LA X

Any question as to whether the bomb went off or not was answered before I even began watching the episode. The onscreen info blurb stated that the episode would show "what happens in the aftermath of Juliette setting off the hydrogen bomb". So the bomb did go off. Some people counted and said that from beginning to end, Juliette hits the bomb a total of 8 times before it explodes. Eight would make sense with it being one of the numbers but I didn’t count so I will take their word for it. So after the bomb goes off and the screen goes white we are back on Oceanic flight 815. I don’t want to freak you out right away, but we really don’t know that this is flight 815 do we?

I say this because some differences are obvious right away. Jack has a different hair cut than he did in the Pilot episodes. Jack almost seems to “wake-up” as he looks around and it’s fairly obvious that he “knows” something. Cindy gives Jack one bottle of vodka this time instead of two (maybe she knows he won’t need a bottle to clean his wounds from the crash) and cue the turbulence. Rose attempts to calm Jack who is the nervous flyer in this reality not the other way around as it was originally. After the turbulence passes, Rose tells Jack he can let go which mirrors her "letting him off the hook" back in season 1. After Jack says “we made it”, Rose says “we sure did” as if she also knows something. I could be reading too much into all of this but I’m not holding any thoughts back at this point. Some people claim that Jack is seated in row 24 on this flight not row 23 like he was originally. Again we have one of the numbers. On the original flight Rose wore Bernard's wedding ring around her neck because her husbands fingers always swelled when he flew. Bernard is wearing his ring on the plane in the ATL. ATL stands for Alternate Time Line by the way, not Atlanta.





Captain Seth Norris tells us that the turbulence was caused by the plane hitting a pocket of bad air. Where did that come from? Was it maybe a pocket of exotic matter instead of just bad air? Jack goes to the lavatory and he looks at his face in the mirror. It almost seems that he was wondering why he looked older. In the mirror, Jack looks at an open wound he has on his neck and it doesn‘t seem Jack knows how it got there. Is it possible that in the mirror is the only place this wound actually appears and really isn’t on Jack’s body? Are the different realities already “bleeding” (no pun intended) through to each other? I wonder if Jack was to check, would he also be mysteriously missing an appendix? Jack comes back to his seat and Desmond is there.





Let’s examine this a little closer, Desmond seems to be wearing a wedding ring. Now if the bomb went off, would that mean Charles Widmore died in the explosion? If so, then no Penelope Widmore. Certainly if there isn’t an island then Desmond doesn't enter the boat race. No boat race means he can’t crash onto the island. Who is he married to? Is Desmond really there? I know I’m jumping around a bit but you know how this all works so bear with me. Since we know Desmond has always been “the one the rules don’t apply to”, could he know about the different time lines and is he simply there to push Jack in a certain direction? When Desmond says “brotha” he intentionally does this to jar Jack’s memory. Jack knows that he has met Desmond before and I am guessing in this reality it wasn’t when Jack twisted his ankle running up those stadium steps. I don’t think that ever happened in this reality but Jack clearly remember Desmond from somewhere. He just might not remember him from this life, brotha. Jack looks out the window and the camera begins to plunge us down through the clouds and into the ocean. On the ocean floor is the island looking a little worse for wear but just as it did before the explosion that Juliette would have caused back in 1977. The explosion of the hydrogen bomb sends the island down to the ocean floor to be with the Dharma shark. So therefore, in the alternate reality, the "reset" is on. Not exactly the “Tabula Rasa” like Faraday claimed but something like it. Whatever you choose to believe, and even though the special effects were a little more cheesy this time, you have to agree we have one of the biggest head scratchers in a LOST season premier than ever before. This was more of a “WTF?“ moment than Ben and Juliette standing in New Otherton watching 815 crash. I thought that was a hell of a way to start a season but it was nothing compared to this one. At least we know the answers will come quickly and the mysteries won’t take as long to unravel as before. The roller coaster just went up the first big hill and we are off and running at the beginning of the final season of LOST.





We have another iconic eye open at the beginning of a scene as Kate wakes up in the jungle high up in a tree. I was reminded of her up a tree picking fruit back in season one and I also was reminded of the scene of Bernard sitting in his plane seat hanging way up in a tree back in The Other 48 Days. When we hear how Kate’s hearing has been temporarily impaired it hearkens back to Charlie right after Eko tried to blow through the blast doors inside the Swan hatch when his hearing was impaired. Kate quickly runs into Miles then finds the back door to the Swan hatch. Kate runs a short distance to the crater that was the Swan hatch. There, she notices Jack and Sawyer laying in the tall grass and for a change, she goes to help Jack first. Ironically, if she had helped Sawyer first she might have been able to save Jack a kick to the face. Sawyer is pissed and who can blame him? He lays all of this onto Jack’s shoulders. One look at Jack and it would seem Jack also blames himself.





Meanwhile, back on the plane - ATL Jack meets the Marshall outside of the lavatory. Kate bumps into Jack as she comes out of the bathroom. Sawyer bumps into the Marshall. As Sawyer gets to his seat, he overhears Artz questioning Hurley about Mr. Clucks’ Chicken. When Sawyer hears Hurley mention that he won the lottery you can see Sawyer’s gears clicking as he starts making plans for Hurley to be his next mark. ATL Hurley is a completely different version than we are used to. First he calls himself the luckiest man in the world. So where is the cursed Hurley? Since Leonard never heard the numbers he never passed them on to Hurley at Santa Rosa mental institute during a game of Connect Four. This doesn’t mean that Hurley was never in Santa Rosa, although it wouldn’t surprise me if this version of Hurley is perfectly sane and has never seen the inside of a mental institution. As this is going on, on island Hurley asks Jin what just happened and why it went from day to night. Jin explained that it felt like another time jump which we know it was. Jin goes to the hatch site and sees Jack and Sawyer still arguing. The scene turns on a dime as Kate hears Juliette calling for help.





Sayid is in bad shape and he tells Hurley that he doesn’t think he will be going anywhere nice after he dies. Hurley hears something or someone in the jungle. He yells that he has a gun and knows how to use it. Yeah, that’s if you don’t count chambering a bullet as part of knowing how to use a gun.

Sun smiles while watching Rose and Bernard as “bastard” Jin tells her to button her sweater. I sure didn’t miss this version of Jin and I forgot how bad he was. Locke is reading the emergency pamphlet that he dropped in the original time line but doesn‘t drop it here in the ATL. Boone tells Locke that if the plane goes down he wants to be with Locke which is what gets Boone killed in the original time line. This version of Boone is alone and without Shannon who, it turns out, did not get on the plane with him. Locke tells Boone that he was in Australia to go on a walkabout. I really had hoped that Locke did get to go on the walkabout but Cuse and Lindelof have stated in a recent podcast that Locke was lying to Boone and he didn’t get to go on the walkabout in this time line either. Boone asks Locke if he is “pulling his leg” about the walkabout which is a little funny (especially if you have a twisted mind like me) in that it was Jack who pulled Boone’s leg. In order to set it when it was broken after the drug plane fell from the ledge. That was bad I know and I apologize.

Flocke (Fake Locke, MIB, Jacob’s Nemesis or whatever you want to call him) cuts out a piece from Jacob’s tapestry and wipes off the bloody knife. Ben is in shock and Jacob's body is gone. Flocke tells Ben to go outside and tell Richard that he wants to talk to him. Outside on the beach Frank and Sun are discussing just who Bram and Alana are. Richard is seen talking to them and discussing who is really in charge. Ben come out of the foot statue and tells Richard that John wants to talk to him inside the chamber. Ben lies about Jacob being OK. Richard shows Ben the dead body of John Locke. Ben seems genuinely shocked by this but still doesn’t come clean about Jacob being dead. Why?

Jacob tells Hurley that the reason Hurley can see him is because he died an hour ago. He also tells Hurley that he was killed by an old friend who tired of his company. I would imagine he means MIB and not Ben here. Jacob tells Hurley to take Sayid to the temple and that Jin will know where it is. He also tells Hurley to take the guitar case. Jin returns to get the van to help save Juliette and Jacob is gone. They put Sayid into the van and head to the Swan hatch. My question is why didn’t the Dharma van rust and fall apart? Shouldn’t it have aged thirty years? Hurley asks Jin if he knows where the hole in the wall that Jacob told him about is. Jin says he does. Back at the Swan hatch, Sawyer tells Kate that if Juliette dies he will kill Jack. Did you see Sawyer move the exercise bike that was in the debris? They got a lot of mileage out of that exercise bike.

ATL Jack is taken to the bathroom where the door is locked/jammed shut. We are told that whoever is in there has been in there for some time. ATL Sayid is able to kick down doors as well as ever as he uses his foot to open the door. After seeing the Drive Shaft ring we know that Charlie is in the bathroom. Jack points out that Charlie isn’t breathing. Does this look familiar? Jack says he needs to cut a hole to help Charlie breathe and that he can do it with a pen. Sayid seems to question Jack's idea to use a pen. Remember back when Boone and Jack were trying to save Rose? It was Boone who came up with the pen idea. Jack clearly didn’t like the idea then but seems to be okay for Charlie. Did you also catch Jack saying that he had a pen in his pocket but doesn’t know what happened to it? You shouldn’t have to think too hard to figure out what happened to his pen. On a side note it is this missing pen that Jack used back in season one to make an incision on the injured Marshall.

Jack pulls out a small bag of heroine from Charlie’s throat and Charlie is revived. Back at Comic Con Dominick had “Am I alive?” written on his hand. What we didn’t know then was that this would be Charlie’s first spoken line in the ATL. He also added a classic Charlie line when he uttered “Terrific!”. Another difference is Charlie has a very short buzz cut now instead of the longer shaggy look he had that we are more familiar with. Let’s look at the many deaths of Charlie Pace. He is hung in a tree and left for dead by Ethan. In one of Desmond’s visions he sees Charlie drown in the water when he tries to catch a bird in Par Avian. Later, he sees Charlie get shot in the throat by one of Rousseau’s arrows in Catch 22. We know that Charlie drowns after writing “Not Penny's Boat” on his hand. This time Charlie was choking to death on a bag of heroin. All these deaths are very similar. Seems fate can course correct over different time lines.

After moving the beam, Sawyer gets to Juliette who is still alive but in bad shape. Juliette tells Sawyer that she hit the bomb and it went off but it didn’t work. She again tells him that she did it to make it so Sawyer never came to the island. Topside, Hurley tells Jack that he can save Sayid. Jack seems to be OK with this idea. Good to see Hurley beginning to take some control of the situation and good to see Jack ready to let someone else take control.

Bram takes a group of men into the chamber to find Jacob. Flocke tells them that Jacob is dead and they don’t have to protect him anymore and they are now free. It would almost seem that Flocke was going to let them go but then they shoot him and Flocke disappears. Smokie returns to pass judgment on Bram and his group. Bram watches the rest of his men get slaughtered as he surrounds himself in a ring of ash. Smokie thinks outside the box as he hits the ceiling of the chamber which causes a rock to hit Bram. This causes Bram to fall out of the protective circle of ash. Smokie takes out Bram in a most severe manner. Oddly enough a man named Bram is taken out by a stake through the heart j like a vampire. For 25 bonus points who wrote the most famous book ever about vampires? No, I don’t mean the Twilight series! Smokie disappears and Flocke returns and delivers one of the best lines of the night: “Sorry you had to see me like that.”.

Down in the hatch, Juliette seems to be delusional as she tells Sawyer that maybe they can go "Dutch" on some coffee sometime. She then has a moment of clarity and tells James to kiss her, which he does, turns out this is their kiss goodbye. Before dying, Juliette tells Sawyer that she has something very important to tell him. She dies before she can though. When Sawyer carries Juliette’s body out of the hatch it reminded me of the moment when Sayid carried Shannon’s dead body. The two men stare down the person responsible for the death of the woman they are carrying. Both men were also in love with the dead women they were carrying.

ATL Charlie tells ATL Jack that he should have left him die. Charlie says that he was supposed to die. Jack goes back to his seat and Desmond is gone. He apparently isn’t back to sitting where he originally was either as Jack looks around and asks Rose if they saw him. She says they did not but that they were asleep. I’m still going with that he wasn’t really there or he was but only Jack could see him. Desmond is not held to the normal “rules” that everyone else is. So let’s discuss Desmond for a second; Desmond is in the hatch not pushing the button which is what causes the original flight 815 to crash, we all know this and have gone over it ad nauseum. ATL Desmond can’t possibly be in the hatch pushing the button because Desmond never crashed onto the island in the first place. We see a wedding ring on Desmond’s finger so he is married but probably not to Penny because I’m not sure Penny Widmore was ever born. Did Charles Widmore get off of the island before the bomb exploded?

Matt Parkman (you would understand if you watched Heroes) announces that they are about to land at LAX. Sawyer seems to be looking for his next con, Sayid is looking for a reunion with Nadia, and Jin is looking for a way out. Sun is as well. Kate is still looking for some hope as Jack looks for some clarity. The police, who I thought were coming for Kate, remove Charlie from the plane first. The handshake between Boone and Locke almost felt like an apology from Locke which Boone seems to accept. As I watched the musical montage I feel a lot of character development was lost as well as a revision of history.

I can’t help but feel sad for most of what I saw. Charlie is once again a drug addict and is suicidal in this timeline. Sawyer again seems to be a con man planning his next score on Hurley. Locke is still in the wheelchair but at least he is alive. Kate is still a prisoner on the run (a quick observation; the Halliburton case that Kate was so interested in originally was in the overhead compartment this time but was under the seat in front of the Marshall in the original time line. Recall back when Sawyer found it in the lake with the waterfall) while Jin once again cannot speak English. Rose and Bernard come off of the plane smiling but Jin and Sun are in direct contrast as they look absolutely miserable. While all of these are sad moments, perhaps the part that saddens me the most would be that Rose is possibly once again dying of cancer. That is if she has cancer in this version, which I guess it is possible she doesn’t but then that means I need an explination of why Rose and Bernard were in Australia.

Morning arrives on the island and Sayid is still alive. Sawyer tells Kate to help Sayid but asks Miles to stay behind to help him bury Juliette. Sawyer tells Kate he doesn’t need her to leave a trail because he isn’t going to be following them. You can tell that Jack is having a hard time with Juliette’s death. He can’t even look at Sawyer as he carries Juliette’s body away. Sawyer notices this which will play an important roll later. Hurley's group head off to the temple with Sayid. Oh, and someone want to tell Hurley to get that red shirt off! Inside the cavern, Jin tells Hurley why Montand's corpse is missing an arm. Hurley responds with a classic Hurley line: “This is gonna be awesome!”. Kate is the first one to hear the whispers. Jack goes off to look for Kate while the other Others take Jin, Sayid, and Hurley one by one. Then Jack hears the whispers and he is taken by the old skool others.

ATL Kate goes into the bathroom stall and we find out where Jack’s missing pen ended up. Kate works fast but not fast enough to get the cuffs off but she still manages to get away from the Marshall. Once again he is felled by a blow to the head. Kate gets into the elevator and finds Sawyer is there as well. Sawyer notices the cuffs and he helps her escape the airport security which may or may not have been looking for her. The code the guy on the elevator responds to is an actual code at LAX for \ illegal discharge of a firearm so it might have been for Kate but maybe not.

After they bury Juliette, Sawyer asks, er ok forces Miles to use his ability to speak to Juliette. He wants to know what Juliette had to tell him that was so important. As Miles is trying to get a message it almost seemed that Miles wasn’t expecting to get anything from Juliette. He gets the two word message “It worked.”, notice Miles can hear what sounds like the engine of an airplane as well as something that sounded like the turbulence that hit flight 815. So with this bit of information we get from Juliette, “it worked” must refer to the explosion allowing the flight to land safely in LA. If you believe this than it’s possible Juliette wasn’t delusional at all when she was talking about going dutch on some coffee but was actually “flashing” sideways and seeing events in the alternate time line that were to happen in the future. I’ll put some money on us seeing another scene between Juliette and Sawyer in the ATL where they meet and have a cup of coffee together.

Hurley and his group arrive at the temple. Hippy Chick Cindy (what the hell happened to her since we last saw her?) tells Lennon (the hippy guy with glasses) that Hurley’s group were on flight 815 with her. Dogan (the Asian guy) tells his people to shoot them. Hurley is quick to tell them that Jacob sent them and that helps ease their trigger fingers. Hurley says that his proof is in the guitar case which we find out holds a big ankh. Dogan breaks the ankh and inside is a piece of paper and on that piece of paper is another one of Jacob’s famous lists. After everyone tells Lennon their names, Dogan says they need to bring Sayid inside. Hurley wants to know what was on the piece of paper that was inside of the ankh. He does deserve to know after all this time. Lennon (who I think looks a little bit like Hurley’s friend Johnny who worked at Mr. Cluck’s with him before he hit the lottery) tells him that the paper said that if Sayid dies, they are all in trouble. So let’s hold up here for a second. All the people on the list are the same people we saw Jacob touch. He also touched Sun who isn’t there yet but she is there somewhere now that we are in the same timeline again. Miles is also there with them and - uh oh - Miles wasn’t touched by Jacob, was he? Someone want to tell Hurley to see if that red shirt comes in a medium for Miles to put on.

At the customs desk it is discovered that Jin has a bunch of cash with him that he didn’t declare before the trip. What was that money for? I hope it was for Jin and Sun to be able to start a new life in the US out from under Sun's fathers control. For a moment, when the male customs agent called over the female agent named Anne, I thought it was gonna be Anna Lucia. Why does she address Sun as “Ms. Paik”? Is Sun and Jin not married in this reality? Sun says she doesn’t understand English and this is either a lie or in this reality Sun never took lessons from Jai Lee. My money says Sun knows English just fine. After all there is only one person on this show who lies more and does it better than Sun and that’s Ben Linus.

The water isn’t clear in the healing spring and doesn’t heal Dogan when he puts his cut hand into the water but just in case it is still working they put Sayid in. And then hold him under water until the big egg timer runs out of sand. We know what the risks are of Sayid being healed by the spring. No memory and he is one of them now. But that’s the risks of clear water healing him. What’s the side effects of the cloudy water healing him? Why did they want to know who shot Sayid? Ironically though, Ben was healed after Sayid shot Ben and Sayid is put into the healing waters after he is shot by Ben’s dad. Disregarding the pleas of Sayid’s friends, and even though he was thrashing around, they hold Sayid under until he is dead. Sayid strikes a Jesus-like pose as he is carried from the spring. Jack tries to revive Sayid similarly to how he tried to save Charlie when he and Kate found him hanging in the jungle. Kate tells Jack it’s too late and in a move that is very un-Jack like, Jack stops pretty quickly. Jack has really given up on the “I can fix this” mentality and has gone with the “if the island wills it then it will be so” way of thinking he has adopted since coming back to the island.

Kate continues her attempt to escape from the Marshall. She tries to steal Frogurt’s taxi. Then she gets inside of another cab and in the cab with her is Claire. The cab driver is the puppet ability guy also from Heroes. See, you should really be watching Heroes as well!

Zack and Emma give Kate some tea(?) as Miles and an unconscious Sawyer are brought into the temple. Seems like Kate didn’t need to leave that trail for Sawyer to follow after all. Hurley is taken to Dogan’s office, I guess it’s an office, I don’t know, but he’s got some bansai trees in there. Hurley tells him that Jacob is dead and is all “Oh, you guys didn’t know?” about it. With this information the Others commence to freak the hell out! Everyone has to get to their posts and they start spreading the ash. A firework is shot off even though it was still daylight. I mean would it have killed them to film this scene at night so we could get a nice view of the firework going off? Hurley comments to Lennon that he supposes that all of this means his group isn’t getting out. Lennon tells Hurley that all of this isn’t to keep them in but to keep “him” out.

Turns out “him” is Flocke or whatever name you want to call him. Ben comes out of his stupor and asks Flocke what he is and Flocke says he is a “who” not a “what“. Ben then says that Flocke is the monster and Flocke is playing with Ben now and you can tell when he says to Ben that they don’t have to resort to name calling. It’s a little harsh of Flocke to stomp on the stake that Bram is impaled on and snapping it off but a nice touch by the writers. Flocke tells Ben that John was very confused when Ben killed him and his last thought was “I don’t understand”. That was a little much but then he goes on to tell Ben more about John Locke. Watch the subtle touches the director adds by having Terry O’Quinn move back and forth from the light and into the shadows. From dark to light. He ends the conversation by telling Ben that he wants what Locke didn’t. He wants to go home. And was that a pretty creepy ass face Flocke made after saying this? So where is home? Is it the temple? Now that we know more about Jacob’s cabin and the circle of ash, can we assume that it wasn’t Jacob that Locke heard way back when? Could it have been the Man in Black that took over Locke’s body that said “Help me”? Going back to exactly where home is for Flocke; in Milton’s Paradise Lost; Satan wages a war in an attempt to reclaim his place in Heaven. All the while he continues to rule hell.

Hurley tells Sayid that if he ever wants to talk he will be around as he says goodbye to his friend. Miles seems put off by all of this almost as if he already knows Sayid isn’t dead. Kate tends to Sawyer who regains consciousness and I have lost count how many times this scene has played out. You know the one where a newly conscious Sawyer asks Kate where they are when he doesn’t recognize the new surroundings. She tells him that they are in the temple with the Others but this time the others are protecting them. Sawyer tells Kate that he has decided not to kill Jack because Jack deserves to suffer along with them.

ATL Jack is told that there is a problem with his cargo. The coffin containing his dad is missing. Jack is on the phone with his mother; the funeral was in two hours? Who plans funerals this rigid on time? Yeah I know, Jack apparently does. Locke asks Jack what he is missing because the airline also lost one of his bags. Turns out Locke’s knives were missing from the cargo which is odd because his knives are what he found on the island in the original time line. Locke comforts Jack by telling him that the airlines didn’t loose Jack’s dad just his body. Jack is glad to hear that, seems this version of Jack is a little more of a Man of Science and a Man of Faith. Jack asks Locke what happened to his back and tells Locke he is interested because he is a spinal surgeon. Locke tells Jack that his condition in irreversible to which Jack tells him that nothing is irreversible. He gives Locke his card and tells him to come in for a free consultation. A quick Google search of the address at 8444 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California 90211 shows two things very interesting. First, if you look at the aerial view the building looks like a submarine and there is a statue in front of the building that looks similar to a Dharma symbol. Go to a street view and you can actually see a LOST crew filming outside of the building. Anyway, back to the show; this was a nice meeting between Jack and Locke who have never seen eye to eye in the original time line. I hope I see Locke accept that free consultation and I really want Jack to “fix” Locke.

Why did the two items get misplaced, lost, forgotten, shipped out from the magic box or whatever happened to them? Well, first and foremost it happened because the writers needed a way for these two to meet each other. That’s not all though, there’s a reason that the box of knives and the coffin with Jack’s dad inside are missing from this version of the plane. Maybe because they were so badly needed in the original time line that somehow they were zipped through realities. Who says they were actually on the first version of flight 815? Didn’t think of that did you? The island has the magic box and we know that whatever you want to be on the island thanks to the magic box can be there. Jack needed his fathers coffin to be there and so it was. Locke needed his box of knives to be there and your wish is the magic box‘s command. After time travel, pockets of exotic material, alternate time lines, and disappearing islands the magic box is a little easier to swallow wouldn’t you say?

Finally we go back to the beach to see what Richard and company are up to. This is good because I can remember the seasons a few years ago when you had to wait until the second or third episode to actually find out what happens to everyone on the show. Richard spots the firework and whatever the firework means, it must be some heavy shit from the look on his face. Ben and Flocke come out of the statue and Flocke tells Richard that it’s good to see him out of those chains. Back inside the statue, Flocke was ready to let Bram and his men go, but they opened fire on him. Notice Richard is very adamant about nobody shooting Flocke. Perhaps Richard knows he can’t kill, or pass judgment unless he has reason to. Their reunion doesn’t seem to be a happy one. Flocke kicks Richards’ ass and tells the rest of the group that he is very disappointed with all of them. Is he trying to pass himself off as Jacob? After flinging Richard over his shoulders he makes way for the temple I can only assume that is where he is going anyway. As Flocke walks away the camera lingers on Ben for a second and I hope I saw the look of Ben beginning to come up with a plan. Hopefully it will be one that actually works. Another thought on Jacob and whoever is inside John Locke; perhaps the island is where the two of them (Jacob and The MIB) were sent to do their penance. Maybe they have to work off their transgressions and learn from their mistakes before they can move on. Maybe their game isn’t a “game” at all. Maybe, for them, the island is Purgatory.

Jack is asked to go with Lennon so they can talk in peace. Lennon tells Jack he can either go with them willingly or they can make him go. After a little scuffle between Jack and the New/Old Others. We still need to come up with something to call these people. These Temple Others seem to be the Others that may have liked the way Charles Widmore had run things and once Ben banished Widmore from the island they branched off. The Dharma Ville Others would have been Ben’s Neo-Others. Ben’s people liked muffins and book clubs. These others like hippy clothes and being bare foot so as to keep a direct connection to the island. Maybe they are more in tune with it than Ben’s people. The temple others also hate modern conveniences which Ben says Jacob doesn’t like. Really, maybe it was the MIB that didn’t like the modern conveniences. However you slice it, it would seem that these others definitely know more about the island than Ben and his group does. I also want to add here that these others we did see before. Think back when Jin and Eko were hiding in the jungle and we saw Others walk by with the bear-on-a-string-bait thingy. Remember that scene? That was these Others. Also these are the whispering Others that Ben warns Rousseau about when he takes Alex from her. Remember him telling her that if she hears the whispers she is to run the other way if she wants to stay alive? Hurley yells to get Jack‘s attention. Even Lennon can’t hide his surprise when he sees what Hurley is trying to call their attention to. Sayid is alive and like all of us, he wants to know: “What Happened?”. Just throwing this out there: anybody think Sayid is still dead and that is Jacob inside of Sayid? I’m just asking.

LAX are the initials that stand for Los Angeles International Airport. However, the title of this episode of LOST is “LA X“. So what does that mean? Well in Roman numerals X is ten, so is this the tenth time flight 815 has tried to land in LA? Could be but don’t dismiss the fact that TPTB (The Powers That Be = Lindelof and Cuse) are huge comic book fans. In fact Lindelof used to write for Marvel Comics. It is a practice in the comic book industry to have alternate realities. Sometimes these realities take place in alternate time lines and some of these take place on alternate planets. Marvel Comics and DC Comics both use this literary technique of having multiple timelines/realities. Earth X is a parallel universe that has similarities to our Earth but with lots of differences. Some are subtle and yet some are blaring differences. Wherever they decide to go with this, one thing is for sure, I will be along for the ride until the bitter end. It doesn’t matter if it ends how we want it to, but it is going to end. After the final episode I am sure there will be people who cry foul and won’t like it. While it won’t be a fade to black with Don’t Stop Believing playing in the backround, it can’t make us all happy but I won’t worry about that now. Instead I will carefully buckle my seat belt and make sure I enjoy the ride. Like I said earlier about the rollercoaster just going over the first big hill, episode 1 of the final season just started to ramp things up for us. So c’mon put your hands up and enjoy the hills and dips. Don’t worry, the writers, producers, and directors need and want you to stay around. The island does as well.