary though.

When Faraday was doing his test with Regina, Frank commented that he did that sort of thing on the boat all the time. He could have been doing tests to figure out the bearing to use. Also, Naomi thought they were going to a point in the middle of the ocean, but they were given coordinates to move to. If Widmore knew where the Island was all that time, why wait to go? I suppose he could have been waiting to assemble the right team, but I'm still leaning to him not knowing where it was.
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I really do see your points... it's just my nature to disagree and argue I think Ben banished Widmore from the Island using a non-Island-moving magic cave, and that cave affected his memory. I don't know why, but right now, the thing that keeps coming to mind is Widmore talking about when the nightmares started. I'm really not sure of the significance, though.

Right. I see a lot of disagreement and speculating. I'm speculating that the voice in the Dr. Candle video is Faraday. Which would mean that at some point he and Dr. Candle were contemporaries. Which would seem to imply that he has time traveled to pre O6 Dharma (meaning Dharma before Faraday) once Faraday arrives it becomes post O6 Dharma. I'm assuming the island has moved back in time, not just Faraday. (Although now that I think about Faraday noting that Desmond is his constant, it's probably just Desmond who has time shifted.) Which is all somewhat circular in that if he is present during the Dharma days, then the Dharma stuff wouldn't have happened without Flight 815.
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Anyway, if we're taking Ms. Hawking at her word when she says that what happens happens and if bad things happened after the O6 left, then the O6 returning cannot reverse those bad things. So what's the point?

Maybe this all goes to Faraday's curious reaction to the footage of the crash of Flight 815, where he started crying but didn't know why he was doing it.
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Perhaps Faraday and the island leap into the past (somehow), where he meets the Dharma Initiative and Dr. Candle/Wickman. He then, somehow, eventually leaps significantly forward in time. In the process, he develops "time sickness" and needs a constant....only to "meet" Desmond through the machinations of Mrs. Hawking or someone. Immediately, like Desmond in "The Constant" episode, his past self forgets the "future" that will happen (i.e. getting to the island, etc.), so that when he sees the crash footage, a shred of his subconcious reacts....