LOST: rambling on time, timing, and Egypt!

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Egypt!

More Egypt! Woohoo! I'm loving the idea (my crazy idea) that the Island materialized in ancient Egypt. I want it to be as an oasis in the actual desert, but I guess I'll allow for it to have lamely appeared as an island off of Africa, too. Room enough to appear in the Nile? The delta? Is that where the Island first appeared on Earth? First acquired its weird EM pocket of power.

Which Egyptian god is the statue of? Does anyone know? Can anyone tell? Is there only one Egyptian god who is depicted with four toes? What animals have four "toes?" Cats? Dogs? Or was it Egyptian practice to only show four toes in drawings of human bodies? Like on THE SIMPSONS?

Is Richard Alpert an age-frozen Pharaoh?

Jim hit me with the phonetic connection between Horace (Goodspeed) and Horus, whom I last saw in RELIGULOUS. The son of Isis and Osiris, Horus has a man's body and a falcon's head (Thanks, wikipedia). Nothing about four toes, tho. Do all the Egyptian gods have human bodies and animal heads?

What does this mean about the Island? Does it play some active/meddling role in Egyptian mythology or ancient history? Was its power misguidedly attributed to one of their pantheon? The Others/black smoke monster temple has hieroglyphics on its walls. Why would Dharma use hieroglyphics in the Swan? Are they directions that refer to the Temple or writings on its walls?

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Timing problem or not? Bentham's tour, death, viewing.

In talking over recent LOSTness with Emily, she brought up a pretty serious inconsistency in the timing of events surrounding Locke's world tour and his death. The episode in which we see his attempts to recruit the Six and co seems to place his attempted suicide-turned-murder a day, or at most a few days, after he talks to Jack in the hospital. Ben's revelation that Jack bought a round-trip ticket seems to push the idea that Locke only just spoke with Jack. If that's the case, how can we account for the time that seems to have passed between Bentham's visits to Jack and Kate and Bentham's obituary (also Jack and Kate's meeting at the airport)? In that time, Jack grows out his crazy beard (he's already started when he tells Locke none of them are important), flies multiple times, begins cracking up at the hospital, sees his father (Could that have happened before Locke's accident? Beard or not?), loads up on the drugs, ponders suicide. Or Sayid's return from building schools in the DR and his appearance at Hurley's asylum and their short-lived WEEKEND AT SAYID's?

When Emily brought it up, I had to agree that Locke's tour experience and death as we saw it make you think that only a short amount of time passed between his hospital stay and his murder. In the end, tho, I think that that's an illusion of editing, resulting in a compression of the timing of events. To clinch it, I think I'll need to re-watch the episode and look for physical signs of the accident on Locke when he's setting up his makeshift gallows. Is it possible that Abaddon was DRIVING MR. LOCKE for months? Or that Locke was doing his own thing (like what?) most of that time and only calling Abaddon when he was ready to meet with a certain Sixer/Lostie?

Doesn't seem like Locke would allow himself anything like downtime, tho, right?

Blerg. I'll just roll with it for now.

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Others = "Good people?"

Ben's lists, and his and Tom's insistence that they are the "good guys," don't seem to jive with the biker gang behavior of Richard's people in the 70s. The two Others that find Paul and Amy picnicking seem to be intent on doing Amy some very un-good harm. And AFTER killing her husband, Paul. *AND* while an apparent Dharma-Others truce is in effect. What up w that? Were the Others more state-of-nature back then? Before Ben? Are "good people" a Ben-era phenomenon or rule?

Horace tells Sawyer that he and his people are not Dharma material. What sort of code does Dharma use in their selection of recruits?

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Horace Goodspeed

Jim thinks that Horace may have set Paul up, to get him out of the picture and leave Amy alone. I like the sound of that. If we start from that, and do a bit of reverse engineering, we get to some very interesting possibilities...

Perhaps Horace is a big picture player. At least on the order of a Ben. Maybe on the order of an Eloise?

For Horace to be able to set Paul up, he has to know that he can get away with it. And not just the murder, but the breaking of the Truce. Which means that he has to know that the Island will deliver a way out for him. Which means he has a connection to the Island, or maybe even speaks to Jacob and does the Island's will.

And what would the Island's will be? To bring into the world a baby, the child of Amy and Horace, a baby conceived AND delivered on the Island. DEMON SEED, anyone?

What if Horace and Alpert were in cahootz? For Horace to pull off the murder of Paul, ideally, he'd be able to have Alpert's help, maybe get Alpert to take the muzzles off two of his biker gang Other boys and happen to send them to check out the field where Paul and Amy are picnicking. What would Alpert get out of it, tho? What he gets out of it even after Sawyer's meddling/fixx... Paul's body. What would Alpert and the Others get out of that, tho? A host or reanimated puppet for the Island? For Jacob, a la Christian? A source of inside information, perhaps?

In any case, whether or not tree-dynamiting Horace and/or Alpert orchestrated Paul's death, the situation gets Sawyer and company in with Dharma, and Horace in their debt, setting them up for their LOST ON MARS period. Pretty lucky unluck.

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The other LOSTies?

In the time-skipping melee, I thoughtlessly discounted everyone else as insignificant and fire arrowed to death, but Emily reminded me that Bernard spent quite a bit of time working on getting a fire going, back at the beach, just before Frogurt got himself awesomely arrowed. In the subsequent time skips, we follow Faraday, Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, and Charlotte, but lose track of everyone else. Like I said, assuming them all to be STAR TREK red shirts, I figured they'd all get dead, one way or another, arrows, monsters, nosebloody headaches. But, hey, we sorta care about Bernard and Rose, right? And we know the Island likes Rose.

So what do we suppose happened to them? Are there any other fringey Losties that I've totally given up on?

Maybe Bernard and Rose joined the Others in 1974-77? Or been living the Crusoe life together in some remote part of the Island? Could they have had a baby in that time? One who grows up to be Matthew Abaddon?

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The other LOSTies?

We haven't seen Sayid or Sun land in 1977 yet. What if they were found by Alpert's Others (Widmore's people at this time?), and have been recruited or taken captive by the Others? Would the Paik name hold any power back then? What could or would they tell Alpert, and vice versa? Locke's mission. Ben's manipulation. Faraday's mom and the Lamppost. Is Eloise "Elle" Hawking still on the Island at this point in time? And hostile takeover Sun might know quite a bit worth knowing to young Widmore.

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Crazy talk.

Egypt! I need a team of experts. An Egypt person, a Bible person, a history/geography person... I have my ideas. The hieroglypics on the Swan clock hinted at Egypt, but y'know, thru the prism of this 60s fringe science research compound, the DI. They co-opted the elemental symbols from the Korean flag for their logo, why not borrow from Egypt for a creative alarm clock alert, right?

Then, there was the appearance of Richard Alpert. My cinemascopic mind pegged him as an Egyptian. I know the heavy eyeliner is in fact, NOT makeup, but a physiological phenom, or so I've heard it explained from various friend sources. I always kind of assumed that to be the case, since first "meeting" him on SUDDENLY, SUSAN or whatever that Brooke Shields show was. But I'm not going to take it as an accident that he was cast for the role, looking as he does. I'm going to take it as meaningful that when he shows up on the Island, the first thing I think of is Egyptian.

I personally think the initials adding up to Ra, the Egyptian sun god, is a bit thin, but nevertheless fun.

Hurley, in tune with the dead of the Island, has taken to painting watercolors. Or at least, watercolor. The one subject that we've seen: Egypt, specifically, the Sphinx.

While time-skipping it up, Faraday, Sawyer, Juliet, and Miles are treated to a few seconds of the backside of the towering statue that would eventually be spotted by Sayid as a ruin, with only a four-toed foot intact. The statue looks to be a likeness of some Egyptian god, with a human body, a nonhuman or at least head-dressed head, and holding something (a staff?) in its right hand, maybe also its left (I think).

Let me throw some names and words out here... Pharaohs. Horus. Osiris. Alexander the Great. The Library at Alexandria. Pharos.

I did a little clicking at Wikipedia. There is an island near Alexandria, Egypt called Pharos. It was once the location of a towering lighthouse, named after the island, apparently, the Pharos. The lighthouse was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Over centuries it was preserved but ultimately was destroyed. Underwater remnants of the lighthouse, its foundations, and surrounding structures and statues were discovered in the 90s. It doesn't exactly make sense, but I like the Island for being a neighbor of Pharos. I can't get myself to say that the Island *IS* Pharos, cuz Pharos is still actually where it is. Pharos was home to a temple of Isis and the Pharos lighthouse.

I originally clicked over to Pharos after clicking to get to the Library at Alexandria, cuz I thought that maybe the Temple might have been a temple of learning and that it might have been built and hidden on the Island when it happened to materialize in Alexandria.

Is Alpert a pharaoh? Could he be Alexander? Egyptian hieroglyphics in the Swan and on the Temple, but Latin among the Others themselves...

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LOST/Others/Island timeline...

If we buy Widmore's story, he was leader of the Others before Ben. He and his people protected the Island for 30 years before Ben. Maybe he wasn't necessarily leader for all those 30 years, cuz back in the Jughead 50s, it seems like he was already in the business of Island protection, without being leader of the clan, right?

So...

1950s.
Young Widmore and Elle (Eloise) are Others, under the leadership pro tem of Richard Alpert. They encounter the time-skipping Locke, Faraday, Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, and Charlotte.

1974.
The Others and the Dharma Initiative have a truce. The final time-skip lands Sawyer, Jin, Faraday, Juliet, and Miles in this time, where Sawyer speaks with Alpert to preserve the truce. No sign of Widmore.

1977.
Sawyer, Jin, Faraday, Juliet, and Miles have joined the DI. Jack, Hurley, and Kate are time-flashed out of Ajira 316, land in this time, and are reunited w Sawyer and company. No sign of Widmore.

1960s late.
Horace Goodspeed and girlfriend (Samantha Mathis?) stop to help Roger Linus get his wife to the hospital to give birth to Ben. The mother dies in childbirth.

1970s late.
Horace gets DI to hire Roger Linus. Roger and son Ben arrive on the Island. Ben sees the ghost of his mother appear to him. Ben meets Richard Alpert.

1970s mid-late.
Penelope Widmore born.

1970s mid-late.
Daniel Faraday born.

1980s mid-late.
The Purge. Ben kills his father, Roger, and helps the Others exterminate the DI. Only the Swan station personnel survive. Ben joins the Others.

1988.
Rousseau and team land on the Island. Time-skipping Jin encounters them at two different times, once by the Temple, before skipping away.

2001.
Under Ben's leadership, Alpert and Others recruit Juliet.

2004.
Desmond kills Kelvin, pushes the Swan button late, triggering an EM pulse that causes Oceanic 815 tears itself apart in the sky above the Island.

2004.
Oceanic Six return to the outside world

2004.
Ben turns the wheel and starts the Island time-skipping. Ben exits in Tunisia.

2008.
Ajira 316 flies into a time flash over the Island. Jack, Hurley, and Kate (and Sun and Sayid?) are time flashed back to 1977. Lapidus crashlands plane on Island. Locke is resurrected. Ben, Lapidus, Ceasar, and Alanna are among survivors.

Let's try to braintease this out. Assuming we can take Charles Widmore at his word when he speaks to Locke about his place w the Others and Ben's shenanigans...

Widmore had to get off the Island and into the outside world in time to amass or usurp his considerable fortune. Widmore had to get off the Island and into the outside world in time to father Penelope. Widmore has been unable to return the Island since he left it.

These facts indicate that he left the Island in the mid to late 70s, MAYbe the early 80s, at the latest. This would allow for Penny being in her late 20s to young 30s in "present day," and the 80s would have been the perfect time to start building up wealth. His inability to return to the Island seems to back up the idea that Charles turned the wheel when he left, since turning the wheel moves the Island. If he'd left using some conventional transpo (a boat or the sub), the Island would not have moved, and he could conceivably return by navigating to the same location and using the magic bearing to get thru the snowglobe glass.

But, if he left the Island in the 70s, how could he have been tricked into it by Ben, who only arrives in the 70s as perhaps a 10 year old? And doesn't actually join the Others until the 80s?

It's possible there's a serious chunk of information that LOST hasn't revealed to us—like maybe Widmore was leader during the truce, but spent some of his time off-Island over the years building wealth and having a daughter and maybe even funding Dharma—but if we assume that Widmore's story is true, then I can only think of two explanations.

1. More time travel. Someone else will take a turn at the wheel in a future episode, sending or pulling Ben back to the 70s or 80s where he'll manipulate his way to a high position among the Others and sucker Charles into turning the wheel. He might also tip Alpert off about his encounter with the young Ben, before it actually happens.

2. A long con. "Present day" Ben will manage to plant some info or artifacts in the past that will convince Widmore that he needs to turn the wheel sometime in the 70s or 80s, exiling himself from the Island and leaving leadership open for the Ben who kills his father in the Dharma peace van. Maybe he's already managed it, and the Losties in 1977 are destined to pass that info along and inadvertently do Ben's bidding.

Another person to try and track over time is Eloise Hawking, aka Elle. She's a contemporary of Charles, and given Daniel's age, probably left the Island around the same time as he did. Could they have left together? Or one right after the other? Could Daniel and Penny be siblings? I like it. Altho it still bugs me that Charles wouldn't (or couldn't?) seek Eloise's help with locating the Island.

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LaFleur.

A creole name, Sawyer say. He improvised. Fits his salvage story? Did he get as specific as saying his boat was out of Louisiana? Was LaFleur ever mentioned in previous Dharma flashbacks? Was it an alias we've heard him, or Locke's dad, use?

Maybe "the flower" reflects/foreshadows his lame-ass domesticated-by-Juliet self? It's not bad to see him happy, but it is PAINful to see him with Juliet, especially all hearts and flowers.

The Island lets Hurley speak to the dead. The Island cures Rose's cancer. The Island gives Locke back his legs. But Sawyer? It turns Sawyer into a girl. Bleah.

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Allright, enough crazy talk.

For now. =)

Keep on keepin on~