Whatever the Hell Just Happened, Happened

I left cheering. Raising my fists in triumph and cheering. I fist-bumped attendees of the weekly watch party. I cracked open (another) beer. I shrieked like a tween at a Destiny’s Child concert (Thanks Maggie).

This was, for me, the best episode of the season and perhaps the best since last season’s The Constant. Jam-packed with heady discussions of time travel paradoxes and satisfying fill-in-the-blank scenes. Halfway through Whatever Happened, Happened, I looked at Maggie and said, “How the (expletive deleted) am I going to write about this one?” Well here goes.


Sounding the Alarm
Jin is awoken from his Sayid-induced involuntary slumber by Phil, the whiny Assistant to the Regional Other. Meanwhile, at base camp, Horace is directing his charges to clean up the mess and find the Hostile. I thought it interesting how paranoid and fearful these Dharma folk were regarding their neighbors. Horace just raised the threat level to red. Or orange. Or whatever made-up color scheme will scare his people into action. Oh, and Roger Linus took a shine to Kate. But who wouldn’t!?!?

The “I’ve Slept With Sawyer” Club
Back on the mainland (in 2004), Kate pays a visit to one of Sawyer’s other ex-lovers, Cassidy. On the way in to Cassidy’s house, Kate’s croons Claire’s favorite lullaby to her “son,” a subtle wink to those of us devoted enough to remember Claire’s affection for that very tune.

Outlaws Kate and Cassidy were reunited. And it felt so good until Kate brought up Sawyer, spilled the entire Oceanic Six lie and got put under the spotlight by Cassidy for lying about Aaron. Suddenly, the mood changed from glee to bitterness, as Cassidy attempted to expose Sawyer’s true nature to naïve Kate. Awkward!

If It Aint’ Broke, Don’t Fix It.
Once again, LOST explored Juliet’s surgical limitations, as young Ben Linus’ life hung perilously in the balance. Unable to find the bullet, Juliet asks Sawyer to enlist Dr. Shepherd to save Ben Linus (yet again, for the first time). But Jack refuses to fix Ben, dismissing his potential death as a mere hiccup in the unchangeable string of time. No big deal.

Kate confronts Jack and his cavalier attitude toward letting “just a boy” die, and we see Kate’s learned maternal instincts kick in as she begs Jack to save their common enemy. But Jack – invoking Miles’ time travel lesson – remarks that he’s already saved Ben Linus, “30 years from now.” “I’ve already done this once…and I did it for you, Kate. I don’t need to do it again.”

Taking a page out of the John Locke playbook, Jack asks, “Did you ever think that maybe the Island just wants to fix things itself? And maybe I was just getting in the way?” Later he tells a distraught Juliet, “I came back because I was supposed to.” Supposed to what? Jack admits he doesn’t know, but he knows he has a purpose.

For Dr. Shephard, this represents a sea change that’s been developing over the past few episodes. Empirical, fact-based Jack is giving way to submissive, let-fate-dictate-what-happens Jack. In a way, he’s beginning to learn that you can’t mistake coincidence for fate. I get the feeling that this metamorphosis is going to have major implications as we move forward.


Nerd Fight
I love Hurley. Especially when he assumes the role of LOST fan, asking the same questions that so plague us as viewers. A Back to the Future “fading pictures” analogy leads he and Miles into a discussion about time travel paradoxes that could just as well have taken place in the comments section of this very blog (and it has already!).

Hurley argues that if Ben is dying, it negates the existence of everyone in the room. To which Miles retorts with the “Whatever happened, happened” argument. “(This) is what always happened. It’s just, we never experienced how it all turns out.” The kid can’t die because Ben’s alive in the future, says Miles.

Later, Hurley – struggling to comprehend the whacked-out physics lesson – concludes that this conversation has already occurred.

Miles: This conversation already happened, but not for you and me. For you and me, it’s happening right now.

Hurley: Okay, answer me this. If all of this already happened to me, then why don’t I remember any of it?

Miles: Because once Ben turned that wheel, time isn’t a straight line for us any more. Our experiences in the past and the future occurred before these experiences right now.

Hurley: Say that again.

Miles: (picking up gun) Shoot me.

Hurley: A-ha! I can’t shoot you. Because if you die in 1977, you’ll never come back to the Island on the freighter 30 years from now!

Miles: I can die, because I’ve already come to the Island on the freighter. Any of us can die, because this is our present.

Hurley: But you said Ben couldn’t die because he still has to grow up and become the leader of the Others.

Miles: Because this is his past.

Hurley: But when we first captured Ben and Sayid, like, tortured him, then why wouldn’t he remember getting shot by that same guy when he was a kid?

Miles: Huh, hadn’t thought of that.

Checkmate. With that, we learn that our heroes are just as much in the dark as we are. The potential paradoxes and what-ifs that we battle on this blog are no clearer to Miles, Hurley or anyone else. And I think that was the point of this scene. It was the powers-that-be saying, “Don’t worry about all these things, we’ll explain them in due time. You’re okay to be confused for now because, hell, even Miles is confused! And that mo-fo has been here for three years and can talk to ghosts!”

But I’m curious as to who you side with (for now). Is Miles correct in his laissez-faire assessment that messing with non-time-travelers is futile because fate will course correct it (the Faraday/Hawking theory)? Or is Hurley correct in believing that they can cause events to change by interacting with them, and that changing those events can change their own nature and outcomes? For me, it comes down to what time travelers can and can’t affect in the pasts they visit. Are they restricted to changing the way things occur, or can they actually change what happens? Regardless, I loved the scene and the reassurance that our confusion is acceptable. They’ll tell us what’s up in due time.


Mommie Dearest
When Jack refused to save young Ben, Kate took matters into her own hands. As a conveniently universal blood donor, she bought Ben some time with a quick transfusion. At the same time, she comforted a distraught Roger Linus, who laments his failings as a parent while Kate silently ponders her own. Roger’s realization of his faults makes me wonder if, in this altered past, there could exist a Roger Linus that didn’t drive his son to genocide. Of course, as we later learn, we’ll never get the chance to find out. Maybe Miles is right that you can’t change the events of the past. But can you change the motivations of those involved with the events? Last night, we almost found out.

As Roger continued to pace and fret about his son’s fate (he cares now?), we see Kate and Juliet decide to resort to the “extreme measures” mentioned in the episode preview. They can’t save him. And Jack simply won’t. So who do they turn to? Oh shit. But first...

“Missing Bastard Child in Aisle 4. Missing Bastard Child. Aisle 4.”
In a trippy grocery store scene, little Aaron gets separated from mommy, only to be picked up my that meth-addict whack-job. This scene seemed to illuminate for Kate the reality that she wasn’t supposed to raise Aaron – a notion that she later expounds upon to her new confidant, Cassidy. Cassidy explains to Kate how she needed Aaron to fill the void that Sawyer left. And apparently, that stuck with Kate when she went to talk to Claire's mom.

I didn’t expect to love the scene with Kate and Claire’s mom. But I did. I sat agape as Kate finally came clean about the Oceanic Six, with no pretenses and no ulterior motives. It was actually a pretty beautiful scene. We saw Kate’s character come full circle, as she halted her decades of running away and finally shot somebody straight. She told Claire’s mom the truth. She told her she was going back to find her daughter. And she told her about the lie that haunted her more than any other: that Aaron was her grandson. Finally. We see Kate atone for the lies of her past in one painful fell swoop. And she’s rewarded for that honesty by Claire’s mom, who agrees to assume the role of caretaker for baby Aaron.

This stark honesty was refreshing, and Evangeline Lilly proved that – god-like hotness aside – she’s got some acting chops, too. Those quiet tears and hushed sobs showed how badly she wanted to stay with Aaron. But she knew it wasn’t to be. And for an estrogen-charged mother-and-son scene, Lilly was sincere and believable. Awesome.


Like Father…
Back on Time Travel Isle, Sawyer and Kate venture into Hostile territory with an unconscious Ben Linus, where they piece together what Ben did to free Sayid. Suddenly sympathetic, Sawyer says, “A kid’ll do almost anything if he’s pissed off enough at his folks.” He knows what negligent parents can do to a kid. At which point Kate informs him about baby Clementine. An understanding washes over Jim LaFleur, as he realizes that he may do to Clementine what his own parents did to him: drive the child to sad desperation. It was a tragic moment, watching Sawyer realize that he may have become the thing he rebelled against his entire life. And he couldn’t do anything to prevent it.

But never mind that. There was work to do. Ben Linus was hurt, and there was only one man who could help him.

Paging Dr…. Alpert?
Richard Alpert – with his classically poignant timing – enters the scene and identifies the wounded boy as the misguided adolescent Benjamin Linus. Richard realizes that this may be the payoff for the patience that he asked of his curious young convert in the jungle a few years back. Kate and Sawyer ask Richard to care for Ben, to which Richard apocalyptically replies, “If I take him, he’s not ever going to be the same again…he’ll forget this ever happened and his innocence will be gone. He will always be one of us.”

With that bit of course correction (I’ll explain that in a minute) behind him, Richard carries Ben to the temple. A place of healing. Of completion and self-actualization. Almost as if realizing the effect that the action will have on his future, Richard backs himself into the temple door and disappears with our last glimpse of an innocent Ben Linus.

Fate's Funny Way of Course Correcting
As good as the Kate-Claire’s mom scene was, this one put it to shame in a hurry. We saw Kate, Richard and Sawyer come to grips with the fulfillment of a future they didn’t necessarily understand or agree with. And in an instant, we saw Miles and Hurley’s debate rendered irrelevant by one simple act of course correction. Let me explain.

I don’t believe that in the original iteration through time, an Iraqi man shot Ben Linus. I do believe that, in the original iteration through time, Ben Linus was forced to be patient and wait for the right time to join Richard’s people. But all of that ceased to matter when Kate and Sawyer handed Ben’s lifeless body to Richard. Ben’s innocence would be robbed. He would always be one of them. And bullet-wound or no, Ben Linus’ patience was rewarded by his new father figure, Richard, who accepted him into the fraternity of Island mystics. Never mind how it happened. Just know that it did happen. That whatever happened…happened.

This seems to support Faraday’s theory of time travel. No, Sayid wasn’t “supposed” to shoot Ben. But he did. And when that threatened to derail fate’s course of action, fate intervened in the form of Kate. Her new-formed maternal instincts kicked in, compelling her to do whatever it took to save Ben. As it so happened, “whatever it took” meant turning Ben into an Other. And if Kate hadn’t done it, someone else would have, in some other way. You can’t change what ultimately happens, you can only change the way it happens. Make sense?


A Peak Behind the Curtain
Man, this episode just kept getting better. As Richard departed with Ben’s body, a nameless Other warned him that he, “shouldn’t do this without asking Ellie. And if Charles finds out…” “Let him find out,” snapped Richard. “I don’t answer to either of them.”

Oh. Snap! Dharma Blog loyalists know of my long-held inkling that Charles (Widmore) and Ellie (Hawking, presumably, the curly-haired Other from Jughead) eventually hook up, take over the Others and create Daniel Faraday and Penny Widmore. This quick little aside didn’t prove that theory, but it gave it some merit. And true or not, it’s interesting to note that Ellie apparently assumes some level of power among the Others. And Charles – by 1977 – isn’t out of the picture. As we know, Ben will eventually force him out. Last night reminded me just how excited I am for that confrontation.

"The Land of the Living"
Like I said, this episode just kept getting better toward the end. After the epic course correction and subtle nod to Charles Widmore, we saw Ben Linus awaken in the Ajira 316 infirmary to a dead man watching over him. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” said John Locke.

Talk about a loaded statement. Locke’s reference to the “land of the living” carries with it an implication of his own resurrection, a premonition to Ben’s forthcoming reckoning and atonement for his misdeeds (did you see that preview for next week!?!), and a knowing reference to the Island’s capacity for hosting half-alive inhabitants (Christian, Claire). I’ll tell you what, if you’ve got a grand theory as to what Locke really meant by this statement (and why Ben Linus looked so damn shocked to see him), I’ll let you have at it in the comments section. As it stands, I’m at 2500 words, and fighting sleep and sanity at the same time.


Wrap Up
For me, this episode symbolized a turning point for the season. Yes, LOST will continue to fill in the missing pieces of the story arc to this point. But last night it set up some pretty serious developments regarding Ben’s ascension, Locke’s return, Jack’s assimilation and understanding, Kate’s acceptance of her role, Hurley and Miles’ grasping of time travel and, most importantly, fate’s desperate attempt to ensure that whatever happened, happened.

Namaste.
Charlie.