Sayid back in 1970s Dharma-town has caused problems for Sawyer, who doesn't want to kill Sayid. But his Dharma colleagues do, and Sawyer therefore tries to spring Sayid - who refuses -
But that's not the really perilous part, which arises when we and Sayid fully realize the reason that he's back in this time and place. Boy Ben sets Dharma on fire, a distraction to allow Ben to free Sayid, in return for Sayid's agreement to take Ben to the Hostiles (Ben thinks Sayid is one of them). Sayid agrees. Why would he do that, after refusing Sawyer's offer?
We can see the answer coming, like a slowly, inexorably moving Mack truck though time. Sayid is going to kill young Ben - to nip all of this insanity and horror in the bud. Except, Sayid apparently doesn't know, realize, or care that, if he kills young Ben, then Sayid could not be there to kill Ben in the first place, since Sayid is there with gun in hand as a result of what Ben as an adult did to Sayid and everyone else.
In other words, Sayid's killing Ben would pitch Lost into a paradox of enormous proportions, that would change the life stories of just about everyone we know on the show.
Choice 1: At the instant of young Ben's death, most of the people we know - Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Juliet, etc - change into Jack2, Kate2, Sawyer2, Juliet2, etc. In this time-altered world, Dharma is not destroyed by Ben. Oceanic 815 might crash, but the survivors will be dealing with Dharma, not The Others. Juliet might be brought to the island, but not due to Ben ...
It's an intriguing possibility, but Choice 2 is far simpler and easier to comprehend: Young Ben is not killed.
Tonight, however, we see Sayid shoot young Ben at point blank range.
We'll find out more next week, but I'm guessing the impossible won't be allowed to happen on Lost - young Ben will survive the wound... (either by normal medical means, or, who knows, maybe via some kind of resurrection like Locke)...
One more thing about time travel: Did Oldham, the Dharma torturer, remind you a little of Faraday - an older version of Faraday? Nah, couldn't be...
PS added March 26, 2009: It occurs to me that, if anyone dies as a result of Sayid's shooting of Ben, it could be Sayid. He's lost the love of his life, and has nothing left to live for. He's struggled all of his life to control his killing, and he gave into it when he shot Ben. Sayid might take his own life. Or, Dharma will go ballistic if they catch Sayid after shooting Ben - they have no idea what Ben has in store for Dharma. Even Sawyer won't be able to protect him.
5-min podcast review of Lost 5.10
More Lost - see : The Richard-Locke Compass Time Travel Loop ...
and Lost Returns in 5 Dimensions and 5.3: The Loops, The Bomb ... 5.4: A Saving Skip Back in Time ... 5.5 Two Time Loops and Mind Benders ... 5.6 A Lot of Questions ... 5.7 Bentham and Ben ... 5.8 True Love Ways ... 5.9 Two Times and a Baby ... 5.11 Clockwork Perfect Time Travel
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9 comments:
My jaw dropped when I saw that final scene.
That was just... I can´t even start to wrap my mind about it. What the heck? What the heck?!?!?!?! With a big grin. Are finally going into Primer multiverse territory?
I think Choice 2 will take place because, as you said, it is far more simple than Choice 1.
I believe that young Ben will be saved by Jack. As we should recall, it won't be the first time Jack saves Ben's life. And, when Jack does show off his skills as a doctor, he might get bumped up from janitor.
Great episode though.
Ben will be saved by Juliet, more likely, and that will explain Ben's obsession as an adult with a woman who "looks just like her"...
I have long been skeptical of the particular "time travel paradox" issue raised in this episode. The idea of a compass that "comes from nowhere" seems more difficult to account for. But if one allows for time travel as a possibility, then one can go back in time and exist in a place and time when one has not yet been born. I'm not sure how inadvertently killing one's grandparents (or whatever) would necessarily make things any more paradoxical, since time travel itself as a concept suggests that itme can loop and is not purely linear.
Well, yeah, probably Ben won´t get killed. But, still, the idea of various parallel lostverses seems exciting enough.
The show has made a point of Faraday saying 'Whatever happened, happened'. And the next episode is called just that. I think that in everything we've seen up to this point, this happened already. This is why Ben has been f'ing with Sayid. I think it's obvious now that he had Sayid kill the man on the golf course just so he would be captured by the bounty hunter and put on that plane. we'll find that the others he killed were not as harmful as been led him to believe. Also, We'll probably find that Jacks dad had more to do with the island than we think (we still don't know how exactly he died). The island brought him back, locke, and Charlie (yea, I said it. Charlie was at the mental hospital to visit Hurly and another patient saw him. You may say 'but he's crazy', Well no one saw Mr. Echo when Hurly was playing chess with him did they?). The island will bring young ben back and Richard will convince him he'll be in charge and his destiny is to kill Dharma. Whatever happened, happened.
A few thoughts on Ben, and a question re: airplane landings
1. Remember when Desmond tried to save the guy in the store from being killed, and he just got hit by a car and died anyway....then he finally gave up on keeping Charlie alive, because he was told you can't change what is "suppose to happen" Faraday has confirmed that line of thinking. Healing Ben: Maybe the island, maybe Jack, maybe Julliette...all good bets for healing...But are we missing something? Is there a way for Ben to stay dead and everything else stay the same?
2. Maybe the gun shot passes through Ben, but weakens his spinal column just enough, that it can't fight off a tumor which begins to grow there. Thus making Sayid the reason O815 had to crash in the first place, so Jack could operate on the tumor! A stretch, I realize but hey, it's Lost!
3. Could Ben have memories of the Losties from the '70s even if they have their own different memories from the the same time period?...Or is it like "Frequecy" (if you've seen that) where some of them have dual memories? Were they all born in '77?
And...
Do you think the Losties, now in the '70's built the runway that Frank landed on, just for that purpose? It doesn't seem like planes come to the island, so it would be unnecessary for any other purpose.
white bear etc.: hadn´t thought about young Ben´s bullet wound and its relationship with the column tumor. there´s probably a symmetry game in here. and the landing path? yeah, i thought so, too. now, i wonder: will season five end the big story arc that started from season one (which, somehow, seems the case) and will season six be about the future (no pun intended) of the island and the losties and other and any islander in between?
When Sayid talked about having a purpose and not wanting Sawyer to release him, I really thought he was going to flee with Ben into the woods and mentor him, redeeming himself by (pre-)redeeming Ben. I definitely got that wrong. I suppose it makes sense that one of the Losties would try to change things by killing Ben. It wouldn't be realistic if no one did, and this makes for a good test of the changeability of the timeline.
I strongly agree with Choice 2. There is still a huge amount of Ben's backstory yet to tell, and if young Ben dies, there's so much we'll never learn.
In different forums people have been suggesting that Ben has a rare condition called situs inversus, that causes the organs to be reversed. Sayid appears to have shot him in the heart, but if the heart was on the right (rather than left) side of his chest, then Sayid may have missed it. (If that were true, though, wouldn't it have been mentioned when Jack was operating on him?)
Oldham was played by William Sanderson, best known for having two brothers named Darryl on the second Bob Newhart show.
White Bear Girl, I think the runway was built by the others when they had Kate and Sawyer as slave laborers.
As for healing Ben, I think it's all three. The island keeps him from dying while Jack performs emergency surgery. Then Juliette nurses Ben back to health over several weeks. (Someone somewhere once suggested that Ben was so possessive of Juliette not because he was in love with her, but because he needed her as his constant. This is looking more likely now.)
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