Let the (Mind) Games Begin...

Hello my dear friends -

The wait is over. After more months than I care to mention, Lost is back tomorrow night with two new episodes to kick off Season Five. As those of you who have read my last few posts and/or connected with me on Facebook know, the premiere just so happens to fall on my birthday -- hence the party hats to the left.

Amazingly, I'm still spoiler-free... except for watching the inescapable previews that have been running for a while now on ABC. (That rhymed.) While I had intended to share my thoughts on those clips in advance of the new season, I have since realized that I'd just end up covering the same information again in my upcoming episode recaps. So what I thought I would do instead for this last post before the premiere is talk about five of the biggest overarching mysteries that remain in the series.

I'm not going with the obvious ones (Where is the Island? What is Smokey? What is the Four-Toed Foot statue?) because they've been analyzed and theorized to death already. Instead, I'm choosing to remind you of five questions you may have forgotten you had:

1) Who were Adam and Eve, and what's up with those black and white stones?

"Adam" and "Eve" are the nicknames Locke gave to the skeletons Jack and Kate found in a cave in Season One. These skeletons have never been seen or mentioned since. Do you really think there isn't going to be some sort of twist that involves their identities?

Assuming that a little space-time bending will come to pass, I'm still going with Jack being the male, as it looked like (though it's not certain) he kept the pouch of black and white stones from the remains. Meaning that -- unless we see him pass them off -- the stones are more likely to be on his person than anyone else's in the future. I used to think that the female would be Kate, but now I think that Juliet is also in the running. Other guesses are Sun and Jin, Rose and Bernard, Desmond and Penny, the DHARMA initiative founders, Gerald and Karen DeGroot, or (of course) a couple we haven't met yet. Don't ask me how Jin could come back from the dead or why Penny would ever be on the Island -- I'm just naming off the major couples, OK?

However, if Lost's rules of time travel don't end up allowing for living people to see or coexist with their own 50-year-old skeletons, then the DeGroots become my top guess. There's also a small part of me that doesn't think the writers would let The Mad Doctor (Jack, for you newbies to my site) meet such an undistinguished end, which also ups the chances that Adam and Eve are either the DeGroots or characters that haven't been introduced to date.

Wait! I just thought of another possibility... what if the skeletons are somehow Nikki and Paulo? That would be like the ultimate episode of Punk'd (the Lost writers being Ashton Kutcher and the audience being the unsuspecting Justin Timberlake), and therefore we'd probably be treated to another tongue-in-cheek Nikki and Paulo flashback in order to understand the significance of the black and white stones. You heard it here first!


2) How did Montand lose his arm?

I'm pretty sure there's a good percentage of you who are reading this right now and thinking, "It's more like, 'how did e lose her mind?' Adam and Eve? And now Montand?"

That's right, folks... I said Montand. The rest of you may care about the numbers or the Frozen Donkey Wheel or the whereabouts and inhabitants of Jacob's cabin, but I want to know about Crazy French Chick/Danielle's armless friend, dammit!

In the first part of the Season One finale when a subset of the Lostaways gathered dynamite (RIP, Dr. Artz) from The Black Rock, Rousseau said, "This is where Montand lost his arm." So I can only figure that if we are shown exactly what happened to Montand, we'll learn more about Danielle's past in the process.

Things I'd love to know about Danielle and her crew include:
1) What was "the sickness" everyone on her team became infected with? Was it what we now recognize as the effects of becoming "unstuck in time" à la Minkowski and Desmond? Or was there something else that did them in? Or did Rousseau make the whole thing up because she killed them all because she was the "sick" one?

2) Did Danielle truly never encounter any of the Others in her sixteen years on the Island, as she claimed to Sayid when she first trapped him in Season One? I ask this because there are a lot of inconsistencies in what she's told various 815ers over the four seasons. Methinks she DID mingle with the DHARMA peeps and/or the Others back in the day (I could actually see her hitting it off quite well with Patchy) and they had some sort of falling out that left her alone and Alex in Ben's possession.


3) Is Aaron the Spawn of Satan?

When "Raised by Another" first aired, tons of people on the message boards were all riled up because they thought that lil' Turniphead was meant to be the Antichrist. The psychic dude that Claire visited did go on and on about how all of these terrible things would come to pass if she didn't stick with her bay-bee for the long haul. Now that Claire is chillin' with Zombie Dad in Jacob's cabin and Kate is acting as a mother to Aaron off of the Island, is the whole of humanity in peril? Is something about this young boy inherently evil or what? Thankfully, the kid they have playing Aaron in the flash-forwards doesn't look like he's straight outta The Omen or else I just might have to stop watching the show. You may think I'm bluffing, but I've said several times that I have no tolerance for evil-freaky children and I mean it.

For now let's assume that I am not forced to abandon our beloved show. What are the biggest questions surrounding Aaron as we head into Season Five?

1) I'll be curious to see if there are any weird things that beginning happening when he's around... like birds dropping dead or rain stopping and starting on his command or polar bears appearing in his presence. He might be "special," just like Walt.

2) Is he "supposed" to go back to the Island with the rest of the Oceanic Six, or not? Because right now we're getting mixed signals. The psychic first said that Claire had to raise Aaron. But when he gave her the tickets for Flight 815, he told her that a "nice couple in LA" were waiting to adopt him, and that they were "not strangers." Some now wonder if that was his weird way of alluding to Kate and Jack, who would eventually end up with Aaron in Los Angeles (for a while, at least). I, for one, still think that the comment about the LA couple was just a random remark and that the psychic put Claire on the flight because he foresaw that it would go down and she'd be forced to raise her son.

Claire was indeed very attached to her bay-bee once he was born... making it all the more strange that she'd go on to abandon him simply because Zombie Dad beckoned her into the jungle (unless, that is, she left because she's actually dead). Apparition Claire then visits Kate off-Island and says "Don't you DARE bring him back," and Dead Charlie tells Jack (through Hurley) that he shouldn't be involved in the boy's life. To me, it seems as though there are two forces, communicating through a bunch of ghosts, that are fighting about where and with whom Aaron should reside, and it's damn confusing.

3) If Aaron DOES end up being raised however in the hell he's supposed to be raised, will we at least find out what havoc he would've wreaked on the world had another scenario transpired? 'Cause I've got this crazy Apocalyptic vision in my head and if that wasn't what was going to go down then I hope someone goes back and tells that psychic that he's kind of a drama queen. On a related note, when is someone fully "raised?" If Kate's had Aaron for at least three years and wasn't supposed to, how much does that count in the whole scheme of things? I've got to stop thinking about this now.

Crap, there's one more thing: when Desmond was seeing flashes of the future, he claimed to have watched Claire and Aaron board a helicopter and leave the Island. We all know that's not what happened. So was Desmond seeing something in the future future? Is Kate going to bring Aaron back to the Island and then he'll eventually leave again with Claire? Did Desmond confuse his long-haired leading ladies? Or was he just fibbing to Charlie in the hopes that the idea of rescue for Claire and Turniphead would be enough to motivate Darth Hoodie to sacrifice himself in the Looking Glass station?

4) What face cream has Ageless Richard been using?

He of the Bushy Eyebrows and Long Eyelashes has sported different hairstyles over the decades, but, as proven by Ben and Locke's flashbacks, he hasn't aged since at least the 1950s.

We know that Richard is an Other... or what the DHARMA Initiative would refer to as a "Hostile." The Others seem to have been on the Island since before DHARMA arrived; with the help of Ben, they eventually came to overthrow those pesky scientists in a slaughter termed The Purge. As the years passed, Richard had also been watching -- and sometimes visiting -- Locke, and now seems content that ol' baldy is taking what would seem to be his rightful place as the Others' new leader.

From a conversation he had with Locke, we know that Richard wasn't too interested in Ben's attempts to save pregnant women on the Island. The Others as a whole ARE interested, however, in protecting their home, snatching "good people," and watching Jack freak out in a cage when the opportunity presents itself. I have a feeling we're going to learn a lot more about their background in Season Five, so here are some questions I hope we get answers to during the next few months:

1) Why are the Others seemingly ageless -- or is it only Richard who's so lucky? After all, we haven't gotten proof of anyone else's agelessness but his. Long Live Locke reader JhP wrote me this fall with a theory on this issue, based on the 1973 novel by René Barjavel entitled The Immortals (or Le Grand Secret in its native French). Since this book is now pretty hard to locate (I found a used copy on Amazon), I'll summarize the part that might have had a hand in inspiring Richard's story line on Lost, as Executive Producer Damon Lindelof stated during Season One that he spent some time in France (where this book was extremely popular). This is just a theory, but if you still don't want to read about it, skip to #2 below.

For those of you still with me... in The Immortals, a scientist creates a serum that provides for everlasting life, but as soon as he realizes the consequences of his discovery, he tells a few of the world's most powerful leaders and they come up with the idea to send anyone who's taken the serum (or become "infected" by those who have) to a secret island in order to avoid overpopulating the world (their children are born immortal as well). The people are essentially frozen at the age they were when the virus takes effect, or only grow to be teenagers if they're born on the island. However, in the book, no one can leave the Island because they'd infect others with immortality... which doesn't really jibe with how Ageless Richard has been seen off of Lost's Island. But I do think that the whole "immortality serum" and "international conspiracy" aspects of the book may still be relevant to the show.

Another thing to consider is that this same author, Barjavel, also wrote a novel called The Ice People in which scientists discover the ruins of a 900,000-year-old civilization along with two people living in suspended animation in an underground hatch. If that weren't enough proof of the possible influence of Barjavel on the show, if you read his Wikipedia entry, you'll see that in 1943 he wrote "the first novel to present the famous paradox of time travel: if one goes backwards in time and kills one of his ancestors before he had children, the traveler cannot exist and therefore cannot kill the ancestor."

Innnnteresting.


2) Who, if anyone, besides Ben came over to the Others' side from DHARMA? Or was Ben the sole DHARMA survivor of the Purge? Speaking of the Purge, what happened to Ben's childhood crush, Annie?

3) Who was the leader of the Others up until December 2004: Ben, Jacob, Richard or someone else? Ben told Jack that he "made the decision to kill over forty people in a single day," but then told Hurley that the overall Purge was not his idea. Ben has also said that no one besides him has ever seen Jacob, even though the rest of the Others seem to somewhat worship the cranky cabin-dwelling spirit thingy.

4) Who helps the Others off of the Island -- where do they get all of their money and resources? And why are some people like Charles Widmore, the as-of-yet-unknown "economist," and possibly Abaddon working against them? Is everyone fighting for control of the Island, or is something more going on?


5) How did "Jeremy Bentham," aka my man Locke, end up in a casket?

It still pains me to think about those final seconds of Season Four when the camera panned back to show that the man whose death Jack had been lamenting was none other than his old nemesis, John Locke.

Some think that because of clues provided in the Comic-Con 2007 Orchid Station video, Bentham is actually a clone, or another "instance," if you will, of the guy we've come to know and love on the Island. Meaning that the "real" Locke isn't actually dead but rather still fighting the good fight back in the jungle. I'm not too sure I buy that theory, however, because if that were the case, why would Ben tell Jack that they had to bring Bentham back to the Island with them? If Original Locke is still there, surely no one would want two Lockes running around, would they? And if Bentham didn't come back to life when he was returned to the Island AND Original Locke was still there... then what would be the point of bringing Bentham back?

Further, if Bentham was a clone of sorts, then I don't think any of the Oceanic Six were in on the secret. Near the end of "There's No Place Like Home," Hurley asked, "And why are you calling him 'Bentham'? His name is ---" before being shushed.

Finally, I just really, really, really hate the idea of clones becoming a part of the Lost story. Clones are right up there with "evil twins" for me. As in, any mystery that's explained by evil twins or clones usually seems like a total cop-out. So perhaps I'm dismissing the clone theory because I simply dread that it could be proven correct. Until it is, I'll continue to assume that the Orchid Video was meant to introduce the time-shifting abilities of the Island, and nothing more.

So what do I think happened to Locke, then? In a nutshell, I think this situation is exactly what it appears to be. Locke took on an alias of "Jeremy Bentham" after he had to leave the Island because of the "very bad things" that transpired once the O6 left. Since he doesn't have the super-spy skillz of Sayid (or the lovely, long-flowing locks, for that matter), he screws up and gets himself killed, but only after he's had conversations with Walt, Jack, Kate, and possibly Hurley. Although Ben has supposedly been banished from the Island after turning the Frozen Donkey Wheel, he must know of a way to get back into its good graces and figures he'll take Dead Locke along for the ride. The only reason Ben would do this is because he's confident that Locke will come back to life (in some form) once reunited with the Island -- and that he'll play a critical role in setting things right.

(For the record, I do think time travel is involved in all of this, but I'll write more about that topic in the new episode recaps. And yes, I am OK with characters coming back to life and traveling through time, but not with clones or evil twins. Don't try to understand what goes on in my brain, people!)

Of course ten million other questions remain, but we'll have ample opportunity to discuss those in the coming months, now won't we?

In the meantime, ENJOY the two new episodes, and wish me luck in finishing posts for both "Because You Left" and "The Lie" before the 28th.

And if you haven't already, you better wish me a "Happy Birthday," because I'm needy like that!

- e

The First Look at Season Five

Hello my dear friends -

I am planning an extra-special post for early/mid-November, so check back soon... but in the meantime, I just wanted to make sure you all caught the Season Five promo for Lost!

Drumroll, please...

(If you would like to take a look at the individual screencaps, click here and then hit the "view screencaps" button underneath the video.)

All I can say is that the new footage supports writer Brian K. Vaughan's assertion that Season Five "is definitely going to be the strangest thing that’s ever been on network television. Ever."

That's a BOLD statement, buddy! I LOVE IT!

I will be back with an analysis of the video above, plus some other goodies for you, when I return from my travels in a few weeks. Trust me, it will be worth the wait.

For now, I leave you with two thoughts:

1) I shrieked with glee to see Sayid kicking ass once again
and
2) The Best Line was definitely uttered by Kate to Even Older Aaron: "We're goin' on vacation, baby."

Awwwww... YEAH!

More soon,
- e

Hints from Comic-Con

Hello my dear friends -

It's been about two and a half months since Season Four of Lost ended, and I hope all of you have been making the most of the hiatus so far. For those of us who are in countries that have been enjoying warm-weather months since May 29th, I dare to guess that the time has gone by quickly. Besides, NO major non-reality TV shows have been on since Lost's finale, so it's not like anyone feels like they're missing anything just yet, right? However, when September and October bring a bevy of season premieres, things may get a tad more depressing and Lost's return in February will still be ridiculously far, far away.

That's most likely why the producers of our favorite show once again threw us some bones to chew on during the recent Comic-Con conference in San Diego. I didn't attend the event, but have watched the video that was shown at the Lost panel, have thought long and hard about what it could mean, and am now fully prepared to provide a debrief.

You all know my strict "no spoiler" rule for this site, but for some of the Comic-Con scoop, I make an exception. That being said, I'm not going to cover any of the Season Five plot-related information that the producers discussed in a question and answer session, although I did read all of it and don't feel that any of it is too surprising. If you would like to know what they said, the best and most succinct recap I have read is here.

What I AM going to discuss, however, is the video that played. While I wasn't quite as excited about this one as I was about The Orchid Station video that debuted last summer, this clip probably raises just as many new questions, if not more.

Before you watch it (assuming you haven't seen it already), allow me to set the stage. At Comic-Con, there was a Dharma Initiative booth, because the organization is apparently in business again and is trying to recruit new people (in the world of Lost, not in the real world... sorry, folks). A Lost fan attended one of the Dharma orientation sessions, and secretly filmed the video they showed there. Then he escaped from the room and showed the rest of the Comic-Con attendees what he had taped. This was obviously all just a staged thing with actors, lest you start getting too jealous of the kid on the tape.

Knowing that, you can try to forward the video below to the one-minute mark, where the good stuff begins...

If you'd like to read a transcript of what you just saw, click here.

Time to analyze the video. I hope my brain's still up to the task after being out of practice for several weeks...


THE NAME GAME

Previously, Pierre Chang went by a different alias in each of the hatch orientation videos we've seen... and the names were connected: Marvin CANDLE, Edgar HalliWAX, Mark WICKmund. Now he has finally revealed his true identity. So did those other monikers hold any clues, or does this guy just like candles? And why did he feel he needed to use pseudonyms in the first place?

We also find out that he is a professor from Ann Arbor, Michigan (Go Blue!), the city where I spent four years of my life during college. Who else has ties to Ann Arbor, or "A-Squared" as we Michiganders say? The DeGroots. Remember them? They are the two hippie freaks -- professors at the University of Michigan (in Ann Arbor) -- who co-founded the Dharma Initiative.

The connection between Chang and the Degroots could've easily been deduced back in Season Two, when we saw them in the Swan Orientation video that Chang moderated, so what's the big deal? I personally think that Chang mentioned Ann Arbor to get us crazy fans thinking about the Degroots again... because I have a feeling they're going to factor into Season Five.

I now put the probability of the Degroots being the Adam and Eve skeletons in the cave at 39.57% (higher than before).



CAT'S IN THE CRADLE

Honest-to-God truth: until I read the video transcript, I thought some rabid cat was making a racket at the start of Chang's speech. I felt really dumb after I found out it was supposedly a baby crying. They need to get better sound effects for these videos, seriously.

So, the #2 Biggest Debate that has arisen from this new clip is: "Who is the baby?" Many people thought it was Charlotte at first, since we have been given reason to believe that she was born on the Island. We also know, from when Ben rattled off her background in "Confirmed Dead," that she was born in 1979, which would more or less fit the thirty-year time gap between when Chang shot the video and the present day (more on that shortly). However, Chang clearly says "take HIM outside," so I really don't think it's Charlotte.

The next guess that's flooding the message boards is that the baby is Miles and is Chang's son... simply because he's Asian and so is Chang. Maybe Miles' "powers" come from the fact that he was born on the Island? I throw that theory out there, but I really don't subscribe to it, for the same reason that I don't believe Abaddon is "Older Walt" just because they're both African American.

So right now, I have no intelligent guesses for who the baby might be. But I do think it might not even matter. Perhaps "Who is the baby?" isn't the question we should be asking. Perhaps the right question is, "HOW is there a baby on the Island?" Because, last we checked, pregnant women died before giving birth to any children conceived on the Island.

The baby heard in the video could've been conceived elsewhere, like Aaron, and that is why he survived. Or maybe the problem with pregnant women arose after this video was taken. As I mentioned in my Season Four finale post: "But perhaps pregnant women started dying on the Island in the first place because of Ben... because he stopped devoting himself completely to the Island and got too wrapped up in Annie. As a punishment, the Island made it so that no one else could ever have children and Ben would have to bear the guilt of that situation."

This we can be sure of: we were meant to notice the baby crying on that video for a reason, or else it wouldn't have been on the tape in the first place, nor would Chang have called attention to it.

Finally, in Season Five we need to be on the look-out for a woman named "Lara," who Chang called out to on the tape. Some people think he said "Jennifer," but the actor who plays Chang actually confirmed the name was Lara in a recent interview (he says, "Dammit, Lara!").


KARMA POLICE,
ARREST THIS MAN, HE TALKS IN MATHS

We also learn that Chang was brought to the Island to conduct "experiments to study the Kerr metric solution of the Einstein field equations." Saaaaay whhhhaaaaat?

According to Lostpedia, "the Kerr metric is used to describe the rotation of black holes and how everything, including light, must rotate when near a black hole. When the Kerr metric is applied to Einstein's theory of general relativity, we get a wormhole. Since the trajectory of observers and particles in general relativity are described by time-like curves, it is possible for observers in this region to return to their past. So, in theory, time travel is possible if one uses the Kerr metric."

Now, where else have we seen mention of the Kerr metric on the show? On the chalkboard in Daniel Faraday's experiment room in "The Constant."



Which leads us to the #1 Biggest Debate that Chang's new video spawned...


GUIDED BY VOICES

Who is/are the owner(s) of the voice(s) heard on the tape--the one or two people Chang speaks to near the end?

When I heard the unseen guy say "None of that matters. It doesn't matter. Just get to it. Please!", I (and pretty much everyone else who watched this video) thought, "Yay, it's Faraday!" How he says "please" was the giveaway.

But then when I heard "This is useless! Alright? It's just useless. They'll never gonna see this, Pierre. How do I turn this off?", I wasn't so sure. Concentrate on how this man says "off." It's a New Yorkish accent, and it definitely is not how Daniel sounds. This same person speaks again at the very end of the clip, and says "off" again, while Chang begs him not to shut down the camera.

My initial hunch was that there were two men in the room with Chang. One is Daniel, who seems hopeful that the experiment might work. The other man is the more pessimistic one. Many people on the boards seem to think it may be Horace--the dude who brought Ben and his father to the Island, and who was seen recently in Locke's dream about Jacob's cabin. I could buy that, if for no other reason than it would explain why he popped up again on the show... they wanted to make sure we remembered him in future seasons.

Further, the actor who plays Chang did confirm in an interview that "we have seen" the person who spoke on the tape. That seals the fact that it's not a new character. But it also leads me to believe it is just one person, rather than two, behind the camera (he didn't talk like there were two different people ... he used the term "the voice" in the interview). So, despite the weird-sounding pronunciation of "off," I think if I had only one guess as to who was in the room with Chang, it would be Daniel. It would explain why he was crying at the wreckage of Flight 815 when we first saw him in "Confirmed Dead" (though he appeared to have no understanding/memory of why he was upset). And Daniel obviously had a hunch he might be time-traveling one day, or else he wouldn't have noted in his journal that Desmond could be his constant.

Just as important as the identity of the unseen man/men is how the guy(s) came to meet up with Chang in the first place. Because whoever the mystery man is, he is the one supplying Chang with information not only about the future, but also with more details than the Dharma group previously had about the mysterious properties of the Island. If we assume it is Daniel's voice in the video, then my guess as to how he got there would be that when Ben moved the Island, Tie Boy got thrown through time to a point in the past... which may or may not be the same point that Locke and others will have gone to.

With his handy-dandy journal, Faraday would be able to help Chang figure out what is going on with the special space-time qualities on the Island, and then subsequently suggest an attempt at transmitting a message through a "pinhole" in time (the term Chang used on the tape). Why Daniel would sound so defeatist about the experiment working, however, is beyond me. I suppose if you thought you were going to be stuck in the past with a bunch of people who were doomed to die and didn't think you would ever see your lady love (Charlotte) again, you would be a bit exasperated.

It does lead me to wonder, however, how Daniel would get back to the "present time" (for him, at least... which would be the end of 2004) after helping Chang try to reach the Future Dharma Team.

Allow me to end this section with one note of caution. I remember being really taken aback at some of the comments I got, both on this site and on DarkUFO, about the "who's in the coffin?" debate that started after the Season Three finale. In one particular post, I had laid out all of the possibilities of whose casket it might be, and some people outright attacked me for not just accepting that it DEFINITELY WAS MICHAEL. It was a done deal in their minds. This confidence stayed with those commenters until the last five seconds of the Season Four finale. And, well... we all know how that one turned out.

So I have to chuckle again when I read about all of these people who act like they have some sort of inside knowledge that it OBVIOUSLY IS FARADAY on the tape. While I agree that most signs point to it being him... I think we all should've learned by now that nothing -- absolutely nothing -- is a given on this show. Keep that in mind, should you find yourself ripping on anyone who doesn't think it's Daniel's voice, or being the subject of such taunts if you have another theory.


HIDE AND SEEK

At the 1:45 mark, there appears to be a strange image inserted into the reel. Here it is:


Unless it is a still-shot from The Blair Witch Project, I have no guesses. Nor do I think it's important, I'm just reporting that others do.


AND I THINK IT'S GONNA BE A LONG, LONG TIME

Although static drowns out exactly what Chang says about "thirty years," we can assume that since he made references to the Internet and the current President of the United States, and since he also spoke of a "violent purge" that had not yet happened, that he is coming to us from the year 1978, thirty years in the past.

How does this fit in with the timeline that we think has been established for the show thus far? (I'm taking all dates from the timeline listed on Lostpedia, which pulls from either stated dates or implied dates within episodes).

1970 - The Dharma Initiative was created

1977 or 1978 - Ben and his dad come to the Island

1978 - Chang broadcasts the video to the year 2008, possibly with the help of Faraday. Chang still has his left arm intact and there is at least one baby on the Island.

1980 - The Swan (original hatch) Orientation film is copyrighted, and in the video Chang's left arm is a prosthetic. The Pearl's Orientation film is also copyrighted in this year, but Chang's left arm appears to be his own in that reel.

1992 - The Purge takes place, where Ben helps The Others kill the Dharma Initiative members with poison gas.

2001 - Juliet arrives on the Island, and at this point, the problem with pregnant women has been going on for some time.

2004 - Ben "moves" the Island.

2008 - Chang's video makes its way thirty years into the future.


My guess would be that Chang must lose his arm in "the incident" he refers to in the Swan film. "The incident" was apparently why they started having someone push the button in the Swan hatch every 108 minutes in the first place (ah, remember the button and the Countdown Clock 'o Doom? Those were the days...) -- to control the Island's electromagnetic anomaly. So whatever this incident was, it probably happened between 1978, when Chang still had his arm, and 1980, when he appears to have a prosthetic in at least one video. Even though he mentions "a violent purge" while looking down sadly at his arm in this newest reel... his arm was obviously already gone before he was killed in The Purge.

Who wants to bet that we're going to see Chang on the Island in Season Five (in the past)? Who wants to also bet that a lot of what happened between 1970 and 2001 is going to be covered in Season Five?


ONE MORE TRY

Before the video is cut off, Pierre pleads with his unknown transmission recipients to "continue the research," to try to save him and his group, to try and find a way to "change the past," and to "stop what's about to happen."

First and foremost, let me reiterate that the producers have said, literally countless times, that the futures we have seen for the Oceanic Six are set in stone -- they are not going to change. They admit that it would be "cheating" and that the audience would not have any stake in the characters if it wasn't certain that Jack, for example, would end up all depressed with a hillbilly beard after returning home. So any talk of theories that include some group going back in time to change the past that will therefore make a different future unravel for our Lostaways should be ignored.

However, we cannot ignore that Pierre thinks that his fate can be changed, and that he is encouraging Future Dharma members to try and save him. And we can't be certain that they won't in fact try to do just that. But if, as Ms. Hawking explained to Desmond back in "Flashes Before Your Eyes," the universe will always course-correct... then there seems to be no hope for Pierre, his poor arm and the rest of the Dharma Initiative. Maybe Future Dharma DOES travel back in time but is still unable to change Original Dharma's fate.

In fact...

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

... I would bet that's what's going to happen. Why else would The Powers That Be behind the show have chosen to create "Octagon Global Recruiting" to try and attract people to the newly reconstituted Dharma Initiative (complete with a shiny new logo!)?

Why else would this summer's new online game related to the show (or ARG, alternate reality game) revolve around Dharma? You can play the game at DharmaWantsYou.com... or you can be lazy like me and just read what other people figure out from the game here.

It would seem that the Dharma Initiative HAS been resurrected in the year 2008, and I wouldn't be surprised if they try to interfere with the past. The question is... is Widmore behind it all? I would guess that there would be some connection to him, too.

Here's how it all might work: We can assume that Jack spirals into his depression in the late fall of 2007, because when he was still sober, happy, and living with Kate and Aaron, he read a clip about the Red Sox which placed the date at the end of August 2007. I would assume it would take at least a few months for him to get to the bad state he was in when he was begging Kate to return to the Island with him in the scene outside the airport in the Season Three finale.

We can therefore assume that the final scene of Season Four, in the Hoffs-Drawler funeral home with Ben and Jack looking at Locke (sniff) in the coffin, took place in the final months of 2007. And what's after 2007? 2008. Our current year, in which Dharma is reassembling and Jack is trying to round up the Oceanic Six again; both groups would have the goal of getting back to the Island. It might take them some time... like, say, until the beginning of 2009. You know, right when Season Five premieres. I'm making a bet right now that all of the action in the show ends "real-time" in May of 2010, when the final episode of the series airs.

Let us just pause a moment and appreciate the brilliance of the Lost writers once again, shall we?

(Pause.)

Incredible. Truly incredible.

Anyway, last time we saw Sun, she appeared to be trying to strike a deal with Widmore. She could be trying to get revenge on Ben (whom she might blame for Jin's death if she learned, from Locke/Bentham that Ben let Keamy die, thus blowing up the freighter...), OR she could have hope that Jin is still alive (also from Locke/Bentham) and is using Widmore to help the O6 find the Island again. Especially if she learned that Dharma was re-forming and Widmore was backing their new mission. What Sun is up to is one of the things I'm most anxious to figure out next year.

Let me restate that this entire section is just what I think is going on/going to happen ... purely my own theory. I'm sure it will be blown to bits shortly.


This ends my analysis of the new Pierre Chang video. However, there are a few more things I wanted to share with you all that I thought you might find interesting...


YOU LOOK JUST LIKE ME, DUDE!

At Comic-Con, there was a guy who looked EXACTLY like Hurley, as you can probably see from the still clip below. If you don't want to be spoiled about any Season Five plot points, only play the video for a few seconds just to appreciate his Hurly-ness.




IN OTHER LOST-RELATED NEWS...

- Sawyer's going to be in a movie!

- Shout-out to reader KV for letting me know about Lost: The Answers Are Here, a documentary of sorts that aired after the Season Four finale on Sky One in the UK. (The link goes to a page on YouTube containing the show broken up into three parts. Be forewarned that there may be some mild spoilers in these clips, but they are definitely something that will help tame "Lost Withdrawal.")





- What's this? Locke and Chang have already met?!?! This throws all of our theories out of the window. Oh, wait. It was only on the show JAG. Phew.



- Shout-out to reader LH for telling me about an appearance by Keamy and Zeke in Wild Hogs at 23-second mark in the video below. Yes, that IS Keamy. They both have been in tons of movies, by the way. Check out IMDB for the full list (here's Zeke's, here's Keamy's).



- Shout-out to reader "Island Girl" for telling me about these truly hilarious Lost spoofs, created with Lost action figures (and a few other "guest stars"). Can you guess which one is my favorite (readers of 'According to e' over the past few years will have an easier time...)? The bigger question is, why didn't I think of this?!?! (Note: other things on this site outside of the Lost spoofs are NOT safe for work.)

- The shout-outs keep coming... this one goes to reader TC, who sent me these pictures, taken in a Trader Joe's grocery store in St. Louis. Looks like an employee there is a fan of the show...





And finally, on a personal note, I have a few things to add:

- We had a guy do some work on our condo building last week, and I swear to you, he looked like he could be Desmond's uncle. I am sure the way I kept staring was unnerving the heck out of him. If he had busted out with a Scottish accent, I might have kidnapped him. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture (that probably would've made him walk out on the job, don't you think?).

- If you've been reading 'According to e,' then you know that I saw a Sawyer look-alike at a Jimmy Buffett concert a few weeks ago. And Jimmy himself referenced Lost during his performance!

- Before there was Lost, there was The X-Files to keep all of us nerds happy. Click here if you were a fan of that show and want to see some ultra-ridiculous pictures of me from an X-Files convention in 1998.

That's all I've got! I'm going to be pretty busy over the next few months (be sure to check in to 'According to e' to keep up with my adventures and to catch a big announcement I'll be making in a couple of weeks...), so I don't think I'll post again on Lost for a while. Remember to sign up in the upper right-hand part of this site if you'd like to get any new posts emailed to you or fed into a reader. Or friend me on Facebook, where I also post any new write-ups.

In the meantime, continue to do all that you can to keep your mind off of Lost's absence, and let me know if you have any other theories, questions or comments about the newest video!

- e