LOST -- Season 4, Episode 2

It's become a bit of a tradition for me to write up a little summary of my thoughts about the previous night's episode of LOST. I send this out to co-workers and friends who enjoy the show. I'm sure there more of you out there who watch the show as well, so I thought I'd post my most recent e-mail.

So last night’s show was a big one. Four new characters were introduced: Charlotte Lewis, Daniel Faraday, Miles Straume, and Frank Lapidus, and of course, many more questions were raised.

I’ll start with my favorite revelation of the night: Charlotte Staples Lewis (thanks to Ben, we know her full name):

Does her name ring a bell with anyone else? How about “Clyde Staples Lewis” aka “C.S. Lewis.” I really believe this was something J.J. wanted us to notice.

We already know that the writers of Lost are very intentional with names. Nearly everyone’s name alludes to another famous historical character, which offers clues about their true identity. For example, Faraday (the real-life one) was an English physicist who researched electromagnetism. His discoveries led to the development of Faraday cages, an enclosure used to block outside radio and electromagnetic waves. Also, he established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. (I got this info from Wikipedia.)

Remember Daniel Faraday’s weird comment about the way the light scatters on the island? (So yes, this is intentional.)

Back to Charlotte . . . Trusting that her name was a very intentional choice, let’s run with the C.S. Lewis theme . . .

Lewis was a famous Christian theologian and writer (and like Charlotte, studied at Oxford). Perhaps his most widely recognized work is the series The Chronicles of Narnia. In this series, four children, Susan, Lucy, Peter, and Edmund, find themselves transported to a magical realm, the land of Narnia, by walking through a wardrobe. Ultimately, the children fight in a battle, in which good prevails over evil. Also, I find it interesting that in the beginning, the children leave Narnia, and eventually return to help defeat the evil queen and forces of evil.

Pay attention. I think we’ll see more Narnia parallels soon. And I have a hunch that Jacob might be the Aslan/Christ-figure . . .

My favorite passage from the Narnia series:

"Aslan a man? Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion-- the Lion, the great Lion."

"Ooh!" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he--quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will, dearie, and make no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about being safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

Moving on . . .

As for the rest of the show, I just have some questions (most of them are pretty obvious):

• What’s going on with flight 815? We know the plane is on the island, but now we see it at the bottom of the ocean. Is this the real flight 815?
  
• Why didn’t Frank fly flight 815? And why was he chosen to go back to the island with Naomi?
  
• Why aren’t the four surprised to see the survivors?
  
• And why was Naomi so concerned that they would find survivors?
  
• If the four are there to find Ben, then why was Naomi carrying a photo of Desmond and Penny? Are they all connected?
  
• How did they get a photo of Ben as an adult? Has he really been on the island since he was a boy?
  
• What’s up with the polar bear? We know that the Dharma initiative was doing tests on polar bears to see if they could live in other environments, so that might explain why they dropped one in the Tunisian desert . . . but why was it fossilized? Is this a hint that maybe they’re in another time dimension?
  
• Who is the man that Ben has on the boat?
  
• Why did Daniel cry when he learned that flight 815 was found?
  
• Where is Desmond?
  
• Why had Frank studied the list of passengers?
  
• Why are they looking for Ben?
  
• What are the implications of Hurley having seen Jacob’s cabin – and that it was in a different location?
  
• Is Walt at Jacob’s cabin?
  

Okay, that’s it for now . . . Let me know if you have any other thoughts/theories/literary analyses.