Thursday, March 5, 2009

Lost: The Dharma Years

**UPDATED AT 4:28pm - additional information at the bottom

Man, lots to digest from last night's Lost.

I'm just going to throw a few things out while I wrap my brain around the timeline. 3 years in the Dharma camp?!?

Horace - we finally got to see more of him. Remember, he was out building Jacob's cabin when Locke stumbled upon him during his time loop / Jacob encounter. At the time he said it was for him and his wife to getaway. But who is his wife at that time? We know he and Amy had the baby together, but in a previous flashback I thought he was actually married to Ben's schoolteacher, Olivia. I'm really confused on the timeline. I'm assuming that Ben is somewhere in camp at the same time Sawyer and the others are there, but maybe he hasn't arrived on the island with his father on the sub yet.

Amy and Horace's baby - is it someone we know? Ethan or maybe even Sawyer? Or was the birth just a vehicle to show the elapse of 3 years, and draw a parallel for the upcoming Sawyer / Juliette / Freckles love triangle (is 3 years long enough to forget about Kate's fine looking rear?)

The dude with eyeliner - Thanks, Sawyer! I've been calling him that for the past two seasons. Finally someone acknowledged Richard's freaky eye makeup!

This is absolutely an episode that needs to be watched over again. If I see anything else, I'll post it in the comments below... please do the same! Oh yeah, and according to Ben, Charlotte was born in 1979 - so what's she doing walking around as a kid in 1974? Was that a goof, or did Ben have his facts wrong?

**UPDATE


I just rewatched parts of The Man Behind The Curtain from season 3, and Cabin Fever from last season. Both had Horace in the flashbacks. So now I think I have the timeline figured out.

Back me up here:
In 2004 Horace appears to Locke and says the he died 12 years earlier. That would mean he died in 1992, the year of "the purge" (Which we saw in the Man Behind the Curtain episode in season 3). This is when Ben kills his dad, and the others destroy the Dharma Initiative.

The earliest time we know of Horace's whereabouts is when Ben is born in the woods off the highway in Portland. Horace and Olivia just happen to be driving by and witness Ben's mom dying after giving birth. This is sometime around the mid '60s.

In 1974 Horace meets Sawyer for the first time. this is during the time of some sort of peace accord with the others. We also see that Richard Alpert has short hair. Now, when Ben first comes to the island as a young boy, it seems as if he 15 or so. That would put his arrival time right around the same time Jack and company returns to the island (1976).We know from the episode "The Man Behind The Curtain" that the others are attacking the camp on a regular basis when Ben is on the island and that Richard has long hair. Although Olivia is seen as a school teacher, there's no proof that she and Horace are an item. In fact, just because they were driving together in Portland doesn't prove it either - they could just be co-workers or friends, so let's not even factor an Olivia/Horace romance or marriage into the timeline.

OK - My thought is that little kid Ben arrives on the island right after the events that are currently happening to the losties. Perhaps the truce is somehow broken between Dharma and Richard's people. This is why the Others start attacking Dharma right around that time... this could explain why Richard's hair is long from hiding out in the jungle and why he wants to recruit Ben as a sleeper agent to eventually bring down Dharma.

Oh yeah... while trying to figure this out I also noticed that Locke's mother was named Emily. She gave birth to Locke out of wedlock sometime in the late 50's and gave him up for adoption. Ben's mother's name was... Emily. And based on the timeline, the appearance of her age matches. Could Ben and Locke be half-brothers?

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