No - they gave some blatant hints (especially in the episode the week before tonight's) that it was MU Lorca we were dealing with. They by design gave viewers who were playing close attention all the clues they needed.
I didn't buy the fan theory: "The Lorca who Captains the U.S.S. Discovery is actually from the MU..."
Still, it's pretty obvious it wasn't a secret they were desperately trying to hide/keep from the audience (and if they had I sure many would have considered it a cheap last minute stunt - but it's clear this was another planned story element/twist from the very start - and they were dropping hints to the audience all through the season (IE Lorca's oddly shaped scarson his back; and the fact he slept with a Phaser in his bed and his reaction to the Starfleet Admiral waking him in an earlier episode).
Indeed. I've never been a viewer who needs to figure out in advance where the plot is going, but even I was struck by that special shot of Lorca's pad at the end of Into the Forrest I Go. That shot, which showed the discrepancy in the number of spore jumps, was no accident. This was the producers telling us that at the least, there is something going on with Lorca, that all has not been revealed about him. This was the hint that made even me start to think Lorca might actually be MU.
This was not the Darth Vader reveal in Empire which NO ONE saw coming because that was the way producers wanted it to go. Contrast that with the Yoda reveal. Luke says something to Yoda, whom he has just met, like "he can't be Yoda". The camera cuts to a shot of Yoda's face reacting to Luke's statement. This was the producers giving us a hint that there was more to this little green guy than meets the eye. Maybe he was Yoda. Had they wanted to make the reveal as big a surprise as Vader, we would never have gotten that reaction shot from Yoda. This similar to the way DSC handled Lorca.
The DSC producers' weren't trying to hide who Lorca really was. If they'd wanted that, they would never have dropped all those hints. So, all of you TBBS sleuths who followed the bread crumbs to the right destination, congrats, but slow your roll. Seems you found what you were supposed to find.
I'll be honest and say I'm disappointing that they have Lorca being from the MU because I think he was a character more in the actual TOS mold - but that's what happens when you let the guys who worked on ST:VOY (which was crap front to back) do their interpretation of the TOS era.
Can't say that I'm thrilled that it seems way more likely now that we'll lose Lorca, but I'm holding off on feeling disappointment pending how things go in the last few episodes of the season.
And shout out to those who interpreted the scene in "Forrest" where Lorca talks to Stammets about one last jump as Lorca "manipulating" Stammets, This was not the way I interpreted the conversation, but even though the on screen evidence is still less than obvious, it appears that Lorca definitely was manipulating Stammets. So I was wrong about this scene.
I wonder, along with most of us, where is prime Lorca?
Also, getting back to the PU is one thing, but how do they get the MU DSC back to the MU?
If Lorca does die, give DSC credit. They will have done something here that no other Trek series has done; put the captain character in
real danger, and I'm not talking about the fake
real danger all the other shows have placed their captains in. That's what I call, "boldly going where no one has gone before".
