Ok, I know I’m a few days late but considering we’re heading into a month-long dead time until Lost resumes I figure there’s ample time to analyze and discuss episode 8.
First off, good use of flashbacks to bring us up to speed on what’s been happening in Michael’s life since we saw him leave the island and now re-appear on the freighter as a janitor. I totally forgot how much of an ass-clown he was so I appreciated how they replayed the events leading up to his departure with Walt. My feelings last week of “Oh, it’s Michael!” quickly turned to “Oh, that stupid jackass…”.
While catching up with Michael we see that he’s completely alienated himself from Walt, slipping into a deep depression to the point where he tries to kill himself more than once but is mysteriously unable to. Tom appears and tells him that the island won’t let him. Ok… so the island has powers that extend around the globe? I think that’s the first time we’ve seen the island “do” something that wasn’t on the island, right? This is an interesting new twist.
So perhaps we’ve confirmed now that Michael is the final Oceanic 6 member? It’s definitely looking like if he died nobody would show up to pay their respects. However, the funeral was in LA and Michael was living in NYC… doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been him, but it would make more sense for the funeral to be in NYC I think.
And the cliffhanger moment… which I’m sincerely hoping they’ll pick right up in the next episode… who the hell sniped Karl and Rousseau? Are they actually dead? Those looked like kill shots to me. Was this all a plot of Ben’s to eliminate those who were more important to Alex than him? If there’s one thing we can say with certainty about Ben (and I think there is only one thing) it’s that he loves Alex and wants to protect her. Pretty doubtful that he’d send her off to some make-believe unknown Dharma station to get shot at. But now what? Is she blackmail bait to be used against Ben?
Maybe that means it was some of the other dudes from the freighter who we saw shooting clay discs off the side of the boat in Michael’s flashback? We know they want Ben, so they’d be really interested in getting their hands on Alex. On the other hand, those shots in the forest didn’t sound like machine guns so I’m not sure it could have been them after all… but I’m running out of possible suspects here. Unless it was a fleet of polar bears or clouds of black smoke.
And we learned that Tom, who is now dead, was gay. Not sure how that fits into the story.
We’ve got 4 weeks to analyze. All random crackpot theories are welcome.