The Oceanic 6 are definitely the 'news story' of who makes it off the island but with the faked wreckage we know someone is manipulating the news media for their own agenda...including Jack's bogus story at Kate's trial. Infact at some point there will have to be a justification of the 374 bodies in the fake plane that the world will notice, is 8 too many. My current operating guess (just for fun, not a spoiler cause I don't even research Lost threads elsewhere) is that the Losties will comandeer the freighter with help from the Locke and Ben and their onboard ally Michael. Some will die in the effort (Jin?, Michael?), there will be reason all them can't get out to the freighter (out gas in the helicopter?), there will be a lot of heroism and sacrifice (seemingly the developing theme of the show) and the 6 will show up at the closest port with a bogus story. Bogus because a deal was made with Locke and Ben that for their help that The Island will remain a secret. So my guess for Oceanic survivor #6 is............... Walt; the reason Michael is allied with Ben. The little boat he and Michael left on would have only be able to reach the freighter, not land ...Ben's plan to get a spy aboard the freighter. (that was fun)
Lostpedia's is a very good reference guide, and includes theories as well. Fantastic way to quickly recap episodes and have the allusions and hidden stuff pointed out and explained. Evan
The problem is the ads for this episode said meet the final of the Oceanic 6 (Sun). This means they've already shown us all of them, and thus Aaron must be one of them.
I forgot about Michael being on the freighter under an assumed name. You are right, that may very well mean that Walt or Michael is the last of the 6. There is no way the writers would make the 6 totally obvious, they just had to make it another point up for debate.
It would seem that Mike & Walt are excluded from being Oceanic survivor celebrities...but we still don't have confirmation on who Jack was referring to as the "2" that didn't make it. In court he talked about 8 plane survivors, with 2 dying post-crash. I assume that means the O6 came home with 2 body bags. Who's in the body bags??? Ben gets smuggled off. Juliette's not on the manifest, so she doesn't make sense. Evan
Here is my theory, and it's based just on my guesses Spoiler Ben doesn't want the island found. He arranged for the fake fuselage and the dead bodies. The bodies were the folks that he gassed all of those people from before. Could it be that Jin survived to get off the island but died once he was back somehow? Maybe he was part of the 6. I don't know.
Remember that Jack was LYING on the stand. He told a story that corroborated the story I am sure they were conned in to by whoever got them off the island. My Theory: Ben gets them off the island bc all of them did something terrible to get there (minus Sun bc she is pregnant and Ben has a heart, and Aaron bc he is 3 months old.) Because they got off the island ON the freighter means something happened to the freighter crew...and the ship was re-manned by survivors. Mr. Widmore is now super pissed and is going to go to the island to destroy the people on it and use its resources for power. Remember: Mr Widmore was behind funding on DHARMA INITIATIVE along with PIAK (Suns dad) Widmore is actively seeking the Island now that he "lost" it because it seems like Ben is doing everything to keep people from coming or leaving it minus himself. Knowing Widmore is looking for everyone, Ben is sending Sayid to clean up all Widmores people to make sure Widmore NEVER comes back. Mr. Abbadon (really dark fella that hired Naiomi and went to visit Hurley) seems to be a pawn of Widmore, but with his interactions with Hurley, Widmore NEVER gets to the island and his crew is seemingly dead because he asked him "ARE THEY STILL ALIVE?" which leads me to think Widmore trying to get back there to rescue either his crew, or kill the Losties in revenge.
his grave said "9/22/04" as his date of death which is the date of the Plane Crash...it looks like he wasnt part of the O6, as his labeled death is WITH the crash I also noticed Sun's name on the headstone...possible that they were both memorialized and then her date of death was erased?
How do we know Jin is even dead? This may be the fake death story behind it...as if he died in the crash. He could still be alive on the island. As far as Sun is concerned, is there a difference? I mean...they can't get back to the island. Or, at least, not easily at all...so he might as well be dead. But, weren't there two fatalities aside from the O6? I guess we have to assume Jin is one of the two who didn't make it in their fake story but they were still able to get him off the island. Whether he died before, during, or after the rescue...if he is in fact dead...I guess we will know some day. Just add another question to the long list of never-ending questions which may never be answered or are answered at a snail's pace.
Sometimes, when married couples plan to be buried next to each other, they get a joint headstone. When one dies, the other still has their name on the headstone with the date of death not filled in. Then when they die, they are buried in the neighboring plot and the date is filled in. It's a sign that Sun is still devoted to Jin and, despite being young, has no plans of moving on and eventually remarrying or even getting into another relationship.
I think there is a good chance that Jin is still alive back on the Island as is Claire. I am just coming up with this theory, after reading your post. Maybe, the reason they had to claim there were 8 is because Claire must have lived long enough to give birth and Jin had to lived long enough to impregnate Sun. For some unknown reason Claire and Jin sacrificed leaving the Island so that Aaron and Sun could leave. That could explain why Jack told the story that 8 survived the crash and only 6 lived to leave the Island.
Yes, but the entire idea behind the lie was to explain away those made evident to the public while covering up anyone not seen by the public. If 6 and only 6 people popped up from the rescue, what point is there in bringing in 2 others that died post-crash/pre-rescue? If two 815 body bags didn't come along during the rescue, why bother making up a story about 2 others? I have to believe there are 2 815 (excludes Juliette, Desmond) body bags that get back to LA with the O6. I also wonder about where Ben "dug up" (lol) those 324 bodies. Locke was at the mass grave, and it was an open pit. There were bodies in it, but how many people from Team Dharma were on the island when Ben killed them all? 40? 400? Ben needed exactly 324, so maybe those bodies in the pit were leftovers. Evan
I like this idea, but to play devil's advocate: Why give Jin a 9/22/04 death date then? He'd die the same day as the crash. They may as well have said he impregnated her the day before the flight. Evan
''Lost'': Cheating Time In an episode with both a flash-forward and a surprise flashback, Sun and Jin deal with her infidelity and the Island's pregnancy curse By Jeff Jensen (EW) Jeff Jensen, an EW senior writer, has been despondent since the cancellation of ''Twin Peaks''They never made it to Albuquerque in the flash-forward future (at least, not yet), but Jin and Sun landed somewhere deeper in last night's moving, deviously tricky installment of Lost. Back on point after last week's subpar Juliet-centric episode, ''Ji-Yeon'' had me dabbing my eyes repeatedly. You're always going to get me watery with a story about the sometimes perilous road of bringing new life into the world; it's a personal thing, and Lost tapped it well enough, so there you go: I'm sold. Even better, I loved how this story, unexpectedly, dealt with resolving Sun's sin against her husband — her infidelity with Jae — yet also completed Jin's redemptive reconstruction into a husband worthy of his wife's faithfulness. I'm not sure if Jin really is destined for death, as the final moments of the show seemed to suggest, but in many ways the episode felt like a valedictory for the character. Recognizing his own moral failure during his fishing-boat heart-to-heart with Bernard (a kinda corny but altogether effective scene), the former underworld strongman was able to forgive his Sun and recognize his role in pushing her away. But the beautiful moment came when he said he would follow her to Locke's camp — this, from the man who just a couple months ago in Lost time demanded his wife obediently trot after him. The role reversal closed the circuit on Jin's redemptive arc and had me searching for tissues anew. When he asked, with great vulnerability, if the baby was his, and Sun assured him that it was, I grabbed more. Well played by Daniel Dae Kim and Yunjin Kim, this was Jin and Sun's finest hour since season 1. But we're going to rumble over that flashback fake-out, aren't we? As I write these words at 12:50 a.m. PDT, I'm already getting e-mails from readers irked by what could be seen as a pretty manipulative storytelling tactic. ''Ji-Yeon'' seemed to contain a shared flash-forward that seemed to reveal that both Jin and Sun had made it off the Island. More, it appeared to tell the story of the birth of their child, a daughter named Ji-Yeon (which means either ''delay'' or ''flower of wisdom''), and how Jin missed the blessed event because of a comic episode involving his frustrated quest to buy a giant stuffed panda. But then the show pulled the rug on us. Hard. Lost had given us an episode with both a flashback (that panda business was part of an errand Jin was running for his mobster boss, Sun's father, Mr. Paik) and a flash-forward (we learned that Sun, a member of the Oceanic 6, got off the Island in time to successfully duck its anti-pregnant-lady curse and give birth). But I dig narrative gamesmanship, especially when it's supported by a strong, compelling character idea. Jin's flashback served as a touchstone that reminded him (or just us) of the morally flimsy man he used to be. He needed to feel that anew — and we needed to see that again — in order for him to be able to (very quickly) reach reconciliation with his wife in the Island present. So it worked for me. I look forward to reading your beg-to-differs on the boards below. While you're at it, debate this: Do you think Jin's really dead in the flash-forward future? In the last scene, we saw Hurley travel to Seoul and join Sun in visiting Jin's grave and introducing Ji-Yeon to her father, at least in spirit. But the marker indicated the date of death as 9/22/2004 — the day Oceanic 815 crashed. As the episode reminded us, wreckage of Oceanic 815 was found in the ocean, along with corpses of all the passengers. Some possibilities: 1. The marker was erected when Jin and all the other passengers were declared dead. But Jin really isn't dead. He's on the Island, or somewhere, for some reason. Hurley and Sun — who clearly have secrets to keep regarding the fate of their friends — merely went to Jin's grave site for the sake of keeping up appearances. After all, they're super-celebs in the future, their movements and choices are being tracked by the press — and, possibly, their enemies. 2. Nope: Jin's dead. He's gonna bite it in the unfolding Island story. So while the marker bears the wrong date, it's all the same to Sun: Her husband is gone. Thoughts? Oh, and I can't finish my Jin-Sun riffing without noting how my jaw dropped when Juliet spilled the beans about Sun's affair to Jin in order to prevent them from skipping off to Locke's camp. The balls on Juliet! That was ice cold. Awesome! Other thoughts: The Love Boat, this is not Not that he needs the money, but Charles Widmore should rent the Freighter out for Halloween parties, because man, is this boat one freaky place! We got roaches, suicidal crew members, and blood splatter on the walls. (I loved the deadpan doctor's line: ''That shouldn't be there.'') And we got a heartless Aussie captain named Gault who likes to tell spooky stories about people who should be dead and yet are very much alive. Finally deciding to grant Desmond and Sayid an audience, the gruff Gault brought out the black box of Oceanic 815, purchased, he explained, at great cost and through secret channels by his boss, Widmore. (The mention of his name caused Desmond's peepers to pop out of his sockets in surprise.) Gault told the castaways that the world thinks all 324 passengers were found at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Clearly, this was staged — but how? ''Where exactly does one come across 324 bodies?'' Gault asked. Then he put this conspiracy right at the feet of the man he and his freighter thugs had come to nab: Benjamin Linus. Our freighter questions mount: Why does Widmore have his ascot in a bunch over Ben? And what was that secret midnight mission Lapidus, a self-proclaimed castaway ally, went on? Three small things about the freighter before we get to the big fourth thing: Is there any special significance to Captain Gault's name? Glad you asked! Just so happens that there's a John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, written by Lost-cited author Ayn Rand. In Shrugged, Galt is a mystery man who has invented a powerful new source of energy and has vanished off the face of the earth. Turns out he and some other ''captains of industry'' (Wikipedia's phrasing) have formed a secret society in Colorado. I'm not a Rand guy; never read the book. I'm certain that connections could be made here to Dharma and the Others, Ben and Widmore. Feel free to e-mail me your dissertation on the book's significance to Lost and I'll send you a Doc Jensen ''No Prize.'' Late addition: I just woke up from a nap after submitting this recap to my editor and received an e-mail from reader Tom, who points out that Captain Gault is also the name of a maritime adventure hero created by writer William Hope Hodgson. According to Wikipedia, Captain Gault is a ''captain for hire'' who is ''highly placed in a secret society....In general, he reveals himself to have surprising reservoirs of specialized knowledge. Where he got all this knowledge is generally not revealed; we get only these tantalizing hints at the character's past.'' Says Tom, ''This last sentence seems to sum up all of Lost, doesn't it?'' Nice catch, dude! And this gives me a chance to make a connection I've always wanted to make: Hodgson also wrote stories about a spectral investigator named Carnacki (think: Miles Straum?), who lived at 472 Cheyne Walk, in London — just down the street from where Penelope Widmore lives! What was the book that the troubled Regina was ''reading'' upside down? It was Survivors of the Chancellor, by Jules Verne, an 1875 novel of psychological suspense about — get this — the castaways of a grounded ship who start killing themselves from madness and despair. Interestingly enough, the books that Verne published before and after Survivors of the Chancellor have some powerful Lost resonances: Mysterious Island (also 1875) is, of course, considered an essential text, but then there's Michael Strogoff (1876), about a spy on a mission named...Michael. His lady love? A woman who shares the name of Sayid's Iraqi sweetheart, Nadia. Why did Regina kill herself? Because she was inconsolable over the death of her lover — the late, Locke-knifed Brit Naomi. Remember the inscription on her bracelet? ''N, I'll always be with you, R.G.'' Yep: I'm thinking Regina is ''R.G.'' And now, for that big fourth thing: Hey — don't I know you from someplace? Oh, yeah! You're the guy who sold out my friends and killed those two Tailie girls just to get your weirdo psychic son back! I loved this scene. Doc Freighter was showing Sayid and Desmond to their bug-infested quarters when he summoned freighter janitor Kevin Johnson to scrub that brain paint off the wall. (Shades of Radzinsky, Kelvin's former partner in the Hatch and originator of the blast-door map, who blew his brains out and left some stain on the Swan's ceiling.) Pushing his mop bucket down the hall, K.J. emerged from the shadows and revealed himself to be Michael, looking both meeker and buffer than we last saw him at the end of season 2, sailing away from the Island with Walt. He and Sayid shared a tense moment (Pleasepleaseplease don't bust me!) — and that was that for this episode. The promos for next week's episode promise a major download of Michael intel. Two things: 1. Despite my theories explaining Michael's return in yesterday's Doc Jensen column, I've become quite taken by the suggestion offered by several readers that actor Harold Perrineau isn't playing Michael but rather a grown-up version of Walt. I gotta tell you I really dig that idea. 2. I know many of you felt that Michael's return was anticlimactic, the surprise spoiled by ABC's promos and Perrineau's presence in the credits in recent weeks. Yesterday's Doc Jensen column addressed those complaints, but in an ironic turn of events, my coverage of those complaints wound up functioning as a spoiler for those of you who weren't aware of Perrineau's return. My apologies for my role in ruining the surprise; I should have been more careful. The Oceanic 6 is set. Right? Right? Sun's flash-forward fake-out seemed to close out the first act of Lost's future-time story line: identifying the members of the Oceanic 6, the celebrity miracle survivors of Oceanic 815. To recap, they are Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Aaron, and Sun. Now, I know what some of you are saying: Aaron can't be a member of the Oceanic 6 because he wasn't born prior to the crash and therefore was not technically an Oceanic 815 passenger. To which I say, Please. Don't be so literal. In the Lost world, the Oceanic 6 is clearly a media-coined term, pinned on these six souls by some clever headline writer or newscaster. And being in the business, I can tell you that tiny little facts like Aaron's non-passenger status would never, ever get in the way of a easy, catchy piece of phrasing. We journalists are exactly that lazy. So let's call it: The Oceanic 6 is settled. Now, let's move on to the next act of their story, which I'm betting will cover two big points: the backstory behind Jack's downward spiral into boozy, grizzly-bearded, we-gotta-go-back-to-the-Island mania, and more context for Ben and Sayid's secret war with their list of mysterious off-Island foes. Well, my deadline has come — and gone. So I turn the space over to you. What did you think of ''Ji-Yeon''? Did you like it as much as I did? Gimme your Michael and Jin theories, Lost nation! Go!
But the bodies in the pit had been there for what, 20+ years. They were pretty decomposed. Ben was supposed to have participated in the purge in his late teens or early twenties. This was before Rousseau arrived and he "adopted" Alex who is something like 17 now. They showed video of bodies inside the plane. And while they were waterlogged and decomposing, they weren't close to the bodies that had been lying out in the open for 20 years. I think the bodies on the plane definitely came from somewhere else.
Actually, this makes a lot of sense. When all passengers of 815 were declared dead, their families erected a joint headstone for Jin and Sun with the date of the crash as the date of death. Of course, Sun survives so they erase the date of death from her part of the headstone. It doesn't answer the question of whether or not Jin is really dead, but it does give reason why the date of death is what it is.
I think he's still alive on the island. Sun was emotional, but that's to be expected, she just gave birth alone, and she misses her husband. Hurley shows up, but he didn't seem too upset about Jin passing away. Also, as screwed up as Jack is/becomes, he still want to that mystery persons funeral, so why wouldn't he go to Jin's if he was really dead? Same with Kate, although she might not be able to leave the US because of her troubles with the law. People are going to get killed off on the show as the series wraps up, but I doubt they kill off Jin, Sun, or Claire because of their children.
