• That’s sad. But even as Frank admits that yes, they probably have, they continue on following Hurley and Jack.

Great Hurley Line: “So…what do you think we should say to Locke when we get there? I mean, how do you break the ice with a Smoke Monster?”

• Jack’s got a feeling that Anti-Locke is “going to do most of the talking.” Which is, I think, dead-on.

Jack: “Ever since Juliet died – ever since I got her killed – all I’ve wanted is to fix it. But I can’t. I can’t ever fix it. You have no idea how hard it is for me to sit back and listen to other people tell me what I should do…but I think maybe that’s the point. Maybe I’m supposed to let go.”

• Was that too on-the-nose for you? It wasn’t for me, because despite the fact that Lost is liberally underlining its main Jack theme, Matthew Fox underplays the whole moment beautifully. It becomes, for me, an affecting, character-rooted admission, not a hammering over the head of the show’s themes. You can argue that we’ve seen this side of Jack before, when he returned to the Island in the 70’s, but I’d argue that we haven’t, really. Jack didn’t trust Sawyer back in the Dharma days. He put up with him. If anything, his arrival in Dharmaville was like a trial run for the sort of “letting go” we’re seeing now in full. Jack truly does trust Hurley. With that, his character turns an enormous corner.

Hurley: “You’re stuck on the Island, aren’t you?”
Michael: “Because of what I did.”
Hurley: “And there are others (Others!) out here like you, aren’t there. That’s what the Whispers are?
Michael: “Yeah. We’re the ones who can’t move on.”

• Whoa.

Michael’s reappearance on the Island as a ghost (and I’m going to stop using those quotation marks – since we’re more or less told outright that these apparitions ARE ghosts) gives us the answer to the Whispers – they’re the product of dead people who are unable to move on – “souls” that are trapped because of “what they did.” I imagine that there are people now furiously combing through the transcripts of past episodes that included The Whispers, and I’ll definitely be taking another look at them. This revelation more-or-less confirms my “Well of Souls” theory.  Back in the Rewatch Column for Confirmed Dead I wrote:

“Whether you believe in the concept of a soul or not, there’s also electricity within the human body that helps to animate that body. Without that electricity our bodies wouldn’t function. And that thought leads me to another thought….if electricity is responsible for animating the human brain, and that electricity escapes from a dead body at the moment of death, where would it go? On an Island with tremendous electromagnetic energy, would that electricity be attracted to the electromagnetism? Would the Island’s pocket of energy retain that electricity? And if that electricity animates a person, carries the ‘echoes’ of their thoughts and feelings and self, then wouldn’t that potentially explain the Island/MiB’s ability to assume the forms of the dead? It/he would be drawing from a kind of database/resevoir of people’s personalities – of the energy of people who’ve died on the Island and whose electricity has been captured/absorbed by the Island. We’ve already talked about how Lost has referenced the Biblical legends of Mount Moriah – a mountain which contains a chamber known as ‘the well of souls.’ Is there a literal ‘well of souls’ beneath the Island, with the word ‘souls’ being replaced by ‘energy’?”

• That theory seems to have gained some teeth in this episode, with the notion that Michael and some of the other Island ghosts are “trapped” there, unable to leave. It further underlines the idea of the Island-as-Underworld. Back in the Rewatch Column for The Beginning of the End, I talked about the similarities and the parallels that seemed to exist, using the introduction of the mysterious Matthew Abaddon as a jumping-off point:

“You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape; my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, O LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you. Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Abaddon?” – Psalm 88:8-11

The book of Revelation uses the name Abaddon to refer to “the angel of the Abyss.” In Hebrew scriptures, the word Abaddon is interpreted to mean “place of destruction,” or “realm of the dead.” There have been a number of clues to indicate that the Island is a “realm of the dead.” Here are just a few of them:

1) The presence of the name “Apollo” on the show in multiple locations and in multiple situations. We’ve seen it pop up on candy bars, we’ve seen it on the side of homicidal buses, and we’ve caught a glimpse of it on the wall of Anthony Cooper’s well-appointed pad. What does Apollo have to do with Abaddon? Revelation 9 calls the angel Abaddon by its supposed Greek name: Apollyon, a version of the Greek name “Apollo”…

Interesting, eh? I’ve already discussed some intriguing connections between certain Apollonian myths and Lost. You can read those musings right here.

2) The presence of the term “Underworld.” The red-and-black “warning” hieroglyphics seen in the Swan Station whenever the clock ran down past zero translate roughly to mean “Underworld,” the Egyptian realm of the dead. “Underworld” is also a common translation of the Hebrew word “Sheol,” the Jewish “abode of the dead, and descriptions of that place can be seen as echoed in Lost’s narrative:

It is very deep (Prov. ix. 18; Isa. lvii. 9); and it marks the point at the greatest possible distance from heaven (Job xi. 8; Amos ix. 2; Ps. cxxxix. 8). The dead descend or are made to go down into it; the revived ascend or are brought and lifted up from it (I Sam. ii. 6; Job vii. 9; Ps. xxx. 4; Isa. xiv. 11, 15). Sometimes the living are hurled into Sheol before they would naturally have been claimed by it (Prov. i. 12; Num. xvi. 33; Ps. lv. 16, lxiii. 10), in which cases the earth is described as “opening her mouth” (Num. xvi. 30).

Sheol is spoken of as a land (Job x. 21, 22); but ordinarily it is a place with gates (ib. xvii. 16, xxxviii. 17; Isa. xxxviii. 10; Ps. ix. 14), and seems to have been viewed as divided into compartments (Prov. vii. 27), with “farthest corners” (Isa. xiv. 15; Ezek. xxxii. 23, Hebr.; R. V. “uttermost parts of the pit”), one beneath the other (see Jew. Encyc. v. 217, s. v. Eschatology). Here the dead meet (Ezek. xxxii.; Isa. xiv.; Job xxx. 23) without distinction of rank or condition—the rich and the poor, the pious and the wicked, the old and the young, the master and the slave… The dead continue after a fashion their earthly life.

… Sheol is never satiated (Prov. xxx. 20); she “makes wide her soul,” i.e., increases her desire (Isa. v. 14) and capacity. In these passages Sheol is personified; it is described also as a pasture for sheep with death as the shepherd (Ps. xlix. 15). As a rule Sheol will not give up its own.

That description of a place that is never satisfied, increasing its desire and capacity, a place which hurls men and women under the earth to a land that has been divided into compartments should sound familiar to a fan of Lost. It evokes the imagery of Rousseau’s crew being pulled beneath the Temple, a place that, as we’ve seen in Season 5, contains many levels beneath the surface. It evokes the image of John Locke being pulled into a hole in the earth by the Monster, as if the earth were ‘opening her mouth.’ It summons up the memories of the many ‘ghosts’ that seem to populate the Island, continuing ‘after a fashion their earthly life.’

3) Charlotte’s maybe-literal claim that “this place is death,” implying rather colorfully that the Island embodies/augurs death and the dead.

4) The presences of ‘ghosts,’ both on and off the Island, all of whom (with the possible exception of ‘ghost-Walt’) have died on the Island.

5) The hieroglyphic carving seen under the Temple just before Ben encounters the Smoke Monster. The carving portrays Anubis, the Egyptian Protector of the Dead, seeming to charm/command/stand against a shape that could well be the Monster.

All of which points somewhat-persuasively to the notion that, while the Island may not literally be Purgatory/Sheol, it may in fact be responsible in a mythic sense for the stories of afterlife realms which have been created by different cultures over human history. It may be the origin point for the numerous human myths which describe a Sheol/Purgatory/Underworld-like afterlife. This is very much in keeping with what I’d say is one of my central pet-theories about the show – that the Island is meant to represent a place from which myths and legends are born, rather than a literal representation of any one mythical place. That is to say, I believe that the Island is the source of inspiration for such myths as Hades, Atlantis or Dilmun – but that the Island is neither literally Hades, nor Atlantis….”

• Those were my pre-Season 6 thoughts, and while they’re not a perfect fit by any stretch of the imagination, I’m admittedly pleased by the way that they line up. I’m sticking by my theory that the Island isn’t literally Purgatory, but that it’s served as an inspiration for it in different cultures through history. Given that Michael asks Hurley not to get himself killed, can we assume that Michael isn’t working for the Man in Black?

• It’s nice to see that Hurley remembered to bring a blanket this time around.

Libby: “I want to be with you because I like you.”
Hurley: “Yeah, but, you like me because, well…you’re delusional.”

• Libby kisses Hurley, and that opens the floodgates – he remembers his “Other” life, and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that at the exact moment she kisses him we hear the sound of the Ocean rushing in. I’m reminded again of the Oceanic Feeling I talked about in the column for Happily Ever After. Hurley’s moment of Oceanic Feeling connects him to another state of consciousness and being (“Good being”). It “awakens” him in a profound way.

• Again: Jorge Garcia’s work in this episode is really, really admirable.

UNO MAS PAGE BREAK!