SPOILER ALERT – Lost Season 6 “Happily Ever After”

SPOILER ALERT The preview of an upcoming Lost episode will be discussed briefly, and content from that episode will be mentioned.

Holy crap! I was right again!!! I am awesome! You are awesome for reading my blog! We see in the previews of the next episode of Lost (“Everybody Loves Hugo”) that SPOILER ALERT Hurley is indeed taking over the position of Jacob! I totally called it! I am so smart! (See “My Brilliant Prediction” towards the end of the blog posting I linked to in this paragraph.)

UPDATE April 15, 2010

It seems that “Everybody Loves Hugo” did not in fact confirm my prediction that Hurley is the new Jacob, as the preview suggested it might. I apologize for my premature excitement. I stand by my prediction, and I believe it will be shown to be accurate.

Before I get to this week’s episode of Lost, there was something I completely neglected to discuss from a previous episode; I believe it was from "Sundown," which happens to be where my first correct prediction happened. Strangely, a segment from The Daily Show where they mention things the Christians did to non-believers during the Spanish Inquisition made me think of this, and in fact shed some more light on it as well. I’m referring of course to Dogen’s poking and prodding and torturing of Sayid to test that the latter was infected. Thus, Dogen was doing as the Christians did. This can be viewed as both evidence for Dogen representing an Evil or a Good Jacob; Evil in that it is evil to do such painful things, and Good in that it might be necessary to hurt an individual to ensure that individual is not evil, like a good ol’ fashioned witch hunt. Obviously, then, if Jacob is Good, then Dogen was doing evil things in the name of Jacob, just as Ben, Widmore, and Eloise did.

In this week’s fantastic episode, “Happily Ever After,” we learned a lot. The perspicacious Daniel Widmore/Daniel Faraday figures out in the New Reality/Flash-Sideways that they had a previous life in which they changed everything with a nuclear bomb. Daniel Widmore/Faraday is smart, kind of like how smart I am for my correct predictions. Anyhoo, when faced with impending potential death or giant magnets, a few of our characters (Charlie, Desmond, and Daniel) were seeing things from their previous life, something that I sort of suggested in a previous blog posting when New Reality Jack seemed to not remember things from his New Reality childhood, and so I suggested that perhaps memories from his previous life were mixing with his New Reality/Flash-Sideways memories. There I go again, being all smart with predicting stuff – or in this case, quasi-predicting stuff.

Speaking of perspicacity (I mean Daniel’s, not my own), Desmond also possesses special abilities to see what could or will be in the reality we are familiar with. Of course, he’s experienced such things before, where his consciousness shifted to a different place and time, and when Daniel Faraday gave him a new memory in the past that he retained in the future. He seems to be the only character in the reality we are familiar with who, I’m assuming, witnessed the new reality/flesh-sideways while he was unconscious via something involving magnetism and some crazy death-tempting experiment Charles Widmore was conducting on him.

This week’s Happy episode also showed us more characters’ lives that have improved. Desmond of course felt empty without Penny, but Destiny and probably Hurley would ensure that he would find her. Charlie might be suicidal, but more likely, he is a risk-taker who is chasing his Destiny. One could argue that he is chasing the Island, but we know he isn’t, based on the other characters’ presumably improved lives.  In this episode, we also see the helping hand of G-d...I mean Jacob...I mean Hurley, when He helps Desmond find his luggage. I heart Hurley. Next week’s episode is so true – everybody really does love Hurley.

It seems that the Widmores are a lot less evil in the new reality than they are in the reality we are familiar with. It looks like Charles Widmore and his New Reality still wife Eloise Hawking (Eloise Widmore in the new reality) both seem to still have some evilness lurking within their souls, but for the most part, they seem to be happy – or happier than they were in the reality we are familiar with. Their son Daniel is alive, which is good, and he is a musician, which is also good. Some might say the life of a genius is being wasted in music, but that genius’s life was literally wasted when he was a scientist in the reality we are familiar with. Furthermore, creativity is certainly not a waste. Penny is still Daniel’s half-sister, and probably resulted from an extra-marital affair Charles Widmore probably had in the New Reality, or so I assume based on Eloise’s angry reaction to Desmond’s inquiries regarding Penny.

In a previous blog posting, I discussed whether Charles Widmore is good or evil, and I concluded that he most likely is similar to Ben was before the latter’s emotional breakthrough in that he is working for a Good cause in ways that often become Evil, and he is consumed by the desire for power, which is also evil. This episode didn’t change these views at all regarding the reality we are familiar with. In the new reality/flash-sideways, however, Charles Widmore is just a regular guy, not needing to fight for Good, The Island, or Jacob, and therefore not having to commit Evil acts in the name of Good. He does have power, though he doesn’t seem consumed by it in an evil way. Desmond recognizes this lack of evilness when he sees the new reality, and thus recognizes that despite Charles Widmore’s apparent evilness in the reality we are familiar with, he is working for a greater Good, for a world where hopefully everyone will be happier – or at least a world without Evil roaming free throughout it.