Lost 6x11: "Happily Ever After"

[Mr Awe]

Episode =

Agree, rated it as Excellent myself, which is rare because I'm a tough reviewer.

Now, as for the two universes...

Why is everyone convinced that the flashsideways universe is "wrong" and that it needs to be destroyed for some reason? What is so great about the "original" universe, how are their lives better in it?

And why would anyone need to erase either of the universes?

Even if the prime universe were superior to the FS universe (why? they're both equally real apparently), the existence of the FS universe is not endangering the prime universe in any way, as far as we know. Why would Desmond need to do anything on the Island?

I agree that the alternate universe isn't inherently worse and there's really no reason to prevent it from being created.

However, I would take one step even further back. I'm not sure that there are 2 universes. What we're calling the alternate universe might be the one and only universe. The island might just be a shielded bubble, either the last holdout from the the original universe or maybe outside of any of universe.

I think the resolution will be to prevent MiB from escaping, which would entail entering what we're calling the alternate universe, which is the only universe. However, the twist might be that what we're seeing is a universe in which he's already escaped into. I'm still playing with that theory. There are parallels between Eloise and MiB.

Mr Awe

 

[TheGodBen]

Radzinsky designed and built the Swan Station, so I think he knew what was going on with the button and the key and all of that. But, since this was established in season 5, your second sentence kind of explains the first.

Oh yeah, he was the guy with the glasses and a lust to kill, I completely forgot about him. If Radzinsky knew so much about Dharma, why did he have to make that secret map?

 

[Jenee]

Perhaps he didn't want Calvin or Kelvin or whatever his name was, to find it.

 

[DevilEyes]

You know ... That could be why, for the first time in ...?2 millenia? Jacob goes off the island and actively recruites candidates.

Dharma, during The Incident broke through this field, and the field is slowly leaking energy into a pocket that regularly needs to be siphoned off. Jacob and MIB both know that eventually that's not going to work and the electromagnetic field keeping MIB/evil contained will eventually weaken enough for him to escape.

So, Jacab, knowing this confrontation with MIB will possibly kill him, builds a lighthouse to find prospective candidates to bring to the island for 'recruit training'.

...

The problem is ..., from the beginning .... first with Rose and Locke, then the others and Ben, even MIB and Jacob speak of protecting the island. It's never about protecting Jacob or ... containing whatever is on the island. They continue to talk about protecting the island - the cork.

The theory about MIB being the evil that needs to be contained still doesn't fit. He says the island doesn't need protection. He says the island can take care of itself.

He doesn't say anything a normal captive would say. He doesn't say "they're keeping me against my will". He doesn't proclaim his innocence. He just says he's done "protecting the island".

I don't believe that MIB is "the evil". I think the other theory makes a lot more sense (sorry, I forgot whose theory it was, or which thread it was posted on), that the Island is like a maximum security prison, MIB is something like a "prison guard" whose job has been to prevent "the evil" (whatever it is) from escaping/spreading into the world, while Jacob is something like a "warden"; but MIB is sick and tired of not being able to leave the Island himself, like a guard who has to live on Alcatraz and feels like he's no better off that the prisoners. MIB wants to leave, and doesn't care if the "evil" escapes or not, while Jacob insists on keeping the "evil" in the "prison" at any cost.

 

[Jenee]

My theory was along those same lines, but with each new episode, it appears to look like the writers are going toward MIB being 'the evil'.

 

[zengoth]

Terrific episode, but I dunno if it's smart for the writers to want us to believe the sideways verse is the "wrong" one. As a threat that needs to be avoided, it lacks punch. Several of the characters (Ben especially) have better lives in the sideways verse and other characters are at least alive and sane. The universe seems to want to return to a state where everyone is less happy. Hmm, that would explain a lot about things.

I think it's a misdirect, too - like that Voyager episode w/2 ships. The pristine one elects to take the suicide route and leaves the damaged one to survive. I think perhaps, the characters will voluntarily give up the alt reality for the island one in order to save the world.

 

[MikeS]

Nobody mentioned - MINKOWSKY!!

 

[Plomeek Broth]

Nobody mentioned - MINKOWSKY!!

I was hoping the Short Circuit theme song "Who's Johnny?" was going to blare onscreen when he opened the limo door.

 

[Servo]

Terrific episode, but I dunno if it's smart for the writers to want us to believe the sideways verse is the "wrong" one. As a threat that needs to be avoided, it lacks punch. Several of the characters (Ben especially) have better lives in the sideways verse and other characters are at least alive and sane. The universe seems to want to return to a state where everyone is less happy. Hmm, that would explain a lot about things.

I think it's a misdirect, too - like that Voyager episode w/2 ships. The pristine one elects to take the suicide route and leaves the damaged one to survive. I think perhaps, the characters will voluntarily give up the alt reality for the island one in order to save the world.

Exactly. We don't know what the cost of the Happily-ever-after-verse is. We're only seeing it from th POV of the characters.

And not everyone's sideways-verse is a bed of roses anyway. Sayid's, for example; the woman he loves is married to his brother, he's still a killer, and they were very vague about his job. It seemed like he was making up some boring crap to cover up what he actually does.

 

[Mojochi]

We still have no resolution on Sun, Jin & the baby's alt-fate. Certainly didn't look promising

 

[Jenee]

We also, still, have no resolution on Sawyer-the-cop's meet up with Kate-on-the-run.

 

[chrisspringob]

Nobody mentioned - MINKOWSKY!!

Part of me is suspecting that alt-Minkowski knows a lot more than he's letting on re: what the alt-universe is all about. Not sure what it is. I think it was the way he told Desmond that he was there to help him in that last scene in the limo. I'm wondering if Minkowski's conscious time traveling on the freighter involved some reality-swapping with the alt-timeline.

 

[Mojochi]

Nobody mentioned - MINKOWSKY!!

Part of me is suspecting that alt-Minkowski knows a lot more than he's letting on re: what the alt-universe is all about. Not sure what it is. I think it was the way he told Desmond that he was there to help him in that last scene in the limo. I'm wondering if Minkowski's conscious time traveling on the freighter involved some reality-swapping with the alt-timeline.

I suspect you may be right, in some way. It's the fact that Minkowski, like Des, is a time/dimensional shifter of the same ilk

In fact, here's a cool notion, Juliet was like them as well. Her last words sounded like those of someone who, in the span of those seconds or minutes of unconsciousness, at the bottom of the destroyed shaft, in the prime dimension, had maybe spent a great deal of time in the alt-reality

In fact, it's very possible that Hurley & Mile's visitations & impressions come from alt-reality sources as well, & perhaps Sayid & maybe child Ben Linus actually did die, & were somehow replaced by alt-versions

 

[DevilEyes]

Terrific episode, but I dunno if it's smart for the writers to want us to believe the sideways verse is the "wrong" one. As a threat that needs to be avoided, it lacks punch. Several of the characters (Ben especially) have better lives in the sideways verse and other characters are at least alive and sane. The universe seems to want to return to a state where everyone is less happy. Hmm, that would explain a lot about things.

I think it's a misdirect, too - like that Voyager episode w/2 ships. The pristine one elects to take the suicide route and leaves the damaged one to survive. I think perhaps, the characters will voluntarily give up the alt reality for the island one in order to save the world.

Exactly. We don't know what the cost of the Happily-ever-after-verse is. We're only seeing it from th POV of the characters.

And not everyone's sideways-verse is a bed of roses anyway. Sayid's, for example; the woman he loves is married to his brother, he's still a killer, and they were very vague about his job. It seemed like he was making up some boring crap to cover up what he actually does.

There is nothing to suggest that the "boring crap" (travelling the world and translating legal documents) is a cover up for anything. He only became a hitman in the original timeline because he wanted to avenge Nadia's death and believed he needed to protect his friends from Widmore. Why would he be worse in the FS universe than he was in the Prime Universe? Nobody else is. Sawyer is a cop. Ben is a teacher. I believed that it was when his brother and his family got threatened that he employed his old skills again. That's classic Sayid, he goes back to killing or torturing, even though he hates it, when he needs to survive and protect people he cares about.

Also, how is his life in the FS reality not better? In the Island reality, Nadia is dead, Sayid has buried two women he loved, he "died" and got "resurrected" and is not completely fucked up and creepy, or as Dogen would say, "has darkness in him".

Nobody said that the FS reality is a bed of roses... just that it is, so far, better for most characters than the Island reality. Many of them are dead in the Island reality, and alive in the FS one (Boone, Shannon, Daniel, Charlotte, Alex, [implied] Danielle, Arzt, Minkowski, Roger Linus, presumably Juliet, probably Eko, Ana Lucia, Libby, everyone who died in the crash etc.) The only one it might not be better for is Rose, because she will probably die of cancer, and we still don't know how things will turn out for Sun and Jin. Now, of course, that reality might turn out horribly wrong for some reason, but so far it hasn't been that way.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Loved the episode. Everyone else has commented on all the great things about it, so I'll just mention the one thing I hated about the episode.

Dominic Monahan's performance was godawful.

I'm sorry, I like Monahan and I like Charlie, but he wasn't playing Charlie, he was playing his Flash Forward character. The smirk, the low, focused delivery... and I just can't take him seriously in that role. Just look at the underwater scene and it's clear the guy with his hand on the car window and the guy from the old footage with the "Not Penny's Boat" on his hand aren't even close to the same character.

 

[Dream]

Good episode, but I thought the Richard episode a few weeks back was better.

 

[label]

I'm sorry, I like Monahan and I like Charlie, but he wasn't playing Charlie, he was playing his Flash Forward character. The smirk, the low, focused delivery... and I just can't take him seriously in that role. Just look at the underwater scene and it's clear the guy with his hand on the car window and the guy from the old footage with the "Not Penny's Boat" on his hand aren't even close to the same character.

I haven't seen Flash Forward so I can't draw any comparisons but I will agree that he didn't seem much like the Charlie we knew. Course, the charlie we knew had beaten a drug addiction, committed to Claire and Aaron and was a functioning member of the island community.......quite a huge difference I think.

When I was watching it, I just wrote off the differences between the two characters as the Sideways Charlie had just had an epiphany and wasn't really himself, even in that reality.

 

[Hober Mallow]

I haven't seen Flash Forward so I can't draw any comparisons but I will agree that he didn't seem much like the Charlie we knew. Course, the charlie we knew had beaten a drug addiction, committed to Claire and Aaron and was a functioning member of the island community.......quite a huge difference I think.

When I was watching it, I just wrote off the differences between the two characters as the Sideways Charlie had just had an epiphany and wasn't really himself, even in that reality.

I could probably just chalk it up to that had I not ever seen Flash Forward.

Do you have the first season Lost DVD? One of the extras is Monahan doing a reading for Sawyer, and the producers admit they couldn't take him seriously at all that way. Well, that's how he was playing Charlie in the last episode.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

I can't elaborate on it at all, but the one thing I got strongly out of this episode is a hearken back to the old "they're in purgatory" idea. It can't be a coincidence that Charlie and Desmond had to almost die to experience the world we have been seeing for the last six years. Near-death experiences of the afterlife? Makes me think the flash-sideways universe might end up being the real one and maybe these characters are dead after all.

Edit: And the next to last episode is titled What They Died For. Huh huh what did I tell ya?

 

[Mallet]

Edit: And the next to last episode is titled What They Died For. Huh huh what did I tell ya?

Or maybe a lot of people are going to die over the next few episodes, and add to that all of the people that have died so far on the series, and maybe jacob or the MIB or someone will finally tell the few survivors why all those people had to die. What was the reason for their sacrifice?

I'm guessing, but I would assume that "what they died for" was to get Jack (physically, emotionally and spiritually) to the place he needs to be to take over for Jacob and to save the world from the MIB escaping.