Open up my LOST and let me out, little baby.

Previously, On LOST: Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on a mystery island and the survivors tried to get rescued. Unfortunately for them, the mystery island was a nexus of cosmic power that many powerful people were (and are) trying to control, so instead of rescue there's mostly been a lot of killing and dying and shouting and scowls, and only (Oceanic) Six of them escaped, give or take. Even more unfortunately, the mystery island was a nexus of spiritual energy and cosmic destiny, so it turns out there's a super-good chance that they weren't supposed to leave, destiny-wise. Now former island cult leader Ben Linus is playing Oceanic Pokémon GO with the (Oceanic) six rescuees/escapees, and hopes to collect them all (except Aaron), in order to return them to their islandy destinies. Meanwhile, back on the island, the remaining survivors are trying to stay alive as they skip through time like a rock skipping upon a pond made out of murder monsters.

Because of course there's a murder monster, and time travel. Nexis of cosmic power don't you know eh wot.

So much to say so much to say.

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O B S E R V A T I O N

As we've seen before with Season 5, the writers are by now paying only the most nominal lip service to the traditional focus-on-a-single-character-per-episode structure, choosing instead to zoom around the timeline like caffeinated koalas as the action ramps up and the stakes rise. The last few episodes were holy-shit episodes. Most of the episodes this season will be holy-shit episodes. These, however, are mostly stage-setting episodes, even if they do have some holy-shit moments and what might be the single most perplexing (to me) scene in the run. We're talking only 15% levels of holy and less than 10% levels of shit. Doesn't mean we can't have a little fun, right at this whoopie spot, where the Jin is cold and Sun's revenge is hot.

Rouge your knees and roll your stockings down. And all. That. Lost.

Episode 4: THE LITTLE PRINCE (Kate, sort of): This episode starts off, as so many of these episodes do, on Penny's boat during those fateful days right after the Oceanic Six escaped the island but right before they revealed themselves to the world at large. It establishes that Kate (holding Aaron) decided to adopt Aaron (held by Kate), which we already knew, and that the O6 decided to lie about their experiences on the island, which we already knew, and that Kate (whether or not holding Aaron) is loyal to Jack, which we already knew. My point is this scene doesn't accomplish much. I think it only exists to try to (semi-successfully) frame this hour as a Kate episode.

Anyway.

Off-Island 2007: Kate leaves Aaron with Sun in Sun's hotel suite to go visit the dickish lawyer last seen bringing a maternity claim against Kate for custody of Aaron. After Kate leaves, Sun receives a box of chocolates from Charles Widmore, along with a dossier showing Ben Linus' wid-whereabouts. Also the box has a fake bottom, concealing a Ben-killin' gun, perfect for killin' Ben. If you recall, Sun blames Ben for Jin's death, and is working with Widmore to exact revenge. (Is Widmore also responsible for Jin's death? Yes! Even wid-more so than Ben, by most reasonable calculations. Also I'm unclear how Sun would have discovered Ben's culpability, since only Locke witnessed it. Maybe he told her, though I seem to recall that he didn't visit her. Oh well. The heart wants to kill who the heart wants to kill.)

At the law firm, the dickish lawyer is dickish to Kate. Should have seen that coming, Kate. She asks dickish lawyer to reveal his dickish client; dickish lawyer declines, dickishly. Kate Of Course decides to stakeout the dickish lawyer to follow him and find out his dickish business. That's pretty smart, actually, although I think this is exactly what the dickish lawyer's dickish client expected Kate to do, as we will see.

Jack is in the hospital, having saved Sayid's life from the effects of a powerful tranquilizer dart. He's interrupted by the hospital's director of clinical services, who wants to know what the dilly-dang Jack is doing practicing medicine at the hospital when he is extremely suspended for being extremely high all the time, and Jack hilariously just brushes her off to take a phone call from Hurley in lockup (if you recall Hurley confessed to some murders to escape Ben) and she just ... disappears? Never seen again. Amazing. LOST, you crack me up. Anyway, Jack's career is probably now extremely over, for whatever it matters, which is nothing. Ben arrives in his carpet van to collect Sayid and Jack, but not before Sayid has to take out an man in an orderly disguise for being a Sayid-killing assassin. That's just how Sayid does it, kids. Sayid finds Kate's address in the assassins' pocket. This makes Jack make Jack Face and go find Kate on her stakeout, to Keep Her Safe. Ben reminds Jack of their rendezvous at pier 23. Numbers!

Jack of Course meets up with Kate, just as dickish lawyer leaves his dickish offices to go somewhere, and Jack is the one who has to beg Kate to be allowed to tag along for a change. Dickish lawyer goes to a motel to visit ... Claire's mom! Oh my God! Kate realizes that actually her lie has kept Aaron from his actual family! This is very complicated! Jack investigates! Um, turns out Claire's mom has no idea about Aaron at all. Dickish lawyer's business with her is unrelated. It's just one of those LOST coincidences that probably (definitely) aren't coincidences. Stakeout denied! Meanwhile Ben (chaperoned by Sayid) meets up in a parking garage with dickish lawyer—who is Ben's lawyer. That's right, the whole custody nonsense was just Ben doing Ben stuff. Never change, Ben. Also, per dickish lawyer, Hurley's going to get off on his murder rap due to lack of proper blzzle brrzzz gzzle. That's convenient, from a getting-Hurley-back-to-the-island standpoint.

Everyone meets up back at Pier 23. Kate accuses Ben of being behind the custody shenanigans. Jack vouches for Ben and Ben immediately sandbags him by confessing to being behind all the custody shit. From a nearby car, Sun watches, getting her murder on.

Meanwhile ...

Island, Lost In Time: As we last left her, Charlotte's in a bad way, given that she's extremely allergic to timejumps. She recovers, but Daniel Faraday, who knows a lot more than he's letting on and is terrible at hiding it, sure looks concerned about his island girlfriend. Maybe it's because she doesn't remember him, which is one of the main signs of time madness.

Locke meanwhile has figured out a thing or two about a thing or two. He realizes that, since this Billy-Pilgrim time bullshit all started when Ben Linus did whatever he did down at The Orchid station, probably the place to go to stop it is The Orchid station. Hey, that's solid reasoning, Locke. Well played. The Gang Goes To Stop The Timejumps.

Locke also believes this is all happening because the Oceanic Six left. Why does he believe this? He doesn't tell his friends, but we know it's because The Adversary told him so. Richard Alpert also told him so, but Richard Alpert only told him so because The Adversary also told Richard Alpert so, creating a situation where different people told Locke so, making it seem more credible for coming from multiple authorities even though it actually only came from one source. Then, at some point, we have learned, Locke will get off-island and tell the Oceanic Six the same thing, and now at least some of them believe it. So it seems that The Adversary told Richard told Locke told The Oceanic Six that everyone shouldn't have left and needs to come back, and that's why everyone else off-island now thinks it, too. The Adversary, who started all this, is also the monster who wants to destroy reality, by the way. Just mentioning that. Might be relevant to the validity of the whole "they all have to go back" claim.

The closest path to the Orchid is via the Zodiac—that's the black inflatable raft with the outboard motor for all the boaters (I'm just talkin' about Zodiac)—and the Zodiac is back at their camp, so that's where they head. Timejumps being what they are, it turns out they are in a "when" corresponding to Season 1. Ah, Season 1. Simpler times. Anyway, they see the shaft of light coming up from the hatch, and eventually Sawyer sees Claire delivering Aaron with Kate attending, and he feels all kinds of ways about seeing his Freckles again. He's a complex guy, sweetheart.

Timejump! Kate is gone. Sawyer looks shattered.

Walk walk walk. Miles is also having nosebleeds. He wants to know why he and Charlotte are particularly timejump-sensitive. Faraday posits it may have something to do with duration of exposure. Miles says what the hell, man, I just got here. Faraday's face says hmmm I know something you don't. I'm telling you, play poker with this Faraday guy if you get a chance.

They get back to their camp—which is still there! But Sawyer's bummed; somebody bogarted all the Dharma beer. Also the Zodiac is gone. In its place are a couple of no-motor pontoon-skiffs that need a paddlin'. The skiff has a water bottle from Ajira Airlines. (What's Ajira Airlines? Hold that thought.) The Gang Steals A Skiff.

Out on the open ocean, they are paddlin' away, when they are suddenly shot at by a group from the other skiff, now in pursuit and hopping mad, presumably because of "hey, what the hell, that's our skiff" or words to that effect. Juliet shoots one of their assailants before a timejump carries them away. (Who were they? Hold that thought.) The timejump saved our friends from people with guns, but landed them in the middle of a torrential downpour. They go to the nearest shore, where they find evidence of a wreck ... a French wreck.

Cut to ... a life raft full of French people. The French people see a body floating on some jetsam in the sea. They pull the body into their raft. Mon Dieu! It's Jin, last seen in the Season 4 finale, being exploded. He's totally non-exploded now, though. In the morning, non-exploded Jin awakes on the beach, and meets the French team, including their seemingly youngest member, a pregnant woman named ... come on. You know who.

It's young Danielle Rousseau.

End of Episode 4.

Episode 3: THIS PLACE IS DEATH (Genuinely no idea. Jin probably?): This episode picks up right where it left off. Jumping right in ...

Off-Island 2007:

Sun interrupts the Kate/Jack/Ben/Sayid confab pier-side confab with her Ben-killin' gun. Ben does his Ben thing, which is to stay alive by talking fast. He tells Sun that he couldn't have killed Jin, because ... Jin is still alive. Dun-dun-DUN! Oh wait, we just learned that. Cough.

Anyway this breaks up the party. Kate leaves (holding Aaron), Sayid leaves (not holding Aaron), and neither of them seem to want to have anything do with any of the rest of the others, so Ben remains unparalleled at staying alive but mediocre at recruitment. Jack and Sun take off with Ben to the person who has the proof of Jin's non-exploded status. This person also happens to be the person who can get them back on the island. (As everyone already knows, it's Eloise Hawking.)

On the way, Jack apologizes to Sun for failing to save Jin. Sun says it won't make any difference whether Jack is sorry or not, because she's killing Ben either way. Jack has no problem with killing Ben, given Ben's custody shenanigans with Kate. At this, Ben's finally had enough. He screeches the van to a halt. "What I'm doing is helping you," he snits. "And if you had any idea what I've been doing to keep you safe, to keep your friends safe, you'd never stop thanking me." He really seems offended. If they say ONE more word, he will turn this van back around, and there will be NO McDonalds for ANYONE, and he MEANS it. Sun and Jack keep quiet; apparently they want McDonalds. After a bit, they drive on.

The three arrive at the cathedral where we last saw Eloise Hawking. On the way in, they encounter Desmond, come from his strange Faraday mission, who wonders what all these island people are doing looking for Faraday's mother. Ben, who clearly was not expecting Desmond, and who clearly did not know that Hawking is Faraday's mother until this very moment, and who furthermore clearly finds this information of significant relevance, spins on his heel and walks into the cathedral without another word. Hawking, waiting inside wearing her robes of drama, notes that not everyone is present. "This was all I could get on short notice," Ben murmurs. Hawking doesn't actually seem so concerned by this as you'd think, given that she so recently dropped a "God Help Us All" on the thought of just such an eventuality. Hmm, interesting.

"Let's get started," she says.

Meanwhile ...

Island, Lost in Time: Non-exploded Jin is having a tough time communicating with the French expedition. They don't speak Korean, he doesn't speak French, so they do their best with his broken English. The French have detected the recording of the numbers that Radzinsky left so many years ago (it's the one which will eventually bring Hurley to the island) and have deduced a radio tower is somewhere around. They want to go to there to make le rescue broadcast. Jin wants to get back to his camp; he's focused on Sun, who he hopes to find still on-island. Problem is, he doesn't know where camp is from his current location, but he does know how to get there from the radio tour. La Gang Se Rend à la Tour Radio.

On the way one of the French team disappears. All are understandably distressed, but they're even more understandably distressed when the smoke monster bursts from the ground right beside them and drops their missing comrade's corpse right in their midst. They're most understandably distressed of all when the smoke comes busting out of the bushes and drags their ostensible leader Montand (anyway he's the tallest and boldest of them) through the jungle and tries to pull him down into a hole beneath a hieroglyph-covered temple wall. Jin and the French grab Montand's arm just in time, and begin a tug of war. They're overstandably distressed when the smoke monster rips Montand's right off of his arm, leaving them holding the severed limb. Sacre bleu, mon bras est perdu!

From the caverns beneath, they hear Montand calling out for help. The team is admirably loyal if not admirably wise about following malevolent cosmic entities into tight spaces, and heads down the hole—all except for Rousseau, who Jin holds back on account of the baby. Just then we have a timejump, and Jin finds himself all alone. Montand's arm is decomposed. It's been there a week or two probably. Guys, you have to refrigerate that.

Jin espies a distant trail of rising campfire smoke, and this leads him to the French encampment. It's untidy, especially because there are two dead Frenchmen nearby. Further down the beach, Jin sees Young Rousseau in a showdown with her husband/baby daddy, with whom she was very tender earlier, but who she clearly no longer trusts. "That thing changed you!" she yells. "You're not Robert! That monster made you sick!" Robert demurs "It's not a monster, it's a security system guarding that temple." Hmm. We've heard that line before. Rousseau lowers her gun; Robert raises his and pulls the trigger. Click. No bullets. Rousseau shoots him down, leaving her all alone, and well on her way to a madness borne of solitude and grief.

That's when Rousseau sees Jin, and ... well, you know Rousseau. She's shooty. She just shot her husband/baby-daddy, she's certainly not going to not shoot the mysterious Korean guy whose appearance prefigured all this madness and who disappeared out of nowhere a couple weeks ago.

Jin is saved by a timejump, but it's out of the frying pan into the fire. Somebody points a gun at his head. But wait! It's out of the fire and into the ... um, the not-fire! It's Sawyer! Sawyer is so overjoyed to see one of his dead friends still alive that for maybe the first time in the entire series he drops his Sawyer facade completely, and says "well whatya say?" like a happy hillbilly with a big goony grin on his face and it's really lovely.

The good times end quickly, though, as Jin asks "Where's Sun?"

Sawyer figures Sun is dead. Locke (correctly) believes Sun made it off-island, and intends to leave the island to go bring her back. Jin looks stricken by either eventuality.

Speaking of stricken, there's a timejump and Charlotte falls to the ground, hemorrhaging badly. And then there's another timejump. (Sawyer: "COME on!!") And another. And another. Juliet and Sawyer have nosebleeds now. Charlotte is insensate, but then leaps up to shout at Jin to not let Locke bring Sun back. "This Place Is Death," she episode-titles. Jin makes Locke promise not to bring Sun back to this bullshit death island of woo-hoo-hanny.

Charlotte can't travel, so Faraday stays behind with her. She tells him that she grew up on the island as a small girl, a child of the Dharma Initiative. Now she remembers how, on the last day of her life on the island, a man appeared and told her to leave and never come back. "Dan ... I think that man was you," she says. Faraday looks sad and unsure. He's there with Charlotte as she dies, and weeps when she's gone. It's sad.

The rest of the group head on to The Orchid. When they arrive, they're pleased to see that they're in a time that coincides with the existence of Dharma's stations. Except—timejump!—it's gone. All that remains is a deep deep deeeeeep well. Locke, who has never found a dumb idea he didn't love, heads down the well on a rope. Halfway down—timejump! The rope disappears. Up above, Sawyer is still holding the rope, which leads into the ground.

But never mind. It's time for a perplexing scene.

Locke falls to the rocks below, compound fracturing his leg horribly. After a moment of fruitlessly casting about in the dark cavern within which he finds himself, a figure appears and lights a lantern. It's Christian Shephard, last seen in the cabin telling Locke to move the island. He admonishes Locke for letting Ben do the job, and instructs him to finish the job. "Finishing the job," incidentally, means gathering everyone who left and bringing them to Eloise Hawking, who will know how to send them back. This is a more detailed version of what Richard already told Locke. And speaking of Richard ...

"Richard told me that I have to die," Locke says. It's more of a question.

"Well I suppose that's why they call it 'sacrifice,'" says Christian.

It's not the answer Locke wanted, but he's obedient to the end; he gathers himself and says he's ready. In excruciating pain, Locke crawls around a corner in the cavern (Christian says he can't help), to where the wooden wheel, last seen being manipulated by Ben, is rocking around, seemingly off its track. Malign-looking energy pulses behind it. Panting with effort and groaning with pain, Locke puts the wheel right again.

Say hello to my son," Christian says.

"Who's your son?" Locke asks as the light surrounds him. But then he's gone.

End of Episode 5.

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B E L I E F

Huge revelations on the way in future entries. This time I'm going to devote most of my attention to Locke and Christian in the cavern. But first a few smallish things:

1) Custody shenanigans. This isn't so much belief as extrapolation. Ben wants Kate to return to the island (and much more about Ben's tangled motivations next time), which means he needs to accomplish the challenging maneuver of separating Kate from Aaron. (Ben is basically a stand-in for the writers here, who wrote a whole lot of checks they decided they'd rather not cash with the Claire/Aaron storyline.) Ben being Ben, he goes about this in the most convoluted way possible. My belief is that the whole point of all of it was Kate following dickish lawyer to unrelated motel meeting (why else a motel meeting? oh well) in order to confront Kate with the reality of Claire's mother and the fact that she undeniably, albeit in a well-meaning way, stole a kid. Anyway that's how it's all going to play out. Feels like Ben could have just told Claire's mom about Aaron. Why do it this way? Maybe this is Ben playing spiritual guide with Kate like Locke did with Charlie back on the island, and letting Kate make her own choices? Naaaaah. It's LOST silliness, plus the plot-nonsense warp drive the writers seem to have affixed firmly to poor Kate's character.

2) Ben's hissy fit. He sure got pissy about Sun and Jack's threats to kill him, didn't he? I mean, most people would, but Ben is far from most people, and has been fielding threats to kill him all series long with aplomb and a peach. This time it really seems to have hurt his feelings, though. From this, I believe some faction of island-aware people have been trying to murder the Oceanics all along, and Ben has been successfully working to stop that faction. Ben has been suggesting these are Widmore's people, but the evidence is going to pile up against that theory, so either Ben is wrong about that part or he's just trying to make people think Charles is a bad guy because he personally hates Charles for killing his daughter. Me, I believe it's the latter, because I believe the person sending these murder goons is R.G., the mysterious Economist who gives bracelets to dangerous ladies, and Ben seems perfectly aware of R.G. I've written before about how the whos and whys of these factions don't matter much to the main plot, but there's a decent chance Ben really has been keeping the Oceanics alive (assist from Sayid), and this is the thanks he gets? You'd pull the van over, too.

3) The mystery shooters from skiff 2. This is the loose end that famously really never does get tied off. (There is apparently a DVD extra that tries to explain that they are another group of timejumping sailors from the Black Rock but we don't accept DVD supplemental material here at The Reframe and also come on that's insane troll logic.) We never see a scene from the position of a group who pursue and shoot at unnamed skiff-thieves that disappear, which is what would have happened from the perspective of those in the skiff in pursuit. (By the way, it sure is lucky that the skiff made the jump along with the timejumpers, isn't it? Something our heroes might have thought about before taking to the open sea.) Anyway, this one isn't too hard to figure out. Ajira Flight 315 is coming to the island, full of Oceanics and Bens and various rather militarized Jacobians. Some of those Jacobians have priorities of their own, and they get around in those skiffs, and probably would feel a way about having a skiff stolen, but those Jacobians never matter all that much to the main plot, so why waste a scene on them losing a skiff? is probably what the writers decided. But yeah it was almost certainly the random Ajira Jacobians shooting at the Sawyer Gang. I believe that, and now you can believe it too. There won't ever be any confirmation of it, but it's what fits.

4) Young Rousseau. Meanwhile, we get flagrant confirmation of Rousseau's origin story, which we already had confirmed for us back in her very first appearance by Rousseau herself. The pieces we're given don't contradict her telling, but they do fill some gaps about our smoky friend The Adversary. (Also, the LOST creative team sure did a good job over 4 seasons of not giving older Rousseau any scenes with Jin, who we presume Rousseau would have remembered. Good job, writers.) There's a temple (is this the first look at it? it's an early glimpse, anyway). which has a vast network of subterranean caverns, and the smoke monster often resides in those caverns. Sometimes It pulls people down inside. Sometimes It probably kills them and then impersonates the recently killed friend to lure the rest. We saw this waaaay back in Season 1, if you recall, when the creature grabbed Locke. I believe It wasn't just trying to assume Locke's form early, but making a play for Kate and Jack as well. When The Adversary isolates people, It corrupts them—"infection" is how Rousseau thinks of it, and she's not alone in thinking of it that way (I'm thinking here of Dharma and its quarantine of its critical staff inside the Swan Station). The things to highlight here are: 1) the proof it provides that Rousseau is actually correct, because her baby-daddy really does try to shoot her, and we must presume that either he killed their two compatriots that Jin sees stretched out on the beach, or else they tried to kill Rousseau and she was forced to dispatch them; 2) the fact that baby-daddy tells her the exact thing about the smoke that Locke tells Jack back in Season 1: it's a security system for the island.

From this I would like to extrapolate. We are being taught that the temple is a place that is captured by The Adversary and where Its corruption is perhaps most powerful. It's going to be important to remember this, because eventually we'll meet the people inside the Temple, and they will all clearly believe themselves to be true followers of Jacob, opposed to The Adversary, and convinced that the Temple is one of the only places that is free from The Adversary and its influences. We'll never hear very much to contradict the Jacobian narrative (though there will be a couple hints), but almost everything we'll see contradicts it. Rousseau's story is another direct textual proof-point for my belief that most Jacob-worshipers actually worship The Adversary without knowing they do so. And it provides incontrovertible evidence for the idea that The Adversary can corrupt humans into murderous acts. Observing before believing is very important, kids.

Likewise, Locke doesn't believe himself corrupt, but within a few days of his arrival on the island, he met The Adversary, and he clearly has undergone some process similar to that of Rousseau's team. And both were told the same lie-wrapped-in-truth about the smoke: It's just a security system. The return of this phrase is one of the clearest textual proofs for my belief that Locke has been Adversary-enthralled. Once they were enthralled, Rousseau's team was sent to kill one another, because that's what The Adversary, who hates human interlopers, wanted. Locke was not sent to kill his fellows by The Adversary (and also was not pulled down into the ground by It), in part perhaps because killing Oceanics is against the rules imposed upon It by The Island, but also because It has a much more intricate plan for John Locke.

5) And speaking of those rules and that plan ... OK, god damn it, I've been putting off this most perplexing part of the narrative for years, and now I have to try to figure out what I believe about this god damned donkey wheel. God damn it.

Put a big red pin in this scene. I believe that this is the moment that The Adversary's trap finally closes its cruel teeth around John Locke for good. It's also one of the scenes I've always found most confounding. I think a lot of people do. In this, a lot of viewers perceive a creative team that has lost track of their own story's complexities, and I can't blame them for it.

Whenever I get confounded, I return to the deepest secrets that we will eventually be told. One thing I know for sure is that The Adversary and The Island are playing a game, and that this game has rules set by The Island, and that most of these rules will never be disclosed to us, the viewer. I believe what is going on in this cave is driven entirely by those rules. So where some see the LOST creative team losing their way, I see something a little different, which is a creative team who understands a series of deeply buried rules that, for sometimes perplexing reasons, they do not want to reveal to us. I believe it's a rather complex series of rules, which is why there seem to be so many contradictions. Think if you didn't know the rules of chess and had to figure it out by watching it played out of order. That's sort of what is being asked of us. In one move, you see a bishop move in a diagonal all the way across the board. Under a different set of circumstances, it can't move at all. An inconsistency? Not at all. In the first case, the diagonal was unobstructed. In the other it was obstructed. I believe that's the best way to think about matters relating to this deeper game.

I'll list the troubling questions, and then I'll tell you what I believe makes sense.

First: what the hell is going on with the wheel? We will learn beyond doubt that it is something The Adversary manipulated humans into installing, so we can presume the wheel is a key part of Its plan, because it gives humans the ability to do what The Adversary cannot, which is steer the island itself. This creates a loophole in the rules, if we observe that the rules state that The Adversary cannot enter the light or manipulate it.

Turning the wheel moves the island from one orbit of time/space/possibility to another, and we will learn that it does so by "manipulating the light and the water," Putting it off track seems to be what has been making our friends nosebleed around time, or anyway Locke putting it back on track will coincide with the end of the timejumps. In 2004 the wheel wasn't off-track, now it is; its chamber was frozen, now it's hot. I believe this demonstrates that turning the wheel moved the terminus point from the Artic—where Penny knew to set an observation station—to Tunisa, which is where Ben came out.

But wait. The timeline is off.

Ben may have been the one who put the wheel off track, but even if he did, that was in 2004, and Locke is in the cavern in a "when" significantly earlier than that. My belief is that the cavern is a place out of time, and if/when Ben put it off track, it remained off track across all of the island's time until somebody came along to put it back on track, and that, just as it was put off track across all time, this somebody can make the fix from any point in the island's timeline. Me, I believe that The Adversary knew it would go off track when it was turned, because sending our characters through time certainly appears to be a part of Its plan. (It would have been nice to show that a bit more clearly, though, writers.)

But wait ... why would the wheel only affect certain people on the island but not others? To answer that, I have another question, one that is mercifully easier to answer.

When are we? We're at a time before the digging of the well, which itself predates the Orchid's construction. We'll see in a coming episode that in this moment, the statue of Tawaret is still intact, so this is 1867 (we'll learn this is when the statue was destroyed) or sometime earlier than that, but after the time of the Ancient Egyptians, who presumably built it. There's a wide range of some millennia we could be in, is the point. But even more to the point, we are far before any time when Christian Shephard's corpse came to the island, which in all other cases determines who The Adversary can or cannot manifest as with physical presence. I believe this tells us that The Adversary may be constrained by many things, but time is not one of them, at least not in this particular place, and not in that particular way. It can appear to John Locke as Christian here. That diagonal is open. Does that mean it could also appear as Christian in other places during this when? Not necessarily. To me it speaks to the chamber as a place out of time.

I have no doubt that this "Christian Shephard" is The Adversary's latest physical manifestation. Most of Its manifestations are overtly incorporeal, but as Christian we've seen It hold Baby Aaron. We've seen It light and hold a torch. Yet It can't help Locke get to the wheel he needs to fix. Why? I believe we're being told It can't or won't touch him. Yes, but why? I have always been pretty confused about that one, but I'm starting to see a picture. I think now it's time to return to a bunch of yet-to-be-revealed information about Jacob, including the idea of Jacob's candidates. Jacob, as an avatar of The Island, draws people to the island, as is The Island's wont. But Jacob no longer wants to be the immortal indwelling human manifestation of a cosmic entity, and who can blame him. So Jacob's been drawing certain special recruits for a while, candidates to replace him, among whose numbers are a lot of our main characters from Oceanic 815. We'll see the specific way Jacob draws these special ones, these candidates: He touches them.

There appears to be something in the touch of cosmic entities that affects destiny. I observe that the candidates are in a particular category. I believe that means that if you were a cosmic entity and wanted to tie only their presence within the timeline directly to say an off-kilter wheel, the diagonal would be open.

And this I believe is one of The Adversary's strategic reasons for creating the timejumps: The Adversary needs Jacob off the board, but he also need no new Jacobs to rise. Answer? Hide all of the candidates in the past.

The Adversary is a cosmic entity, incidentally. And Locke is a candidate. So maybe The Adversary is not permitted by the rules to touch candidates when It is manifesting in human form (It has grabbed Locke in smoke form). Or maybe The Adversary Itself has already set a destiny for Locke that It doesn't want to interfere with by touch. I think it's something in that time zone. I believe that's also why he wants all the Oceanic Six to return—because while they're off-island, they aren't off the board. But if they return to the island, the returning candidates will go into the same part of the past as the rest of the candidates ... provided that Locke, infused with some measure of The Adversary's cosmic presence, touches them, maybe? We'll see that Locke honors Jin's request and doesn't try to recruit Sun. If my theory is correct, perhaps Sun will, for seemingly no reason, return to the island in a different time than all the rest of the candidates. Let's watch and see!

Why can't The Adversary simply move the wheel? Easier answers here. First, turning the wheel exposes you to the light, and It is not allowed to enter the light. Next, it doesn't want to. Another reason the wheel is off its alignment is because The Adversary needed to give Locke a motivation to set things right, because It needs to send Locke off-island. Why? Because (for reasons I've explained in earlier entries) It needs Its next physical manifestation to be John Locke, and I believe that the rules state that Adversary-al physical manifestations can only occur under certain circumstances. One way is for the person to die by going all the way to the very heart of the island ... but Jacob doesn't let anyone find the very heart of the island. To get to the heart of the island, Jacob first needs to be taken off the board.

The other way for The Adversary to manifest as somebody is for that somebody to come to the island. Not just anybody, though. The diagonal needs to be opened. Specifically, it has to be somebody who has already been on the island, maybe somebody who has already been exposed to the light—both of which are, through the re-setting of the wheel, conditions that are about to apply to John Locke. Oh, and one last thing ... this somebody needs to be some body. Dead on arrival, that is. This, incidentally, means that I slightly believe Christian had probably also been to the island at some earlier point in his life, but that's not important; it's just an inference from what the rules seem to be.

Jack never did find Christian's body, you know.

Anyway, that's why I believe The Adversary told John Locke (via Richard) that Locke had to die. He needed Locke not only ready and willing to die, but determined to die.

Not a matter of destiny.

The Adversary just needs a John Locke corpse to come to the island.

It's a game piece.

L O S T

Next Time: We're Not Goin' to Guam, Are We?

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A.R. Moxon is the author of the novel The Revisionaries, and the essay collection Very Fine People, which are available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He'll feed you fruit that don't exist.