Hi cousins. I'm guess I'm going to do keep doing my LOST run-through, even though Nazis presently run roughshod through our government shredding our public life in pursuit of their goals of corruption, slavery, and genocide. I can only stare into the abyss 3 weeks in a row before I need a bit of comfort, and this weird show comforts me. Maybe it can comfort you.

Previously, On LOST: Oceanic airplane crashed, Freckles and Sawyer smashed; Hurley had a lot of cash, black smoke did the monster mash; Locke attacked Naomi's back (this infuriated Jack), Ben's scared, wild-haired, no one really seems to care; Charlie drowned to save his friends, the beginning of the end; time bends, space rends—did Desmond know? well it depends; Others murdered on the shore, numbers and Egyptian lore, Jacob, smoke, and island war, I can't take it any more ...

we didn't move the island

it was always movin', as this season's provin'

we didn't move the island

if we ever leavin, then we'll soon be grievin'

Subscription to The Reframe is free.

It's tough but fair. Subscribe now for free and never miss an essay. Pay whatever you want if you'd like to support the work of an independent writer.

O B S E R V A T I O N

We're in Season 4 believe it or not. Ah season 4, when the episode runs get shorter, the Jacks turn crazy, depressed, and rail-thin, the episodes are pumpkin-spice-flavored and so dense with mythology and mystery that most of these blog posts look like they'll be single-episode affairs, and a brisk wind blows from the future-flashes that will eventually become present-flashes bolstered by sideways flashes and everyone who has been watching this show distracted while scrolling their phone starts to ask wait what in the hecking french fries is going on here anyway. If you know you know, and if you don't, I'm going to tell you, so read on ...

Episode 1: THE BEGINNING OF THE END (Hurley): We open on a flash-forward (or ooOOOooh is this is now the present day, and the scenes on the island that are the flashbacks?) as Hurley takes police on a televised high speed chase. He yells "I'm one of the Oceanic Six!" as they apprehend him, and I admire how deftly we have just been told a lot of key information and framing in that one line. In custody, Hurley is interrogated by Anna Lucia's former partner, and, as Hurley lies about knowing her (and about a few other things) it becomes clear that he is involved in some sort of conspiracy of silence. He's also having some pretty vivid hallucinations, seemingly related to Charlie's death, which earns him a trip back to his old psyche ward—a development he welcomes with relief.

Island Time. There's a freighter offshore, if you recall. Rescue is at hand! Or is it? Yes! But maybe not? There's a bunch of business in which the people on the freighter want to know where their teammate Naomi is, which is awkward because Locke killed her on the orders of Tall Walt/Maybe The Island/But Probably The Adversary, but then actually she isn't dead and they have to go find her in the jungle, which Kate does, just in time for Naomi to get on the phone to the freighter, and (apparently) vouch for our Oceanic heroes. And then she dies. Again. Cough. It's a lot of ground to cover for not a lot of payoff, but it bolsters the level of suspicion growing between rescue team and rescued team, so OK.

Meanwhile, Hurley is happy for the last time in a long time. He cannonballs into the ocean and then immediately thereafter learns that his best bud Charlie has died in order to warn them that the folks on the freighter don't mean to rescue them at all, and in fact might mean them deathly amounts of harm. Bummer upon bummer, dude.

The Gang Go to Warn Jack. Hurley gets separated and finds ... the cabin where Ben took Locke, which contained a shadowy gentleman with maybe telekenesis who whispered "help me" and who will never be directly explained. Hurley peeks into the window and sees Sir Shady sitting sedulously, but then is suddenly startled by another face right at the window. Yikes! Hurley closes his eyes insisting that the cabin is just another hallucination ... and sure enough, it disappears. Just then Locke appears from the darkness. The two of them go to rejoin the "warn Jack" contingent, and when they reach it, Locke warns everyone, quite rightly, that the freighter clearly represents danger for them all. As a rebuttal, Jack tries to murder Locke with Locke's own gun.

Yep. It wasn't loaded but Jack pulled the trigger. I highlight this moment, which I believe is not ever commented upon again, because it demonstrates just how far Jack has gone in his obsessive focus on rescue, which is a great way to illustrate just how devastating and transformative it will be for him to realize that this was the wrong thing to want. I'm reminded of something I wrote waaaay back in the first entry.

Those who approach the mystery of the larger story with blind faith find themselves disillusioned, rejecting the truth they see unfold before their eyes because it fails to hold true to what they’ve been told.

Those who insist on focusing only on what is observed finally find themselves at the limits of their understanding, forced to decide whether the larger story they’re experiencing is ultimately unknowable, or is just a mistake crafted by a disinterested and distant god.

Jack and Locke are positioned at the center of the great dialectic of Observation vs. Belief, which is what makes their conflict so narratively compelling. Locke, positioned as a man of faith so open-minded that he has made himself susceptible to corrupt manipulation, nevertheless is reacting to new information as he sees it, Jack, though positioned as a straightforward and practical man of science, is so fixated on proving himself to himself (by way of proving himself to his abusive father, RIP) that he has committed to an almost monomaniacally blind faith in his preconceived notions, failed to observe the growing ledger of evidence that something far larger is happening than a simple narrative of stranding and rescue, and thus has tragically failed to apprehend the moment.

This moment is also notable because it shows that Locke, despite all his island zealotry, isn't quite as far gone into his own bad assumptions as Jack; when he pulled a gun on Jack, it was a bluff. When Jack did it, it was in earnest.

The upshot of this event is that the Oceanic group splits once again in twain: Some go with Jack to hopefully be rescued by the freighter. The rest go with Locke to the Dharma barracks to prepare for what they assume (correctly, it will turn out) to be a coming assault from very bad folks. Hurley, convinced by Charlie's sacrifice, joins the latter group, as does Sawyer and Claire and Rousseau and Alex and Carl and Ben and a bunch of redshirts, but you can tell its trusty and true Hurley's defection that hurts Jack most.

Back in our off-island Oceanic Six future, Hurley is visited by three ghosts. No, that's not quite right. He's visited by one ghost, one lawyer, and one Jack.

Lawyer first. This is Matthew Abaddon, a man played by the magnificent character actor Lance Reddick. Abaddon represents himself as an Oceanic attorney there to help Hurley access better facilities, before revealing, in a quietly menacing way, that he knows that Hurley left people behind alive on the island.

Ghost next. Hurley's sitting at a picnic table on the facility grounds, not enjoying the lovely day very much. Charlie appears, which troubles the big dude, what with Charlie being dead and whatnot. As Charlie insists that the island wants Hurley and the others to return, Hurley closes his eyes and does the na-na-na-you're not there nobody's-listening thing just like he did back on the island with the cabin, and, just like the cabin that time, Charlie disappears.

Jack last. This is a healthier Jack in pre-pill-junkie beard days—though earlier in the episode we did see him pouring himself a day drink, so our boy is on the way! He comes to shoot hoops with Hurley in the gym (Hurley's Kobe, Jack's terrible), but it's clear he's there to make sure Hurley hasn't spilled whatever beans they're keeping. Hurley tells Jack that he's sorry about leaving to go with Locke back in the day (a day we've just witnessed) and that it was a mistake to have done so; Jack looks sad and disturbed but says it's all good. Hurley then says that he thinks it was a mistake to leave the island; that they need to go back. Jack, who we know will be saying the exact same thing to Kate before too long, firmly tells Hurley "we're never going back," and departs.

Back on the island, it's nighttime. A helicopter passes over Jack and Kate, and another parachutist lands. He's a scrawny jittery dude with a beard. No, it's not future Jack. We'll learn soon that his name is Daniel Faraday.

We don't know him yet, but he's a big honking deal.

End of Episode 1.

The Reframe is a reader-supported publication with a pay-what-you-want subscription structure. Free or paid, everyone gets the same newsletter, because those who can afford it pay. If you would like to support my work, and if you can afford to, consider upgrading to paid.

B E L I E F

Yikes, so much to observe, so much to believe. The big mystery everyone wanted answered was "who are the other three of the Oceanic Six?" (we've already seen Jack, Hurley and Kate) but this will all be directly answered in due course, so instead I'll focus on some more pressing questions that get answered less definitively, or not really at all.

1) Naomi's death. Let's start with low stakes. Naomi gets a tree branch broken off in her abdomen, and that heals in what seems like 3 days. Then she dies almost immediately from a knife in the back. But no! she's alive. But no! it was fatal after all. It's weird, right?

This isn't a big deal. The seeming inconsistencies are probably just some narrative artifacts employed to make the specific episode run that got a bit more contrived than usual. And you can explain it all easily enough: Naomi healed from her first injury because her purpose both for the narrative and The Adversary (contacting the freighter) wasn't accomplished yet, she played possum with the knife in the back because she was incapacitated, then she made a run for it, then she succumbed to her injuries, and this time it was "allowed by the island" because she'd accomplished her purpose.

But I like to speculate, and so I'll just note that capriciousness in healing has been a plot-driving element at times, and that The Adversary does seem to be in charge of the whole healing issue on the island, and that Adversary-enthralled John Locke has introduced the concept of "the sacrifice the island demanded," which I believe he learned from The Adversary. And I will note a detectable pattern of an authority figure coming to the island with a group and being the first of that group to die. (See the Oceanic pilot, Naomi herself, and the confounding character of Ilana. Who? Never mind. We'll get to her.) So maybe this pattern fits into Jacob's soon-to-be-often-discussed-but-never-to-be-fully defined "rules." Just a fun little thing to note.

2) Abaddon. And this is one where there is unfortunately less than meets the eye. "Abaddon" is a Biblical name of an angel of destruction, and the Abaddon scene sure plays like we're meeting a major new character, and maybe a primary antagonist ... but nope, this is just one of Charles Widmore's agents. He'll appear a couple more times and then die. This continues a pattern of this show—unfortunately a seeming by-product of the showrunners' by now well publicized pattern of toxic behavior and racial discrimination—of establishing hugely compelling characters of color, and then failing to think of anything compelling to do with them and summarily dispatching them. See also: Naomi. Dammit.

Anyway, the question is why is Abaddon visiting Hurley? It's got a simple answer. We can take this occasion to note that Charles Widmore, though a cold and ruthless bastard, will eventually be revealed as somebody who is dedicated above all to protecting the island—isn't that nice? He's also somebody who, it will be suggested, has been manipulated to some degree by The Adversary, and whose ruthlessness therefore leads him to conclude that the way to protect the island is to murder everyone on it, which is far less nice but is a very Adversary-aligned sort of thing to do. In summary, Charles Widmore is a land of contrasts.

Widmore arranged the freighter mission through Abaddon, as we'll learn in the very next episode. We'll also learn that the mission was to murder everyone on the island, which, again, is sort of Widmore's thing. Though the magic of time travel shenanigans that will eventually be disclosed, Widmore will also know that at least some people on the island will not be murdered, but he sure seems hopeful about murdering everyone else. He also for some reason wants to engage in a cover up, so he does something that (for reasons I'll address at length some other time) actually makes no god damn sense and I wish wasn't part of the show. That is to say, Widmore paints an airliner to look like Oceanic 815 and loads it full of corpses and sinks it in the South Pacific to be "found" by a treasure-hunting mission he concocts, and thus he convinces the world that everyone on the plane is dead.

By the time Abaddon comes to Hurley, the mission has already been a colossal cock-up, which Widmore would of course know, but he doesn't know any (wid)more than that. Because of time-travel shenanigans that will eventually be disclosed he's probably not surprised that Hurley is back, but for the same reason, he also knows that Hurley has to go back to the island to complete unfinished island business. He knows there are still lots of people left on the island, probably he can't say why he knows it. Ipso facto, he sends Abaddon, the agent who arranged the mission. Widmore's trying to get information from somebody who certainly has it. Maybe he's trying to subtly push Hurley back to the island. I believe that's all there is to it. Dammit.

3) Hurley's interrogation hallucination. Let's venture into deeper waters. In the police interrogation room, Hurley suddenly sees water on the other side of the one-way glass. A figure swims up to it, touches it, and it breaks, flooding the room. Then it's gone. What's happening here? Well, Hurley is a mentally ill man, and hallucinations are not unknown to him. This might just be nothing more. However, the parallels to Charlie's death are clear, and Charlie is definitely giving Hurley a visit (his first appearance is what sent Hurley into the panicked flight that turned into a highway chase with police). I think this is Charlie's second attempt (that we know of), which perhaps combines with Hurley's hallucination-friendly brain to create a Charlie-flavored vision of ominosity.

But that brings up a far more pressing question. Namely ...

4) Ghosts? What the hell? This is a spoilerific blog series, so I've already mentioned many many times that yes, this is a world where ghosts exist. Specifically, the island is a nexus, not only of a cosmically-relevant store of universe destroying energy, but also of spiritual energy. We'll eventually learn that the island is where spirits go after life, and where they sometimes stay until they've worked through whatever business they left undone. This, incidentally, is probably why the entity I've been calling The Island appears to be focused on helping people who come to the island to work out their issues during life; it just makes things easier. (The fact that this is also a frequent focus for John Locke suggests to me that he communes not only with the malignant corrupting entity I've been calling The Adversary, but also in some way with The Island itself, though I believe he's probably confused about which is which.)

Anyway, now I want to explain what I believe Charlie is doing visiting Hurley, and why I believe that yes, that's really Charlie. To do that I will be making reference to things that aren't revealed until literally the very final moments of the series, which I believe very clearly answers what Charlie is doing here, even though nobody ever says "and so that's why Charlie's ghost visited Hurley." So big spoilers now. You've been warned.

Eventually we'll learn that The Island's consciousness has been residing for centuries or maybe millennia within a human named Jacob, and that Jacob has become aware (or hopeful maybe) that the duties that attend such an indwelling are about to pass from him. Jacob has, therefore, brought candidates to the island to see which of them might be interested in the job, which is why all of this is happening in the first place. One of the most delightful surprises of the whole show is the revelation that the person who ultimately gets this job is not natural hero/leader/jock Jack (though he'll give it a try) or the mysterious mystic destiny hound Locke (though I think The Adversary has been whispering in Locke's that this is his destiny), but rather the damaged but sweet, affable, and kind Island Mayor himself, Hugo "Hurley" Reyes.

That's right: In the world of LOST, the true man of destiny is Hurley.

Moreover, in a coda at the very end, we're going to learn what it is Hurley decides to do as the New Jacob, which is to help spirits come to a place of peace and pass on to the next thing. He even enlists Walt for the job (who is by that point a patient in the same psyche ward as Hurley!), which to me is a major clue as to the nature of Walt's own powers—and Hurley's. Namely, to interface with the spiritual plane.

And Charlie does seem at peace, no? It's a "best version of" situation, I think. He's at ease, unperturbed, kind but firm.

To be plain, I believe that The Island knows that Hurley has to return to the island to fulfill this destiny. I think Hurley is uniquely qualified for this because he's already attuned to the dead. I believe that Charlie is Its emissary. And, given that time is relative when it comes to the island's physical properties, it stands to reason that time might be just as relative when it comes to its spiritual ones, which means that it's possible that the person who is sending Charlie to talk to Hurley is Hurley himself.

5) "They need you, Hugo." Charlie says this to Hurley. And this is my proof/hint at that last belief from point 4. I believe that the "they" who need Hurley might be those they left behind on the island ... but in truth, saving the people still living is more of a Jack job. I think the "they" that need Hurley are the multitude of displaced island spirits that Hurley is ultimately fated to help. I think it's entirely possible that the person sending Charlie to do this is not Jacob, but Hurley.

Let's go to deeper waters still, and talk about a place that acts like Pace.

6) The cabin. OK, what the hell is going on with the cabin, anyway? It's a frequent enough point of interest in this show that the writers were definitely doing something with it. They never unpack any of it.

We'll learn Horace Goodspeed built it. A team sent by (I think) Eloise Hawking will eventually burn it to the ground, so we can assume they think there is Bad Stuff in there. There is a ring of ash around it, which is a method the Temple faction of Jacobians (explained elsewhere in this series) use to attempt to contain The Adversary, so we can assume that the Temple faction of Jacobians believe The Adversary is trapped there. Ben Linus was a frequent visitor, and while he in typical Ben fashion tells many lies and maybe a few truths about it, we can pick through the wreckage to find some facts. A few days before Hurley stumbled upon it, Ben brought Locke there. Ben's claim was it was where Jacob lived, but we will eventually learn that Ben has never met Jacob and knows it, so we can be sure that Ben was lying about that. However, we can assume that the cabin holds some importance to Ben, and it's reasonable to assume that he knows it to be a residence or occasional haunt of The Adversary, and we will learn beyond flaw or flimsy that Ben Linus is in thrall to The Adversary. So maybe Ben took Locke there hoping It would kill his rival, or perhaps he only wanted to force It to choose between Locke and himself, or maybe it was some secret third thing.

We know that whatever it was in the chair said to John Locke "Help me." I'm still wondering about that one. Last time I wrote about this, I speculated the figure in the chair might be John Locke himself. Let's leave the meaning of those words for now.

We also know that it's a different figure in the chair that Hurley sees. I brightened it up a bit and it sure looks like Christian Shephard in his coffin suit to me. Take a peek and tell me I'm wrong.

Whatever it is, it's somebody who can be not-there and then there. Somebody who can make things go all shaky and poltergeisty. Somebody who can appear in different guises, one of which is Christian Shephard. I've seen enough; I'm calling it. It's The Adversary in there, rocking in the chair, absent but then suddenly there, sometimes with a head of hair, sometimes balding like he uses Nair—hey, rhyming's fun, but is it fair?

Is The Adversary trapped in there? Somebody certainly seems to think so, but It sure doesn't seem trapped to me. Perhaps at one point It was. Perhaps it just serves Its interests for people to imagine It trapped. (By the way, if it is The Adversary, that in no way means that it can't also be, per my previous speculation, John Locke. We'll get there.)

Meanwhile the cabin itself is something that's seen and then not seen. Next episode there will be a hint (watch for it) that it appeared to Hurley in a different place than Locke knows it to be. It's visible to Hurley, who is attuned to spiritual matters in a way that John Locke (who perhaps stumbled upon Hurley because he was looking for the cabin himself?) mostly hopes to be or pretends to be.

It sounds to me as if the cabin, like deceased human beings, existed physically once but now exists in the spiritual realm. There are other places like it. There's a lighthouse. There's a cave. We'll get there.

Speaking of time ...

7) Eye at the window. Peeking into the cabin, Hurley sees a painting of a dog. Vincent maybe? Sure, maybe ... but who would have a painting of Vincent in their cabin? Not Horace Goodspeed. Not Ben Linus. Surely not The Adversary. Maybe it's just a painting of a dog. Let's move on.

Hurley then sees the figure of Probably Christian Shephard—The Adversary, that is, according to me.

Then, suddenly, there's somebody else there. An eye at the window. Hurley is quite reasonably spooked and runs away. He closes his eyes. The cabin is gone.

The eye will never be explained, so I'm going to speculate. I wouldn't go so far as to say I believe this, because there's just no plot relevance as far as I can tell and as far as I know it never gets mentioned again. The eye is dark in color; John Locke's eyes are blue, so I don't believe it is Locke. Hurley was looking right at The Adversary when it comes into view, and we've never seen The Adversary manifest as two places simultaneously, so I don't think it was The Adversary.

It's a place where The Adversary is known to frequent. It appears to be a spiritually connected place. I know of one person who might be in that cabin, doing spiritually relevant things, who might even be moved to put a painting of Vincent on the wall (if you want to attach meaning to a dog painting that is briefly and inexplicably foregrounded). That person is Hugo "Hurley" Reyes. Of course, for it to be Hurley, the cabin would have to have arrived from some point in the future, or Hurley would have had to have temporarily accessed that future point. Incidentally, those are both things that are entirely possible within the universe of this story, so I'm going to assume that Hurley was peeking at a Hurley for just a moment there. Try assuming that with me. See? It's fun!

Perhaps the cabin, like the island itself, moves.

Moves through what, though?

Well, through time and space, of course.

Daniel Faraday just landed, by the way.

L O S T

Next Time: On a Faraday, You Can See For Miles

The Reframe is totally free, supported voluntarily by its readership.

If you liked what you read, and only if you can afford to, please consider becoming a paid sponsor. If you'd like to be a patron of my work, there's a Founding Member level that comes with a free signed copy of one of my books and thanks by name in the acknowledgement section of any books I publish.

Looking for a tip jar but don't want to subscribe?

Venmo is here and Paypal is here.

A.R. Moxon is the author of the novel The Revisionaries, and the essay collection Very Fine People, which are available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He is the sacrifice The Island demanded.