Fly Ajira Airways! Televisionary editor Jace offers his take on this week's mind-boggling episode of Lost: "316."
NOTE: This article goes into great detail about "316." If you haven't seen this episode yet, STOP HERE NOW! MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
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I don't know about you but I am very, very worried about Penny.
The newest episode of Lost ("316") seemingly achieved the impossible: sending the castaways back to the island on a wing and a prayer, something that I thought may not have happened until much later on this season. Trust Team Darlton to pull a bait and switch on us and actually start this week's episode with Jack, Kate, and Hurley surviving yet another plane-related mishap and waking up on the island.
I thought that this week's episode, written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, was absolutely brilliant, offering us some new mysteries to ponder (more on that in a bit) while fulfilling viewers' wishes (just like Jack's!) that the Oceanic Six return to the island. And while I still have some head-scratching questions, I thought that the return to the island was handled beautifully: a bit of haunting mystery, a wallop of blind faith, and a flash of white light.
So what did I think of the revelations of the aptly-titled "316"? Let's discuss.
The Lamp Post. Absolutely loved the reveal that the computer lab beneath the church was actually a Dharma station called The Lamp Post, a very fitting moniker for the station, which acted as a conduit between pockets of a specific type of electromagnetic energy. By tapping into these energy sources and using a Foucault pendulum, Eloise Hawking (and previously Dharma scientists) are able to predict where the island, which is in constant motion, will next appear. It explains why rescue never came for the castaways as they weren't long enough in one place for people to locate them, why the island is ALWAYS notoriously difficult to find, and why Penny had scientists looking for a specific type of electromagnetic energy up in the Arctic. So did the US military discover the island in 1954 (as shown by the surveillance photo on the chalkboard in the Lamp Post) because they were looking for it specifically? Or was it an accidental discovery?
And, given the complex equations and use of the Lamp Post, how did Captain Gault of the Kahana know to be in the right place at the right time then to find the island at the end of Season Three? Hmmm, that's an interesting question. And the only likely answer that springs to mind is that Hawking had to have given the coordinates to Widmore. Which does make me question Eloise's allegiances just a wee bit.
So why the Lamp Post? A clever homage to C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, where a lamp post acted as a landmark for the bridge between Narnia and the real world. (If you remember your "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe," it's where little Lucy Pevensie meets Mr. Tumnus for the first time.) Therefore, it's a fitting symbol of a beacon in the night sky, a lighthouse pointing the way to the correct path. Unfortunately, for the Oceanic Six, they won't have the luxury of traveling to the island via an old wardrobe...
Ajira Airways. I'm glad that the clues about Ajira Airways have finally paid off with such deliciousness: the episode's title refers to a particular flight (316) that travels between Los Angeles and Guam, which will put the Oceanic Six (or, well, Five plus Ben and a few others) in the right position for the next event window. However, it's still very much up in the air (heh) whether or not Flight 316 actually crashed or whether Jack, Kate, and the others were pulled out of the timestream when the white light materialized. So far, there's no sign of the downed plane on the island but, as it's likely that Frank Lapidus will also wake up on the island, I do hope that the plane had an able-bodied co-pilot... (BTW, how awesome was it that Lapidus ended up piloting the flight, as he was originally meant to fly Oceanic Flight 815? Only wish they hadn't put Jeff Fahey's name in the credits!)
I'm very curious if this was the same means that Ben continually used to return to the island following his frequent off-island jaunts (as seen through his cache of passports and foreign currency). Did he often take Ajira and vanish off the plane in order to reach the island from various points in the world, based on knowledge gleamed from Eloise Hawking? It certainly seems that way, anyway.
Penny and Desmond. Speaking of Ben, I'm very, very nervous about how he ended up bloody on the docks prior to the flight and then turned up in the nick of time for the flight with his arm in a sling and his face covered in cuts. Could he have followed through on his promise to Charles Widmore that he would kill Penny in recompense for Alex's death? I certainly hope not but right now my mind is definitely fearing the worst: that Ben brutally murdered Penny (and possibly Baby Charlie too) and that she fought back with every ounce of strength at her disposal... and that we'll have to wait a few weeks in order to learn just what happened.
As for Desmond, I'm glad that he said that he was finished with the island, even if the island hadn't finished with him yet. Just how will he get back to the island? And what if Ben had rigged things so that he didn't have any choice in the matter? Color me very worried.
The Proxy. I was a little skeptical when I first heard Eloise say that they had to approximate the same circumstances as the original crash but I love the symmetry of Jack transporting Locke's body (wearing Christian's shoes) and that of Christian's body on Flight 815. I've been waiting for that payoff since I first heard of Ben's plan. And just like Christian, Locke will be resurrected once he returns to the island... but will he have corporeal form? Or is that what makes Ben so special, so unique? That he can literally transcend death, not in spiritual form, but in the flesh?
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