Analysis: 5.4 The Little Prince

Kate’s decision to claim ownership of Aaron was always an issue that could have been perceived as a selfish and cold act. And yet she and Jack discussed the matter prior to the ‘big discussion’ we’ve already seen in The Lie, and her justification was reasonable. Claire was set on giving Aaron up for adoption, for one thing, but logic aside it was perhaps too easy to dismiss the idea that Kate genuinely cared: She was present at the birth!



She was the first to hold Aaron in her arms – that’s bound to have an effect. And Aaron did serve a function as a form of ‘communal baby’ (remember Auntie and Uncle Sun and Jin?). With Claire lost, it’s very justifiable that Kate would feel indebted, and willing, to care for Aaron.



Years later, however, and Kate would find herself with legal action threatening to take Aaron away from her. Rather than just make a straight run for it she decided to leave Aaron with Auntie Sun and try and find who was setting the lawyers after her. At first we thought it was Carole, Claire’s mother. . .



. . . but she was just after some cash and didn’t even know Aaron existed. So eventually the true client was unmasked and out of the shadows stepped forth the man behind the lawsuit curtain. . .



There’s a whole tangle of stuff that Ben is involved with that I am about to delve into. But before I do, in case you missed it, Ben’s van had this company name on the side. . .



. . . which is an anagram of ‘reincarnation’. Not wanting to read too much into it, I can’t help but feel this just might have something to do with Dead Coffin Locke for episodes to come. But sticking with the van for a second, here’s Ben sat in it meeting his lawyer.



Notice the document the lawyer is carrying? Is it just me, or does this document not look entirely dis-similar to some of the documentation that Sun had delivered to her in an envelope alongside her chocolate box with handgun combo?



OK. Let’s take a minute here. Sun was looking at documentation obtained from an unknown source that was, basically, tracking Ben for her. Once this source had pinned down Ben’s whereabouts and movements, the information was delivered to Sun, with a gun, and so off she went to meet with him.

Now if this information came from the same lawyer, Ben’s lawyer, that has also been pursuing Kate to gain custody of Aaron, does that not indicate Ben is allowing Sun to find him? What I mean is, Ben knows Sun is after him and he has manipulated the situation so that she ‘finds’ him precisely when he wants. At the end of the episode, after all, Sun has brought Aaron to the docks where the rest of the Oceanic 6 are all convened. Ben’s plan to get the O6 together within 72 hours has been brilliantly pulled off, wouldn’t you say?



Well, except for Hurley. But now Ben’s lawyer has managed to wrangle Hurley free from murder charges (how!?) surely it’s not too much of a reach for Ben to bring him into the fold. All he needs to do is not let Sun kill him. . .!

It’s quite a plan, but not at all beyond the limits of what master manipulator Ben is capable of. At present, though, I am still rather unclear about where the tranquiliser gunmen fit into this.



Are they also part of Ben’s scheme? Were these guys the means by which he planned to get Sayid? Kate and Aaron had a custody lawsuit. Ben tried to convince Hurley in person (but failed). Jack was already willing to go back and Sun, as I have speculated, was controlled by her thirst for revenge. Considered like this, it does seem to me that Ben is pulling on all of these plot threads.

Head spinning yet? Be thankful you’re not on the Island, where head spinning disorientation travelling through time has more dire consequences than just mere confusion.



Despite the nagging feeling that Faraday still isn’t quite giving up all the goods on what he knows about this nosebleed activity, a few more clues came to light. The root cause is that those people who have spent longer on the Island, and are now disconnected in time from it, are more susceptible to blood-exiting-nose haemorrhaging. That makes sense of why Juliet, Island-resident of around three years, also developed the same symptoms.



Enlighteningly, so did Miles. It would seem the long-held suspicion that he has been on the Island before is confirmed, albeit in a roundabout way. It’s odds-on favourite theorising that we’ve seen Miles on the Island already, in the first episode of Season 5, here. . .



. . . who, of course, is none other than the son of this guy. . .



Maybe Miles really is Pierre Chang’s son. Maybe Pierre Chang, Dharma scientist for all seasons, did something peculiar to his son that created his capacity to apparently commune with, and be attuned to, the deceased. Considering how the season has gone so far then it’s perfectly likely!

Of course, the last time we saw Pierre Chang was at the under-construction Orchid Station in the 1970s, which is the very same Orchid that Locke and Sawyer are leading their group to. Locke plans to get there and find the means by which Ben left the Island (which we know was the ‘donkey wheel’). Now I wonder if, when we saw Faraday at the beginning of the season, this wasn’t the end point of this journey.



What I mean is, I believe Locke will get to The Orchid (in a different time period from what we have seen). He will turn the ‘donkey wheel’ and leave the Island, and in turning the wheel once more he will stop the time-jumping. Unfortunately, the Island will ‘stop’ for Sawyer, Juliet and the rest in the 1970s. And that’s why we saw Faraday in that time period, poking around The Orchid; he’s trying to find out if there’s some way he can get himself and his friends back to when they belong!

That’s where I see that journey headed. Bizarrely, I think we already know they do this within 72 hours, because that’s the ‘event window’ remaining that Ms. Hawking spoke of – as though the O6 and our time travelling Losties, in some fashion, are attached by the same umbilical of transitory time! As if your mind hasn’t been melted enough, this episode delivered up other revelatory whoppers. First up:



Pardon me for being prickly, but Jin’s amazing survival (although welcome in the sense that I like him) just didn’t go over with me at all. There’s no way he got off the exploding freighter alive. I know he apparently did - what I mean is I don’t believe it. And even if he had escaped the blast, I don’t believe he could have possibly got himself into the ‘radius’ of the Island when it did its disappearing act.

Deep breath. Relax. And move on.

Jin is alive after all, evidently flitting through the same timeframes as Sawyer and the rest, just from the comfort of a piece of driftwood in the sea. And now he has found himself in 1988, to be around during the arrival of Rousseau and her infamous science team to the Island.



We Lost fans have waited a long time to hear about Rousseau’s backstory, but on first glance it appears the story she told to Sayid back in Season One was the truth. She was part of a science team. They heard the numbers (you can hear the robotic ‘4 8 15 16 23 42’ broadcast over the radio) and then they got caught in a storm and washed up on the Island.

In case you’re wondering, the French they spoke is mostly them bickering amongst themselves and wondering if there is life on the Island – but Robert (Rousseau’s lover, probably husband) remarks that they should have never followed “those damn numbers” and that their equipment had malfunctioned to get them into the mess they were in.



I anticipate spending a lot more time with these guys in whatever window of time the Island ‘remains’ with them. I don’t think we’ll get the whole story, we don’t have the time, ironically enough (unless the show ditches its current storytelling convention for a The Other 48 Days-style episode!), but it’ll be interesting none-the-less. Why did the older Rousseau never recognise Jin in the other episodes we’ve seen? Fact is Jin and Rousseau never really had much to do with each other (to the best of my memory they’ve never directly spoken), sixteen years had passed for her, and she wasn’t exactly one hundred per cent mentally stable after all that time.

Quite why Rousseau didn’t remember Jin – the little prince of the episode title, no less – popping up in her past is the smallest of matters given the tumultuous cascade of plots and concepts bombarding the show at the moment. I mean, what about this:



That was found here:



That was apparently set up by these hostile people:



I believe this whole sequence took place in the future. Potentially the people in the canoe arrived on the Island in a commercial airline plane somehow (an Ajira Airways instead of Oceanic this time!) and may, or may not, just turn out to be people we already know.

Some think the canoe people are the Oceanic 6. Other people think they are the product of an alternate timeline provoked by, perhaps, the crash of Oceanic being averted (my paradox-averse brain simply cannot entertain that notion). Hell, some people think they might just be Locke, Sawyer, Juliet and the rest chasing and shooting at themselves from some point in their own futures.

You push me to pick, I like the last option best – but my brain waves a white flag when it comes to explaining why. I think I feel a nosebleed coming on. . .