With only 10 hours of Lost left, I've decided to take everything at face value. This may be naive, I know. But if they're setting up for a "Smoke Monster is good, Jacob is bad" switcheroo and can pull that off along side with everything else that needs to be resolved, I'll be impressed. For now, I would like to think that we are actually getting answers instead of more misdirection, so I'm going with the obvious: Jacob is good, Smoke Monster is bad. Does that mean I'm on "team Jacob?"So which side is Sayid truly on: good or evil? This week we got the answer. According to Dogan, everyone has good and evil inside of them, but one side will always tip the scale. In the real timeline, Sayid has always struggled with his evil side. Torturing Sawyer on the beach, torturing Ben in the hatch, killing for Ben back home... He's a killing machine, and even though his good side struggles to keep it at bay, evil tends to win out every time. As we know, in the real timeline Jacob "pushed" Sayid. Did Sayid truly make these decisions to be evil on his own, or was it part of Jacob's plan to get him to do what he needed to do?
The answer, sadly, comes in the alternate reality. Sayid is trying to be a good man; he gives up the love of his life (to his brother!) because he doesn't believe he is worthy of her. He is trying to let good win out by following a straight and narrow path. He's in a boring, but responsible job; He's a caring uncle and he tries to resist using violence to solve his brother's problems with the mob. That evil is bubbling under the surface, however... and even without Jacob's "push" Sayid finds himself in a situation where, when given the option, he kills a man (Keamy!) even after getting what he wanted.
Back to the real life timeline... Sayid declares to Dogan that he is not evil, regardless of what the evil-o-meter shock machine says. Dogan knows the truth, so sends him out for a final "test" to kill the Smoke Monster. This test is similar to the tests given to suspected witches in Salem: Dunk 'em in a tank, if they drown they're not a witch. If Sayid is truly good, the Smoke Monster will kill him. If he is evil, he will live and do the Monster's bidding. Bad gamble by Dogan: Surprise! He was right, Sayid is evil and now recruited by the Smoke Monster's team. Bye bye Dogan and your weird John Lennon friend.
Who else is on the Fightin' Smokeys? Claire and Sawyer made the choice to follow him. Sayid's evil grin pretty much makes him the MVP at this point... but what about Kate? What happened down at the pit? Did Claire have time to recruit her to the team, or did they just high tail it out of there? I'm thinking Kate is still on the fence, and is following behind because she has nowhere else to go. Can't wait until Crazy Claire has time to confront her about Aaron! And what about Jin? He's there somewhere... looks like we will find out more about his path (and why he was in the freezer - can't stay out of the mob even in the Jacob-free world?) in the coming weeks.
Theory time: What if the alternate reality flashes are showing us who is truly good and who is truly evil. We are seeing what their lives are like without Jacob's influence. Those who are making good decisions without being "pushed" are truly good. Those who are evil, are truly evil. Kate looks like a good-guy at this point... looking at herself in the mirror at the mechanic's she saw the good person inside and decided she couldn't take Claire's bag and abandon her in LA.
Observations and questions:
Keamy is an a-hole even without Jacob's push. In the alternate reality, he's a loan shark mob boss. In the real reality, he was a soldier of fortune working for Widmore that eventually killed Alex.
Yep, that was Jack walking down the hall in the hospital.
Where is Richard during all of this?
Jin doesn't speak English and is still involved with the mob in the alternate reality. Doesn't look good for him not being on Team Smokey at this point.
The preview makes you think that Ben is a goner... but come on, this is Lost! "The man who has caused so many deaths will meet his demise" can mean many things. Don't you think if they were going to kill off Ben they would make it a surprise? Guess we'll have to wait until next week to find out.
Your thoughts?
Row , Row, Row your Boat gently down the stream...merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily... Lost is but a dream. :)
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Is this reading to much into things? Why at the end of the episode did the voice say 10 hrs left until "series" finale but the screen said "Season" Finale. I don't trust anything anymore.
ReplyDeleteSayid is toast in the next episode...he's caused many deaths!
ReplyDeleteWhere does Widmore fall in all of this? He was a leader of the others at one point and yet the crew that he sent to the island's mission was to kill everyone on it (the man in black/smoke monster's goal- in the first episode we see him we find out that he doesn't like visitors)- if we assume that he gave them that directive then was he being recruited by the man in black the same way that say Hurley is being tapped by Jacob?
ReplyDeleteBut then if we start think about Jacob and the Man in black recruiting different players and how Sayid, Claire, and now potentially Kate and Sawyer are on the Man in Black's side we have to remember that Jacob was the one who recruited them in the first place- is this all some sort of master plan? Did he know that Ben was going to stab him- if he had planned it all along then that explains why he never talked to Ben even though Ben was the leader of Jacob's people.
On the idea that the meter read Sayid as being evil- does this necessarily read him as being inherently evil or that he was infected with an evil? Claire was subjected to the same test and gave the same results and now she's batshit crazy- this must have been a long process which sayid is only beginning- it'll be interesting to play out because its obvious that Claire was affected and has altered memory/perceptions.
And on that to say that Jin has not found redemption is shortchanging him- how long of a chance has he had? The plane only landed at LAX a short while ago in the flash sideways and we can assume that his life was more or less the same before it- Hurley's, Kate's, and Jack's histories weren't Drastically affected and neither were Locke's or Sayid's so it seems too early to dole out good guy bad guy titles. It seems like they all just have a part to play in this and each one's part is different.
I'm interested to see where Bernard and Rose are in the post blast Island- is this going to end with the two of them sitting on a beach alone being happy-he way that Jacob wanted visitors to the island to act (this would also draw a parallel to the aforementioned beach scene where we are first introduced to Jacob and the man in Black)?
Jin is definitely on Team Smokey. Remember when not-Locke sent Claire into the Temple? She asked why she had to go and why he didn't send Sawyer or Jin.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that bugged me is if Sayid is such a bad-@ss in real life, why did Dogan whoop him in this episode, and why did he whine/cry when being "tortured"? Seems a little out of place
What is good and what is evil? Off island, did the dark side (Keamy) not force himself on Sayid? Did Sayid have a real choice at that point?
ReplyDeleteOn the island, did Sayid not give warning to the temple folk as to how to avert death?
Is MiB any better or worse than Jacob in terms of manipulating people?
I thought the teaser said there were "10 episodes left until the 2 hour series finale".
ReplyDeleteThat would mean there's 12 hours of Lost left.
Hey Boris - Do you remember that episode when Locke first wanted to meet Jacob? He and Ben went to the cabin and Jacob was invisible and sort of freaked out. He didn't seem like a good guy to me then, but then I can't remember all the details to make any connection now.
ReplyDeleteI think that this story is going to keep going answering as little questions as possible. The only change is that in the series finale, at the end of the episode when the word "lost" is put on the screen, it will be followed by a ?
ReplyDeleteas in are you still "lost?"
It seems to me that the losties on the island are pursuing the same goals (known or not) as the losties in the flash sideways universe...
ReplyDeleteKate came back to the island to get Claire and reuinte her with Aaron.
Sideways Kate seemed to convince Claire to keep Aaron.
Hurley does what he can to appease everyone
Sideways Hurley does what he can to appease everyone
Jack struggles with his inner conflict, struggling with what he knows as fact, and what he feels is right
Sideways Jack has the same struggle
Sayid struggles with his past and falls to his prior ways
Sideways Sayid does the same.
They haven't really shown us too much about the others yet- but it seems like there are definite paralells to the island losties and the sideways ones.
The scale in the cave episode also explained a lot. The light stone and the dark stone, being an inside joke is an overlooked symbol that means a lot. Obviously, Jacob is the recruiter, so it would seem that he would recruit both the 'good' and the 'evil' to make it a fair game on the island.
Sure seems to me like God and the Devil. Jacob, who is more 'God' like, chooses one person at a time to be his 'prophet' and uses that person to try to get others to do his bidding via faith.
'Locke' is more like the Devil- he directly tempts those he feels he can sway to follow him.
I'd prefer not to look at it that way, but that sure as hell seems like how it is to me.
What about a "genie in a bottle" theory? Smoke monster (genie) can't kill his master (Jacob), but now he is free because his master (Jacob) has been killed. He told Sayid he could give him what he wants (grant wishes?). Maybe the island is under water in the alternate reality because whoever controlled the genie wished the island were at the bottom of the ocean.
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