The Last Season

The Last Season
One Dark and One Light...

Thursday, March 5, 2009

A knot in the Time Line

Now that was a fun little episode, good storytelling and the acting sold it. I think Elizabeth Mitchell is getting better with each episode. Love the display of emotion during the delivery and during the kitchen kiss scene with Josh Holloway.


I am not a shipper. In fact I couldn't care less what happens with Kate anymore. The Kate from season 1 and 2 is long gone and I can't see her coming back. Go Sawliet, ha ha ha.

Highlights of the episode included "Jim LeFleur" having a little heart to heart with Richard Alpert and letting him know that that they were waiting for John Locke. But this brings up a question. At this point in 1974, Richard is well aware that John Locke is only 18 years old. Probably a Senior in High School. Wasn't it around this time that he tried to recruit John to his "Science Camp in Portland"?

Which leads into another question. The ageless one (who I assumed was a reanimated spirit like Christian Shepard) is able leave the island and walk around in the real world. Hmmmm.

We saw Richard leave the island at least three times. Once to visit John Locke as an infant in the hospital, once to visit young Johnny boy in the foster home and one more time to recruit Juliette for Mittelos Bioscience . At the time he was with Ethan to recruit Juliette, Dharma was no longer on the island and the Others had occupied not only their buildings and equipment, but apparently the stuff they owned off island as well.

So if Richard and Ethan used the Dharma submarine to get to Portland in 2001, how did he get off the island in 1956 or even 1961? He told Locke that the way to leave the island was priviledged information so we know that it could be done. Follow a certain course like 305º or 316º and you are gone, but on what? It's not like the others have any ships.

And while I'm on this train of thought about the Others coming and going from the island, there is another person of interest who has been in my thoughts since watching "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham". I am talking about Charles Widmore.

Now Charles was supposedly (if we take his words to John Locke at face value) the leader of the Others for 30 years. Mmmkay. Let's say he was tricked by Benjamin into leaving right around the time of the Purge. Because as we saw, immediently after gassing the Dharma Initiative, Richard Alpert started taking orders from Ben. So I have to assume Chuck was gone from the island by this point.

Since Miles stated that Chuck has been looking for the island for over 20 years, then from 2009 going back, that would mean Chuck got tossed back in time by the Frozen Donkey Wheel to around 1989. Not too big a stretch. But was he sent back in time farther? Maybe, and here's why I think he would have had to be. PENNY.

In 1996 she looked to be in her early '20s. clearly she was old enough to marry Desmond. This means she had to have been born in at least 1976 or earlier. Now since we know that in 1976 Charles was the leader of the others, would that mean that Penny was born on the island? or that daddy took trips off the island to make babies? You would think Penny would remember being raised on the island, so I have to assume she wasn't.

This little time line problem is really bothering me. She certainly wasn't raised in Dharmaville. Where the heck were the others living? In the Temple? The Jungle? How could Charles or even more so why would Charles leave the island in the 70's to have a daughter? He wouldn't.

If he was sent back in time even further by the FDW, say to the early 70's then he would have been looking for the island a lot longer than 20 years.

And here's another puzzler.
Charles clearly has plenty 'O Money. Enough so that he could build his own pendulum and hire a staff of mathematicians to figure out the next jump point. Clearly by the mid 90's he would have access to better computing power than the apple II's the Dharma Initiative used in the Lamp Post Station.

Hell, he has guys with guns. just go and take over the Lamp Post and figure out the next return trip. He knows exactly where it is, after all he gave Desmond the address. If Chuckles really wants to get back to the island, I think he could. He got his freighter there and everyone who needed to get to the island made it. Daniel, Charlotte, etc. He could just as easily have ridden on board the chopper.

His exile must be different somehow from just turning the Donkey Wheel. Even Benjamin made it back in one piece. I really can't tell who is the bad guy here. Is there a good and bad? or is everything a gray area and all we are doing is watching these two guys play a game?

namaste,
hatchling23

6 comments:

whygodwhy said...

I do not think that Charles was leader of the others at all. In 1954 he was taking orders from Richard. So that would mean that in the purge took place in 1989 a he was gone soon after Richard told John how to leave the island.

Unknown said...

Good points on Penny. We don't really know when Charles left the Island yet, but the question of whether Penny was born on the Island is a good one.

Also wondering, we've never seen her mother, have we?

Unknown said...

Yeah, the time travel is beginning to present some difficulties, as it does in all of those types of books/movies/tvshows.

The Earth itself would be in a different part of the galaxy, each time they travel through time. A lot of other issues as well.

Yes, they need to get back to the old Kate too.

I still love LOST though!

phatallac said...

Charles didn't turn the donkey wheel, thereby leaving the island. He was forced to leave by the sub in handcuffs in "Dead is Dead". Ben went to see him off remember. Its not impossible, however, to imagine that previously he had turned it and that was one of the sins he had committed though: turning the wheel or moving the island = exile. Maybe that's how he left so often before the purge. Until they get the sub during the purge, they left using the wheel in the well. Once darhma builds the orchid over it and controls it though they are left without a consistent means of leaving the island.

Capcom said...

Interesting. :-)

Floor Heating Pueblo said...

This was great to rread