InsaneBear

Our Adventures: Lost – “The Substitute”

Wow…just wow. Ben Linus as a high-school teacher. Lol. Now if we can move past that, let’s try to examine what was a really great episode. Firstly, I really want to rewatch a bunch of Lost episodes now. It seems to me that each episode this season will mirror a previous episode in some way. “LA X” obviously mirrored “The Pilot,” then there’s “What Kate Does” / “What Kate Did,” and this past episode was an alternate universe take on “Walkabout.” So idk, maybe I should figure out which episodes most clearly define each character and then rewatch them for clues.

But moving on! Loved that Raimi-esque shot from Smokie’s perspective! And Richard looks like a scared little boy now. But he must be a player if Esau was trying to recruit him. And as a side note, that whole “not everybody gets a second chance” thing that Esau said just goes along with my redemption theory, although he seems to be offering a second chance at evil (as far as we know). Oh, and when he was telling Richard that he’d tell him everything Jacob never did, total tree of knowledge/evil serpent allusion. It would certainly be interesting if the writers had the balls to question the logic of that Biblical tale down the road, as I’ve never bought into the lunacy that budding from ignorance is somehow evil. But I doubt they will.

But speaking of players, what will become of Sawyer (who had some great foreshadowing intro music with “Search and Destroy”)? He clearly doesn’t trust Focke, but after the revelation at the end, he might have been swayed (although I don’t see him ending on that side…he’s always been a noble guy in his own way).

Oh, and another major player? Strange jungle blondie who seemed to strike the fear of God into Focke. Going purely on looks, I just get the feeling that that kid is Aaron, somehow or someway. I mean, Aaron is the only person we know of to have ever been born on the Island. That has to make him special. Many myths feature messiahs/heroes who mature rapidly. I just have a hunch that it’s Aaron. Maybe I’m wrong, though.

Before I move on to the end I want to cover what happened with Ben/Illana/Sun/Frank. First of all, they sure focused a hell of a lot on Locke’s body and decided to bury him but nobody else. If he rises in three days I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised, especially consider that he was apparently a “candidate.”

Also, the scene where Ben walked in on Illana crying and lied about killing Jacob (because he likely feels guilty), plus the funeral speech where he genuinely (as genuine as Ben can be at least) feels sorry for killing Locke and admits that he’s not as good a man as Locke was, these things just further my theory that he will eventually redeem himself for murdering Jacob. He may not always show it, but if we look to the past, like when he couldn’t bring himself to kill young Rousseau and raised Alex as his own, Ben has always had more good in him than Widmore. Widmore’s sole pursuit has always been power from what we’ve seen. This leads me to believe that he will be pairing with Esau when Ben fights for Jacob.

And last but not least for this group, Illana collecting the ashes seems to hint that this has happened before and that the ash circles hold power over Jacob and Esau because they contain their essence. Given that we haven’t seen Esau’s MIB form since a very, very long time ago, I think it’s safe to say that it was his ashes surrounding the cabin that contained Jacob. We need more information of this topic to clarify.

And this brings me to the end. Inside joke, har-har. Those stones looked bigger than the ones Jack found, though. And Jack found them on a male and a female. There must be a connection between them, but I wonder what it is? But more interestingly for now, the numbers! That still doesn’t exactly explain them, but now we know where they came from…sort of. I wish I could have seen some of the crossed out names but I didn’t catch any. And I wonder if the number associated with each name has any significance. If I had any ambition I’d correlate the first letter of each last name and pair it with the number given to each person and use those two numbers to look up Biblical verses, but that’d probably just be a big waste of time. I wonder if Esau’s even telling the truth about them all being candidates. If they were, why wouldn’t he just kill them? What could he need a candidate for? I also think he was lying when he said that he was once a man. I believe he was channeling his inner John-Locke when he said that. Or maybe not.

Okay, to close things out, I’ll discuss Esau’s intentions to get the hell of the island. If we go back to the season 5 finale when Jacob was talking about the thread he’d weaved by hand and was saying that it took a very long time but that was the point, I’m starting to feel like maybe the island is a prison. Maybe both Jacob and Esau were sent to this prison to protect it as punishment for something they’d done long ago. But going with the theme of faith, they weren’t told why they have to protect it. Therefore, Esau thinks it’s all some sick joke and doesn’t see the point. He wants to escape, unlike Jacob, who gets “the point.” It’s about redemption. You can only find redemption by admitting what you’ve done first and then working to right it. Esau is trying to run away from this punishment because he must not believe in it. And I just remembered that Jacob can go off the island which shoots his half of the theory to hell. So whatever, he’s a guardian, la-di-da-di-da. I’m sure something in that theory’s salvageable, but not right now.

It seems like every episode starts out with the promise of answering questions but ultimately just raises more. That can make this whole theory-making business tricky. So for now I’m just sticking with the “if the losties redeem themselves on the island then they get to live in the happy-time alternate reality” theory. Til next week!

Author: Cody

Tags: lost, lost season 6, lost theories, Our Adventures, the substitute