Related to this--what was with Kelvin wearing the chemical suit 1) when he knew it wasn't an issue, as we saw in the scene before he met his demise, 2) when he was "alone" on the island--Desmond's flashback of the day he washed up on the beach shows Kelvin wearing it. Why? I understand he wanted to keep Desmond in the dark while he fixed the boat uninterrupted and in order to be able to leave D there punching the buttons, but why before that? No one to impress or fool. Stumped.

Maybe Kelvin had an idea that they were being watched (he might have known about the Pearl Station) and dressed up in the suit when he left the hatch only as a ruse. That could explain why he was dressed up when he found Desmond...or...maybe he knew Desmond was coming so was dressed in full suit when he brought him in from the beach to keep the quarantine story straight from the beginning.

But I could be wrong.

Maybe at the time Desmond washed on shore, Kelvin still believed the tale of the illness which he had been told (by Dharma?). He could have come to the conclusion the illness was not real only later.

Yes, Kelvin calling the Others "the Hostiles" made me think that the Others have been fighting their own little guerrilla war against the Dharmas for some time.

However, I don't think the Others believe they are being "hostile" to the Losties/Tailies. They seem to believe they are doing the right thing by extracting the good ones. Maybe this has something to do with the "sickness" or maybe it's as simple as their knowledge that, isolated for long enough, everyone reverts to their true nature, and that they are somehow saving the good ones from the eventual wrath of the bad ones (as well as incorporating them into their ranks in their struggle against the bad ones).

Fester

they are somehow saving the good ones from the eventual wrath of the bad ones (as well as incorporating them into their ranks in their struggle against the bad ones).

And based on that possibility, I was rather surprised they would let Walt go...if indeed they are letting him go.

I forgot how much intrigue there is surrounding him, but was reminded when Henry said "we sure got more than we bargained for with Walt." Does that mean he was a defiant handful of a kid? He 'did' stuff for them with his imaginative powers? How much of his special skeels did they uncover? Possibly even train him to use???

I hope there's more of him in season 3.

the problem I immediately saw with "Walt" staying on the show for many seasons is that he will "age" light years...the actor is growing and I immediately said WOW he sure lost the boyish looks and charm (which fits into being taken) but he was only "gone" for about 25 days and aged the year IRL...a kid his age grows through a lot of changes....

It sounded to me (and I could very well be crazy) like his voice was dubbed. Both last week and this week, his voice sounded ever so slightly too-high and ever so slightly strange. When he said "Dad!" it just didn't really sound like it was coming from him.

If that's the case then I don't think it has anything to do with the plot. I think it's just that his voice might already be changing.

Either that, or he's just been off-screen for so long that I've forgotten what he sounded like. (Which is entirely possible.)

Is it possible Walt somehow cloned himself while in captivity and that is why unHenry said "we got more than we bargained for". Then we could really have a "Bad Twin".

Yet another "crash" could've happened at the start of this season after the Others exploded the raft while taking Walt. Sawyer and Michael were drifting on pieces of the raft and somehow ended up washing up on a beach near the tailies. It's another case of being "pulled" back to the island.

I also find it interesting, considering the name of this episode "Live Together, Die Alone," that it ended with the main characters separated:
Claire, Charlie, Rose and Bernard at the beach
Sayid, Sun, and Jin on the sailboat
Michael and Walt on the Others' boat
Jack, Kate, and Sawyer with the Others
Echo, Locke, and Desmond in the hatch... maybe alive
Hurley headed back to the beach... alone

Seems underestimated that the biggest 'answer' given in the finale was the ending. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the station call to Penny the first ever instance of a non-island scene in present day?

Means they aren't in purgatory or a snow globe.

There is no doubt that if the numbers are not pushed then something drastic happens, but in the instances when we have seen the numbers being late, such as when locke got caught under the door, there was no awful sound or light.....I think that locke is still right and that it was an experiment. Desmond was led to a believe that the magnet was a geological phenomenon, but it was an electromagetic field....when the numbers are punched the field remains at a constant frequency but if the buttons aren't pushed the the field increases, once you experience this then as last night shows, it would work as incentive to continue pushing the button. I think that once desmond turned the key, it in effect aborted the experiment and quenched the magenetic field.
The guys in the snow detected a magnetic surge....but what they reported to Pen I don't know....my theory is that since the field was quenched it is possible to now detect the tracking device on desmonds boat and that was what they were looking for.....or not....

Another question, was the camp really abandoned or was it that they all went to ambush jack, sawyer and kate....that would mean that sayid still has the element of surprise and could plot to somehow free them.....maybe walt will allow something to happpen, as he did with the bird and backgammon(season 1).

I guess we will be back for a season three.....should be interesting

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the station call to Penny the first ever instance of a non-island scene in present day?

Yes I thought it was and did read that yesterday. I don't remember if it came from Damon & Carlton or was a rumor, but someone said there will be more scenes of life off the island, specifically with Penny, next season. I'm not sure I like that.

Wow. Crazy. They really pulled out all the stops on this finale, and I would say it made the season 1 finale look like a piece of crap. I loved it. For a while Lost was just kinda eh and I wasn't even sure if it was worth following closely anymore but this? This is gonna make me come back in Season 3 (which I'm sure is what the producers were going for when they made the finale ).

I like how we actually have answers (or at least what we think are answers), yet there are still questions. Obviously. A few things that come to mind. Maybe not a "few", but you get the point:

- The Others' camp, with a fake hatch. That means they put it there just for the purpose of fooling Michael? Huh?

- The "statue" that was just a foot that only had 4 toes...it seemed kind of cartoonish and strange.

- What's with the hieroglyphics on the timer? Obviously they have to reset it but what do the hieroglyphics have to do with anything?

- How did the "Quarantine" door just come falling out of the sky?

- Are Locke and Eko fine, and what about Desmond?

- (Still) Where is the island, why do the Others not want to be found, and what makes them say that they won't be no matter what?

- How come everything turned all white when Desmond turned the key (perhaps this is some physics-related question that I don't know the answer to, not necessarily a strange thing in the show..)?

- How is it that by following a certain bearing, Michael and Walt are just saved?

- Why did the Others want Jack, Kate and Sawyer, and is it just a coincidence that they happen to be in a bit of a "love triangle"?

- What kinds of tests did they have Walt do, and what's the point of them?

- Most importantly of all, is the show going to start involving characters not on the island? The idea of that is just so odd, I really hope they aren't going to.

*Sigh*

Still a good episode nonetheless, I just hope we get the answers to all these questions in the last season. Good luck, JJ and Damon.

One more, that I'm not sure if anyone has posted any thoughts about yet.

The big pile of notebooks that the Losties found just before they got darted by the Others. Presumably, these are the notebooks of the people who were in "The Pearl", filled out and blown out the pneumatic tube (since Locke's map was found there too, and he shot that up the tube.)

There are a heck of a lot of notebooks in the pile. Years worth. Who, then, were the subjects of the experiment? The Swan people? The Pearl people? Neither? Someone else? Or is there not an experiment afterall?

(I also wonder how the notebooks are intact after however many years, and not blown apart, rained on, and generally turned into notebook goo after being out in the elements. But maybe I just need to suspend my disbelief on that one.)

From the look of the containers, they seem sturdy enough to have protected the notebooks.

I think it raises a more serious question about locations though.

So the 'tube pile' was where they wound up getting ambushed and also saw the signal smoke. Yet, if this is the exit point of the Pearl tube then they also must have been near the plane. But the plane has been visited multiple times and is less than a day's hike from the Swan. But didn't they hike and camp and hike some more before finding the tubes??

So unless the writers overlooked geography, I'm thinking the source of the notebooks is not the Pearl. Maybe it is "Headquarters"...like the tubes went from the Pearl to some other location and from that location to the exit shown last night.

Or maybe the tubes themselves were built to be far enough away from the pearl that those inside the pearl would never expect it was an experiment and not necessary. We are being led to assume that pushing the buttons is important - but that the pearl part was not - mmmmmmm another ?

LAST EDITED ON 05-25-06 AT 06:34 PM (EST)

LAST EDITED ON 05-25-06 AT 06:32 PM (EST)

Emy, I think the writers have thought of a way out for Walt's age issues. Alex, Rousseau's daughter, looks older than 16 so they could say a side effect of the "sickness" or of the vaccine they take is to age faster. It would enable Walt to continue without loss of credibility.

Jimbo, nice observation about the tube and the geography of the island. That tube had to be very long! On the snow globe possibility, I thought the white light special effect was to suggest the opening of a "portal" to another dimension. The arctic station could be monitoring the pulses emitted when both worlds come in contact. The island could still be a "snow globe" or a world of its own.

Das mole; you have more questions than can be answered but with regards to the list of names: Jack, Sawyer, Kate and Hurley have all spend a lot of time in the hatch and have all expressed their disdain at pushing the button. Could it be they were taken away to stop influencing the rest? Hurley, I first thought was just tagging along to report back on what happened. Could it be that the Others have realized the button isn't an issue anymore, now that someone has activated the failsafe? Hurley was one of the "good ones" so they don't need to keep him captive. They first want to get rid of the bad ones.

I am not convinced the hatch Sayid found was fake. What I think is that the inside wall he found was fake / camouflage. There is a way to get past it.

...the second I saw him in last week's episode and the first thing I noticed was how much older/taller/bigger he looked, like a normal boy going through puberty over the course of a year...definitely too much growth for a boy on an island for 40-50 days.

As soon as I saw him I knew they were gonna write him off the show before this season was over.

I don't expect we'll be seeing Walt ever again.

Which really makes me wonder how much planning is going into the writing and how much is just reactionary. They created this amazing mysterious back story for Walt in season one and now he is gone without that story ever being flushed out.

Same with Libby...I thought it was odd that she was killed off w/o her presence in the mental hospital ever being explained. Did she go crazy when the guy she gave the boat to disappeared during the middle of the race?

I wonder that too. I would think they would at least tape ahead his scenes if they knew where the story with him was going.

LAST EDITED ON 05-25-06 AT 10:06 PM (EST)

Hello Shakes, it's been a while since I've seen your posts. There could be some answers to your questions:

Executive producer Carlton Cuse in an interview: “The Others are an important part of season three, and there's a lot of mysteries and a lot of questions about the Others that the audience is going to be curious about going into season three. And those are the things we're going to explore. There will definitely be some new characters on the show next year.
Obviously, Michael Emerson, who plays Henry Gale, he's someone who's going to be very prominent in the show next year. Fans were also introduced to a new character who promises to figure in next season's storylines: Penelope Widmore, played by Sonya Walger."

Harold (Michael) was interviewed today and he said his character wasn't intended to return next season, so he can look for work. He was told they could bring him back later. He said, “Wouldn't it be great if in season 4, I came and brought a rescue crew.”

I’m guessing that once the Others’ story is revealed we will see Micheal return, even if it’s without the rescue team. And where Micheal goes, Walt will follow. Like Desmond, they’ll have gone in a circle. I know it could be a stretch to explain Walt’s accelerated growth by the sickness’ side effects but this is LOST, isn’t it?

In an interview by producer Ausiello said concerning Libby: “I'm not revealing the final answer because Libby's backstory will continue to unravel next season.”

It appeared she was sent to give a boat to Desmond. Could she also have been sent to follow Hurley in the asylum? Penelope Widmore could reveal those answers.

LAST EDITED ON 05-25-06 AT 10:11 PM (EST)

We've been promised by Lindelof that Libby's backstory will be told posthumously, presumably through other folks' flashbacks.

From Spoilerfix:
Damon Lindelof : Libby's got this mysterious backstory, of which we've only given you the tip of the iceberg. We know she's spent some time in the mental institution with Hurley, and the idea of killing her before she had an opportunity to explain how she got there... we have a master plan for how we're going to tell that story, but it's all posthumous.

ETA: As for Walt, I agree. He's done. His story, or rather his "powers" (since his story has been told more or less) will probably be revealed through notes recovered from his "tests" or through 1st-hand accounts of the Others.

Fester

Yes, it could certainly go down that way, but it wouldn't surprise me if the season 3 premier was a Walt flashback that got us to the Micheal/Walt boatride out of there. It seems like the age thing is going to have to be address somehow because it appears they are intent upon bringing people outside the island into the show and what better way to do that than to let someone go escape. If they do that, unless they kill Walt off they will have to deal with the growth issues even if it is a wink and a nod passing comment like "you've gotten so big" or "the part of Walt is now being played by XYZ".

Personally I'm leaning towards Micheal will escape the island, but Walt is in "the room" and is only projecting himself onto the boat, kinda like he was doing with Shannon except he's perfected it now... perhaps he doesnt even know he's not there until the final 5 minutes just before the rescue boat meets up with them, he turns to his Dad and says something like "Dad, you know I'm not really here" and poof he disappears. This would give Micheal a reason to try and get back to the island (something Henry told him he could never do once he left), and a reason for him to hook up with the Widmore chick in the process.

This also gives the added bonus of letting Walt interact with fellow captives Jack/Sawyer/Kate with the potential that he might be able to free them.

-ICB

...or like you said, maybe they ride off into the sunset never to be seen again... I like my way better

Regarding Libby, I've been trying to think through her timeline in regard to what we've seen of her in other people's flashbacks.

Earlier, upthread, michel asked whether it's possible that Hurley's "imaginary friend Dave" is Libby's husband David. I wondered this too, and wondered if Libby's interest in Hurley is due to her knowing that he was able to see and communicate with Dave.

Timeline wise, from what I can figure the Libby/Desmond exchange happened right after David died, which would potentially put her in the institution with Hurley after that. Was she there for her own treatment (she did look pretty ragged) or maybe she was stalking Hurley.

As a fan of good story-telling, I love how they're telling Libby's story posthumously.

Just shows how brilliant the creators of Webster were.

Honestly, I'd be fine with any silly explanation for his aging. I'd rather have his storyline than not. Although a child with his powers would be better than a teenager.

...immediately reminded me of the Colossus of Rhodes. A giant statue of a man staddling the entrance to a harbor on the island of Rhodes. One of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Now, whether the original Colossus's foot had 4 toes is highly doubtful!

**Work of arzt by PhoenixMons**