LOST Rewatch: Jughead

The episode begins with Desmond finding a doctor to help Penny give birth. They have a son. Then we see them sailing some time later. The boy is grown. Desmond is telling his son about the island he left a long time ago – Great Britain. Desmond is there to find Daniel Faraday’s mother. The computer at Oxford doesn’t have any record of someone named Faraday. But Desmond goes and finds Daniel’s lab, with the door sealed and marked “fumigation.” Then he finds Theresa, a girl whose brain was affected by Daniel’s research. Desmond learns that Charles Widmore is taking care of her, and was Desmond’s benefactor. And so Desmond goes to see Charles Widmore, and asks him where he can find Daniel Faraday’s mother. He says she is in Los Angeles, and gives him her address, emphasizing that she is a very private person. Widmore tells Desmond to deliver the message and then go back into hiding, since this mess goes back many years and doesn’t involve them.

On the island, Charlotte’s symptoms are getting worse: headaches and double vision. A tripwire sets off some mines, and the Others apprehend them. A woman we later learn is Eloise says “You just could ‘t stay away, could you?” She says that the mines were theirs. They are taken to their camp of tents, where we see Richard Alpert. He says he assumes they have come back for their bomb. Richard says that his people were just defending themselves – it was the American military that attacked them. Dan pretends to be with the American military, and offers to help render the bomb inert. He proves he is not on a suicide mission by confessing his love for Charlotte. The camp of tents was one that the American military set up. Dan recognizes Ellie, saying she looks like someone he used to know. The bomb is called “Jughead.” There is a crack im the casing. Dan tells Ellie that they can fill the crack with lead and bury it in concrete. Dan says that it will be fine because 50 years from now, the island is still there.

The Others that Locke, Sawyer, and Juliette have apprehended speak to one another in Latin. Juliette recognizes that they are Others. When one of them runs off, Locke doesn’t shoot him, because he is one of his people. They track him. The man they later learn is a young Charles Widmore mocks Locke as an old man, and says there is no way he can know the island better than he does. Locke goes to see Richard Alpert, saying that Jacob sent him. That is when he first learns that the man he tracked there is the young Charles Widmore. Locke tells Richard that he is their leader, but Richard says they have a very special process for selecting leaders. So Locke tells him to go look in on him when he will be born, two years from then.

Desmond tells Penny that she and Charlie (their son) are his life now, and he won’t leave them again. But Penny says they will all go to Los Angeles.

At the end of the episode, Charlotte collapses after another flash occurs.

This episode contained the most explicit statement up to this point that the main characters on the show, from our perspective, have found themselves caught up in a conflict that was around long before they stumbled into it. Yet by making this point together with glimpses of the main players in their youth, we get a hint that they themselves are caught up in a web that stretches back before their time in much the same way.

The way elements connected with things that were already shown on the show, or which would be revealed later, impressed me even more on a second viewing (when the latter were still not known to me) than the first time.