LOST Season 4 Official Thread

getting off work is key.

But ABC does do hi-def viewing the next day, so it isnt too bad, and hopefully soon the writers will be getting paid for all of those!

i am also super excited for this episode... i am sure i could go to  lostpedia and it would tell me a brief synopsis and tell me who's flashback it is going to be, but i am resisting, so i can savor it a little...

What?  We get a flashback on a character we have never even met before?  Or is a flashforward on him?  Since Naomi said that 815 went down and everyone died?

That opening sequence was priceless...

Holy shit!

Holy shit!

H.O.L.Y S.H.I.T!

Wow. This has to be the best episode so far. I'm pretty sure those were flash backs. Does anyone know what else Miles has done? He looks very familar and I can't remember what movies/shows I'vew seen him in. It looks like Ben hasn't been on the island the entire time he's lived there. Hmmm...he seems to piss a lot of people of.

And what plane were they looking at? Obviously not flight 815.

They were looking at a replica.  It's a fake, being staged by Oceanic Airlines.  To cover shit up. 

We already knew about Ben.  He moved to the island when he was like 7 or 8, with his father.   And I dont doubt he left the island, same as Richard and Ethan, and he pissed some folk off.  I am not surprised.

This was a phenmonal episode.  The question is, why did they need a ghost hunter, and anthropologist, and a physicist for, if they were just going on a kidnapping / recon mission???

Anybody notice that Locke and the gang were sitting around in that same area where Charlie was hung back in season 1.  I doubt it means anything, and It could be a completely different place, but it looked really familiar to me.  Anyway, great episode. 

I would figure that whoever this group is, they're somehow connected with dharma/hanso and they'repretty pissed at him for killing off their whole crew years ago.

I'm guessing now that this "box" is somehow able to send people to and from the island and they sent the polar bear to tunisia as a test. Which still seems weird because how would they know it worked?

I think where it got so slow and dragging out over season 2 and the first of season 3 was just the climb to the top of the rollercoaster and from here on out it's gonna be breakneck speed to the end!

how the hell did the polar bear bone's fossilize? 

I thought we had established, with the facts of the former pilot still being alive and the team searching for Ben supporting the pre-existing facts, the island was not moving at a different time than the rest of the world/universe???

The news said that the plane crashed off the coast of Indonesia.  I don't believe it.  The whole thing is a cover up.  The question is, who is covering it up, and where the looking for the plane or for the island or for something else when they found it?

The ROV's that found 815 are from the Christiane 1.  The Christiane I is a salvage ship in the alternate reality game Find 815. It left port from Jakarta, Indonesia, and is looking for the Black Rock in the Sunda Trench.  It is somehow associated with the Maxwell Group, which is a division of Widmore Industries.

I've been saying for a while now that there was a staged crashed plane, so it was nice to see that theory pan out as I thought it would. I'm still convinced that Pak Heavy Industry is involved with it, probably contracted through Hanso.

I love the way this episode was structured, giving us flashbacks not only for Naomi but also four other people we haven't even met yet. I want to watch it again, but from a what-the-fuck-is-going-on standpoint, and from a progressing the plot standpoint, this was one of the best episodes I've seen yet.

Ben has probably spent a lot of time off the island, and I'm sure somehow someone found out that he was partially responsible for the death of the Hanso group. I'm sure the helicopter crew, their mission consisted of more than just finding and capturing Ben, but also to do some research on the island before heading back home, giving whoever hired them important information that they can use to stage some sort of assault. The gas mask indicates they were prepared to kill a large group of people if need be, but they definitely made a mistake by only having one soldier. And why would Naomi fly in solo before the rest of the group? And who was piloting that helicopter?

And out of all the shit that was thrown at us - Ghost hunters! Time traveling Dharma Polar bears in the desert! Naomi as Rambo! - the thing that I'm most curious about is what is happening on the freighter. During the last phone call, the woman on the boat sounded in trouble, and the captain was unavailable. Ben reveals he has a person on the freighter, who is obviously doing something to disrupt them, but who is this person, how did Ben know to get him/her on the freighter, how did that person infultrate the group, and so on. There's so much going on here, it's absolutely brilliant, I almost feel bad for people who abandoned the show too soon. Can't say we didn't warn them, though....

I agree, wholeheartedly.  This episode was abso-freaking-lutely amazing.  SO many more questions!!!

I am still confident that the Oceanic 6 do not get off the island as a result of these people...  

OR they have to kill all of them to get off, maybe that is hte secret they cant tell anyone?  And maybe thats why no one else decided to leave?  (Thoughthat doesnt seem likely, I am sure that a large number of the miscellaneous extras, there must be 15 or so still alive, would want to leave too and wouldnt mind killing some fools for it).

I think it's Michael who is on the boat. Maybe he was drifting out in the ocean and they picked him up. Just a thought, but it was the first person who came to mind.

I thought the gas mask equipment all had that biohazard logo on them? it made me think maybe coming into the island they thought it was still under quarantine from when kelvin/desmond and the other guy were still pressing the button.

Did they specifically say the polar bear in tunisia was fossilized? I got the impression it was but from the looks of the bones they looked awfully new.

as for ben's man on the frieghter, i don't think it's him but we haven't seen mikhail yet in these two episodes. I say i don't think it's him because it sounds like it's someone that ben has had on this boat for quite a while infiltrating them.

Michael being the spy does raise some interesting questions and can probably be easily fit into the show - maybe Ben told Michael about what was going to happen should anyone ever get to this island and what would happen if he allowed Michael and Walt to leave. It doesn't sound incredibly plausible, but I could see it working.

I missed the quarantine logos, but if so, that's a good reason why they'd've brought them along, but I don't know why any of the helicopter crew wouldn't've just said, "Oh man, we thought this place was quarantined." Also, why would Naomi have any reason to contradict what Abaddon was telling her about there being no survivors? Wouldn't she have been led to believe that 815 crashed in the ocean and killed everyone on board, along with everyone else not directly responsible for the cover up? Why would she assume anything else?

Also the guy playing Miles was in X-Men 3, he was the dude with the spiky face that gets killed along with the rest of the bad guys during the final battle.

Also, its pretty safe to assume that the physicist was sent to the island to figure out what is keeping the island from being detected, that Miles was sent there to discover information about or communicate with Jacob, and the pilot was recruited after disclosing his identity to the operator of the Oceanic hotline. But why they only sent one soldier (Naomi) and why they sent a palientologist is beyond me at this point. Of all these characters, I'm interested in Miles the most, and I'm interested in the woman's grandson, the drug dealing kid who was murdered. I assume this'll come into play again because they made a blatant effort to show us his photo several times.

Also, I'm really sick of the writer's resorting to "Are they gunna kill Ben or not?" tension to move the story along. The audience knows Jack isn't going to kill him and Locke isn't going to kill him and Sawyer isn't going ot kill him, so knowing that it's very hard to keep the tension up. I'd rather Ben start steaking up about what's going on, rather than this big bluff that's never going to pay off, especially now that we know Ben is interested in talking with Hurley about Jacob's cabin. It'll be great when we find out who is on the boat, and I hope its someone we already know, like the Sheriff or Richard, rather than a new character, and I wonder how one person is going to commandeer the entire freighter filled with who knows how many people.

I was just reading on lostpedia that mikhail is definitely dead this time, from the producers confirmation. Which, along with bad wigs for jack, seems to be a recurring theme...pointless wasted deaths of characters!

Yeah, they confirmed it after the season 3 finale, which is all fine and good - I'm glad he's dead - but I don't think it was very well executed in the show if you have to have a press conference to confirm it after the fact. Same thing for the Sheriff lady - she pops in and has a big deal with one episode, is never seen from again, and then is confirmed dead.

with her though i figured they might give us a flashback to what happened to her. mikhail, all we get is "oh yeah, he's dead for reals this time.' Bah!

there's speculation that she might've been killed by locke when he blew up the submarine but its still a really dumb move by the producers to tell us she's dead, that takes all the fun out of seeing her die.

I understand why they said that Mikhail was dead, though, because we all really were convinced that we saw him die when he went through the fence.  And he did say "Thank you," most likely because he thought the fence was set to a lethal level.  So the fans demanded to known whether or not Mikhail was still alive but just missing some fingers, because giving his history as we know it, he is pretty good at surviving stuff that seemingly kills him.

Maybe the bones are not fossilized, I am not sure.  I would not be surprised if Michael was on the boat, he and Walt need to return somehow.  But I dont see why he would.

There is apparently a 2004 travel guide on top of Frank's TV in his flashback, so everyone is asuming that the flashbacks occur in 2004.  But how long between the "crash discovery" and the mission?  Naomi recognizes Charlie as "the rockstar," and says that he had a large memorial, and the band gets back together and writes a #1 songt and goes on a world tour...Did she make that up?  I dont think she would... 

It is also clear that she doesnt have 100% faith in Abaddon...

I have lots of other thoughts racing through my mind but I need to let them digest for now.  It is funny watching Lostpedia, though, from the moment the episode ends through today, and looking at the information as it is added and the changes it goes through.

Does it really matter if you do the alternet reality? I've watch some of the little episodes and I didn't think it was too important.

Thank for telling me what Miles has done...it was driving me crazy.

 i think the spy on the boat is Ben's childhood friend, the girl that he had a crush on but left the island. He could have possibly stayed in contact with her and is now using her as a spy and that's how he knows so much information about the four that landed on the island.

when the pilot is watching the tv and sees a boating in the water that they are assuming is 815's pilot, it looks like the body Sawyer and Kate found that time in season one, where Kate saw the briefcase with the guns. The body looks identical and it's hard to forget how gross the face was of the body, so I'm pretty sure it's the same body. If that's the case, how did they get footage if the body is on the island in the water? 

If I remember right, in the first ARG they made a rabbit appear on the shelf that was the same rabbit as the guy was holding. Could explain the polar bear.

There is also some speculation that the pictures on the wall of the home had a pic of Eko when he was a kid. I saw the pics and it does look like him.

Also the frames of the pictures change. Look at the frames whne he goes upstairs then look at them when he goes down stairs.

Charllotte Lewis is a refernece to CS Lewis. Chalotte, like CS are professors at Oxford.

Ive watched pretty much all of the new ARG and I didnt learn anything new except that Maxwell Corp and Widmore are the same. Yawn I hope there is more to it otherwise a huge waste.

most bodies look the same once they have been underwater for three months, as far as decomp and the like, so i dont think the body that was shown on the footage was the same found earlier.  (It may have been the same prop, though!)

The footage showed an entire plane, submerged.  So we know the footage is false, and that there really never were any confirmed deaths, it is a cover up.  The question is, who is covering it up?  Also, the footage in the opening scene, from the ROVs - Was that the actual wreckage?  The ROV footage only shows a piece of the plane, and the navigators were commenting on weird readings and anomalies.  So I speculate that they really did find the (partial) wreckage of the plane.  This is what gave the freighter an approximate location.  However, they took that information and used it to stage a fake discovery of the entire plane.  If I remember correctly, we do not learn that the ROVs were from the Christiane 1, which is what confirms their geographical location, until the news footage.  So they could still be anywhere, and have really found the plane.  But whoever it was that found the plane is now doing something sinister...

There is a chance that MIchael is the person who gave them coordinates to search for.  In the opening scene one person comments to another, "Are you sure these are the coordinates your buddy gave you?" or something to that effect.  But the more I think about it, the more I doubt that he was one the boat.  Why would he actually return?  If it was part of his deal with Ben, why would he honor it?  And, additionally, he does not know about Desmond nor does he have access to a photo.  So where did Naomi's photo come from?  This leads me to believe that these are other folk, empowered by Widmore Industries in some way.  Who knows what Ben was doing off-island, or why they were looking for him, or why he gave his real name to anyone when he was off island.  Some people have hypothesized that these are Dharma Intiative folk, but they could not be part of the original crew on the island, as the project was abandoned in 1978 and they are all too young (except maybe for the pilot).   The theory is that the Dharma Intiative, though it has abandoned its Island project, is still working elsewhere and other leaked videos, such as the one around season two shot ona  hand-held where a girl is shooting a clandestine meeting talking about a virus the Dharma tested on some folks in an Indonesian (or Javan, or somewhere) village that killed 1/3 of the people it infected, support this belief that Dharma is still operative.   The freighties are new Dharma, back to either take revenge for the Purge (which seems like a lame reason to spend this much time energy and money and also doesnt require the different types of scientists three of the new characters represent) or to re-invigorate their original Island studies...

My bad... watching the opening scene over and over again, it seems that the ROV footage and the news footage is in fact the same, we do see the whole plane from the ROV point of view.  Which means, unless the boat was in on it, someone planted an entire plane for them to find and report on...  It does not explain how they got the bearing of "about 137" off of their buddy's map and it led them to the plane, though, unless "their buddy" was one of the fo0lks involved in the coverup...

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but I just realized where I remember Miles from.  He was uncle juniors crazy buddy on the last season of the Sopranos.

I think Miles has done a few things. Someone had already pointed out he was from Xmen but I know he has been in other movies. I've even seen Jack on the SiFi channel in some weird made for TV movie. I still think Michael is the one on the boat. Maybe Ben is exploiting Walt. Almost in the same way Ben did with Juliet. He kept using her sister as a way to keep her on the island. He didn't realy break his promise, but he still wasn't being too fair.

One thing I found interesting...the lady walking by Dan in the very beginning (we never see her face) walked and sounded a LOT like Juliet...hmmm...

My bet is that It's Michael on the freighter as the inside man.

Also, was that little quip about "tall Walt" what the producers hinted at as the explanation? Is it just one of those "don't think about this too much" things?

i think the "tall walt" thing they'll explain more. the mention of it last night was just to let everyone know that the people on the island recognize the difference too and arent just going to act like he's always been that big

I think this is more likely the case.  I think that somehow Walt and Michael have aged more/faster than the island.  Everytime I develop some sort of time theory I find holes in it so I am not going to try to do it now.  But I think that is the easiest explanation for Walt of a sudden being taller and the like.  I guess that doesnt much explain why Walt's astral projection of himself, the one who visited Shannon and Locke, is bigger.  Well, thats not true.  If it is some sort of astral projection, intentional or unintentional, it makes sense that Walt's mind is transmitting an astral projection that matches his current form.  If it is some sort of manifestation of Jacob or the smoke monster or some other weird Island entity, it doesnt make sense for it to have grown tall, rather it would be the image of Walt that it "remembered," which was shorter.   Why and how Walt was able to atral project from off of the island back onto the island to guide Locke and tell him what to do is beyond me, though... that is why it makes more sense for Locke's vision to be an Island entity, not something done by Walt (or Walt's mind) but then that doesnt explain the growth.  ARGH.  I dont know how a time/temporal shift theory could work, I have alwasy found holes in my theories, which really just means my theories were not elegant enough, not that it is impossible.  Nothing in the any of the flashbacks or flashforwards denies this as a possibility.  They imply in the last episode that the flashbacks were in 2004, so sometime right after the crash, but who knows?  The news reporter, though it is hard to hear over Daniel's sniffling, talks about the flight and says "Left Sydney for Los Angeles on September 22 2004."  Why would she add the year if it was still 2004?

However, amidst all of this, I am not convinced that either MIchael or Walt are on the freighter.  I just dont see why they would be, it makes no coherent sense.  If anything, they would go back to the island in an attempt at rescuing their friends.  Not as covert agents working for Ben, nor part of a group trying to kidnap Ben.  They would only return if it meant they could save their friends, which the freighter has unequivocally stated it is not planning, or intending, on doing.

I am also still not convinced that this freighter is in fact what is repsonsible for getting the Oceanic 6 off of the island.  It may either leave or be destroyed or be commandeered by the Others, I dont know... and I am not ruling it out, obviously, that this freighter gets them off island.  But I am not convinced of it.  Hurleys apology for going with Locke may speak to the opposite of this, and might imply that they are soon transported off, but I dont trust a single implication the show offers anymore... and I only trust half of the facts...

All they have to do is show Michael with a patch of grey hair and everything will be fine for the audience. There is probably going to be something about how staying on the island will cause you to age slowly but leaving the island will speed it up.

And I doubt it was Juliet. I don't think the producers know who the chick was yet, but by not showing her face they kept the door open for a lot of options, allowing them to change on a whim. That's one of the things I really appreciate about this show, the adaptability of it all.

Touche on the adaptability, that's really where they shine, especially when it doesnt seem like deus ex machina over and over again.

Yeah, I dont see a problem with aging Michael, either, I just still dont see why he'd be on the boat. 

There are other problems with the whole time moving at different speeds situation, such as the "live" feed of her sister and nephew that Ben showed Juliette, after the plane crashed.  If it really was live, as he said, then her sister and nephew both aged just about 3 years, which is the same as how much time she spent on the island.

Hopefully we will soon discover just how long the freighter has been out there, and I suspect we will learn about Ben's "man" in episode 3 or 4.  And I am guessing we will see Walt and michael again in these first 8 episodes, though we may not, who knows...  Luckily, even though the storyline is opening up even more questions, the course it has plotted for itself seems to require it to answer many of those along the way, instead of stringing us along indefinitely...

Well, my point was that the world doesn't move any different, its just that the people who've been on the island and are now off it, they age faster, and people who were off the island and who are now on it, they age slower. Which could explain why Ben went from being a little kid to looking like a middle-age man in a few short years, if he spent a significant amount of time off the island. If that picture Miles had is any indication, he did spend some time off the island.

Also, I saw you over at Lostpedia, changing shit.

<--- Random Stranger.

Pretty much I just hit "recent changes" whenever I go to the site to see what most people are focusing on. And I agree with you about waiting until later to change anything, but typically the first batch of people to start putting shit up do so in such a rush that they don't care about spelling or grammar or linking to other important pages. Right after watching the show, I'll usually go straight to the theory pages or add some unanswered questions, and primarily just focus on cleaning up other people's bad typing. After a day has passed, when people finally get around to posting still photos from the episode, that's when things really start getting interesting.

Anyway, another couple of interesting theories:

* Walt is Ben's "man on the boat" - he and Michael were picked up by the freighter people, but before being sent off Walt was brainwashed in Room 23, and given a way to communicate with Ben. He was then put in the boat with Michael and they were given coordinates that would get them close enough to the freighter to be intercepted and picked up. Ben knew the whereabouts of the freighter through Mikhail or Richard or any of his other sources.

* There is no man on the boat. Ben has information about all the members on the boat through his other sources, and he knew the boat was coming for them, but he tells Locke's group that there is a man on the boat to plant doubt in Charlotte's mind. When they meet with Jack's group (presumably during the next episode), she doesn't allow Jack to take Ben, thinking there is a mole among her people.

This would mean that Ben knew about the boat a hell of a long time aggo, which means it has just been hnaging out in the Pacific for a while, which is an interesting proposition.  If this is true, did he know then that the boat was looking for him, which is why he wanted a man on the inside?  OR was he just concerned about their proximity to the island?  Either way, some reason, this doesnt seem likely to me, but if it is true, then man, Michael is going to be PISSED at Walt.  He burned the first raft and now brings them to a freighter that is looking for the island?  All Michael wants to do is bring his son home, to his pathetic life back stateside.  As opposed to living on a tropical island where there is bountiful food and you are one of the most importnat peole in your community.  Well, you were before you started murdering innocent people.  So,I guess the impetus to go back to the States must be a little higher, now that he is a murderer...

I'm still curious if they're going to write in the tsunami hitting the island.

Well, according to Lostpedia, last week's episode was Day 94, which makes it December 24, 2004.  The tsunami was on December 26, so I guess we will see in one of the next twp episodes if they decide to include it.

I guess it would depend on where they are geographically located, but that Tsunami caused devastation MILES inland.  It could possibly literally mess up the entire island, or at least it has the potential to, depending on where the island actually is. 

It's kind of funny... every theory we (or any Lost fan) proposes, trying to answer any of the question, just creates more questions in and of itself, and often gives us answers at the expense of  more confusion.  However, that is exactly what the writers do, too!  So any of our theories ar epossible, no matter how many holes they might have, and no matter how many additional questions they might catalyze...

I highly doubt they will be including the tsunami into the plot of the show.  It would just be to dificult and would completely fuck that entire ilsand over.  They have included small things from real life, like the Sox winning the world series, but those types of things were entirely irrelivent.  Making the survivors not be able to get of the island because a tsunami hit would be way to obvious.

i'm not so high on them not being able to get off the island because of the tsunami, but i'm wondering if they'll hint at whatever caused it is something going on at the temple or something. maybe the islands magical properties wont let the tsunami reach the island or it brings the frieghter inland a la the black rock? my only concern is they've pretty much got the whole gang back at the beach at present so they'd need to figure out a reason to get all or most of them to high ground asap.

There have been several hints at mirrors and mirror images, dopplegangers and references to CS Lewis (Through the Looking Glass and Alice and Wonderland).  The thing about the Bunny, and not putting them near each other.  One thought is that  we as human beings, as souls, do exist on MANY planes at the same time, is that something that plays into this?  A common scifi theory is that if you travel back/forward in time and meet/touch yourself it'll cause a major disaster, both will die.  These are some of the things I've been thinking about lately.  I keep waiting for Jack/Jack to meetup or past/present/future Jack or other character to run into itself.  Then there's the whole BOX thing whereby Locke summoned his father.  These all seem related to me.

Great stuff guys.

cs lewis did not write Slice in Wonderland, he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia as well as the Turnscrew Letters (or something like that) as well as a whole bunch of Christian theology.  Well, of course, the Christian theology was pretty explicit in The Chronicles of Narnia, but it was pretending NOT to be Christian theology.  he also wrote stuff that didnt pretend.  Lewis Carol wrote the Alice in Wonderland stuff.

While I am all for some sort of temporal shift of some sort, I am not too keen on their being dopplegangers or some sort of hole in time that could allow such dopplegangers to exist.  The fact that the crash was an obvious coverup or hoax of some sort insinuated to me that it isnt a rip in the space time continuum, ot at least not one that allows for time travel.  But who knows?

I actually have an appointment from 6:30 - about 10 this Thursday, so I am going tot miss it.  Which is awful.  but I am confident that within a few hours of the time I get home it will be available for download, and I will watch it later Thursday night or Friday morning before work...

sorry, double post.  OR a doppleganger!

I saw some spoiler stuff and they will probably do this but because of the writers strike we wont see it until next season.  

Unless its' the season finale! They have been talking about how awesome it going to be, maybe I just uncovered it!

oh duh - Lewis Carol, not CS Lewis, brainfart

and i know who the Oceanic Six are - Jack and Kate are two, the rest may surprise you

also, i think the guy in the coffin is BEN, due to kate's strong reaction, or maybe LOCKE