Analysis: 5.10 He's Our You

I have been very clear in my thinking regarding timelines on Lost. You could say I subscribe to the Daniel Faraday point of view: Whatever happened, happened. That is, the process of going back in time does not allow the time traveller to change events in history that will alter the future. I’m not too bothered about the theoretical science about this in real life – I’ve just been a staunch advocate of such a perspective on Lost.

And then Sayid put a bullet straight into Young Ben’s chest and, abruptly, I am forced to question that perspective.

So Sayid shoots Young Ben in 1977. Does that mean that, say, the Ben we last saw lying in a bed in 2007 ceases to exist? Will his body simply vanish from existence? Well, surely not. The idea that Young Ben died means he never met Sayid when caught in a net, or did any of the other hundreds of things that eventually resulted in the Oceanic 6 leaving and then returning.

No. The paradoxes created are simply boundless. But, so the argument runs, that’s only if we stick to the idea of one timeline. In essence, Young Ben dying may produce an alternate timeline - a different future - and it may even be the one that Sun and Frank found themselves in, with the rundown Dharma facilities and so forth.

The argument is: When Ajira 316 crashed on the Island somehow it ‘jumped’ into this alternate timeline, one where Ben was killed as a Young Boy on the Island, and that’s just going to be one of the problems that Sun faces in trying to repair what has happened to get back to Jin. It’s a plot, I suppose, but it seems kind of messy to my mind.

And the thing is, if alternate timelines can occur just because Young Ben got shot, then why not occur for other such major instances where our Losties have travelled into the past and effected changes? Let’s take Jughead the Bomb as a prime example.

In the episode Jughead, we saw Sawyer and Locke and Faraday travel back to the 1950s to discover Alpert and The Others dealing with the bomb on the Island. Now Faraday stepped up and informed them that needed to bury the thing deep and that way they would be safe from the radioactive leak. If there are alternate timelines then that means there’s a timeline where Faraday didn’t change history, and didn’t tell them to bury the bomb, and radiation covered the Island with who knows what consequences.

It’s a mess, right? This one example is just one of many moments where alternate timelines could have been created and yet we have never seen, which is what reinforces my assertion that multiple timelines don’t exist on Lost. Young Ben got shot. The crucial point is that Young Ben always got shot by Sayid. It always happened. And, obviously, that means Young Ben surely can’t die. It wouldn’t be the first time someone got shot on the Island and survived.

Indeed, there’s a certain irony in the idea that Young Ben ‘miraculously’ survives due to the Island’s healing powers, the same way it allowed Locke to stand up and walk with a broken back. Or, alternatively ironic, the discovery of the seriously-injured Young Ben may require Jack to step up with his surgeon skills and save the boy’s life.

It’s not as if we’ve never seen Jack operating on Ben to keep him alive, right?

Imagine if this moment, for Young Ben, when Sayid shot him, is the last time he sees Sayid until that moment he is caught in a net and Sayid comes out of the jungle.

Can you imagine? The man that shot you close to thirty years ago suddenly pops up? That’d be cause for concern. And Ben was stricken with a spinal tumour at that time, too – the Island was no longer healing him! Sayid certainly gave Ben a hell of a beating back in that episode One Of Them - the question is did Ben know back then that he was going to get out of it alive? It’s feasible.

What’s perhaps more interesting is the idea that Sayid, in shooting Young Ben, forges the colder, more calculating man we have come to know.

Sayid, naturally, killed Young Ben because he was utterly oblivious to Faraday’s talk about “whatever happened, happened”. Sayid no doubt figured that killing Young Ben would mean that he would never be sent around the world, assassinating people. Paradox schmaradox. However, the very next episode is called Whatever Happened, Happened - so I am retaining my position that there’s one timeline, one history, and Young Ben will survive this gunshot to grow into the man we know.

That Sayid’s escape, and Dharma’s belief that he is a ‘hostile’, may be the reason the truce breaks apart and war between Dharma and The Others begins is just another potential irony. We don’t know exactly who propelled the flaming Dharma van into The Barracks. . .

. . . but it seems impossible to figure this was a coincidence. Young Ben must have at least one accomplice tucked away that engineered this flaming van, maybe even someone in Dharma (Mikhail springs to mind), to create the diversion. But now Dharma will see it as genuine hostility from these ‘hostiles’ and so begins the war. And we know how that turns out. Cue: patricidal Ben Linus. Cue: gas mask Alpert. Cue: ‘the purge’.

That spectre on the Dharma future still looms.

Quite where Sayid goes from here is anyone’s guess. Previously he had justified his torture and killing as acts he perpetrated against his will, against his choice. From being forced to torture Tariq in One Of Them. . .

. . . to being confronted by Amira, the woman he once tortured, during the episode Enter-77, where he literally broke down over what he had done to her. . .

. . . to even insinuating to Hurley, in the first episode of Season 5, Because You Left, that he had been doing terrible things Hurley wouldn’t want to know about, Sayid has constantly projected a sense of martyrdom over his nature. And yet as a child, when he killed the chicken, he was rewarded by his father proclaiming him to be a man.

Killing made him a man. Killing is the man. Sayid finally acknowledged this before he shot Young Ben and, we can be sure, Ben will remember this to, one day in the future, use Sayid as his personal killing machine, sending him around the globe to take out key people in Widmore’s organisation – he knows Sayid is more than up to it.

We learned that it was one such assassination – of Peter Avellino, as shown in The Economist - that brought Ilana to capture him. Sayid does have a habit of getting in with these seductive ladies that pull a gun on him in the bedroom. Elsa did it. Now Ilana.

If she’d lived long enough, Shannon would have probably done the same, eventually!

The interesting question about Ilana was that she sent by “the family” of Peter Avellino to bring Sayid back on the plane – Ajira 316 – to Guam. She just happened to be getting on the plane that was destined to go back to the Island? I think we’re back to the old coincidence vs fate. If it turns out that the people that hired Ilana are linked with Hawking or Ben, as Sayid implied, then conspiracy is apparent. Otherwise we just have to put it down to forces on a cosmic scale ensuring Sayid came back and fulfilled his part of Island history.

And speaking of returning to the Island, Kate almost revealed her reasons for doing so. The way the scene played, with her discussing it with Sawyer, certainly leant itself to the suggestion that Kate was going to tell Sawyer that he was the reason she came back. Now, whilst many ladies may extol the hunky virtues of Sawyer, I don’t think he’s enough of a reason for her to have abandoned Aaron – an act that clearly haunted her deeply. But if not Sawyer, then what? Why did she come back?

Frankly, I don’t know. At the harbour the thought of going back to the Island was utterly abhorrent to her, but then not long after Aaron had been palmed off somewhere and Kate was consigned to returning. It needs to be something pretty damn convincing. But then the same goes for Hurley who, working as a Dharma Chef, appears to be as happy as a pig in shit – but he must have had his reasons for returning and I don’t think it was to be serving Jack and Kate breakfast.

Still, it’s good to see the characters and their inherent mysteries have come to the fore. What will become of Sayid now – eyes opened to his murderous heart and running wild in the jungle? Don’t know. Wait and see. Same as with Kate and with Hurley. Same as with Sawyer and Juliet, who are coming to realise that their three-year Dharma idyll is coming to an end.

Unless, of course, Sawyer thinks he can stop ‘the purge’. Unless he thinks he can change history. Unless he wants to refute Faraday’s ideas of whatever happened, happened. Me, I believe he’s wasting his time on a futile endeavour. There’s only one timeline. One Island history. The Losties have had the benefit of cropping up at various points along it, but really they’re just fulfilling their part of Island history like filling in missing pieces of a jig-saw. It’s what the finished jig-saw looks like, and who will be a part of the last pieces, where the real drama lies.