As of a couple of weeks ago, I've seen the first two seasons of Lost.
I realize this puts me a year behind those who actually watch TV, and by now have seen the Season Three finale, but it just seems like time to offer my theory of What's Going On – as of the end of Season Two.
I had a revelation when Kate found the fake beard and theatrical adhesive. Who, I thought, uses such things? The IMF, that's who! This explains much.
If the whole series is taking place within an episode of Mission: Impossible, it makes much more sense. No one survived the plane crash; there was no plane crash. A lot of people who, for one reason or another, were of interest to the Government, were routed through an airport, drugged, hypnotized into thinking they had been in a plane crash, and dumped on a beach along with some wreckage. (The beach, incidentally, isn't where they think it is. All information regarding the location of the island is spurious.)
The Others are the IMF, with some extras hired from a rep company. Some of them are among the “survivors.” Of course, they know who everyone is, having brought them there.
The bunkers are left over from WWII, hastily refitted to give the impression of having been set up in the late 1970s. Hints: an underground geodesic dome makes no sense (but it has such a 1970s futurist feel to it), and there's no way that tape drive has been operating continuously since the days when such things were current technology.
The conduct of the Others doesn't match what we'd expect from the team of Dan Briggs or Jim Phelps, but this can be explained in a variety of ways:
The IMF is under new management since the 1960s, and has gotten ruthless;
The IMF has always been that way, and the old TV series was propaganda meant to make us believe they were far more ethical than they've ever actually been;
This is the IMF from the universe where Paris has a beard.
So: people of interest have been put on an island, and are being watched, infiltrated, and prevented from leaving. Who are the prisoners and who are the warders?
To start with, we can discount the purported head count of Others based on the number of torches that lit up all at once in the forest. Ya think Barney (or any other FX guy) couldn't arrange that? The hunting party had been guided to that meeting place, and all could have been prepared well in advance.
We can also discount anything said by Michael after his return; some of it was inconsistent with well-known facts.
Delenn Rousseau is a
warder. She's “been there for 16 years” since the day before the
“crash,” and is actually much younger than she's made up to look
during her brief appearances. Note that she guided Kate & co. to
the medical bunker, which was awfully decrepit for a facility that
supposedly had been in use, clean, and well lighted within the
preceding few weeks. (But why was the fake beard left in that
locker?) She's also been providing all those other carefully-planned
nudges to steer the group in whatever direction their destiny lies.
Ethan was a warder. Actually, he was one of the extras. He was meant to be found out. He was not meant to be caught. When he was taken prisoner, he had to be killed to keep him from talking. This means....
Charlie is a warder, and is either part of the IMF's core group or one of the specialists they brought in for this mission. But, you say, Ethan tried to kill Charlie! Well spotted, but remember, this is largely illusion. To overpower Charlie, drag him up the tree, and hang him, all in that short time, Ethan would have needed superhuman strength – the impression the prisoners are meant to get – unless Charlie was cooperating. In fact, Charlie climbed up the tree, Ethan applied a previously prepared noose designed not to kill him in any great hurry, and Charlie took one of the IMF's well-known possum pills, which enabled him to feign death convincingly for a few minutes.
This leads in another interesting direction: did the band Driveshaft actually exist? If so, this Charlie is presumably not the real Charlie who was in the group, but just an IMFer borrowing his identity. If not... then Locke, who claimed to recognize the name of the group (and Charlie himself? Memory is fuzzy) is also a warder.
It makes much sense for Locke to be a warder, as he plays a key role in guiding the group on its adventures. Also, he's had two up-close-and-personal encounters with Rover (the cloud of gnatobots), and lived to tell (nothing) about them. On the other hand, we've seen his excursions with Charlie, and they weren't discussing IMF business. So, I'm guessing he's a prisoner, being manipulated by Charlie. The same, then, applies to Mr. Eko.
I'm pretty sure Jack is a prisoner, but I've been dubious ever since the pilot episode of his actually being a neurosurgeon. (My doubts could just be the result of bad writing, though.)
Kate is a prisoner, but her backstory is bogus, and the “marshal” was a fake. Look, murdering her father wasn't a federal crime – the subsequent bank robbery was, but the “marshal” was after her before that. Also, none of her known crimes would appear to justify an act of war against Australia. Real feds would have asked the Australian authorities to arrest her and extradite her. Clearly, there's something else going on here.
Jin is a prisoner, for reasons relating to his employer. I'm not sure whether Sun is an innocent bystander (she was supposed to have been diverted before “getting on the plane,” wasn't she?), or an auxiliary warder, co-opted while learning English and making escape plans.
Walt is a prisoner, though it's not clear what the Government wants with a little kid. The comic book and the polar bears were planted to influence him. It could be that his father is one of the warders, and may not even be his actual father.
I'm reasonably sure Sayid is a prisoner, though I'm not sure the reason for him being there is related to anything I've seen so far. I'd be suspicious of him for the bogus technical information (the goofy "triangulation" scheme, and the handy-talkie needing to find a signal before it would transmit), but I'm inclined to believe that's just bad writing.
Sawyer, now... what are we to make of Sawyer? Prisoner or warder? How about... neither? Sawyer bears such a resemblance to Dr. Smith that I just have to think he's likewise a stowaway and a saboteur. He's actually an enemy agent who replaced one of the targets of the operation just before the snatch. His persona is based on extensive briefings on the character of rednecks, capitalists, and Americans in general, from a Hollywood Former Soviet Republic viewpoint. Unlike the actual prisoners, he has some clue what's going on, and eventually needs to escape and report in. In the meantime, he's interfering with the plan in small ways as the opportunity arises.
So, it's all very confusing... as is
any episode of Mission: Impossible if seen from the point of
view of the targets, who didn't get to hear the tape at the beginning
and don't know what's up.
Or, there's the simple theory I saw on a T-shirt at Baycon: the Others are Cylons.
Other random thoughts:
We haven't yet gotten the story of
Helen on the Phone, and I don't know if I should be trying to sing
that to the tune of Helen All Alone, or Heather on the Phone.
What the heck kind of “bulletproof
vest” did the LAPD issue to Ana-Lucia, that, according to her
mother, didn't stop hollowpoints?
It's a good thing Sayid didn't go on
the raft. They would have had to call it Kon-Tikriti.
I'm not sure what to make of the Season Two closer. It has a certain Blake's 7 finale character to it. Up to this point, when people on the show got shot, there was blood. Where's the blood? If Michael is one of the warders, he has access to the IMF's tranquilizer ammunition. That would explain the lack of blood, though of course I don't know if it explains anything in the next season.
Update: it's come to my attention that I'd somehow missed the last three episodes of season 2, and that what I'd taken for the end-of-season cliffhanger wasn't in fact the end of the season.
Taking the final three episodes of the season into account, there's a little more information:
- Michael is an incidental prisoner, who was coerced into acting on behalf of the warders. He certainly believes himself to be Walt's actual father, but I'm not sure the warders agree.
- Ana-Lucia and Libby are dead.
- The stuff on the island wasn't set up just for that batch of prisoners; it had been there for at least a few years, presumably performing the same function with other prisoners.
- The "Others" are indeed warders, play-acting as castaways/primitives.
- The warders don't seem to have figured out that "Sawyer" is a ringer.
We might also suspect that the island was previously inhabited by giant cartoon people - with three fingers and a thumb per hand, cartoon people should have four toes per foot, right?
Also, the "vaccine every nine days" has a certain Cygnus Alpha quality to it, but shouldn't Richard IV be dispensing it?
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