Last night’s episode of LOST, entitled “Jughead”, was a real treat. After 4 seasons of questions and teases and answers to questions that simply yield even more questions, we’re at the point in the series where the answers are starting to become more plentiful. “Jughead” was chock full of answers and revelations. We’ll get right down to it in bullet fashion:
- Perhaps the biggest moment of the night for me was the revelation that Widmore was a lowly Other back in 1954. Didn’t see that one coming. We still don’t know how Widmore rose to power, how Ben overtook him, how / why he had to leave the Island, etc. But his back story is starting to take shape. Finally.
- The other biggie was Locke’s convo with Richard. His presentation of the compass seems to convince Richard of his identity. And here we see why Richard was present at Locke’s birth 2 years later and why he comes to visit John as a young child.
- Juliet confirms for us that Richard doesn’t age. She doesn’t seem the least bit surprised to find him looking as young as ever. Interesting. And is it just me, or does Richard always look like he’s wearing eye-liner. I mean, whose eyelashes are that dark? Seriously.
- It was a cool to find out that Desmond & Penny have a son, and his name is “Charlie”. Obviously, this is a nod to Dominic Monaghan’s character from Seasons 1-3, the guy who gave up his life to save Des and warned the survivors that the freighter was “Not Penny’s Boat”. But the name is also cool because there’s a subtle connection to the child’s grandfather, Charles Widmore. Interesting…
- I still have a feeling Desmond and Penny end up being the Island’s “Adam & Eve” that were found in the caves in Season 1.
- It seems that Widmore does have a softer side, as demonstrated by his question to Desmond re: Penny’s safety. This simply reinforces how powerful / dangerous Benjamin Linus really is.
- I have a feeling that Ellie, the Other who keeps a gun on Farraday while he inspects the bomb, could be a younger version of our Eloise Hawking, a.k.a. the lady in the Snuggie that desperately needs to upgrade her computer, a.k.a. Daniel Farraday’s mum. Is it possible that she and Widmore become romantically involved after he assumes a leadership position on the Island? Could it be that they have to leave the Island because Ellie / Eloise is pregnant with Daniel and pregnant women die on the Island? Does Widmore fund Farraday’s scientific research for 10 years because he’s his father? All of this might be a stretch, but if Elle is Farraday’s mommy, that helps explain his comment to her (“You look familiar,” or something to that effect).
- Who is Richard’s superior in 1954? At first I thought Richard was the leader of the Others at that time, but he clearly indicates he reports to somebody. Who could that be?
- Could it be that the Jughead bomb was buried in the ground behind the concrete wall where our Season 2 hatch was? Did Desmond have to push the button every 108 minutes to discharge some of the radiation or energy or whatever? I’m thinking so.
- Is Charlotte really dead? (I’m pretty sure I saw her in the previews for next week’s episode.)
already & not yet 
My initial reaction when I heard that Desmond and Penny’s son was named Charlie was that it was indeed Charlie. I mean, he was a British guy, but then the more I thought about it, it made no sense.Of course, now its going to be curious to see if Richard accepts Locke as a child now instead of leaving and giving up on him. I think Penny and Desmond could be “Adam and Eve”, but at the same time, I thought Desmond might be another Richard type character, that never ages, never dies, etc.Obviously Jacob is an entity on the island in 1954, because of the reaction Richard had. But it appears that “Jacob” uses someone to speak to Richard. It will be interesting to see.And the Bomb and the hatch connection makes perfect sense.
It’s always interesting how Lost takes characters that you initially think are evil and makes them into one of the “good” guys, or at least puts a good side to them. They did this with Sawyer, the Others, and did it the best with Ben. All this time we’ve been thinking Widmore is the ultimate villain on the show. Maybe, we’re going to learn that he isn’t that bad after all, or at least has a human side. Maybe they’re going to flip-flop our good feelings about Ben and make it seem like he’s the central villain. Or maybe their both bad guys and our characters are caught between their evil war.I always like Desmond-centric episodes, and I liked all his parts, even though they were brief. I’m a little worried that since they want to get all the characters back to the island soon, if that means Penny gets the axe.The writers seem to be on a killing spree lately. How many of the original 48 survivors (plus tailies) of flight 815 are left other than the main characters? The Others took out a few, Keamy’s group got some, some exploded on the freighter, and now this attack from the 1954 Others. Soon there aren’t going to be any red shirts left to kill.
Lane,That would be interesting if Desmond and Penny gave birth to “Charlie Pace”, our Dominic Monaghan rocker. But then, wouldn’t he be named after himself? That’s wild. I don’t think anything changes with regard to Richard’s visit to young Locke. If anything, last night’s episode helps explain why Richard came to visit him. But if I understand Farraday’s explanation of the rules, you can’t change the past. Just like you can’t change the future. It was Charlie Pace’s “destiny” or “fate” to die on the Island. It was just a matter of how and when. But the universe’s “course correction” dictated that he had to die. After typing all of that, my brain hurts. I come back to my earlier comment from last week: can you believe such nerdy, sci-fi stuff is actually airing on a major network in prime time?
D,You’re right; the writers do a great job of presenting fully human characters on this show. I think that is the show’s best quality. Even if you’re not into all the sci-fi, time travel elements of the show (like a lot of fans I know), you’re still drawn back to these characters and their moments of triumph and defeat, past and present and future. I thought Widmore’s interest in Penny helped give the character a human tone that we need to see. Same thing with Ben last year; the moments following the death of his daughter brought out some of the only beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt “real” emotions we’ve seen from Ben. Seems like I heard somewhere that the redshirt count was supposedly down to about 20 at the time of the Island’s move. The 1954 Others took out quite a few; I’d say we’re looking at about 15 max that are still running through the jungle or waiting at the creek. Who knows..maybe they’re all dead. I wonder…if all the crash people made the jump through time…does that mean Nikki and Paulo are making the jump, too? Maybe they’ll be raised to life in one of these timelines and we’ll actually have the zombie season the producers have long teased in the podcasts.
Along with Edgar J. Sharkington
I think that Richard looks a lot like Jeff Probst. Only Probst doesn’t have the eyeliner going for him.
It’s like he’s on his way to a Boy George concert or something.