This is where Alpert and Locke, chronologically-speaking, met for the very first time. Locke tells Richard that he has spoken to Jacob, that he will be the leader of The Others, and if Richard doesn’t believe him then he should wait a couple of years for Locke to be born. With this one exchange we can track Alpert’s actions during the episode Cabin Fever and reach conclusions. First, Alpert turns up to Locke’s birth.
There’s Alpert’s verification. Don’t forget, from Alpert’s point of view Locke came out of nowhere, told him he was going to be leader, and then disappeared. That was all Alpert had to go on. Locke’s birth is the first validation this bizarre encounter holds truth. So Alpert waits a few years and then he visits young Locke and presents a test.
As it transpired, young Locke failed the test, and we can now understand why. It has been made clear that the compass was Alpert’s property. And yet he asked young Locke to select items he believed were his. Locke picked the compass. That wasn’t his. It was Alpert’s. He failed the test. Cue: Abruptly angry Alpert, presumably because he was thrown into doubt – after these years of patience – about whether Locke really was his man.
Alpert tried to coax Locke as a teenage boy to join Mittelos, but sports-mad Locke wasn’t interested. We can imagine that there were many years of doubt about Locke, possibly explaining why Ben was eventually accorded the role of leader, but Alpert is a patient man and he didn’t give up. Once Locke was chastened by his ‘accident’ he became amenable for coercion.
Abaddon encouraged Locke to go on a walkabout, and from there he got to the Island and from there he was delivered to Alpert, at last, after half a century’s wait: Alpert finally met the man he met all those years ago and knew he had found his destined leader.
Perhaps, like me, this line of logical progression has forced you to consider the idea that Abaddon might, like Alpert, be an Other. He was instrumental in bringing Locke, the promised leader of The Others, to the Island. As he was also instrumental in bringing Charlotte (I’ll get to her) and Faraday as well.
Oh yes. Daniel Faraday. In the previous two episodes we were given scraps of clues that allowed us to propose that his mother was Ms. Hawking. According to the Enhanced Version of The Lie (shown in US), Ms. Hawking’s first name is Eloise. Now there’s a name! Not only was it the name of Faraday’s test rat from The Constant in Season 4, it can also be shortened down to “Ellie”.
What’s in a name?
This feisty young Other was called Ellie. Faraday remarked that she had a striking similarity to someone he knew. Eloise. Ellie. Ms. Hawking. Whatever you want to call her, I think Faraday calls her “mum”. What’s perhaps more intriguing is the notion of who Faraday calls “dad”. . .
The big reveal was the soldier with the ‘Jones’ nametag was a young Widmore. At last, confirmation of something long suspected: Widmore was on the Island. So we’ve got a young Ms. Hawking and a young Charles Widmore on the Island together. Time for them to meet. To perhaps fall in love. To give birth to a baby boy. . .
Obviously, there’s a required explanation about why Ms. Hawking is called “Hawking”, and Daniel has the surname “Faraday”. It’s not inconceivable that Ms. Hawking never married Widmore, or was once married to a Faraday now long gone. Hell, Widmore might not be Daniel’s father at all and purely funded the research since its Island-related nature sits close to his heart. But Widmore being Faraday’s father is an alternate explanation why he was funding Daniel’s research at Oxford, and why he paid for the care of Daniel’s apparent one-time girlfriend, Theresa - the unfortunate result of previous attempts at mind-shifting.
This is a revelation that potentially paints Faraday as more of a monstrous bastard than previously considered. Behind his bumbling façade lurks an unscrupulous Dr. Frankenstein leaving behind him a trail of broken people, ex-experiments? It appears poor Theresa is suffering a Minkowski-esque state – flitting time periods in her own mind – but it’s interesting how she has managed to last so long without a Constant. . .
For the record, I’m not willing to give up on Faraday being a good guy. I’m sure there’s good reason why he abandoned Theresa. Or there isn’t, and he’s a love ‘em and leave ‘em type. Charlotte better hope not; Faraday declared his love for her just before another time jump triggered near-fatal effect.
I don’t have any better explanation for Charlotte’s condition than previous assertions about her being born on the Island (or so we’ve been kind of led to believe). If the time period they have arrived at is the same one where ‘original Island Charlotte’ exists then the paradoxical event of their co-existing has created a problem. Conjecture proposes it’s the truth of Charlotte’s origins being unknown to her, and potentially coming to light, that may be the root of her memory loss and nosebleeds, as though everything she was once ignorant of is bursting forth and overloading her.
On most other shows that kind of prediction would be ridiculous, but the boundaries of what we accept as ridiculous on Lost are constantly being shifted. Such as:
The name of the episode was the name of the bomb we’ve now discovered exists on the Island. Faraday recommended burying the thing deep underground and encasing it in concrete. Funnily enough, I happen to know of a place on the Island that is deep underground and has thick concrete surround.
If ‘jughead’ was stuffed down behind the concrete wall in The Swan Station then I wonder what became of it when the place ‘imploded’. Is it still down there, over to the side of the hole? Did it vanish in the Fail Safe bright light? Or was it never there at all, and is instead tucked away elsewhere on the Island, primed to pop up for devastating drama in the future? I don’t think we’ve seen or heard the last about it.
How did the bomb get there? The insinuation was that the Americans found the Island and planned to use the place as a detonation test site. (Interesting notion here is that the Island, in the 1950s, wasn’t as tricky to find as it is now?) Perhaps the unique properties of the Island were perceived by the Americans and so scientific emphasis was introduced. What these guys didn’t factor in were Alpert and his people who were already there. The indigenous Others.
Whilst they had their own weapons – flaming arrows and so forth – they also learned to appropriate the guns and uniforms of their enemy and use them also. Hence the ragtag band of Others wearing army uniforms we saw. We can pretty much grasp how things went for the next few decades. Dharma turned up. Alpert’s mob were ‘hostiles’. They fought in skirmishes. One ‘purge’ later, after half a century of fighting, The Others reclaimed the Island.
Then came Oceanic. The Freighter. Widmore. That name again. Keeps cropping up. But, on Lost, names have a habit of doing that. And it’s not all doom and gloom.
Desmond and Penny, tucked away on their yacht, started their own little family. (By my reckoning, this is the third episode of Lost that has started with a woman giving birth, following The Man Behind The Curtain and Cabin Fever.) What’s in a name? Poignantly, Desmond remembered his old friend. The one who died so that the likes of Des and Penny could get together. They named their new baby boy Charlie. Awww! That’s what’s in a name.
And it would have been cruel to call the kid Jughead.
