Anyong, Charlotte
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 03:52am by Maggie
Jin is on the beach with Rousseau and her crew, sixteen years in the past. He’s very confused and wants to get back to camp to find Sun, but doesn’t know where it is. Rousseau asks him if he can navigate from the radio tower (as they are hoping to get rescued) and he says yes, so he goes with them to find it. On the way there they encounter the Black Smoke Monster. It grabs one of the men and drags him to some ruins and tries to pull him beneath. Everyone grabs onto him but the Smoke Monster severs his arm at the shoulder and disappears with the rest of him. They can hear him calling for help from below, so the rest of the crew goes in after him. Jin tries to stop them and succeeds only in stopping Rousseau herself, because she’s pregnant. Then the island flashes through time and he’s alone, confused, looking at the dessicated severed arm lying on the ground.
Jin sees smoke on the horizon and makes his way to it, finding himself at a camp on the beach. He looks around and finds two bodies on the sand. He hears voices and looks up to see Rousseau pointing a gun at her husband, who is begging her to put it down. She relents but then he shoots at her; luckily his gun misfires. She kills him; Jin jumps out of the bushes to stop her but he’s too late. She then shoots at him, accusing him of being sick too, but he gets away with the island’s help as it jumps him into a different time. So what happened under the ruins? It appears that Rousseau stayed sane because she didn’t follow them inside.
Jin’s next time jump lands him with another gun pointed at his head, but this time it’s Sawyer’s and he happily joins the group. They tell him Sun is off the island. Charlotte translates into Korean for John while he explains why they need to get to the Orchid station as soon as they can. They get walking and Charlotte doesn’t look so good. The island flashes again and Charlotte collapses. She’s in bad shape and talks as though she’s hallucinating things from her own past and childhood. At this point almost everyone has experienced some cerebral trauma and they realize they probably don’t have much time left. She pleads with Jin not to allow Sun to come back to the island, because the island is death. John insists that they continue on without Charlotte since she’s in no condition to keep up, and Daniel stays with her.
Just before they head out, it occurs to them they might not be able to find the Orchid if they’re in the wrong time so Charlotte tells them to look for the well. Once they’re gone, Charlotte confides in Daniel that she’s been to the island before; she grew up there because her mother worked for Dharma. Charlotte and her mom left the island long ago and since then, her mother would never acknowledge its existence. Charlotte made it her life’s mission to return, and is now having childhood memories of a scary man who told her to leave and never come back or else she’d die. She thinks that man was Daniel. Daniel tries to assure her that everything will be fine because he had a chance to speak to Desmond at the hatch, but before he can explain, she dies.
The rest of the group arrives at the Orchid just as the island throws them into the future and they’re left looking at overgrown jungle. John pokes around and finds the well. Before he descends Jin makes him promise not to bring Sun back to the island. He asks John to tell her that they found his body and buried it, and gives him his wedding band for proof. John promises and begins to climb down the rope. The island flashes…the light comes up the well from Orchid station…and John falls the rest of the way down. John finds himself with a broken leg in a cave and Sawyer is left on the surface holding the rope, the only thing remaining of the well. They must be in a time before the well was built.
Underground, John is approached by Christian Shepherd, who explains that John made a mistake when he allowed Ben to move the island, because John specifically was supposed to do that. He tells John to bring everyone to see Eloise Hawking and that she will explain how to get back to the island. John mentions that he was told he was going to die; Christian calls it a sacrifice. He directs John to the cog and says all he has to do is push it, which he does. And then he’s gone.
In Los Angeles, Sun approaches the group at the docks with her gun and threatens to kill Ben. Kate is horrified and runs to Sun’s car to fetch Aaron. Ben tells Sun that Jin is alive and he can prove it if she goes with him to see a woman, the same woman who can get them back to the island. Kate realizes that the entire custody threat was a trick, accuses Jack of being in on it and leaves in a hurry. Sayid follows, saying that he’d better never see either Jack or Ben again. Sun decides to go with Ben and Jack comes too.
Their destination is a church, but before they go in, Ben hands Sun Jin’s wedding band. He tells her that everyone on the island will die if they don’t go back there and help them. Sun agrees to go. Just then, Desmond walks over to them, surprised, and asks what they’re all doing there. Ben tells him they’re all there for the same reason. Desmond asks if they’re looking for Faraday’s mother as well, and Ben looks stunned. They all enter the church where Ben introduces Eloise Hawking. Desmond is shocked as he recognizes the woman from the jewellery shop who told him he’d abandon Penny and end up pushing the button in the hatch. She admonishes Ben for failing to bring everyone, then announces it’s time for them to get started.
Whew, that was a long one!
1. freakgirl said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 7:50 am )
Anyong! Hello! I knew you’d notice that.
2. Maggie said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 7:55 am )
It also means goodbye, sniff! I’m hoping that we get to see the scene between Daniel and Charlotte as a child.
3. chele said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 8:43 am )
I haven’t watched Lost in a looooong time. Like, not since the polar bear thing. So this season I’ve been TRYING to get back into it.. but it makes my brain hurt to try to figure it out every week. “Where are they? What year is this? And who the hell is THAT guy?”
So I think that I’ll just rely on good old TMFT! At least I halfway understand the summaries. Y’all are my heroes!
4. Grey Rainbow said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 9:26 am )
Great synopsis! I can’t wait to see next week. Oh, and I heart Faraday!
5. Soosan said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 10:04 am )
Throwing this out there…
Christian Shephard comes to the island dead in a coffin, and then pops up all over the place.
John Locke, we’ve already seen that he “dies” when off the island and he himself has even realized he must make some sacrifice to save everyone. Now, his body/coffin must be brought back to the Island.
Will he become the new Christian? What is going on here?
Are my facts straight? Where are the smart people when you need them…
6. sadnra said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 10:27 am )
Awesomeness! So I assume that Charlotte’s new memory of Daniel means that at some point we’ll see him travel back in time in hopes of propelling a new direction for the future in an attempt to save her, just like he created a new memory for Desmond (or has he already attempted that and failed because Charlotte HAD to die?). On the other hand, the fact that Desmond is now with Eloise because of Daniel’s memory implant, perhaps it is not too late for dead Charlotte, as Eloise has to do something special with/to Desmond to go back in the past and since the rules don’t apply to Desmond he may be able to do what Daniel obviously could not.
I don’t know if that paragraph makes a lick of sense, really. Oh well.
Anyong.
7. sandra said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 10:55 am )
Also, when the light flashed throughout this episode, it seemed portrayed differently from previous ones, as if more intense, and also more frequent. Could it be because they were moving closer to the wheel, or is it because their bodies were just getting weaker and so the flashes feel more intense?
8. Jason said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 11:59 am )
Sun with a gun is not a bad thing. And, my goodness, she should’ve just shot him in the face in the van. He’s so obnoxious.
So, are we to assume that Rousseau recognized Jin in the present? Or was she too far crazy for that kind of recognition?
9. freakgirl said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 12:52 pm )
I was wondering if Rousseau’s people weren’t crazy, that it was SHE who went crazy. I mean, her babydaddy was correct about Smokey being a security system. I dunno.
10. GeekBoy said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 1:12 pm )
The thing with Rousseau is, she was never particularly chatty or forthcoming. So it’s entirely possible she remembered Jin, and just didn’t think it was worth mentioning. I’m guessing there’s still a lot more story around Rousseau and what happened there that we don’t know about … yet.
Likewise with Christian, who may or may not be Jacob, may or may not be dead, and may or may not be corporeal (as in, he couldn’t help John up because he’s either a ghost, an illusion, or a projection). There’s definitely more mystery to unwrap before we understand the full extent of his story. I’m starting to wonder at this point if he’s either A) ancient beyond belief, or B) the personification of the island itself. In which case, him going out and having kids with multiple mothers could be like Zeus doing the same and siring Hercules, and the alcoholism thing could be his version of God becoming human in the form of Jesus so that he can experience the world, and falling prey to sins of the flesh.
11. Bianca said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 2:14 pm )
HAHA i loved the Anyong.
Actually I can’t even recall Rousseau and Jin having any scenes together. I think it’s also possible she may have never met him. Unless I’m totally forgetting something.
I’m pretty sure Christian is actually dead. Assuming Jacob is a spirit of some sort I think he is able to inhabit dead bodies as a way of having a vessel of communication.
12. Jack said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 4:06 pm )
I guessed when Christian said he couldn’t help Locke up, it was because he was a ghost or spirit or something similar. That was the first thing to pop into my head.
The Rousseau/Jin question. This is where I always get confused on time travel. When Rousseau met Jin in 2004, had she met him before? Or because 1988 happened after 2004 in this instance, would she not have recognized him? And what really happened in 1988… was it the events as they first occurred (without Jin), the events of last night (with Jin), or did 1988 happen twice – the first time without Jin and the second time with him? I feel so stupid and headachey with all this time travel stuff.
I’m trying to remember if we’ve met anyone who could be Charlotte’s mother? But her story made me wonder why she and her mother seemed to be able to leave, while the O6 couldn’t leave without everyone saying the island needs them back. What’s the difference – why does the island need some of them but not the others?
Anyong makes me shed a tear for the Bluth’s.
13. Jason said ( Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 4:30 pm )
Jack, my assumption about the time travel in this show (and based on Faraday’s explanations) is that time is one linear track so if Jin and Rousseau met in 1988, the Rousseau would have that memory in 2004 but Jin wouldn’t because he hadn’t been to ‘88 in his own linear timeline yet.
But I’m trying not to think too hard about the complexities of time travel and this show. They are doing a good enough job with it but inherent with time travel are fallacies you won’t be able to account for or explain away.