Frozen Donkey Wheel

As Facebook friends of mine can attest, my status for the last several days has been all about my interest in the Frozen Donkey Wheel. What is an FDW? I have no idea. Which is precisely why I'm excited.

See, each year, LOST powers-that-be shroud the season finale's big plot twist in mystery with a cryptic codename. This year, it's Frozen Donkey Wheel. Let's look back at our first three seasons' codenamed finale twists.

Season 1: Bagel
What It Is: Delicious Breakfast Treat
What It Meant: For some reason, "Bagel" referred to the abduction of Walt by The Others after they commandeered Michael's expertly-crafted raft of doom. What a bagel and a 10-year-old with mental powers have in common, I don't know. Really. I can't even think of a clever ending for this paragraph.

Season: 2: Challah
What It Is: A braided bread consumed by Jewish people on the Sabbath and holy days. (Thanks Wikipedia!) Apparently during the home stretch of a season, whoever is in charge of codenames gets hungry.
What It Meant: Conflicting reports here. Some say it refers to the opening of the hatch (The Swan Station). Others (including me) believe that the opening of the hatch was rather inevitable and not shocking, and that "Challah" instead refers to the revelation that Penny Widmore hired two Arctic Monkeys (not the band) to sit at a listening station in the South Pole and wait for an electromagnetic anomaly. That seems like the kind of secret you'd want to protect. Still, it's tough to see a connection between holy bread and Remote Arctic Island Monitoring. Seems the LOST higher-ups weren't quite as into using codenames to subtly allude to the twist itself. That is, until, Season 3...

Season 3: Rattlesnake in the Mailbox
What It Is: Certain pain.
What It Means: In this case, the codename might actually have carried some significance. You go to the mailbox expecting mail. The last thing you'd expect? A rattlesnake. It may just whip it's rattling self out of the mailbox and bite ya. Translated to "Through the Looking Glass": What we thought for 1 hour and 58 minutes was a flashback was actually a flash forward. Snakebite also means bad luck, or to bring someone bad luck. Flash forward Jack had certainly been snakebitten by his post-Island fate.

Season 4: Frozen Donkey Wheel
What It Is: Some sort of sick joke? Are they just screwing with us to see what nerd will blog about this?
What It Means: Good question. I'll try to tell you for certain in Friday's recap. But we can explore a little here...
While initial Google results say things like, "LOST Spoilers here!", causing me too immediately keyboard-shortcut my way out of the rabbit hole, I did find one entry that a "donkey wheel" is slang for a treadwheel that uses a donkey as motive power. A treadwheel is a big machine powered by people or animals that moves water. At first glance, that points to Locke's "move the Island" task. Maybe they have to move what's around the Island (the water? the world?) in order to move the Island itself. But then, it's frozen? Perhaps there is some complication with moving the Island (certainly there is). I wonder if the all the time travel complications of late - the failsafe key, the freighter finding the Island, etc. - could impede John from being able to carry out his mission.

We'll see. But it'll be interesting, for sure. Make sure you check back tomorrow as Maggie attempts to set up the epic finale of Season 4. And I'll be growing a post-Island Jack beard and sprouting my first gray hairs as I attempt to recap the episode Thursday night/Friday morning.

Namaste.
.charlie