WHAT HAPPENED
Jughead/Jack Shephard (+ Sayid and Eloise): Newly cuddled up to the word and idea of destiny, and determined to carry forward Faraday’s hypothesis, Jack was/is bent on detonating the H-bomb hidden in the ancient tunnels of the Island that, in theory, will produce a paradox that will rewrite history. From Jack’s now narrow perspective — one clearly scarred by all the folks who’ve died on his watch as “Island Moses” — rebooting time would bring back all those he lost: Boone. Shannon. Ana Lucia. Libby. Charlie. Michael… Eloise agreed to help Jack destroy the timeline in hopes of rectifying her own mistake and killing her son…
Jacob: John Locke, glowing with a supreme, even ethereal self-confidence, drove his new tribe of Others toward a face-to-face meeting with their never-seen god, Jacob…to kill him.
Finally, Radzinsky bumped our favorite hippie, Horace Goodspeed, aside and established himself as the new leader of the dark side of the Dharma force.
THEORIES TO DISCUSS
1. Ben threw Alpert under the bus and pretended to pledge allegiance to Locke — classic Ben, trying to gain control by sowing seeds of doubt and chaos — only to have Locke blow up his scheming by telling him: “I’m gonna go kill Jacob.” Ben’s eyes practically popped out of his skull. Ben is actually surprised by this. Discuss.
2. Ellie Hawking told Jack and Kate she was 17 years old when she escorted time-traveling Faraday at gunpoint to the Jughead drop zone back in 1954. That would make her 40 years old in 1977. Young Boy Daniel Faraday was alive back in the year of Adult Daniel Faraday’s death on the Island. Remember the 9-year-old Faraday playing the piano in last week’s episode? That moment happened right after the Dharma-times events depicted in the last few episodes. Remember, Mom/Ellie entered the room in tears. Perhaps that scene represented the first time she had seen young Faraday since killing older Faraday; and perhaps her tears were an indication that her attempt at eradicating her mistake by helping Jack blow up Jughead had failed. Discuss.
3. ”Follow The Leader” is indeed a direct nod to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan… Magical islands inhabited by peculiar tribes of people working at cross-purposes, death and resurrection, ticking bombs, lost boys, never-aging enchanted beings…
FACTS CONFIRMED
1. Once again, Hurley gives good laugh with his failure to pass Pierre Chang’s history quiz, finally admitting “OK, we’re from the future.” Awesome.
2. The Others did follow Faraday’s 1954 advice and stowed the Jughead H-bomb in the Tunnels in a spot that now sits directly below Dharmaville. (So much for the ”in the shadow of the statue” theory).
3. Alpert’s official title. ”He’s a kind of…advisor,” Ben told Sun, ”And he has had that job for a very, very long time.”
BURNING QUESTIONS
1. The most interesting scene between 1977 Eloise and Widmore was the one we weren’t allowed to hear. Everyone notice that? It came soon after Eloise asked Alpert for some privacy while she and Widmore paid their last respects to Daniel…any thoughts on what they were talking about?
2. So how did the Others get Jughead into the Tunnels. It certainly wasn’t through the tight canal of that under-the-waterfall entrance. ”It’s a 12-foot long, 40,000-pound hydrogen bomb,” quipped Alpert. ”No, not through the pool.” So: Where’s the secret wide-mouth hatch that the Others used to get Jughead into the Tunnels?
3. ”Good riddance” Sawyer quipped toward the Island and then descended down into the sub. Did sawyer ditch his buddies (Miles, Hurley, Jin)? Nah. ”Don’t worry,” Hurley said. ”Sawyer always has a plan.”
4. Resurrected Locke instructed Richard Alpert to tend to Old Wounded Time-Traveling Locke and pass along his compass and some crucial instructions, like the whole thing about needing to die to save his castaway friends, and in this way one of the trippy mystery moments from the season’s fragmented first episode was rounded out and given context. ”Follow The Leader” gave us one arc in which Jack in the past schemes to produce paradox, and also gives us another arc in which John hustles to prevent paradox from occurring. Specifically, Locke was trying to avoid what is known as a ”Bootstrap or Ontological Paradox,” involving the acquisition and replacement of objects and the receiving and imparting of information from future to past to future again. Check it out.
5. How exactly did New/Resurrected Locke know that Old Wounded Time Traveling Locke would be arriving at this particular moment in Island history? ”The island told me,” Locke said. But then he added towards Ben, ”The Island ever tell you anything?” Was Locke just sticking it to Ben? Was this a continuation of Ben’s humbling that began with his judgment by the Smoke Monster or was Locke fishing for information about the extent of his/its Island powers?
6. Why is Radzinsky-led-Dharma so intent on drilling into the electromagnetic anomaly at the Swan site?
7. Finally many have speculated that Jacob will wind up being Locke himself. Do you agree? Yes, Locke’s always been the caretaker, because Locke has always been here…(See 2:30).
Post away!
[Note: In this column, many weeks I borrow from other LOST sites, primarily Doc Jensen and EW.com. I’ll try to put as much of myself in these as I can, but EW gets to screen the episodes in advance and I certainly don’t … so … much love to the Doc, we couldn’t dig in quite the same without you.]