Jughead

    Charles Widmore was an Other? WTF? This episode, the third of Lost's fifth season, is my favorite of the season thus far and ranks pretty high up in the grand scheme of things. Titled Jughead, this episode takes place in the span of one time jump unlike the season premiere. That didn't really mean the plot slowed down though. Jughead starts with Desmond and Penny's boat arriving in England. Desmond's goal is to find Faraday's mother and let her know that he is still on the island. What Desmond finds is that all of the records pertaining to Faraday have been removed (though his lab is still mostly intact) and he meets a woman named Theresa who is doing her own version of the Time Warp after Faraday pulled an Eloise on her.

    Going in to this episode I was thinking that we'd learn more about Desmond's uniqueness but it turned out that we were given quite a lot of information about Widmore. Theresa, who Faraday gave a bad case of the Minkowskis, is being supported by Widmore because he was responsible for funding Faraday's research. When we last saw Faraday at Oxford he was zapping mouse brains back in time thanks to Desmond cheating the system and giving Faraday a setting for his purple sky machine. We can only assume the experiments evolved to the point where eventually Faraday tested them on Theresa. The problem with being lead to believe this is that it doesn't really jive with what we know about Faraday as a person. He seems like a decent guy, not the kind of person that would expose an innocent to the purple sky lazy gun. So would it not be just as likely that Faraday completed his research for Widmore and refused to turn over the work, knowing the complications and side effects? Widmore and his goons could have tried to strong arm Faraday into cooperating by zapping Theresa and then telling her sister that is was Faraday's fault. Widmore would come off as the good guy and Faraday's reputation would be ruined. Kinda like Juliet and her situation with her ex-husband...

    So we're told Widmore is a benefactor, a decent guy... and then we find out that he used to be an Other. Widmore is Jones from the end of the last episode. I'm guessing the army fatigues are just camouflage so the Others can blend in with the army detachment that was working with the bomb. The problem here is that Widmore refers to Cunningham, the other Other that was with him when Sawyer and Juliet were discovered. Cunningham was the name on the fatigues, and also the name of the Other? It doesn't seem to match up... It'd be one hell of a coincidence for there to have been a Cunningham on the island and one amongst the troops... Unless he was converted, or was working with the Others all along as an infiltrator. Hopefully this will be explained some as it bugs me a bit. But back to the more pressing events that unfolded... Widmore/Jones and Cunningham were captured briefly by Juliet, Locke and Sawyer where we learn that all Others (including Juliet) can speak Latin, who knew? After Juliet convinces Cunningham to help the Losties get to Alpert, Widmore snaps Cunningham's neck and takes off for the Others' camp. Locke tracks Widmore back to the camp and asks to see Richard. Last episode we saw Richard give Locke a compass and he told Locke that "next time I see you, I won't recognize you." Locke says that Jacob sent him, which gets Richard's attention and the two talk. Locke says that he's Richard's leader and he need to know how to get off of the island. Richard says that the process of choosing a leader is very important and starts at a young age, Locke then tells him to visit the place of his birth in three years. We know that Richard does visit Locke when he is born in Tustin, California in 1957.

    Now we know why Richard was present at Locke's birth last season. We don't know much else, or if there is any more to it other than Locke having visited Richard once, told him that "you said I'm you're leader" and then vanished after saying he needs to leave the island. It must have seemed odd to Richard at the time, so that's probably why he went through the trouble of going to Tustin three years later. The rest of Locke's 'Cabin Fever' episode makes more sense now knowing that Richard is looking to Locke for guidance down the road. Richard may not know in Cabin Fever when Locke is coming to the island, the two may have only had that one conversation prior to meeting at the end of season three when Locke has to deal with his father. I hope there is more backstory but as it is now, the pieces fit well enough.

    Back to Faraday. While Locke is sorting out his affairs with Richard, Faraday is being led to the Jughead bomb by Ellie. Ellie is an Other that we know practically nothing about other than she is suspicious of Faraday and has a British accent. It's very possible that Ellie is Ms. Hawking, the woman who told Desmond all about the rules of time travel in season three. Faraday makes a comment that Ellie looks like someone he vaguely recognizes. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if Ellie turned out to be Ms. Hawking... who is now in L.A. This is also happens to be where Widmore tells Desmon that Faraday's mother can be found. If Widmore is telling the truth and Faraday's mother is in L.A. it's very likely that Ms. Hawking is Faraday's mother. This could all be a ruse to get Desmond to run in to Ben and Ms. Hawking in L.A. and get him swept up in the Oceanic 6's return to the island. Desmond should remember Ms. Hawking from his flashes and it's unlikely he's go willingly back to the island. If this all turn out to be what happens, it'll be interesting to see how Desmond is convinced to return and what this means for Penny and Charlie.

    But back to Faraday one last time... Faraday doesn't get a chance to disarm the Jughead bomb because it's casing is cracked and it's leaking radioactive material. Faraday suggests that the Other's bury the bomb incased in lead and covered in cement. He says this will be completely safe as long as it's buried. The obvious connection to draw here is that the bomb is the beginning of what becomes the Swan hatch. In the second season, Sayid and Jack are snooping around the station when the remark is made that the concrete wall inside in the hatch is something straight out of Chernobyl, a nuclear disaster site. So if the bomb was buried somewhere in the jungle, why would Dharma build a station on top of it? It's possible their engineer's found the bomb while surveying and disturbed the site, similar to the events under the orchid station. If this resulted in the 'incident' then perhaps it required attention every 108 minutes. I've never heard of a nuclear bomb building pressure inside of it that needs to be released, but it'd be par for the course in Lost so I wouldn't rule it out. Then again, perhaps the Swan was just a mind game as the Pearl tapes said... It's possible that the threat under the station was real but the countdown was complete bull. The failsafe would have had to have been real as well because of what happened when Desmond turned the key. It's doubtful that the failsafe was the trigger of the Jughead bomb, surely if this were the case the crater would have been much larger and the effects would have been much more dire. But nonetheless the failsafe did destroy the hatch and the need to hit the button ever 108 minutes, perhaps it was more of a self destruct switch... Add this to the long but (finally) shrinking list of questions I still have about lost.

    Next up on Lost it's an episode titled The Little Prince. This seems to be a reference to Aaron, so we'll probably see things come to a head regarding Kate's custody. In the premiere, Kate was server papers demanding she and Aaron submit blood to determine their relationship. Kate promptly took off running, which is probably where we'll pick up in the next episode. I expect that Kate will enlist the help of Jack to get out of her legal trouble. Jack's suggestion will be to return to the island where she can finally stop running for good. Kate won't be happy that Ben and Jack are working together but she'll have to deal with it unless she wants to lose custody of Aaron. Here's my best guess for the shocking reveal: It turns out that Sun is behind the subpoena, she's wanting Kate to be so afraid of losing Aaron that she goes back to Jack, which will get Sun one step closer to delivering Ben to Widmore. Sun's ultimate goal is to punish those people responsible for Jin's death, this includes but isn't limited to; her father, Kate, Jack and Ben.