Tyler Anderson

Wow… just wow. I’m not even sure how to start off this post after the events of last night’s episode. Needless to say, you shouldn’t really be reading this post if you haven’t seen the latest episode, “The Candidate”. I urge you to not read on if you haven’t seen it, no matter how little you care about spoilers. Add this post to your Instapaper queue or something and read it later.

There, now that I’ve written an appropriately inadequate opening, let’s get into last night. Because, whether you like it or not, whatever happened, happened.

Wait… WHAT?!

So, let’s start off with the big event of the episode: Sun, Jin, Sayid, and Lapidus are all dead. Yes, they’re really dead. No, they probably wont be coming back (except in the flash sideways segments). Yes I did totally call this happening in my post “All The Dead People Love Hugo,” where I wrote,

At this point there is little reasonable chance that [Flocke] will be able to convince everyone to leave the Island of their own free will. I believe that he’s attempting to bring them all together so he can trigger some event that gets them all killed. He can’t do this by his own hand, of course, but he could easily influence another, such as his lapdog Sayid, to help him.

While events didn’t go exactly as I thought they would, the story elements are all there. Flocke planted that C4 on the plane (or knew that it would be there and decided to use it) so that he could once again lull the survivors into a false sense of security. However he also knows each one of the castaways very well, and is quite certain that, no matter how many times he saves them, Sawyer will never trust him. In fact, he’s banking on that fact. By using the watch he took off of one of the guards he killed, he is able to rig the C4 to explode using a timer. However he knows that this alone will not kill the Candidates, because he can’t kill them by his own hand. Again, Flocke’s knowledge of Sawyer’s personality pays off, as he knows that there’s no way that Sawyer will sit still while a bomb is ticking down. By fiddling with the bomb in any way, Sawyer will cause it to explode by his own hand, which CAN kill the Candidates. And that’s exactly what happens.

“But why is he killing the candidates? I thought he needed them to be able to leave the Island?” This is a question that I’ve been getting a lot since last night. The main thing to remember when you’re dealing with the Flock-Ness Monster is that you can’t trust a thing he says. Sure, he may have made it seem to the castaways that he needed them all together to be able to leave the Island, just like they needed to be together to get there. However this was a complete lie told in order to get them all in one contained location at the same time. He had to kill them all in one fell swoop, because doing it one-by-one wasn’t going to cut it. If even one of them died through his influence the rest would know and his plans would be ruined. Since he’s unable to kill them by his own hand, his job becomes increasingly difficult when he’s lost the element of surprise. Now, upon realizing this, you might wonder how he knew Jack would get on the sub, seeing as every other thing Jack said this episode was, “I’m staying.” The answer to that is simply that Flocke was winging it. He hadn’t predicted not being able to convince Jack to “leave” with the others. He just had to go along with his plan anyway and hope that the situation turned out in his favor.

But why Sun? Why Jin? Why Sayid and Lapidus? Why did they have to die? Well, after creating this (relative) moral ambiguity surrounding the character, the writers needed to convey, with swift finality, that Flocke truly is the villain character of the final season (not that there was any well-founded doubt in the first place). Damon and Carlton uncharacteristically spoke up on the subject in an interview, stating,

…Now you know this show is willing and capable of killing anyone. There is no ambiguity, [Locke] is evil and he has to be stopped… When we watched the death scenes ourselves, it was brutal. [But] the story always comes first. In many ways, the season was structured as a long con on behalf of the Man In Black. Once we revealed that Locke was the Monster, we knew the audience would immediately mistrust him, and we would have to spend at least a dozen episodes of Locke trying to convince the audience that he did not have malevolent intention, that all he wanted to do was get off The Island. But everything he was doing was leading up to one moment, which was [trying to] get the candidates in one fell swoop. He knew if he killed just one of them, everyone would know what he was up to.

And that’s exactly what happened. We’ve known the entire season that Flocke isn’t really acting in the best interests of the survivors, just like he wasn’t acting in Richard’s best interests when he tried to convince him to kill Jacob. I feel that @Flimgeeks crunched this idea into less than 140 characters quite adeptly earlier today, when he tweeted,

It was never a question of whether Flocke was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but how complex his machinations could become.

Flocke has had a complicated scheme running throughout the entire season, and that scheme hit its climax last night. Unfortunately for him, however, he was not completely successful. There are still three remaining Candidates, and the remainder of the season will be focused on how they handle the situation they’re in. I’ll be curious to see how Flocke thinks he can finish off the rest of them, considering that he can’t kill them directly. If I were to bet money on it, I’d say his backup plan involves some horrendous accident using the explosives Richard, Ben, and Miles are currently gathering over at Dharmaville.

At Its Core, Lost Is About Black vs White

The previews for next week make it seem as though the rest of the season will simply be about the good Candidates versus the evil Man In Black. However this is simply not so. We have to remember that black and white aren’t only associated with good and evil in the Lost universe. What else is it linked to, you ask? Well let’s jump on back over to @Flimgeeks’ twitter feed, where he states,

Black vs White isn’t necessarily Good vs Evil… rather order vs chaos, science vs faith, or fate vs free will.

This is very important, especially after Sayid’s death in “The Candidate.” I felt his moment was particularly well done, considering how hated the writers have made him become. His character was redeemed through sparing Desmond and saving everyone on the sub, and then unceremoniously killed. His death showed that free will wins in the end, or as Lindelof says,

Sayid’s entire season-long arc has basically been, if you tell him that he is evil, you can convince him he is evil. But if you tell him he is good, maybe you can convince him he is good. We basically decided that in a moment of pure instinct, if he did something, if he sacrificed his own life in favor of saving the other people’s lives, that would convey to the audience, ‘This guy was actually a good guy.’

However his death was not the one that was dwelled on, as well it shouldn’t be. He’s been Smokey’s right-hand man for too long to garner any sympathy from the audience. No, the death that was most felt by the audience was that of Sun and Jin, who had only just been reunited in the previous episode. Despite the tragedy of their death, I feel the writers did an exceptional job making it shocking, but somewhat appropriate as well. I can’t honestly think of a better way for the characters to die, as they really were the Romeo and Juliet of the series. Plus, this shot is beautifully well-done.

Jumping back to Sayid’s death, one of the most important parts of the episode happened right before he got “Arzted.” He told Jack about Desmond being held in the well near Flocke’s camp, and told Jack that “It’s going to be you.” There’s no definite confirmation of this, but the statement most obviously this means that Jack will be the Candidate that takes over Jacob’s position on the Island. Judging by Jack’s actions in recent episodes, this makes the most sense in the show’s storyline. So yeah, it’s not definite, but more likely than not Lost will end with Jack taking over Jacob’s position as protector of the Island.

As for Lapidus’s death, if that’s really what ended up happening to him, I feel that it was appropriate as well. His character had always been the “Not AGAIN” voice in the group, and got an appropriate send-off with the final words, “Aw Hell,” uttered right before getting blasted with the sub door.

Little Things

Here’s the part of the post where I move away from theories and list some of the stuff that I noticed in the episode that probably don’t mean anything, but are neat little additions.

• It was revealed last night that Flocke was running a “long con” on the survivors, but he conned Sawyer, the con man, more than anyone else in the episode.
• We saw the return of the Apollo Bar this episode, which hasn’t been seen since the season 5 finale. Jack purchased it from a vending machine where it was in slot E3.
• E is the fifth letter of the alphabet, and when you add it and three together you get 8, one of the numbers.
• At the end of the episode, in the alternate universe, Jack quoted both Faraday and Locke, saying that “whatever happened, happened,” and telling Locke that he “wish you had believed me.”
• That second statement is particularly poignant, as that was the last thing Locke ever told Jack, in a suicide note he wrote to Jack right before Ben killed him.
• The music box that Christian Shephard left for Claire played the tune “Catch A Falling Star,” which is the same song that Claire was creepily singing to herself when she was captured by Dogen’s men and held in a pit in the Temple.
• The title of this article is a direct quote from Terry O’Quinn regarding his views on Flocke as a character.

Ending Thoughts

I didn’t go too much into plotline summarizing with this post, as I tend to go off on tangents and write more than is necessary when I do that. I’ll just leave you with this quote from the io9 article, “Is It Still Called A God Complex If You Really Are The Messiah?”. I feel it closely describes my feelings on what the rest of the season is going to look like. As always, if you want anything else explained or elaborated on post it in the comments. Until next week, dear readers.

All in all, this was a pretty amazing, island-shaking episode… The show managed to give three of its most memorable characters worthy send-off, and the Jack/Locke relationship took on some fascinating new permutations, in both universes. Most of all, this felt like the “all seems lost” moment in a story that knows where it’s going. It’s looking like the final few chapters are going to be a wonderfully bumpy ride.