A New Theory for the Bharma Dog

Hello, Dharma Blog readers!! (Or, as my coworker Amy likes to say: The Bharma Dog.)

Happy Holidays to you and yours…and theirs, too, I suppose. It looks like it will be a White Christmas here in tropical Lincoln, NE, where the average high this past week has been a steamy 4 degrees. We have approximately 4 inches of snow on the ground – and, boy oh boy, the ridiculous ice storm bearing down on us today looks like a doozy. My advice? Don’t come to Nebraska anytime soon…unless you have your Dharma Initiative Parka and a penchant for Frozen Donkey Wheels. Oh, I’d give anything to be in Tunisia right about now…

Mua ha ha. Lost jokes are fun for all ages.

Season 4 DVD:
Since we last spoke, I have had the opportunity to re-watch Season 4 in its entirety, multiple times (including five viewings of “The Constant,” my mostest favoritest episode ever!!!), as well as review the many exciting bonus features (2 whole DVDs!). Although I was planning on doing a full-out review, Washington Post’s Jen Chaney really put my thoughts best:

“Like the Lost DVDs that have come before, this one includes numerous behind-the-scenes featurettes, a blooper reel, deleted scenes, several Easter eggs embedded in its menu screens and a smattering of commentary tracks. … As solid as the whole package is, two extras are most likely to fire up fans fixated on the future of the Oceanic 815 survivors. The first? "Oceanic Six: A Conspiracy of Lies," a faux expose that raises numerous questions about the story concocted last season by the six crash survivors who returned to civilization. And then there's my favorite, "Course of the Future," an interactive feature that requires viewers to place several events from the show in chronological order, a challenge considering the writers' out-of-sequence approach to storytelling. Completing that mission unlocks access to every flash-forward from season four, shown in order, uninterrupted.”

Take it from me: to see every single flash-forward, in chronological order, all at once, was both fascinating and a great review as I prepare for Season 5’s premiere, a mere 36 days away!! Blessed be Season 5!! In summary, I highly/strongly/really/definitely suggest putting Lost Season 4 on your holiday gift list, if it isn’t there already. (Frankly, if it isn’t there already, Charlie and I are both questioning your commitment to the show.)

Happy Dharma Birthday, Charlie!
My fellow blogger, Charlie, celebrated his 16th….er….25th birthday on Saturday, December 13th. I think the entire Bharma Dog readership joins me in wishing him a year full of polar bears, the Numbers, and flash-forwards. I contributed to his celebration by contracting the fine folks at The Cookie Company of Lincoln to create a Dharma Birthday Cookie in the shape of the Dharma logo (photo coming soon…once I figure out how to upload images from my fancy-pants new phone). Happy Birthday, Charlie!

Happy Early Birthday, Benjamin Linus!
The uber-accurate Lost timeline over at Lostpedia tells us that the-man-we-love-to-hate, Ben Linus, will celebrate his birthday tomorrow, Friday, December 19. Happy Birthday, Ben! You haunt my dreams. And Charlie’s dreams, too...but he still named his dog after you (photo below). (I’ve also include a photo of my dog, Oakley, who is named after my Great-Grandpa instead of Lost character. I tried to change his name last spring to Dr. Jack Shepherd, but he still won't respond to me. Weird.)

LINUS, age 1 (above) and OAKLEY/Dr. Jack Shepherd, age 10 (below)

When the weather gets bad…start theorizing about Lost.

As I stated before, the last few days in Nebraska have been painfully cold…actually, beyond painfully cold. It has been downright nasty. Here is the view out my back door.

I'm kidding. That's the Platte River. Anyways, moving on. So, what’s a girl like me to do when she has already:
(1) watched Season 4 (a "few" times);
(2) dusted and re-dusted her Seasons 1-4 DVDs and placed them in order;
(3) checked airline tickets to Hawaii and realized she still cannot afford a Lost-cation;
(4) decided she will hire her brother to do the shoveling; and
(5) left multiple messages for Charlie, asking if he wants to play Lost charades?

Well, this girl decided to do a little theorizing. Believe it or not, I have a one that, in my humble opinion, is pretty darn good. And so, my holiday gift to you:

A Theory to Keep You Awake at Night

Preface: This theory requires that you take a few leaps with me, and recognize that while all the pieces may not be there right now, I have a feeling that many of the missing portions will be completed throughout the next two seasons. Even so, I look forward to everyone’s feedback on this!

Evil One and Evil Two (above)

We can all agree that Season 4 of Lost set us up for a continuation of the showdown over control of the island between Charles Widmore and Ben Linus, a long-standing rivalry that is likely to continue its arc through the final two seasons of the show. Both Widmore and Ben want the island for different reasons: it appears Ben wants to protect the island and keep it a secret, while Widmore wants to exploit the powers of the island for financial gain. There appears to be a set of guidelines that dictate what Ben and Widmore can and cannot do. We are still in the dark about what the ‘rules’ are for this game, but we know they exist. (I’ll note that from Ben and Widmore’s bedroom conversation in The Shape of Things to Come, it appears that one of the rules is that neither can kill the other.)

My theory is that, unbeknownst to Widmore and Ben, there has been an unforseen collision of their two worlds in the form of Baby Aaron.

“Hello little baby!! I love you, little baby! I do love you!” -Maggie

“Oh, give me a break, Maggie. You only wrote this theory because you like babies and wanted a picture of a cute baby on the Dharma Blog,” you might be saying. Well, fair enough.

Maggie and a cute baby.

But could my theory be right??

Okay: go with me on this one. I believe that Charles Widmore has two children. One is Penelope (Penny), and the other is Thomas. Who is Thomas? Well, Thomas is Claire’s ex-boyfriend, the father of Aaron.

Aw, Widmore controls their lives! How cute!

I know what you are thinking: Wow, Maggie has really lost it this time. (Puns are fun!)

Au contraire, my friends.

You must be like Charlie and my friend, Micah, who had never heard the theory of Widmore’s Painting.

Please take a moment to look at these two photos (google Widmore Paintings if you want a bigger picture!):

On the left is a screen shot from Raised By Another, when Thomas (a painter by trade) is arguing with Claire, his pregnant girlfriend, about their coming child. Check out the painting in the background. Now, look at the photo on the right, which shows Desmond in Widmore’s office from Flashes Before Your Eyes. Look at the painting behind Desmond. Yep, it appears to be the same painting. Now, how does a painting hanging in Widmore’s office in the early 1990s (when this scene allegedly fits into the Lost timeline) end up in Claire and Thomas’s flat in the summer of 2004? Did Thomas paint it? Or did he somehow acquire it from Widmore?

I’m going to throw this out there: Thomas, indeed, painted it, and gave it to his father, Charles Widmore.

Too big of a leap for you? Consider this:

Do you remember when Thomas left Claire? How he stumbled around his words, and didn’t really have an answer as to why he was leaving Claire? Well, riddle me this: Did Widmore pay Thomas off to stay away from Claire (the same way he paid off Desmond to stay away from Penny), to begin the sequence of events that eventually brought Claire to the island? Widmore said to Desmond that the reason he wouldn’t give Penny’s hand in marriage to Desmond was that Desmond will ‘never be a great man.’ Could he very well have said the same thing to his son Thomas? That Claire, the pregnant daughter of a single mom, will never live up to the Widmore family standards? Verrrrry interesting, eh?

So far, I have proposed that Thomas is the son of Charles Widmore, which makes Aaron the grandson of Charles Widmore. Now, let’s look at the other side of the coin: how Claire’s lineage traces her back to the island, thus making Aaron and equally viable pawn for the Others and Ben.

It has been confirmed that Claire is the illegitimate daughter of Christian Shepherd. Now, we have a very choppy timeline of the life of Christian Shepherd. This is what is known.

We know that as a young doctor, Christian began dating (and supposedly fell in love with) a woman named Margo (Jack’s mother). On their wedding day, Christian’s father (this scene was only recounted to us; we never saw it) told him that he disapproved of their marriage. Nevertheless, Christian’s father gave him a watch that day, which he later passed on to Jack on Jack and Sarah’s (his first wife) wedding day. Soon after his wedding to Margo, he developed a drinking problem, to the point that he would take sporadic trips all over the globe. This addiction eventually led to a trip to Australia, where he met Carole Littleton (Claire’s mother) and became Claire’s father (Charlie, I explain how this happened to you some day).

After Carole’s car accident (remember, the one where Claire survived? And it put Carole in a coma?), and Christian’s first meeting with an adult Claire, Christian changed his life and decided to quit drinking. At the same time, however, Jack’s life and marriage had taken a turn for the worse. Jack concocted a belief that Sarah was cheating on him with his father, leading to a serious and physical altercation during one of Christian’s AA meetings. Unable to cope with this hurtful incident, Christian returned to drinking. This, of course, led to an ill-fated return-trip to Australia, where he ended up drinking himself to death.

Christian’s untimely death, and Jack’s subsequent guilt for his father’s fate, has led Jack to see his father both on the island and after he left the island, seemingly alive and well. Season 4 showed us that he appears to speak for Jacob – appearing to a number of people (and pets) both on/off the island (Jack, Hurley, Vincent, Claire, Locke, and Miles).

So, why does Christian speak for Jacob? And how? Well, I believe that he is somehow a descendant of, or related to, Jacob. This means that Jack, Claire, and Aaron are also descendants of Jacob. Since we know that, at some point in time and for some reason, Ben could also communicate with Jacob. Note: I don’t believe Ben is a descendant of Jacob (some people think he is, which would make him related to Jack…and WHOAH, that would be insane). However, for the length of time he was the leader of the Others), I think he was more of an ‘adopted’ son of Jacob. I think we’re going to see that Locke took over this role when Ben left. (Footnote: I suppose this could also be a model of Christian’s relationship with Ben. I’ll have to think about that a little more.)

AND SO (drum roll), these theories combined represent how (I believe) Aaron is the “collision” of the two ‘sides’ of this rivalry: Aaron is related to both Widmore and “Ben”/island/“Jacob”.

So what does this mean for the future of the show? Well, we all know about the lengths that both Ben and Widmore go to win this power struggle. However, once the realization is made that Aaron represents part of both families, it will be interesting to see how they move forward. Will Aaron be the ultimate prize? Or the ultimate pawn? And with an almost-certain return to the island for the Oceanic 6 (including Aaron), how will this play into the Ben-Widmore game? In other words, why is Aaron’s return to the island worth so much to Ben (granted, we have been told that everyone has to go back, not just Aaron)?

After all, Widmore’s expulsion from the island at some point in the past caused him to go to great and violent lengths to retrieve information that will allow him to return. You’ll recall in The Other Woman the video of Widmore beating a blind-folded and purported Other to a pulp in a parking lot, which was caught on video by Ben. Widmore also hired Keamy and his mercenary team to use the Kahana to find the island. Keamy’s instructions, as you will recall, were to “breach the Island, locate and retrieve Benjamin Linus, and after retrieving Ben, kill every other living person on the Island, including the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, if he found that they existed.” While Keamy’s mission was a failure in the end, he did achieve one success (in the mind of Widmore): he killed Ben’s only daughter, Alex. Would he go to such lengths if with his supposed-grandson, Aaron?

We shall see, my friends. We shall see.

And so…comment away! Poke holes in the theory! Propose your own! I look forward to a lively discussion.

Namaste,
Maggie