Lost Thoughts - Week 1

Can anyone think of a better/shorter title for these weekly posts? Loughts, maybe? Thost?

Don’t worry, this isn’t a tedious recap. It’s a list of my thoughts/observations. But to tell you the truth, I was slightly disappointed with last night’s premiere. Just slightly. Before you hate me for saying that, hear me out. Compare last night’s episode to the premieres from Seasons 1-3. Think about how much new information those episodes revealed (Desmond in the Swan, the Others in the Barracks). Last night was a great stand-alone episode, for sure, but I guess it didn’t feel like a premiere to me. From what I’ve heard about next week’s, though, it’ll satiate my hunger for information…

In the thoughts below, I will be referring to a few things that we learned through the “Find 815” ARG. So if you see something you didn’t know, it’s not a spoiler, I promise.

1. Future Hurley

So Hugo’s money is gone, giving him a chance to start his life over, curse-free. Until the hobbit pops up in a 7-11, that is. My advice to you is to go back and re-watch the scene in the police interrogation room; you know, the one where Charlie swam up to the glass and made you pee in your pants a little when it shattered? Turns out there was something written on his hand, and this time it wasn’t “Not Penny’s Boat”…

Scroll over to see what it was: They Need You.

Speaking of Future Hurley, I can tell you for certain that the creepy African-American guy who paid him a visit at Santa Rosa Hospital was neither an Oceanic employee nor a figment of his imagination, which brings me to…

2. Matthew Abaddon

Abaddon was originally a Hebrew word for Sheol, which is basically Hell. It later became the name of a demon/dark angel, who in Revelation was the King of Locusts. The Greeks called him Apollyon. Here he is killing someone:

In Lost, Matthew Adabbon is played by Lance Reddick (The Wire), who is one of the five new cast members of the season (you’ll meet the rest next week). In my opinion, his performance last night was the best part of the episode (Ben’s sarcastic remarks were the second best part: “Jack, with your permission I’d like to go with John.”)

It looks like Matthew Abaddon is a high-ranking member of the organization that the “freighters” represent, which was revealed on Find815.com…

3. The Maxwell Group

A division of Widmore Industries (Penny’s pop), the Maxwell Group is named after real-life physicist James Clerk Maxwell, an early pioneer in electromagnetism. They’ve got a website, www.the-maxwell-group.com, but so far no one has been able to login. In the Find815 narrative, they manipulated former Oceanic employee Sam Thomas into joining a search for the wreckage of the Black Rock. Following their clues, Sam lead a boat to a set of coordinates in the Sunda Trench where he found the supposed wreckage of Flight 815 on the ocean floor.

So we know that Naomi wasn’t lying about that. But we also know that the Maxwell Group tricked poor Sam into finding a “dummy” plane, so that the search efforts would stop. My guess? Penelope’s father, Charles Widmore, doesn’t want anyone looking for the real plane (or therefore, the Island). He’s one of the Temporal Police, a theory of mine that I’ll explain in another post.

Speaking of the Maxwell Group, we did meet one other member at the very end of last night’s episode, a character named Daniel Faraday played by Jeremy Davies (Solaris), another new cast member (check the credits). Guess what? Faraday is the name of another electromagnetic physicist, whose work was expounded upon by Maxwell. Maybe Daniel is his descendant? Next week, we’ll learn a lot more about the Maxwell Group.

4. The Oceanic Six

We heard Hurley screaming this at the beginning of the episode. Apparently, the real world thinks that Flight 815 crashed into the ocean, since it was found by Sam Thomas in the Sunda Trench. We know from Through the Looking Glass that Jack is known in 2007 as a hero, apparently for saving the lives of himself and five other people who were aboard the plane. The question is, what kind of cover story did they come up with? Floating on an emergency raft for 3 months? And who made them lie about it? The Maxwell Group? And most intriguing of all, who exactly are the Oceanic Six? We know that Jack, Kate, and Hurley made it off the Island. That leaves three more. Desmond’s flashes told him that Claire and Aaron would be rescued. Does Aaron count as a whole person? If so, that would leave one more unaccounted for. Perhaps whoever winds up in that coffin? I don’t think so (I think that’s Michael). It will be very interesting to see who gets rescued and how. After all, Hurley chose to go with Locke, so how does he end up getting rescued? And why does he regret choosing to go with Locke? And what’s happened to the survivors who were left behind? Why do they need the Six to come back? So many questions!

5. Jacob’s Traveling Shack

Looks like this thing’s mobile. Creepy. And in case you didn’t get a good look inside, that was Jack’s dead father, Christian Shephard, sitting in the rocking chair (see the pic at the top). Someone else popped up in the window and scared the crap out of Hurley (and me). Here he is:

My guess? We’ve seen Jack’s dad on the Island before. We’re pretty sure that the Smoke Monster can look like anything it wants to (Yemi, Black Horses, etc.), so I think that Jack’s dad was an embodiment of the Smoke, and that the mysterious guy who looked through the window was Jacob. Some people think Jacob=Smoke, but this scene argues otherwise, in my opinion. It looked to me as though Jacob and Smokey were having some kind of pow-wow. As for why Jacob decided to show himself to Hurley, that’s beyond me. And speaking of Jacob…

6. Charlie’s Ghost

I’m pretty sure that Charlie wasn’t just a hallucination on the part of Hurley. As Hurley said toward the end of the episode to Jack, “It wants us to go back.” I take “it” to mean the Island, and the appearance of Charlie, who tries to convince Hurley to go back, to mean that Jacob’s (or the Island’s) power extends into the real world. After all, Ben told Juliet that Jacob could heal her sister’s cancer while she was in Portland.

One of the most interesting things about the show now will be figuring out who on earth Jacob is. His living arrangements appear to hark back to the Black Rock. Could he be its captain, Magnus Hanso, ancestor of Dharma-founder Alvar Hanso? That’s my best guess. Something happened to him on the Island and he’s no longer corporeal. My guess is that the inhabitants that were already on the Island (the four-toed ones), saw Jacob/Magnus as some sort of God/Messiah to deliver them from evil (the ever-judgmental Smokey), similar to the way the Aztecs responded to Cortez. But how he went from Captain Barbossa to all-powerful ghost is beyond me. I also think that Richard was on the Black Rock as well. Just look at his clothes in The Man Behind the Curtain. The question then becomes, why aren’t these people aging? Is that why the Island violently prevents procreation, for population control? Did it give Ben a tumor because he was messing with the reproduction rule?

Here are a few shorter observations:

- Jack’s a tool. How could he shoot Locke point-blank in the face? Shouldn’t the Doc just be happy about getting rescued? Obviously Locke has good intentions, Jack, or he wouldn’t have attempted to convince the rest of you to come with him. If he was crazy, he’d have just run away and saved himself. I’ve always liked Jack, and felt awful for him for what his terrible ex-wife did, but he’s losing my affection. Locke’s my boy.

-Ben and Danielle have a history. Watch that scene where he asks her to hide Alex again. She’s claimed to have never encountered the Others before, but there’s a lot more to Danielle’s story.

- Does this season feel like the final season to anyone else? I guess it’s because there are people off the Island, or maybe that nostalgic scene at the cockpit, but last night’s episode really did feel like the beginning of the end.

Next week’s episode, Confirmed Dead, was written by Brian K. Vaughn (Y: The Last Man) and Drew Goddard (Cloverfield). The flashbacks (or forwards?) center around (scroll to reveal): The "freighters" a.k.a Maxwell Groupees.

I’m pumped.