A decoy? Would Jacob need the ash ring to protect himself? MiB could do nothing to Jacob, as far as we know.




Yup. I guess this might have been the writers' way to show the ash rings early while deceiving us about the inhabitant, the same way he was deceiving Jacob's followers.



I guess it's either. I must admit I half-remember the circustamces of this. I'll pay attention as I rewatch that episode.



Walt is really mysterious (and his powers, whatever they are, appears to be real enough - so it might be Walt who appeared for real too), and I also wonder how much is really important and how much has become a red herring following a change of mind of the writers along the way (not that I remember them saying they had a change of mind about that character or that they wrote him off the show or anything, though they may have been put off by how fast the young actor grew up - up to s2 he looked small for his age, but after puberty he started looking older than his age...). Will Walt return before the end? Will Aaron?

I vaguely (and only half) suspect the mysterious kid may be playing a variation on the part originally meant for Walt in the original "bible" of the show.


I think it does fit, yes. I'm getting close to those episodes so I might change my mind, but my feeling is that not only Eko had become incorruptible, but with time he may have become more influential on the others than Locke. Those were the two "spiritual" characters, and it's pretty clear from early on which of the two MiB finds more malleable.

Side note: I don't think everything concerning Locke has been MIB's doing (jeez, am I the only one eager to get a real name for that character? They've waited so long I suspect the name will be quite significant). I'm pretty sure Jacob didn't give up on him. Locke had potential to serve well the purposes of both Jacob and MiB and I'm guessing the two of them constantly interferred with him through the seasons.

There's also been many hints that "the game" is one mixing strategy/choices and luck (incidentally, Locke's playing partner early on was always Walt). It's a game at which you can block your adversary, too. I suspect Jacob to have let MiB have his way on purpose a few times, to deceive him.

One big question for me remains "Why did Jacob brought so many new candidates to the Island at the time he did?". Was his time nearly over? Was it his purpose to let himself be killed? How exactly and under which circumstances does the final candidate become the guardian? Is the time around which the guardian change the time MiB stands a chance to try to escape? Did he provoke the issue by killing Jacob, while Jacob himself was expecting it and knew it's through the crisis the new guardian will emerge and foil MiB?

On an unrelated note, I wonder a lot if the problem with women conceiving on the island is suggesting that MiB is a power associated to Death, and it's his presence on the Island that interferred with the development of babies conceived on the island. I always found this a litte illogical considering other mammals on the island don't seem one bit affected by this.



I don't really expect them to screw it up. The season finales have often been the best episodes. My secret hope is that it's as good as the pilot. I'm rather happy with the last season so far, and still a good sport who enjoys being frustrated of final answers. My only notable disappointement so far is how much Ben Linus has faded into the background now that the Black Rock character is in the open. I know making Ben more important was an afterthought due to his popularity as guest start with the viewers and the writers, but I was hoping they'd found more interesting ways to keep him a bit more present in the last season.

I have liked the show well enough since the start, and for the most part I never got annoyed or bored with it, but watching the DVDs again, I'm actually a bit surprised by how good the show was on the whole, how well they balanced and mixed the "human interest" and the show's mythology. There were a few weaker episodes and debatable decisions, but on the whole the quality remained fairly constant. Of course, you could take that story and tell it into a 12-hour mini-series, but I would say Lost is one of the most succesful series in this genre, the subplots and detours they took were most often very interesting and intriguing. Rewatching, I'm a bit surprised how much the show manages to keep my interest despite knowing where all the twists and turns are leading. It's a really well written show, with quite a few episodes that were as well structured and developped as many movies. Perhaps because it's my field of work, but I find that Lost stands way above average for its use of the editorial/writing/directorial bags of tricks - for example how they managed through editing of giving the impression going to the flashback was like a wave rising and going away (eg: going on a throughtful or lingering moment), and coming back much stronger, like a wave crashing on the beach of the island. Paying some attention, I noticed they have come up with styles of editing/writing for each character too. The Jin/Sun episodes often used the trick of going to the FB with one character and returning to the other one (not following the "rule" on occasion to avoid a mechanical feeling), and many of their stories were edited in parallels, deceiving us that they were connected when in fact they weren't until the end (the Panda bear for the baby that turns out not to be Sun's is a classic, but they've done that quite a few times).

I'll miss this show. I'm not a hardcore fan or addicted to it, but I'm sure I'll miss it. I hope the main writer/co-creator (Damon?) comes up with a new show to replace it (I like Fringe well enough, but it's more a substitute to Alias than to Lost).