Analysis: 5.2 The Lie

Why did the Oceanic 6 lie? The conversation on Penny’s boat (frustratingly skipping over Penny’s part in all of what had transpired so far!) informed us that everyone bar Hurley was agreed on lying about it. On more than one occasion Hurley asked the question about why, however, and it most certainly is a valid question.

As Jack has it, the reason to lie was to keep the people they left behind safe. Widmore sent a boat load of people to kill everyone and so telling him the truth about what happened means he’s unlikely to leave them alone. Fundamentally, then, the Oceanic 6 lie as a means of denying they ever knew anything about The Freighter, or Widmore, in the hope of keeping themselves safe.

Jack then admits that part of the reason for lying is because, if they tell the truth, people just won’t believe it. And Jack’s right. People wouldn’t believe it – talk of a disappearing Island with Black Smokes – and it would raise more questions demanding ‘the truth’, and also make them a definite target for Widmore who they know won’t stop looking for the Island. As Penny said, “There’s no calling my father off.”

I just wanted to get ‘the lie’ clear up front because I think it’s been kind of lost in the mix a little. It’s also the latest ‘thing’ that’s been eating away at Hurley (he’s constantly guilty; whether it be for accidentally killing people, winning the lottery, lying about a plane crash. . .). His visit from Ana Lucia presented a major discussion point – when she apparently came from beyond the grave to inform him he should avoid getting arrested.

For all the means by which time travel may explain many mysteries, the dead apparitions Hurley is visited by don’t lend themselves to it. Hurley’s either crazy, or there’s still a layer of the unknown to be peeled away. And I don’t think Hurley’s crazy. But he was conflicted. Ana Lucia told him to not get arrested. But then Sayid told him that he shouldn’t trust Ben Linus, and do the opposite of whatever Ben suggested.

And so, prompting a surprising fling of a hot pocket, Ben Linus appeared to Hurley and offered him a way back to the Island where he would no longer have to feel guilty about lying.

Hurley did the opposite. He ran to the police and got himself arrested. The thing is, if this was just as a result of Ben’s suggestion then it may have been the right thing to do, but given that Hurley’s own personal ‘ghosts’ were advising the same thing then you can’t help but feel like Hurley could have made a mistake. What I mean is, if the ‘ghosts’ are representative of the will of the Island, then that means Ben and Hawking and Jill the Butcher are also working for the will of the Island.

Ah yes. What to make of this group? Jill the Butcher is in league with Ben, and I got the impression that she is just one member of another group. Perhaps these are people that were once on the Island and have all, for whatever reason, since been banished? Or maybe the women, like Jill, got pregnant on the Island and had to leave so they could deliver their babies and survive. And then perhaps they didn’t know how to get back, or didn’t want to go back, or couldn’t get back – but they’re willing to help Ben whatever.

If that includes keeping Locke in cold storage, so be it. (Quite what status of ‘dead’ Locke is at, at this moment, appears up for grabs. I believe getting Locke back to the Island with the Oceanic 6 will bring him back to life, somehow, but this is linked in with the plan of Alpert’s, with time travel, that my brain just can’t quite fathom the mechanics of just yet.)

Ms. Hawking, apparently with the means of tracking the Island, and looking increasingly sinister whilst she does it, has accorded a deadline. There are just 70 hours available to get the Oceanic 6 together and back to the Island (presumably before this ‘event window’ closes, permanently). It’s hard to know if her “God help us all” statement means that failure to reach this goal means absolute cataclysmic end, or it just means that the chance to return to the Island will be gone.

Hawking has spoken before, to Desmond in Flashes Before Your Eyes, about how him not pushing the button would mean the end of the world. She’s either got a flair for the dramatic to make people do what she wants them to do, or she’s genuinely aware of how close everything is to the brink of collapse. Personally, I think she’s a manipulator, and an evil one, and she’s pushing her own agenda.

She might also be Faraday’s mother.

Previously on Lost, Faraday instructed Desmond to go to Oxford, to find his mother. Well, Ms. Hawking is in a church in L.A., apparently (fitting, given the picture of her and Brother Campbell that Lost fanatics are aware of from Catch-22). So maybe Hawking isn’t Faraday’s mother, or perhaps Faraday just doesn’t know his mother is in L.A. in 2007! Faraday claims to have been interested in time travel physics all his adult life, and given the nature of Ms. Hawking as a temporal police agent, and her knowledge of time travel, then it all fits – perhaps a little too snugly for comfort.

Time travel larks abound back on the Island, meanwhile. And they appear to be taking their toll more on Charlotte than on anyone else, with her having nosebleeds that seem reminiscent of 'Constants' but I don't think they are - but they're probably kindred, ahem, sicknesses.

As ever, Faraday knows what’s going on but, instead of not telling because he thinks he won’t be understood, for Charlotte he’s keeping quiet because he doesn’t want to give her the bad news. Why only Charlotte? Is it because, as she obliquely mentioned in the Season 4 finale, that she was born on the Island? Could it be that during the course of bouncing around through Island time they are on a collision course for a Baby/Young Charlotte meeting that creates some form of minor paradox?

If everyone was suffering from nosebleeds we could state that it’s a universal effect of the time traveling – but since it’s just happening to Charlotte then its root cause is something personal and exclusive to her alone. Maybe Faraday will get her pregnant and she will give birth to herself in the past before dying.

That was a joke, by the way. As was this:

Yes, ‘fans’ of the Lost mobisodes were treated to some true “Frogurt” (he invented ‘frozen yoghurt, see?) action before, blatantly whilst wearing a redshirt, he got a flaming arrow through the chest. In the grand tradition of annoying sub-characters meeting a memorable death that started with Arzt and dynamite in Season One, Neil “Frogurt” bit the big one. But who shot him?

I believe the flaming arrows were fired by ‘the hostiles’, and I think this was all occurring quite some time before Dharma in their 70s heyday. When Sawyer and Juliet escaped the flaming arrow barrage they encountered a group of soldiers, English-speaking and aggressively protective of ‘their Island’.

So this is where I sweep in with quite a reach of a theory. I believe that these soldiers were from around the World War II era. Maybe slightly later. I believe that Dharma, or whatever organization preceded Dharma, were more military based. These soldiers belonged to that organization, perhaps when ‘war’ with ‘the hostiles’ was much fiercer. Once this war was done, and ‘the hostiles’ were reduced to more manageable numbers, Dharma scientists set-up their ‘barracks’ and Stations and got cracking with their science experiments. When you consider the armaments and guns of Dharma, this army-based foundation makes sense.

Further still, given these soldiers were English, I’ll venture that a young soldier during this era was none other than Charles Widmore.

He strikes me as a man with a military background. And consider how Desmond tried to win Widmore’s respect? He joined the army! I would also add that Widmore’s Freighter contained a mix of both army men and scientists together. It all fits.

Potentially the timelines are a little broad, since Widmore isn’t old enough to have served in World War II, but there’s a theory going around that he was once an Island Chief. Maybe he once turned the ‘donkey wheel’ and got spat out into the future, in the desert, banished from the Island. If he got sent further into the future than Ben did, the time discrepancy of his being in the 1940s/50s and still around in the 21st Century suddenly have an explanation.

I told you it was quite a reach of a theory, but you read it here first and that’s. . . oh-oh. . . no word a lie!