Lost, Season 5, Episode 5

This Place is Death

Charlotte: The effects of the time-hops finally take their toll on her in this episode as she dies from the constant flashes. Before dying, she says a few things that stand out:
1) “I know more about ancient Carthage than Hannibal himself.”
2) “Turn it up. I love Geronimo Jackson” (She was hearing music in her head. Geronimo Jackson being, as you’ll all remember, an album in the Swan Hatch that Desmond played)
3) Tells Daniel about growing up on the Island with Dharma, and that her mom took her off the Island when she was a child and she never saw her father again. Another character with father issues.
4) She remembers Daniel being a “crazy man” she saw as a child who told her to leave the Island and never come back or she would die.

Daniel Faraday: It’s becoming clearer that he has been on this Island more than once and knows exactly what’s happening. He seems surprised when Charlotte tells him she remembers him as a “crazy man” who told her to leave the Island when she was a child. It’s possible that he meets her in the past during a time-hop, but this has not happened to him yet, and his appearance to her as a child is because he goes back to try to save her, which of course does not work.

SMonster: The return of the Smoke Monster! This time we see its attack on Rousseau’s crew, including the taking of one of the men (Montand) into the Temple via an in-ground vent. (You’ll remember that his same type of event happened to Locke in Season 1, but he was not pulled down into the vent.) Montand’s left arm is ripped off by the SMonster as the other Frenchmen in the group try unsuccessfully to pull him back up.

Danielle Rousseau: There seems to be a continuity issue with the timeline in this episode, as she asks Jin to take them to the radio tower. She asks him to do this within hours of their arrival on the Island, but in Season 1, she told the Losties they didn’t get to the radio tower until a couple of weeks after arriving (could this be another example of the universe ‘self-correcting’?) She ends up shooting the rest of her crew, all of whom went into the Temple vent to try to rescue Montand. In her defense, Robert did try to shoot her, but his gun jammed (the Island protecting her most likely).

Jin: Stays in Rousseau’s timeline long enough to see the SMonster attack her crew, and to witness her killing Robert after he tries to shoot her. Though it’s not clear if Jin understood, he also heard when Robert told Rousseau that the SMonster was a defense mechanism for the Island (how did he know that?), but she tells him it changed him. Another time-hop and Jin leaves that timeline and jumps into “current” (2008) Island time and meets up with Sawyer, Charlotte, Juliet, Daniel and Miles. Knowing that Charlotte speaks Korean (much to everyone else’s surprise), she tells him what’s happening (as does Sawyer, who explains the time-hopping), including Locke’s plan to bring the O6 back to the Island. This is when he learns that Sun made it off the Island in the helicopter. He’s not cool with Locke trying to bring her back (especially after Charlotte screams out “THIS PLACE IS DEATH!!!!), and tells Locke to tell Sun that he’s dead. He doesn’t want her to come back, and gives Locke his wedding ring as “proof” of his death.

Sun: Ben tells her that Jin is alive, and shows her his wedding ring as proof. She agrees to go with him to meet with a friend (who turns out to be Eloise Hawking) who can get her back to see him. She holds off on shooting Ben. Wow…Sun showing restraint.

Locke: Going into the well at the Orchid Station that Charlotte told him to look for, John falls into it (after a time-hop) and hurts his leg. He sees Christian Shephard at the bottom of the well who reminds John, “I said YOU had to move it (the Island).” Locke defers saying he believed he was supposed to stay on the Island. Christian implies that John doesn’t get anywhere listening to Ben, so he goes into the Island Wheel room, sees that the wheel is skipping/stuck and gives the wheel, as Christian said, ‘a little push’. As the Island begins to move, Christian says “say hello to my son”, but Locke never learns that Jack is Christian’s son. (We assume that this will stop the Island’s time-hopping, but that may not actually stop happening until the O6 return.)

Desmond: When he shows up at Eloise’s at the same time as Ben, Sun and Jack, he says “you’re here to see Faraday’s mom?”, Ben looks shocked to learn that she is Daniel's mother. Did he not know this?

Eloise Hawking: Although Ben shows up with only Jack and Sun, she agrees to “get started”, but we don’t know exactly “on what” she’s referring to, but likely their return to the Island.

Rousseau’s Team: Included Robert (her husband and most likely father of Alex), Montand (taken by SMonster), Nadine (killed by SMonster), Brennan and Lacombe. I think I’m missing one.

Double-take:
1. Carthage was located in what is known today as Tunisia. Tunisia is where Charlotte found the polar bear bones with the Dharma collar, and it’s also where Ben turned up after turning the Island Wheel.
2. The hieroglyphics on the Temple look similar to the ones in the Island Wheel room.
3. The music box that Jin finds in the wreckage of Rousseau’s ship is the same music box that Danielle had in her lair, so we’ve actually seen it before.
4. Danielle and Robert discussing that their unborn child will be named Alex: he says it means Alexander, she says Alexandra.
5. In the 1988 timeline, Jin seeing the smoke cloud that he recognizes as coming from The Others.

Questions Answered:
1. Charlotte was on the Island before.
2. The Island is time-hopping because the Island Wheel is stuck…like a record needle skipping in the groove.
3. Charlotte became an anthropologist for the purpose of trying to find the Island that she left/was taken from as a child.

Questions:
1. So, Locke will be returning to the Island in a coffin. Is it a coincidence that Christian Shephard’s body was also brought to the Island in a coffin and now he’s been “re-animated” somehow? Was Christian part of the Dharma group in the past? One of the The Others? Has he been setting Jack up for whatever his role in all of this will be since Jack was born? It now seems obvious that his body was supposed to be on Oceanic 815.
2. Did someone from the Island settle Carthage? Was it part of Carthage in the past? This might explain the 4-toed statue, the Temple, the hieroglyphics…
3. Who were Charlotte’s father and mother? Why did her mother take her from the Island? How the hell did they get off the Island? (Maybe Charlotte was Ben’s friend Annie, but her name was changed when she left the Island to protect her? Maybe Charlotte is the daughter of Ben and Annie?)
4. Is the SMonster the reason that Marvin Candle is missing his left arm? What happened to cause that? Who created the SMonster and for what purpose?
5. Does it matter that Ben turned the Island Wheel and not Locke? Christian eluded to this, but it would seem if the “universe has a way of self-correcting”, then Locke having to turn it would set everything back in place (like the Wheel being set back in place and no longer skipping).
6. Were the people in Rousseau’s crew changed somehow by going down into the Temple in their attempt to rescue Montand? Is this the sickness that Rousseau has talked about previously? Or, did they meet up with the Others down there who changed their thinking?
7. Where the hell is Claire??
8. Will Locke be paralyzed again once he’s off the Island? Will he also land in Tunisia?
9. Do Ben and Desmond go back to the Island with the O6?
10. Will Kate, Sayid and Hurley cooperate with Jack and/or Ben now to go back to the Island?
11. Desmond went to Oxford to find Eloise Hawking, but is told she’s in LA. Why did she have to leave England to go to LA? And why is her last name Hawking and Daniel’s name Faraday?
12. What is the eventual end-game to this whole story?

Tune in next week for “316” (episode 6 of Season 5). Feel free to comment.

Until then, keep a tourniquet handy in case your arm gets ripped off.