Lost, as Recapped By People Who Have Never Seen Lost
Newsweek‘s recap of Lost as told by staffers who’ve never seen the show strikes me as rather astute in the way it draws out how incomprehensible the show is to any new viewer at this point. Worse, I’m a seasoned fan, yet after watching this week’s final-season premiere, I still have almost no idea what’s going on.
If I had a huge amount of free time on my hands, I’d go through the entire series and cut out all the moments in which on character refuses to explain some crucial piece of information to another character.
The temple people are the “other” Others, the creepy scary ones who abducted all the children (and a few specific people) from the tail section in Season 2.
I think there’s a lot of evidence at this point that “Jacob” and the fake Locke (Flocke? Isn’t that what they’re calling him?) are space aliens venerated as gods, and the island is an accretion of land on top of their ship.
— Chet · Feb 4, 05:49 PM · #
This reminds me of an AMAZING little short wherein the animator’s friend recaps the Star Wars trilogy having never seen it. It reminds you why the interwebs are so awesome.
http://vimeo.com/2809991
“My friend Amanda had never seen a whole Star Wars film. When I asked her if she wanted to watch the original trilogy she said that she would, but that she already knew what happens. So I took out my voice recorder and asked her to start from the top. I then created some very basic animation in Final Cut to go along with her narration.”
— Casey · Feb 4, 06:33 PM · #
THANK YOU Casey! Very funny.
— Carl Scott · Feb 5, 06:09 PM · #
That woman knew who sleestaks are, and referenced a Romulan cloaking device, but has never seen Lost? We must have been separated at birth!
— shecky · Feb 6, 06:43 AM · #
Chet, you have made me feel stupid. That is a fantastic theory and it’s got to be in the right neighborhood. Why didn’t it occur to me at any point in the last three years? The power… the explanatory power…
— william randolph · Feb 6, 06:32 PM · #
The real key is that Jacob has a rival (Esau?) who is apparently also immortal and wants to kill Jacob but is prevented somehow from doing so directly.
There’s an episode where it seems to be sometime in the 1700’s and Jacob is attracting an old sailing ship to the island. His rival says “Do you know how much I want to kill you? Someday I’ll find a loophole.” The story of lost is really the story of a giant strategy to control people and events through time in order to exploit the loophole to kill Jacob.
Perhaps, going further with the biblical analogy, the restriction was a promise to their mutual father (Isaac?) to not kill his brother. The “loophole” would be a way to kill Jacob indirectly without breaking the promise. But who knows? Jacob’s rival is also the smoke monster, has been residing in Jacob’s cabin, and has the ability to appear to be the living version of those who have died or who are brought dead as corpses to the island. He has appeared at various times as Christian Shepherd (Jack’s father), Ben’s daughter, and now, John Locke. Whenever people think they are talking to the dead on the island, they are almost always actually talking to the rival who is trying to move the cosmic drama one step closer to his end. The rival, because of his power, is an even more potent manipulator than Ben, and manages to manipulate Ben himself. The rival used his ability to imitate the dead to use Ben’s daughter to command Ben to follow John Locke. He then imitates John Locke to manipulate Ben into killing Jacob. Jabob says before he was stabbed “Looks like you found your loophole” before he whispers “they’re coming”.As to whether “they” are aliens returning to their magical ship which has gone feral with time and only appears to be an island, I have no opinion.
— Indy · Feb 7, 05:15 PM · #
I like you have watched it from the beginning and also sat down at the start of the series expecting that I would have some clarity on what was happening and was disappointed that they took it to another level with the alternate time zone happening, without any real understanding why this is included. I am hoping that the series doesn’t end with me not understanding.
— Steve · Feb 17, 11:16 AM · #