Follow The Leader (or are you still with me?)

Okay, so earlier I posted my recap of Follow The Leader. It was such a great episode that I felt, in order to do it justice, I needed two posts.

Follow The Leader was about taking charge. Radzinsky took control of Dharma. Eloise took control of her future son's fate. Jack took control of his own fate. Locke is taking steps to ensure his control of the Others.

I have a few questions.

1. Is Locke really supposed to be the leader of the Others, or, through a series of crazy time loops, did he set himself up as the leader? It's a sort of what came first, the chicken or the egg dilemma. For four seasons John has been told that he is special, that his destiny is not as a regional collections officer at some box company. In light of last night's episode where we see the scene of John and Richard at the Beechcraft from a different perspective and learn that John was watching the exchange between himself and Richard's. So, I wonder; would Richard have assisted John at the smuggler's plane if John hadn't taken him there. Would he have told John that he had to die? And did the island tell John to tell Richard to tell flashing John this in the first place?


2. Is Eloise already pregnant with Daniel in 1977? I've searched for Daniel's date of birth but can't seem to find anything stating the date he was born.
   
3. Is Richard as attuned to the needs and wants of the island as we've been lead to believe? Would the island not have told him about Ben's return, especially after judgement day beneath the temple? And didn't they hear the plane crash? I know it didn't break up in mid air, but didn't it make a great big noise hitting the trees? Richard didn't know that Ben was back and he didn't know where John had gone. Did they even bother to look for him after he flashed away?
   
4. Did anyone notice how freaked out Ben and Richard were by the new Locke? Its almost like they have been running the biggest scam on island, like selling candy to school children out of their back packs, and the new principal is about to catch them.
   
5. When is Sun going to realize the John has no intention of even attempting to reunite her with Jin? He keeps giving her platitudes, words that are meant to keep her calm but really don't promise anything. She needs to get ruthless again.
   
6. How does Jack know for certain that his reason is to detonate Jug Head and possibly stop the plane from crashing, thus reversing everything that has happened in the last three years? Yes, I see him making decisions and having faith that they are the right ones! He reminds me of someone standing in line at the convenience store buying everything on the counter just because it's there. They never really planned on buying the Tic Tacs in the special anniversary packaging. I understand why he wants to explode the bomb, I just don't see how it is going to work. Wouldn't the fates of EVERYONE on board that plane need to not be connected to the island? John Locke? Mr. Eko? Daniel? Charlotte? Doesn't he realize that some of the survivors don't want to erase the past?
   
7. What's with Sawyer and Juliet making a deal and leaving their friends behind? What happened to loyalty? What happened to looking after each other?
   
8. What's in Hurley's guitar case? Seriously, it's not a guitar. At least, it better not be. I have a feeling that it carries something that is going to help them return to 2007. Either that or it's the largest collection of Twinkies on the planet. I've never had one of those things and I hear that they'll survive a nuclear explosion and still be edible.
   
9. Where has Sayid been hiding out?
   
10. Did Hurley pack a can opener when he stole the food?

Here's what I'm thinking.

I think that, despite detonating the hydrogen bomb, the accident at the Swan site will still occur. Radzinsky is intent on drilling and even the threat of cataclysmic failure isn't about to stop him. Jack will not be able to stop the incident at the Swan station. I don't know anything about the explosive power of a hydrogen bomb but I'm pretty sure it's mighty destructive. I wonder if it will be strong enough to neutralize the energy that is released when Radzinky begins to drill into the ground. Somehow I doubt it. The universe will make sure it happens and no matter how frequently one goes back in time and changes what has been done leading up to the major event, it will still happen. The outcome will be the same with minor changes along the way.

Quotables!

Ben - His name is Richard Alpert. He's a kind of.....advisor. And he has had the job for a very very long time.

Ben - What John, don't you trust me here with my former people? Afraid I'll stage a coup?

John - I'm not afraid of anything you can do anymore, Ben.

Ben - Well, in that case, I'd love to come along!

Sawyer - Son of a bitch! *after Phil hits Juliet*

Radzinsky - Who the hell is Hugo Reyes?

Phil - He's the fat guy.

Ben - Your timing was impeccable, John. How did you know when to be here?

John - The island told me. Didn't it ever tell you things?

Ben - Uhm, no.

This week I have two favorite quotes.

Richard - Well, you seemed pretty convinced, especially when I said you were gonna die. I;m certainly glad that didn't have to happen.

John - Actually, Richard, it did. *stunned look from Richard*

And

Richard - I'm starting to think that John Locke is gonna be trouble.

Ben - Why do you think I tried to kill him?

I have few thoughts about Jacob. Who he is, where he came from and can he be killed, but that will need to wait until tomorrow. Until then...

Arcticroses

FEW MORE THOUGHTS ON DEAD IS DEAD

I've been thinking about Illana's question to Frank Lapidus. A lot. It's begun to consume me. And then I visited Mistaking Coincidence for Fate and read his take on Illana, had a that's what I was thinking moment and pondered even more.

"What lies in the shadow of the statue?"

In LaFleur we got to see the back of the statue when Sawyer, Juliet, Miles and Jin were flashing back and forth through time. Our glimpse was very brief but screencaps were posted on Dark UFO, Lost Media's Photo Gallery and everywhere else on the LOST internet.

But it was where they were standing when they saw the statue that interests me. Sawyer, Juliet, Miles and Jin were at the temple wall. The same place where Montand lost his arm and the very same place where Richard took an injured young Ben to be healed.Locke took Ben to face his judgement beneath this mysterious place.

Ben explained that the Others built the wall to keep the temple hidden.

"We built the wall to keep people like you out. The temple is located a about a half a mile from here" Or something close to that.

In any religion or faith, the temple is a haven, an important place to go for worship and, in times of need, shelter. It is where we go when we seek spiritual guidance and the strength to cope with hardship. It is where Ben told Richard to take their people, the only place on the island he knew where they would be safe. It was where he had sent Danielle, Karl and Alex.

I think Illana is looking for the temple. And, like Jay, I think she brought reinforcements in the form of other passengers and whatever is in that cargo crate.

However, I'm still trying to figure out who she is working for. At one time I entertained the thought that Ben had hired her to bring Sayid to Guam on the simple proof that only those in the Lamp Post knew which flight provided the best opportunity to get back to the island. Oh yeah, and the fact that I believed that only Ben knew that it was Sayid who killed Avelino in the Seychelles. There are some good arguments that it's Widmore who hired her, but how would he know which flight the O6 were planning to take? Which brings me to Eloise Hawking.

We are aware that she knows Whidmore from their time on the island. The very nature of their relationship is fuzzy at best, and we have been given hints here and there that they may have been a team at one point, leading the Others as a couple. However, there is the small matter of the births of Daniel Faraday and Penny Widmore. We now know that Charles frequently left the island and had a child with a woman on the outside. What we don't know is how Ellie came to be off the island and working in the Lamp Post.

Something tells me that she and Widmore do not have as close a relationship as they once enjoyed. Okay, that's blatantly obvious, but what if Ellie is also planning a return to the island? Aside from the O6 and Ben, I think she's the only other person who knew that Ajira 316 was their best chance of getting back to the island.

It's not perfect, but there it is. Let me know what you think.