Lost Recap: "Alright, Dude, We're From The Future"

On last night’s penultimate episode of the penultimate season of Lost, the jig was up for the castaways residing in 1977, because Hurley didn’t pay attention in history class.

I love that, since the beginning, we’d been led to believe that the Others/Hostiles/Richard/Ben knew all the secrets about the Island—probably jumping around in time—and that they were fucking with the Oceanic 815 survivors’ lives on the Island. Now with only one more episode left in Season 5, it’s becoming more evident that the Oceanic 815 survivors have actually been fucking with the lives of everyone else on the Island (Others/Hostiles/Richard/Ben/DHARMA), repeatedly over the course of many years, because they were the ones jumping around in time.

But maybe Jack/Sawyer/Kate/Daniel/Juliet, etc. aren’t the only ones jumping around in time. We already know that Richard doesn’t seem to age, and I don’t think it can be attributed to the Hostile Fish Diet.

I think there’s a message in his bottle.

The boat Richard is building looks an awful lot like the Black Rock.

That painting, “Black Rock Storm,” was first seen at an auction attended by Charles Widmore (in the Desmond-centric episode “The Constant” in Season 4). It was seen hanging next to Widmore’s bed, a few episodes later.

What’s with Widmore’s obsession with the Black Rock, and why did he shell out serious money to purchase the journal of the ship’s first mate at that auction?

Could that journal actually be a version of Daniel’s journal, a book that has jumped around in time more than its author? After all, Widmore’s mercenary team from the Kahana were privy to the “secondary protocol” of the DHARMA Initiative, as well as the logo and location of the Orchid Station. It was previously unknown how Widmore obtained this information, but maybe he read it somewhere.

Or maybe Widmore and Eloise were on the Black Rock, a British trading ship carrying slaves, that left England in 1845 and somehow appeared in the middle of the Island. It would at least explain their beaten-up olde time-y clothing they usually wear.

We know that Ellie and Widmore were on the Island in 1954 (when they were dealing with the hydrogen bomb), dressed in stolen U.S. army uniforms, and were both 17 at the time. Maybe the pair are descendants of survivors from the Black Rock, who built a little camp and got on with their lives, much like the Oceanic 815 survivors had been doing shortly after their plane crashed. Or maybe something crazy—an “event”—happened while they were on their ship, and the Black Rock zapped them into to the 20th century, the same way that Ajira 316 zapped some of the Losties back to 1977.

But that still doesn’t explain Richard’s deal (his accent, his clothes, his agelessness, etc), beyond Ben’s explanation that “he’s a kind of…advisor,” a job he’s had for a “very, very long time.” Although EW’s Jeff Jensen has an awesome theory that Richard is kinda like Tinkerbell, with the Island being Neverland.

So this episode starts at the Hostile camp (1977), where Eloise has just shot Daniel Faraday, her son from the future. It looks like there won’t be a Temple resurrection for him after all. He’s pretty fucking dead.

As we saw in last week’s episode, Daniel told Eloise that she is his mother, just before he died. Eloise realizes that she recognizes Daniel from when he visited the Hostile camp in 1954 and told her to bury the hydrogen bomb. She then finds his infamous journal (that will give her knowledge of future events for decades to come) and recognizes her own handwriting.

She’s totally willing to believe him based on this, and her maternal instincts kick in, wherein she is willing to follow his dying wish: To set off the hydrogen bomb.

But her maternal instincts may have been made stronger by something else: She is currently (in 1977) pregnant.

When Widmore rides into camp after smacking Jack in the head with the butt of a rifle, and hearing that Eloise is planning to head to the bomb, he wants to have a serious talk with her. She shoos Richard away, and you can see Eloise and Widmore arguing. When Jack inquires about what’s going on between them, Richard explains their relationship status, Facebook-style, saying love can be “complicated.”

If you turned your volume way up during their muffled convo, you can distinctly hear Widmore say, “not in your condition,” as he touches her stomach.

So is she pregnant with Daniel? If so, then that would mean that he was only around 18 or 19 when he was working as a professor at Oxford when Desmond contacted him in “The Constant.” I know that Daniel said that he was the youngest person to ever graduate with a doctorate from Oxford, but that would make him like, Doogie Howser young.

Or maybe she’s pregnant with Penny. Maybe following her crazy son’s plan to set off the bomb is what gets her in hot water with the Hostiles and they ship her off the Island. Maybe she’s then considered “an outsider.” The same “outsider” that Widmore makes frequent trips off the Island to visit?

Meanwhile, in DHARMAville, Sawyer and Juliet are being beaten and threatened to give up information on Kate and Jack. Sawyer eventually tells the DHARMA people that it would be best to get the women and children off the Island (which they do, causing the breakup of Miles’ family), and requests that he and Juliet be allowed to leave on the sub as well. CG ¡Aye Aye Aye!

They decide that they’ll continue their happy lives back on the mainland, and that makes Juliet happy.

But then Kate enters the picture (again!). How pissed off would you be if you and your boyfriend decided to start fresh in a new land but you have to sit with some girl he fucked on the ride there?

She’ll most definitely tell Sawyer about Jack’s plan to set off the bomb with Eloise, and that sub will end up heading back to the Island while Sawyer and Juliet’s happily ever after will get lost at sea.

So, the hydrogen bomb:

It lives in one of the rooms of the underground Temple, and you have to swim through scary tunnels to get there.

Oh, and BTW, Sayid is back, and he has nothing to live for, so he’s totally on board with setting off the bomb because even if it won’t undo his misery—as is the plan—it will at least put him out of it.

Sayid doesn’t completely trust Eloise, and he has always exhibited the best judgment out of any of the castaways. Especially because once they reached the bomb, Eloise says, “All right, let’s get started.” That’s exactly what she said when she took the group into her dungeon in 2007 (at the beginning of Season 5), to tell them how to get back to the Island—an event which turned their lives from manageable crap to messy diarrhea. I wouldn’t trust her either.

The other biggie that happened was that Locke finally met up with “his people,” and he brought dinner with him.

Then he takes a quick trip into the jungle with Richard and Ben, to blow Ben’s mind and to ensure that “what happened, happens.” (That Richard repairs his leg and tells him to die.)

Then he returns to the Hostile camp, rallies the troop, and leads them on a march down the beach, something he’s wanted to do since the 815 crash days.

He says that they all should go see Jacob. But he turns to Ben and tells him that he’s actually going to kill Jacob. I had the same reaction to this news as Ben.

So how many questions will be answered during next week’s season finale? Most likely not enough, but we can probably count on learning how/why Hurley got on Ajira 316, and the significance of that damn guitar case.