When I was making my first
attempt to write an episode guide for Lost I questioned the importance
of the freighter folk to the show's overall arc. I believed that while all four
characters did make an impression it has far more to do with the skill of the
actors then the roles they were given to play and while they all had powerful
moments (particularly in Season 5) I questioned how important they work to the
overarching plot. Indeed one of the biggest problems I had with the series
finale for a long time was that is considering how important so many of these
characters were, why weren't any of them in the final scene?
It's possible that I might have
saved myself a fair amount of troubles had I watched the extras on the DVDs of
every season. In my defense I didn't purchase complete sets of the entire
series until at least my second or third rewatch and I'm relatively certain I
didn't start utilizing the extras on them until the fourth. I might have saved myself a lot of trouble
had I actually looked at the section called 'Tales From the Freighter' that is
in very big letters on the Season 4 DVD.
Because there's Darlton
explaining to us in great detail the roles the Freighter Folk are supposed to
represent to us not just for Season 4 but indeed for themes that will be
significant for the entire second half of the series. And in case I hadn't gotten the point Emily
St. James helpfully explains for all her readers what that point was in her
review of the episode that introduces them "Confirmed Dead." To make
clear what she and the viewers thought of them the subtitle is 'The Fantastic
Four''
She reminds us that the continued
expansion of Lost has another reason beyond the need for the show's body
count: "With each new season the show telescopes outward just a little bit
more on each new character helps with this expansion of slope."
Now as we know by this point in
Season 4 the viewer knows that some characters will be leaving the island soon
so we need the action off-island to start being more important:
"We also know there are many
interested parties on the mainland who want to exploit the Island for their own
ends. What we need is a group of characters who can bridge both worlds.
Enter the freighter folk.
Each of the four characters is
more of an embrace of genre storytelling. Dan Faraday (Jeremy Davies) is the
theoretical physicist who understands more than he lets on. Miles Straume (Ken
Leung) is the haunted man who talks to ghosts. Charlotte Lewis (Rebecca Mader)
is the professor studying the hidden secrets of human history. Frank Lapidus
(Jeff Fahey) is the ace pilot who can fly into and out of any danger. As St.
James points out:
"…these are all archetypes
we know from decades of genre fiction. Yet they're (also) archetypes the show
had not yet employed, which may be why they integrate into the story so easily
where previous groups of characters have struggled to gain a foothold among the
unwieldy ensemble."
(And while I don't want to
immediately give anything away that's also something that Lost will struggle with in its final season.)
More importantly as we see in
their flashbacks and as the fourth season continues all of them are integral in
themes that will become critical for much of the final half of the series.
Dan's discussion of science and space-time will become vital to understanding
the major themes in this season and the next. Miles' ability to talk to the
dead will become important as the dead begin to take a greater role in the
destinies of the living on the island and off. Charlotte clearly knows about the Dharma
Initiative, which we already know is important to understanding the island and
that we will witness firsthand in the fifth season. Frank is a conspiracy
theory buff and we already know that the Oceanic 6 are about to engage in a
conspiracy to hide what happened after the plane crash.
What's also important is that for
characters that are outsiders and which we are told from the moment that they
arrived are a threat to the island is that unlike so many other characters the
survivors have met in the first two seasons we actually trust them from the
start. That's even more remarkable when
you consider that the moment we meet them they're all lying about why they are
here in the first place.
All of the characters have
different approaches to the Oceanics. Daniel says he's there to rescue them and
he seems the most honest of the group. That's not necessarily a good thing:
when Jack asks him about his gun, he tells him: "Rescuing you? That's not
our first priority." He's just not as good a liar as the other three
members of the freighter folk; Miles keeps telling him to shut up when they
reconnect and he's just not comfortable with the level of deception or
violence.
Miles is hostile from the start;
more than any other member of the team he's the most mercenary. This is in fact
literal: we eventually learn he had no real interest in any part of this and
only came along because he was going to be handsomely paid for his services.
You get the feeling he hasn't been a lot of fun to travel with: when he ends up
getting exchanged as a hostage for Charlotte, Frank isn't as annoyed as you'd
think: "He was a pain in my ass." Leung's incredible sarcastic
delivery will bring some much needed humor during the final half of the series.
Charlotte's arrival is
remarkable: when she cuts herself loose from her parachute and ends up in a
lagoon she splashes around like a child and seems ridiculously happy when she
first meets some of the survivors. (We'll eventually learn this is a kind of foreshadowing
of her backstory.) It's clear from the moment they reunite that she and Daniel
have quickly formed a bond in which she shows a compassion to him that we don't
see her show any other character. We never learn what their relationship was
like getting to the island but it's clear to the survivors that Dan has fallen
in love with her and Charlotte is aware of it to an extent.
Like his first name implies Frank
is honest about what he thinks when he sees the strangeness of the island. He compartmentalizes the same as everyone
else but he won't hide just how much all the strangeness unsettles him and
though he hides it as best he can, clearly terrifies him. Much of this is very
clear in Season 5 when John Locke appears to return from the dead. He knows
even before he learns the truth that this is not normal and he refuses to
accept as the kind of island business that everyone else does. In a sense the
show is choreographing his purpose right from the start: he's there to get
people off the island and in large part it's because he knows how dangerous
both it and the people who want to control it are.
When we watched Lost the
first time a question that every viewer had when we met a new character was to
paraphrase Howard Baker: "What does this newcomer know about the island
and when did they know it?" With
the freighter folk it took a while to get a clear picture because the first
time we meet them we're more interested in why they seem to know that the
wreckage that has just been found in the Pacific is not in fact Oceanic 815 and
that there are survivors.
From the start we know Frank
knows the crash has been staged because he was supposed to be flying Oceanic
815 that fateful day. It becomes clear early on that's the main reason he was
recruited and that he knows nothing about the island. Charlotte clearly knows
about the island's existence in some form from the moment we meet her in her
flashback but because she is the first to die of the freighter folk we never
learn how she knows the truth about the staged wreckage. (Yes, this is another
example of the female characters on Lost getting short shrift.) Miles
clearly has some idea about the island and that the wreckage is staged (that
much is clear when we see his flashback in Some Like It Hoth) but this doesn't
really interest him when he signs up and its not clear he cares about the whys
and how's until halfway through Season 4. (By that point, he realizes why the
mercenaries were on the freighter and he makes it clear this isn't what he
signed up for.) Daniel is the hardest one to figure out: when we first meet him
he seems to know less about the island then anybody but by the end of the
season he seems to know the most.
What is clear during Season 4 is
that the first team all knew very little about the purpose of their mission
originally. We know that the purpose of the freighter is to find and retrieve
Ben Linus but everyone on the freighter was given different mission parameters.
Frank believes his purpose was to fly the team of scientists to the island but
its never clear how much of this was known to the mercenaries. When Frank
returns to the freighter with Sayid and Desmond, they don't seem happy to see
him and its more than just the fact he brought two of the survivors back to the
island.
It's worth noting the mercenaries
are also given relatively limited parameters. Keamy knows his job is to
retrieve Ben Linus and kill everyone else on the island. He's also told of a
secondary protocol which involves 'torching the island'. But it's also clear
that he was given no real details about the layout of the island, nothing about
the natives and certainly nothing about the smoke monster. And it's clear no one on the Kahana was
prepared for the time sickness that causes 'the cabin fever' that causes many
of the crew to either kill themselves or die of time sickness. (Certainly the
doctor wasn't given any information on it.)
And there's never any clear idea
of the hierarchy of the crew at any point during Season 4. Naomi, who we meet
first and whose mission seems to have been to get the team of scientists to the
island, clearly knows more about the mission than any civilian (we learn this
in later flashbacks) is clearly 'management' but its never clear how much she
really knew about the island during her arc on Season 3. And considering the
mission of her freighter was to capture Ben she didn't show any interest at all
in him when he walked right up to her in the second half of
Through The Looking Glass.
(For the record there's a flashback of Naomi
in Confirmed Dead as well where she dismisses the four people we've just met as
a headcase, an anthropologist, a spook and a drunk as being the wrong people
for the operation. She's told by Matthew Abaddon, who we later learn works with
Widmore, that they will need her in order for the mission to succeed. Nikki Stafford implies that maybe the
freighter folks mission was doomed now that Naomi is dead but maybe she was the
only person who was fully briefed on every aspect of the island at the time and
was officially the head of the entire operation. Once she died the hierarchy
crumbled and the entire mission fell apart. It's a weird theory, I grant you,
but that's what Lost is all about.)
The clearest reason we think
Frank ferried the scientists to the island becomes clear in The Other Woman.
Dan and Charlotte go on a trip with a map one of them has drawn to search for
the Tempest, a Dharma station that controls poisonous chemicals. (We learn some
details about it in Juliet's flashback in that episode.) Dan and Charlotte will
claim that they were sent to the Tempest to render the poisonous chemicals
inert in order to stop Ben from using it as a weapon. This is backed up by the
show's canon in which we learn that the Dharma Initiative was wiped out by the
release of poisonous gas in what was known as 'The Purge'.
In what is an unfavorable review
of the episode in Finding Lost: Season 4 (its one of the few episodes in
the entire show that Nikki Stafford thinks is a failure) she argues that the
entire storyline feels tacked on and that later events on the show will argue
that its redundant. However when we learn about Widmore's connection to the
Others in Season 5 there is a certain logic to it. Widmore knew about the Purge
(there's a possibility he even ordered it) and he definitely knew about
everything the Dharma Initiative did on the island. And considering that
Widmore has no problem given orders to kill everyone on the island to get Ben
it's completely understandable he believes Ben would do the same to protect
himself. (Ben will claim in a later
episode he doesn't kill innocent people to protect the island but we're very
aware how big a lie that is.)
What's also clear is that well
before the end of Season 4 nobody on the first trip is committed to the
original mission. Miles has witnessed the massacre at the Barracks when the
mercenaries stormed it; Frank is determined to protect the survivors from the
wrath of Keamy during their trek back and Dan and Charlotte have confessed the
freighter is not their to rescue them and have already become a sort of ally
(Dan more than Charlotte.) And when Dan becomes aware of the mercenaries are
headed to the Orchid, he makes it very clear: they have to leave the island as
quickly as possible.
And at the end of the season both
Dan and Frank are actively trying to get everyone off the island: Frank is
willing to chopper everyone to freedom and Dan is doing the same on the Zodiac
raft. Notably, however, Charlotte and Miles both stay behind on that journey.
Miles doesn't give an explanation as to why (perhaps the dead have told him
what is about to happen to the freighter) and Charlotte tells Dan she came to
the island "to find out where I was born." That action saves both their lives when the
freighter explodes.
Not long after that Ben moves the
island and the survivors are divided. Most notably Frank is on the helicopter
with the Oceanic 6 and Desmond and he manages to return to civilization with
the rest of the survivors. Charlotte and Miles are still on the island and Dan
is on the Zodiac raft when it is moved. At the start of Season 5 we see him and
he says: "We must have been in the radius." He then says nothing to
the rest of the passengers.
We'll leave Frank behind for now
(Jeff Fahey, for the record, was the only one of the freighter folk who wasn't
named a series regular in Season 4 and isn't officially made one until the
final season) and deal with the ones left on the island. Because it's really
through the three of them even more than the ones left behind that we get a
real sense of what the island will mean in Season 5 – and more importantly,
perhaps the real reason the Island chose them before Widmore came to them.
Most of the action on the island
during Season 5 flows from Dan. This is somewhat paradoxical as Jeremy Davies'
only appears in 9 of the 17 episodes and is almost completely absent during
half the season. But as the show enters what is the leadup to the series
finale, it's clear just how important Dan is to the action.
With everyone who was part of the
leadership gone (and presumed dead considering the freighter has blown up)
what's left is a mash-up of several different groups of survivors. For the
Oceanics, there's only Locke, Sawyer, Rose, Bernard and a handful of redshirts.
(No one knows what's happened to Claire.) Juliet is now accepted as part of the
group and Miles; Charlotte and Dan are the only survivors of the freighter.
More to the point, they are facing a crisis and incredibly Dan knows what
happening.
Using a metaphor that has gone
down in Lost lore he compares the island to a 'record skipping on a
turntable'. He thinks either the island
or the people on it are skipping through time: based on what we see, it's clear
the latter explanation is correct. He also makes clear the rules of time
travel:
"Time is like a street.
We can move forward on a street. We can move backward. We can never create a
new street. If we try to do anything different, we will fail every time. Whatever
happened, happened."
The final sentence essentially
becomes gospel among those left on the island, long after the skipping stops.
What's ironic is that none of the survivors ever know that minutes after saying
that Dan will spend the rest of his life trying to break that rule.
The reason becomes clear
immediately. Charlotte suffers a nosebleed and Dan starts to read through his
journal and he knows something bad is coming. To be clear, the viewer already
does because of the brilliant Season 4 episode The Constant. I'll get to Dan's
part in that in a minute but the viewer remembers that when on the freighter
George Minnkowski was suffering time sickness and nosebleeds were the first
sign that it was about to kill him. The same thing had started to happen to
Desmond had he not managed to find his constant.
And the reason he knew about this
was because of Dan. When Desmond started skipping through time Dan didn't seem
surprised and asked to talk to Desmond. He had an idea what was happening and
told Desmond to go to Oxford to find him in 1996. To confirm his identity he
gave Dan some scientific figures and said he knew about Eloise.
The next time Desmond jumped
that's exactly what he did and he found a younger Dan Faraday. It was here we
first learned Dan's backstory: that he had been working on 'experiments Oxford
frowned on' that involved radiation on rats. Because of these experiments he
would end up suffering severe memory loss which was clearly affecting him in
his first flashback; we'll learn the full extent of it later on. Dan told
Desmond the only way to anchor himself in the present was to find a constant –
and Desmond did.
Now a desperate Dan founds on the
door of the Swan for twenty minutes, hoping against hope – and Desmond answers.
Having just explained what 'the rules' were, he tells Desmond "the rules
don't apply to you." Desmond doesn't but we soon realize what he means. As
he speaks the sky begins to turn purple and unlike with other inhabitants of
the island but like the survivors Desmond is clearly aware of it. Dan tells
Desmond to go to Oxford and find his mother.
And somewhere between three and
five years later Desmond wakes up and remembers. He then begins his path to the
island, though he doesn’t know it yet.
It becomes clear very quickly
that Dan has connections with many important people on and off the island. We
already know of his link to Widmore (and as we'll see it's even deeper than his
just sending him on the freighter) and he's clearly linked to Desmond.
Eventually Desmond finds out who Dan's mother is – and it is a familiar face.
Eloise Hawking, the woman who in Flashes Before Your Eyes' told him he couldn't
marry Penny because his path led to the island.
As the island continues to skip
through time its clear the remaining survivors (those who aren't being killed
by Others) are starting to suffer the same kind of time sickness that was
clearly effecting everyone on the freighter to an extent. Charlotte feels the
worst of it but as the jumps continue it begins to effect everyone else. By
this point Locke has rejoined the group and he has been told that in order to
save everyone he had to bring back everyone who left (and that he's going to
have to die). As is often the case with Locke he uses the excuse of the time
sickness to get what he wants. He didn't want the Oceanic 6 to leave the
island, this is a way to get them back.
So the group starts making its
way back to the Orchid, and as they go they encounter Jin who survives the
explosion of the freighter after all. But the closer they get the faster the
time jumps come and while this happens Charlotte begins to deteriorate so badly
that she actually warns Locke to bring them back: "This Place is
Death!" she shouts.
At that point she's so ill that
Dan won't leave Charlotte's side and the rest of the group goes back to the
orchid. Jin actually tells Locke not to bring Sun back to the island and
despite the flaw in his mission Locke not only promises but keeps his word. (As
I mentioned in my previous entry fate in the form of Ben intervenes.)
In her final minutes Charlotte
tells Dan that she was part of the Dharma Initiative and that she has spent her
entire life studying anthropology for the sole purpose of returning here. But
she also tells Dan that when she was a child a man came up to her and told her
never to come back – and she thinks that man was Dan. Not long after Charlotte
dies.
There's an argument to be made
that this is another in the seemingly endless examples of how much short shrift
the writers of Lost gave to its female characters. And honestly it's
hard to argue with this case then it is with some of the other female
characters on the show. You could argue
it was a necessity for the plot – it is
the motivation of Dan's actions for the rest of his arc on the series and if
that doesn't happen, there's no real way the final season can happen. But it
doesn't change the fact that it is another female love interest dying to
motivate that of a male character, which was a tired trope even before Lost started
to work on it. As a viewer I felt cheated.
And it's also worth noting that
while Locke's actions are noble by simply putting the unfrozen Donkey Wheel
back on its axis and moving it, he actually accomplishes his mission right
there. Immediately afterwards the time jumps stop and the time sickness ends.
It makes sense when you consider that Locke is being used as a pawn in this
mission by…well, a larger force but he'll end up dying as he lived, being
manipulated.
After this the survivors end up
in the 1970s and become part of the Dharma Initiative. Dan, at some point,
leaves the island, so now's as good a time as any to talk about Miles.
Miles, the island's resident
ghost whisperer, spent most of Season 4 remarkably uninterested in the island
or being a joiner. We forgive him for that and lack of understanding of his
ability because he's just so damn funny most of the time. But as the island
starts jumping through time and danger becomes even closer with each leap he
increasingly starts to cling to his fellow survivors. By the time Locke gets to
the well and goes down it, you can tell he's genuinely unsettled by the weird
shit.
It's seems more unlikely that
Miles would become part of a community then Sawyer would become an effective
leader and yet by LaFleur, he's essentially willing to become Sawyer's deputy
and you can tell their friends. That said its clear he's never been as
comfortable in Dharma as the rest of the group and by the time of his flashback
in Some Like It Hoth, we understand everything about Miles we need to.
Miles has been hearing the voices
of the dead since he was only a child and it's clearly isolated him
emotionally. When we him at his mother's deathbed, he's going through a punk
phase and it's clear he hasn't talked to her for a while. He has lived his entire
life believing his father abandoned his family as a child and even though he's
told at least once that he'll learn about his father if he goes to the island,
he claims not to care.
The fact that Miles had daddy
issues almost seems like he's filling in a cliché for everyone who comes to the
island. But unlike everyone else, he has a chance to resolve them. Because it
turns out his father was part of Dharma and we've met him multiple times before
the castaways get there for real in Season 5. I'm talking about the man in the
lab coat in the orientation films who we learn is Dr. Pierre Chang. Miles found
that out on his first week when he was behind his mother in the
cafeteria.
By this point I should mention
every one of the survivors now in Dharma knows what's going to happen to the
Initiative – they're all going to die.
But they've invested so thoroughly in
Dan's narrative of 'Whatever happened, happened" they see no need
to warn them. (This raises the interesting question of whether Sawyer planned
to stay in Dharma right up until the Purge… but we'll let that go.) More to the
point is the contradiction of Miles that Hurley, of all people, points out.
Miles will gladly listened to the last thoughts of the dead but he's spent
three years in Dharma refusing to talk to his very much still-alive father.
Miles has always believed his
father rejected him and his mother but when he says Pierre nursing the one-year
old version of himself and reading to him from a book, we see tears in his eyes
for the first time in the series. It's a profound moment for Leung, known
primarily for sarcasm rather than drama.
Of course, keeping with how Lost
works, by the time he realizes this it's almost too late. Because the sub
has return and Dan has come back to the island with news that should shock
everybody – but no one listens.
We finally learn Dan's backstory
in The Variable, another episode that ranks among the best in Lost's
history. In it we learn almost every aspect of Dan's life – and in keeping with
how so many of these episodes works, it comes right about when he's about to
die.
So much about Lost is
about the argument between free will and destiny and how each character views
it. Dan's perspective is grounded more in a scientific basis in regard to time
travel but the idea of fate is still clear. In this episode we learn the truth
about him and who he is.
Dan has been pushed his entire
life to follow the course he has because of the actions of his mother Eloise
Hawking. She has pressed him to abandon his love of music in order to follow
science, she's forced him to abandon romantic relationships, and she's done it
all keeping him at a distance throughout his childhood. As a result of these
experiments his girlfriend Teresa became permanently unstuck in time and he
suffered memory loss so damaging that he requires a caretaker. He is made to go
back to the island on the promise that it will heal his mind (which is does)
and more importantly because his mother says it will make him proud of him.
By this point we know that Dan is
the son of Eloise and Charles Widmore, who had a relationship when they were on
the island. Dan learned this at some point off-island and has come back aware
of the fact that everything that happened not only to him but also the
survivors returning to the island lies at the feet of his mother. He's now
convinced that he can change the future.
He has arrived back on the island
within a few hours of what will become known as The Incident, the drilling that
will cause Dharma to build the Swan on top of it. They will spend the next
twenty years pushing the button, which on September 22nd 2004
Desmond will fail to push, causing the plane to crash and starting the entire
cycle of events. Dan thinks that he can negate that energy and his plan is to
detonate a hydrogen bomb.
This is, even by the standards of
Lost is insane but it finds an ear in Jack. By this time the Oceanic 6
have made it back to the island after boarding Ajira 316. And the whole reason
it makes sense is because who is piloting that very plane? None other than
Frank Lapidus.
When Frank comes out of the
cockpit to talk with Jack, he looks out and sees the five people he brought
back to civilization. His words are simple: "We're not going to Guam, are
we?" We never really know what Frank thinks about anything that happens on
the island, other than it not being normal. But it's clear when the plane makes
it jump that he was supposed to be the pilot. Because when everything goes
wrong, he takes control of Ajira 316, brings it down intact and with only his
co-pilot dying.
So when Kate tells Jack that
Dan's plan is crazy Jack's reaction is logical: "We disappeared off a
plane in mid-air and now we're in 1977. Getting kind of used to insane."
The problem is with the rest of the survivors Dharma has become the new normal
and when Dan starts spouting new theories that are accurate and even though
they've basically spent the last three years living by them, everyone except
Jack and Kate dismiss him and even Kate's basically just along for the ride.
Daniel was a fan favorite in Lost
history and when you consider his relatively brief tenure on the show,
proportionately he may be the most beloved. Much of this is because of the
incredible work of Jeremy Davies who Nikki Stafford said was at the level of
Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn when it came to the greatest performances on Lost.
I've never quantified it to that
level but Davies has always been an extraordinary talent. (In his very next
major role as Dickie Bennett on Justified he deservedly got the
nominations and the Emmy he was denied for his work on Lost.) But with
the exception of John Locke, I'd argue he's the most tragic of all the
characters.
He has been driven his entire
life by the burden of his mother that he could never escape. He was led his
entire life by her on a path that was going to end on the island. He suffered
immensely both in body and mind just to get there. He finds love in Charlotte,
only to lose her in a very short time. He knows more about the island and what
can happen but during his tenure he's basically ignored about it. He spends
most of his life convinced that destiny drives everything. Then he comes back
to the island, convinced that they change their fate. He marches back to that
camp determined to bring it about…
…And is shot in the back by his
mother, who is pregnant with him at the time. In his last moment he dies
realizing the horrible truth, knowing that his entire life was lived just so
that he could be killed before he was ever born. (Only on Lost could you
say that statement and hope to have it make sense.)
There's an argument once Dan is killed
the remaining freighter folk no longer have any direct relevance to Lost and
in a way they spend much of the final season less relevant to the action then what's
left of the cast. I can make a valid
argument that we need both Miles and Frank during Season 6 for a general reason:
the final season essentially abandons any pretense that there's anything scientific
driving Lost and 'goes all in on the mystical hooey' as is said in Back
to The Island. Throw in the fact that all of the action is no focused on
the remaining candidates and the action between the Man in Black's desire to
leave with them and there's no real need for them as part of the main action.
That's actually the reason we
need them: what humor there is comes almost entirely from Miles and Frank as
well the continued acknowledgement as to just how weird everything that's going
on looks from the outside. We need the blunt honesty of these two characters to
remind us this is as crazy as it looks as well as just how suicidal the
missions of the remaining candidates are. It's telling that in the series
finale the mission to leave the island is led primarily by the two men who care
the least about the great game that's being played and just want to go home.
And come on, during all of this
madness we need the relief of Frank and Miles. Some of the best lines in the
final season come from both men. Who can forget Frank's final statement after
John Locke is buried: "Weirdest funeral I've ever been too." Miles
accepting just how things have changed once there at the temple. "As you
can see Hugo's accepted the position of leadership, so that's…pretty
great." Or how both men describe things when Sun has her incident: Miles:
"that's the craziest thing I've ever heard." Frank: "Says the
man who communes with the dead."
Of course without Dan's death and
his determination for a plan Jack doesn't go on that mission in the final two
episodes of Season 5 determined that they can change their fate. That mission
has to happen because it's a necessity for the people in Dharma to get back to
the future and for the action in the final season take place. But its worth
noting that watching 'The Incident' we get a very clear message of how futile this
mission will me when we finally meet Jacob and the viewer finally gets confirmation
that everybody who came here was brought her for a reason by powers far larger
than even Eloise Hawking or Ben Linus could possibly imagine. I'll deal with that in its own article but it's
worth noting that if one freeze frames the scenes where we see Jacob's
candidates in both 'The Substitute' and 'Lighthouse' we see the names 'Faraday'
and 'Lewis' prominently listed as well as 'Chang'. And considering that it's
often hard to know which candidate is referred to in some cases, it is worth
remembering that was Miles' birth name before it was changed to Straume. Their
destinies were entwined with the island and we already know Frank's was too.
This brings me to that issue I
had with the series finale and the revelations of the flash-sideways. Considering how important the freighter folk
were to the survivors during their lives (particularly Miles and Dan) why aren't
they in the church at the end? It took multiple rewatches of the series for it
to finally register why.
When Eloise asks Desmond if he's
taking Dan with him, he tells her "not with us." That might seem
cruel as if they're not ready to move on. But the last time we see Dan's he's
happily playing the piano with Charlotte clapping at a table and Miles doing
the same.
Think about it. In the
flash-sideways Miles and his father are clearly happy together and he's friends
with Charlotte. We know from earlier episodes that Dan is Charlotte's constant
and it's clear in the series finale they're connecting. The mercenaries have
all been killed again (how does that work? Who cares?) and we all know that the
rest of the freighter folk were always separate from much of what happens on
the island?
So it's clear at some point,
they'll have to move on in their own group. Who knows what it will look like?
Maybe they'll all get on a cruise and find that Frank Lapidus is on vacation,
completely sober and maybe even happily married. Perhaps Richard (who was
completely absent from the flash-sideways) is there as well. (He did leave the
island with them.) Maybe he and Isabella are celebrating their anniversary
together. Perhaps Miles is there with his parents who lived a long and happy
life free of the machinations of the island and Dharma in this universe. And
maybe what's next for them is different for the Oceanics.
I realize this may seem a bit
corny and mystical to be sure and it only works if you buy the series finale's
explanation. But that's what being a fan of Lost always will be. Wild
speculation hoping for some kind of happiness at the end.
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