LOST Episode 5×12 “Dead is Dead” - Screencaps, Easter Eggs, Audio, & Analysis

April 8, 2009

As predicted last week, this will be the hands down choice for episode of the season (at least so far). Unbelievable. Leave us your thoughts at 920-626-6086 for inclusion into the podcast. Our thoughts are below, but make sure to leave your thoughts in the Comments:

We can pretty much confirm now that Widmore (for the most part) was telling Locke the truth about being the leader of the Others for over 3 decades until being exiled.
In trying to put some dates to these events, it gets a bit hairy. Alex was born and stolen in 1988. When Widmore is banished, we see Alex swinging with Ben and she appears to be somewhere around 6 years old. It is obviously post Purge (which happened in 1992) since the Others are living in the barracks. This would put Widmore’s exile at about 1994. The part that’s a bit strange is that Widmore says he’s been trying to get back to the island for 20 years even though it’s now 2007, or 13 years after he was banished. Perhaps he was just using round numbers.
Ben getting Caesar airborn was priceless. Nothing like a double barrel shotgun blast from short range. I was happy to see Caesar go as I didn’t care his character very much. His storyline seemed a bit pointless.
It’s been made even more clear that Jacob is calling the shots on the island. All people need to hear to fall in line on something is that Jacob wanted it so.
Ilana’s question to Frank, “What lies in the shadow of the statue?” was a very intriguing question indeed. Her character became infinitely more interesting, as it now appears that she may have some sort of tie to the history of the island if we assume that the statue she speaks of is indeed our favorite four toed statue. Does she work for Widmore? The fact that she knew about Peter Avellino and that Ben told Sayid they were knocking off members of Widmore’s organization would give her a tie to Widmore, not to mention the tie-in to the statue and the island’s history.
What’s in the large crate that Ilana and crew were messing with (a couple of the numbers were on the side of the crate as well; we need to get a screencap up for that yet)? Accessing its contents would seem to be an integral part of their plan. Could it somehow be tied to Jughead? Just a wild theory / speculation.
It also looks promising (based on the presence of the outrigger left on Hydra Island and the Ajira water bottles that were not-so-discretely flashed in front of us) that Ilana’s crew are going to be the ones chasing our former-time-jumping Losties in the outriggers, so it’ll be cool to see which one Juliet takes out.
As we’ve seen in previous encounters (Yemi, for example), it appears Smokey can take on the form of a human to deliver a message. After reading Ben’s mind and judging him, Smokey morphed into Alex in order to scare Ben straight and get the point across that Locke was ultra important and that was not to hurt him, but instead listen to and help him. I honestly think Ben’s going to heed Smokey’s advice and become one of John’s “disciples”, but we’ll see.
Speaking of Locke, as I hinted at, it looks like Widmore was correct (from 5×07; Locke: Why do you think I’m so special? Widmore: You just are.) in that John is critically important to the island and probably the end game of the show. The island chooses who or what it wants and people seem to fall in line with that.
Is the war that’s coming going to involve Ilana and her people against Locke? Is said war the same scenario Walt was explaining to Locke back in 5×07 when they met up in NYC? If Ilana is working for Widmore, this wouldn’t necessarily seem to make sense that she’d be trying to hurt Locke after Widmore’s handling of him…unless Widmore was lying to Locke. Widmore told him that if he (Locke) wasn’t on the island, that the wrong team was going to win the war. Does Widmore secretly think he’s ensuring that his team (which would be the opposing team to Locke’s team under this scenario) will win if Locke is there? Enough on that one, my brain hurts.
It was a bummer to not see Ellie in the island flashback scenes. She should have still been there in 1977, when we first saw Widmore with young Ben, but perhaps she had left the island by the time the more recent flashbacks had occurred (1988 for the heist of Alex and around 1994 for Widmore’s exile)?
When Smokey judged Ben, did it not destroy him there because the island truly did want Alex dead, meaning Ben had not “disobeyed” by his part in her death? Charles had already indicated that the island wanted Rousseau (and subsequently Alex) dead and Ben seemed to defy the order at that point. I’m just wondering what would have happened to Ben if he had done everything he could to keep Alex alive. Would Smokey have judged him differently?
It’s no secret that I have an affinity for Des and Penny, so I’ve been nervous since 5×07 that Ben may have taken out either or both of them, not to mention little Charlie. Then when Ben told Locke to apologize to Desmond, I really got tense. Needless to say, I was happy to see Des beat the piss of Ben. One thing that I can’t seem to get out of my mind, though, is that we never really saw the connecting scene where Ben gets out of the water and calls Jack…which would keep the door open just a crack to the idea that what if Ben still somehow managed to gather his bearings and make another run at Penny (Des is safe based on Ben’s comment to Locke). I’m sure I’m just being a worry wart, but hey, it’s Lost and you can never be comfortable.
The game of Risk we saw set up in the barracks indicates that we’re not dealing with an alternate timeline version of 2007. Back in 2004 (pre time jumping by our Losties) when the Losties were living in the barracks (before Keamy’s team invaded), Sawyer and Hurley were playing that same Risk game and it appears to be set up the same way (see 4×09 The Shape of Things to Come) in 2007. This leads me to believe that the version of 2007 we’re seeing is an extension of the version of 2004 we saw before all the time jumping occurred.

Easter Eggs:

After we saw the four toed statue in LaFleur, we suggested Anubis as one of the choices for the statue. This hieroglyph looks a hell of a lot like Anubis…