LOST: who's steering LOST2, Michael's noise, and "Hasta, Ilana"

6.12: "Everyone Loves Hugo"

THE LOST2 ILLUMINATI.

In LOST1, I suspected that Widmore, Paik, and Shephard had long-term coordinated designs on the Island, its gifts/powers/resources, and each had sacrificed or groomed a child and/or agent to seal a pact as well as play their part in a planned or pre-ordained conflict or regime change on the Island. I think that's what we're seeing now on the Island. Would these families still be working toward the same end in LOST2, with the Island submerged beneath the Ocean? Perhaps, but there are definitely some key figures we've met in pre-Incident LOST1 who live on in LOST2 who could would take on such chess-playing roles in anticipation of a parallel crisis.

Pierre Chang, Miles's father, is a big muckymuck at the Golden State Natural History Museum. He's one of the few people who lived on the Island who knows that there were time travellers among them on the day of the Incident. The others are Eloise Hawking and Richard. Widmore was Other leader at the time, and Eloise's paramour, so I'm guessing that given the identity of the man Eloise shot that day—Daniel Faraday—that Widmore probably knows about the tachyonauts as well. Others who *might* be in the know include Horace Goodspeed and Radzinsky, who were both present for Sayid's interrogation. Whether they survived the Incident and later took Sayid's story to heart, there's no telling yet.

Chang's, Hawking's, and Richard's encounters with the Losties in 1977, along with Faraday's journal and, no doubt, his work with the DI in Ann Arbor, give these individuals some insight in how things played out in LOST1. By comparing the unfolding reality of LOST2 to Faraday's notes and their interactions with the time travellers, they would quickly realize that they're experienceing a different reality, and Faraday's notes and work could give them a rough map of what's to come in the way of spacetime crises and Incident blowback.

What if Chang, Widmore, Hawking, and Richard, DI and Other heavies, in the wake of the 1977 Incident, pledge to pool their influence and resources to save or correct or protect things as best they can.

But what could they do, and what have they done?

Except for Sawyer (aka LaFleur), they know the names of the tacyhonauts, so with the right resources and relationships, they could easily find and track them throughout their lives. Chang's familiar with everyone who "joined" the DI in the 70s. In addition to that contact, Widmore and Richard met young Ben; Young Widmore and Richard have met time-travelling Locke; Richard met Locke as a child, off-Island; young Widmore and Eloise met Charlotte (who didn't survive "to" the 70s).

A "team-up" would allow the Other bigwigs access to DI science, which on one hand would help Widmore industries make substantial leaps in tech and business, and on the other, would give them access to facilities like the Lamppost, which I think could be vital to any reality-manipulating event in LOST2.

Chang follows his wife and child off the Island, and has kept his family close over the years. Qualified to run all manner of superscientific projects at the DI, he's since become a Somebody at this natural history museum, where he's gathered Charlotte as an assistant and drawn the interest of Hugo Reyes as benefactor. He lives in the same city as his son Miles, and has perhaps nudged him in ways to maintain his partnership with Sawyer once he meets him, a man he came to trust for three years on the Island as LaFleur.

Charles and Eloise get married and raise their son Daniel to be a musician. Music is a natural expression of his Island gift, one that Eloise1 coerced Faraday into giving up in favor of physics. (I was hoping that Daniel would be connected to Jack already as son David's piano teacher.) This might have been in part to prevent his mucking about with the timeline, but I see potential in Eloise's guilt at having killed her own son in LOST1 driving her to protect Daniel in LOST2.

And in the meantime, Charles continues with his business empire building, only this time around, he plants his corporate flag in the heart of Los Angeles. I still say as Other leader in the 70s (and 80s in LOST1) he was straddling Island allegiances, involving himself in the DI and his own business in the off-Island world.

He also strikes up an affair with an outsider "again" in LOST2, a Miss Milton, and becomes father to Penelope Milton, Daniel Widmore's half sister. I've still not figured out who of the two of them is older/younger, and the details or the timing of Charles's relationships, but I'm gonna let myself be OK with the idea that they're not all that important.

Eloise carries on as Charles's better half, perhaps tuning her ability to help him build his empire, as well as to track the not-lost Losties over the years. Maybe she really does have a legitimate reason to tell Desmond that he's not ready. She may believe that she has predicted the correct time for Desmond to meet Penny, in 2007, when her LOST1 counterpart sent the Oceanic Six back to the Island, not realizing that 2004 is the correct/actual crisis point?

That's all I've got on this just now.

COSTANZA'S WORLD?

Heh. Apparently in LOST2, at least one of Costanza's lies is made real...

HURLEY: Oh, you know we got the Human Fund next Saturday night... can you make it?

I wonder if we'll meet the legendary Art Van deLay before this is all over? He will be revealed as the ultimate power behind the Jacob, Esau, and the Island, played by Bruce Campbell. =)

MICHAEL? WHISPERS? REALLY?!

MICHAEL: Hey!
HURLEY: What are you doing here?
MICHAEL: I'm here to stop you from getting everyone killed. You gonna say something?
HURLEY: Why should I trust you? You murdered Libby and Ana Lucia.
MICHAEL: That doesn't matter right now. What matters is you going across that island to blow up that plane. People are gonna die. A lot of people, and it's gonna be your fault.
HURLEY: Why?
MICHAEL: Because people are listening to you now, Hurley.

This whole Michael thing seems like a bunch of static. Noise. Jibber jabber with no authority. He never claims to be an agent of anyone else, he just seems to suddenly feel the need to speak up. What does his appearance in this episode actually DO?

1. He clues Hurley into the notion that there should be a way to do the right thing without getting a bunch of people killed. Okay, fine. But I'd think that understanding is totally within Hurley's nature anyhow. He could've turned that corner without a nudge from Ghost Michael.
   
2. He explains/confirms the "mystery" of the Whispers. They are the souls of the dead bound to the Island because of things they did while alive. Totally frickin unnecessary. I really never thought of the Whispers as a huge mystery. I wrote them off as Other ventriloquism, employed by them to terrorize their opponents and victims. When Ben abducts baby Alex, he tells Rousseau specifically to go the other way when she hears whispers in the jungle. He is sparing her and cluing her in on how to survive on the Island with his people. The Whispers are lost souls? Are we to believe that the Others can somehow ORDER or HERD them for use as a spooky special effect whenever they wish? Boo. Lame.
   
3. He lets us, and Hurley, know that Libby isn't one of those souls. He does this by asking Hurley to pass on his apology to her. Well, kind of good to know, but still, big whup.

Who was he working for when he died? Tom Friendly explains to him how the Island isn't done with him, that's why he can't kill himself. He has to go back to the Island. He seems to be doing the work of the Others at that point, under the leadership of Ben. Remember who tells him he can go now or whatever he says, when Michael runs out of liquid nitrogen and the C4 is about to detonate? It's Christian. That seemed fine to me when I was thinking of "the Island" using the dead bodies on itself as avatars to deliver messages. Michael also sees Libby on the freighter, remember? Thing is, we've since discovered that it's actually Esau who takes the forms of the dead on the Island. We don't know for certain that he's the ONLY beign on the Island capable of it, but it makes a kind of sense that it would. So, were Libby and Christian on the freighter actually the Monster? Does that mean Michael was working for Esau? If so, how directly was Ben being manipulated by Esau? BUT, we've also recently learned that the Monster cannot travel over water as the Monster. He would have had to have reached the freighter in a human form and then done some shape/Monster-shifting on board to appear to Michael...

*sigh* Does that mess make any kind of sense?

WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DO.

ILANA: You have to trust me. I've been training my whole life for this.
HURLEY: To blow stuff up?
ILANA: To protect you.
HURLEY: Yeah, but how's blowing up the plane protecting us?
ILANA: With that plane gone, that thing won't be able to leave the island.
HURLEY: Yeah, well neither will we. And then we'll be stuck here with it and it will be angry at us.

Hurley's not wrong...

ILANA: Jacob said Richard would know what to do. And Richard said to blow up the plane, correct?
RICHARD: Yes.

Jacob or the Rules or the situation haven't dictated that Richard, Ilana, Jack, Hurley and co have to pursue one and only one course of action. There's no reason that Richard's plan to blow up the plane, which is his interpretation of the last request that Isabella made of him via Hurley, that he keep the Monster from leaving the Island, shouldn't be part of a larger plan that involves Hurley reuniting the Oceanic Six, their pilot, and Desmondo at Esau's camp. Even tho that just happens to be exactly what the Monster needs to re-create their first escape from the Island...

HURLEY: Well, Jacob never said anything about it to me. I mean, what if Richard's wrong?
ILANA: Hugo, I'm looking out for your best interests. All of you! Nothing is more important than this! That thing is evil! And God help us if it ever leaves this island! Because if— [*BOOM* goes the dynamite!]

Goodbye, Ilana. We hardly knew ya. Having her Arzt out in the very same episode that features Hurley's ghost whispering ability tells me that she may have Kenobi'd herself, the way Jacob did. For the most part, Richard's correct later about how Jacob doesn't tell people exactly what to do, so maybe having Ilana as a dead adviser is just what that gang needs, eh? And I feel like it's a serious longshot, but hey, we may yet see "her" again in LOST2. Recovering from burns at St. Sebastian's? Well, okay, probably not like that, but somewhere in LOST2... Perhaps as Miles's girlfriend? =)

GIVE ME A LEVER...

SAWYER: That gonna be a spear?
ESAU: I'm not sure what it's gonna be yet, James. When the time is right, it'll tell me.
SAWYER: You talk to wood now?

That staff or spear or whatever it is will be Something Important, mark my words. It will be exactly the thing Esau needs it to be when he needs it.

Keep on keepin on~