Because You Left & The Lie - Lost 5.1 & 5.2

Season 5 opened with perhaps the coolest sequence for a premier since Desmond's Season 2 appearance. Another tone-setting song greets us, as a faceless man prepares for work. Unlike similar openings, we already know this man. Holy God, it's Marvin Candle! Or is that Mark Wickmund? Or perhaps Edgar Halliwax? Really, it's Pierre Chang, ready to tape a Dharma Station orienation film. Then suddenly the action shifts to a problem in the Orchid, where the Dharma Initiative is trying to drill toward the room where Ben turned the infamous Frozen Donkey Wheel. Instead of breaching the chamber, the drill melted and Candle/Wickmund/Halliwax/Chang reveals the chamber contains "almost limitless energy" that will allow the DI to manipulate time. Aha, finally some insight about what happened to the island in Season 4.

But who is that masked man bumping into the doctor on his way out?

Somehow Daniel Faraday is back in the 80s crashing the party. And with this appearance marks the show's foray into time travel. Though the interesting momentum of a DI opening dissipates and we don't see Candle again, Faraday does set the stage for the new paradigm in Lost.



When Ben moved the island, we all wondered whether the island merely moved its physical location of if it instead also shifted on the line of time. "Because You Left" answers that question emphatically: both.

The group left on the island after its move suddenly find themselves skipping through time. Faraday explains the situation as if the island were a spinning record and, instead of a smooth turntable, the LP is skipping. Where the needle lands after a skip is anyone's guess. The first blip takes them into the past, where the camp has not yet been built and the hatch is still intact. Blip two moves them to the future, at least past the point of the crash, because the Swan is destroyed. In Faraday's words, there's really no stopping the events because what happened cannot be changed. Obviously, the story can't end there because, well, that would make for a really boring story. And we know the writers wouldn't leave things like that.

So, several factors on and off the island point toward things either working slightly differently than Faraday explains or specific people have the power to break the loop.

The first person to examine is Mr. John Locke, de facto leader of the Others. Just as Locke moves to take control, he moves through time, just like the rest of the survivors/freighter folk. The only problem is the Others don't move with him. When the first skip occurs, Locke finds himself alone. This moment is one of the most intriguing of the show, as Locke gets to witness the crash of Yemi's plane. As has been noted by several Lost commentators, this record-skipping mode allows the writers to answer a lot of the show's questions, or at least to have us witness them. Locke's move into the past finds himself on the wrong end of Ethan and his rifle. Ethan is about to blow off Locke's head when time skips a second time. This time, Richard comes to find the wounded bald man. Richard tells Locke he knew Locke would be there because Locke told him about it in the future. Though Locke does not understand what is going on, this sequence highlight a few important features.

Firstly, Richard obviously is not affected by the time skips, at least not in the way Locke and the survivors are. Does this fact mean he can manipulate time himself? Why did the Others, who were present on the island when it moved, not find themselves moving like the rest of the cast? Was Locke merely separated from the group for some reason and the Others moved too? Either possibility seems just as logical, when viewed through the non-logical lens of time travel. My money, however, is on a special ability of Mr. Richard Alpert.

The second issue Locke's interaction with Alpert brings up is the meeting the two had in Cabin Fever in Season 4. The test he gave Locke as a child suddenly makes more sense. We wondered exactly what the question "Which of these items already belong to you?" meant. In Because You Left, Alpert gives Locke a compass to use in a future meeting with Alpert, where Alpert says presumably past Alpert won't know Locke. Apart from the brain breaking inconsistencies this logic creates (why does present Alpert know that future Locke will visit past Alpert and past Alpert will not know of Locke at all? If Alpert has the ability to time travel, why doesn't past Richard know about Locke from the start?), the compass now seems to make more sense in Cabin Fever. Apparently Alpert wanted to see if Locke could sense which items he already owned in the future. Does this mean we'll soon see Locke with a baseball glove, a Book of Laws, or a cool comic book? I sure hope so.

(As a quick aside, I find it humorous and a bit ironic that Locke was dubbed to be the leader of the Others only to be removed from their presence nearly immediately upon inauguration. To add insult, Richard tells Locke he must now die in order to save the island. Shortest reign ever. Of course, in the end, I'm sure Locke will end up back in control once he becomes Lazarus and gets out of his coffin.)

That takes us to Desmond. Though Faraday believes events from the past cannot be changed, he somehow finds information in his journal that Desmond is special. Miraculously and uniquely, Desmond has the power to alter the "street" of time. Again, as noted by many others, this fact makes sense, since Desmond seemed to gain superpowers after the Swan imploded and he ended up nude in the jungle. Interestingly, 2008 Desmond dreams/remembers what happens in 2005/before 2005 (following all these dates?) when Faraday interacts with imperfectly-sealed-yellow-suit Desmond. Is this scene a mix between the time travel of Flashes Before Your Eyes, The Constant, and Because You Left? Desmond, therefore, has to be special if his future selves can somehow recall a "memory" that happened to him in the past that happened to Faraday in the present. Otherwise, Alpert would remember Locke the next time Locke sees him. More importantly, this act would violate the idea that nothing in time can be changed. Daniel's theory actually does not really involve time travel. The arrow of time to the players involved still points forward, just the plane of physical existence changes. Therefore, there future or past selves would not have any sort of residual memory and things could never be changed. If you could alter the future or past, then it would follow that your future selves would acquire new memories, a la Desmond. Apparently things can be changed and Desmond is the man for the job. All those slight differences in Flashes Before Your Eyes become more interesting now. I always surmised Desmond might be the central "hero" to the plot (I use the word hero lightly here, since true heroes have one supernatural father) and now it seems that could be the case.

Of course, these events lead us to another character involved in the time travel/course correction plot line, a character we wondered if we would ever see again: Mrs. Hawking. Begging to involve time travel from her name, Hawking showed up first in Flashes Before Your Eyes, telling Desmond that no matter what he did, he would have to end up pushing the button on the island. She leads him to believe that all attempts to change his past, to end up not on the island, would be futile. Because You Left suddenly casts this philosophy into doubt. If Desmond is special, then obviously things can be changed. Which brings us to the question, does Hawking know that Desmond can change things? Based on her almost-supernatural-seeming existence, I have to guess yes. Meeting Desmond in nether-time-travel land, showing up in a monk's photo in Desmond's monastery, and a connection to Ben leads me to believe she knows what is going on. So then we have to ask ourselves, why did she tell Desmond things couldn't be changed? Since we see her aligned with Ben in the present, we can only assume that Desmond's on-island actions benefit the island, the Others, or both. Obviously, if Desmond had married Penny instead of ending up on the island, her ends would not be met.

I find two points interesting in regard to Mrs. Hawking in "The Lie," other than the amazingly coolness of seeing her again. The first is that she is either the uber-Stephen Hawking or the most powerful player we have yet seen. Her mathematics and equipment lead one to believe she knows much more about what's going on with the physics than Faraday. She seems to be able to figure out where the island is going to be and when it will be there. This knowledge is something even Ben cannot discover on his own. Until these episodes, Ben and Widmore seemed to be the giants of the Lost chess board. They seemed on even footing when it came to finding the island, as Widmore had been looking for decades, while Ben now seemed unable to find it again on his own. Hawking, on the other hand, does not have those problems, which places her on a higher plane than both Ben and Widmore. Who exactly is she?

The second interesting point regarding Hawking comes from the supposition that she is the most powerful player yet. If we believe that theory, then why can she not do anything about the situation other than find the island? She does not seem to have Desmond's ability to change things. The best she can do is get ben to assemble the all-star squad to go back to the island that she found. When pressed with what happens if Ben cannot get everyone in 70 hours, she utters, "God help us all." So apparently she is not almighty. Still, I think she is a bigger player than we have ever thought. Which begs the question, is Brother Campbell, seen in a photo with Hawking, another big player?

Obviously, these time travel and power issues were not meant to be solved in two episodes. The arc of Season 5 seems a nice length to shed light on these issues. It's really confusing, but as far as I can tell there are a few big points to take away from the first two episodes.

1. The island moved in both time and space, at least once.

2. Those left on the island, seemingly other than the Others, are still skipping in time.

3. In general, you cannot change what has happened or what will happen. Your skips in time are your present and your life's time line still points forward.

4. Desmond is special and does have the ability to alter time lines.

5. Mrs. Hawking seems to be more in the know or powerful than Ben or Widmore, but still is not powerful enough to solve the problem.

I'd like to quickly address a debate I've seen in other articles and posts. Many people surmise the characters are moving in time and not that the island is also moving. They point to evidence that the terrain remains the same, but the things about the terrain change. Therefore, the island is not moving along with the characters. Sometimes that can be a subtle difference. For instance, the characters and island as it was when Ben turned the wheel did not suddenly teleport to the same time line in 1960, since the camp would still be there, just now they would all be in 1960. Instead, the island is the record and the characters are the needle. The island continues to turn, but the characters always end up in different spots on the island.

I believe this theory to be incorrect, at least slightly incorrect.

Obviously the island moved at least once in present time and space. The helicopter crew saw it disappear and it was not merely a cloaking ability of the island. Ben and Widmore obviously recognized what happened, as neither thought the other would be able to find it. If the characters were merely skipping in time, then the island would still be in the same spot and Widmore could send a new boat to the same coordinates. This possibility seems to be false. The island might no longer be moving in time or space, but it did once. After that jump, I believe the skipping for the inhabitants began, as if the initial jump of the island set the island's time dimension spinning like a tennis ball and every time the inhabitants hit that spinning surface, they skip.

Regardless, things are just heating up. We have our usual new batch of questions, but how things work are starting to take shape. Season 5's first two episodes were not the best in the series, but they were a solid opening.

Awesome, non-time-travel-related inclusions: Ana-Lucia and "Libby says hi," the new character, Jill, Miles declaring "that chick likes me" to Juliet, and a potentially new group on the island at some point, aka the flaming arrows.

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