Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

We continue with our round-table discussions of Lost. This week, we’re joined by Bridget McGovern, Melissa Frain, and Theresa DeLucci. As always, spoilers abound, so stay away from this post if you haven’t watched the latest episode of Lost, “The Little Prince.”

Theresa: Interesting episode this week, more plot-heavy than last week, more off the island than on. Everyone really is all over the place. The Oceanic 6 and Ben (and Locke’s corpse) in Los Angeles 2007, Locke and Sawyer and co. hopping all around time, and Jin, stranded sixteen years in the past. I was hoping we’d get to see a young Rousseau, but very surprised that Jin would find her. Honestly, for some reason, I just didn’t think Jin died in the Freighter explosion. I had hoped Faraday would find him with his little raft, but when he turned up without Jin, I still held out hope. Maybe because I love future, vengeful, Sun and knowing that Jin’s alive while Sun doesn’t gives her scenes even more tension.

My favorite part of tonight’s episode was the absolutely heartbreaking look on Sawyer’s face when he saw Kate in the jungle, helping Claire deliver her baby. Josh Holloway often plays the con man a bit too textbook Southern redneck, but every now and then, he just knocks one out of the park and it’s the moments like that that make me enjoy Sawyer.

So, Sawyer wants Kate to return for selfish reasons, but meanwhile people are starting to get ill from all the time travel flashes. Charlotte was born on the island, Juliet’s been there awhile, and Miles… Faraday isn’t so sure that Miles hasn’t been on the island before. I’d hate to assume that just because Miles is Asian, it must mean he’s Pierre Chang’s son, but this is pretty compelling evidence that Miles was also born on the Island and we saw Chang with a baby in the season premiere. Plus Miles has the ability to speak to the dead. That’s about as normal as anything else on the Island.

And we got the first glimpse of something related to Ajira Airways! Who was shooting at the survivors?

Bridget: For me, tonight’s episode was all about blood, thematically-speaking: bloodlines, blood ties, blood tests, blood feuds, bloody noses, etc: We start off with the flashback to Kate and Jack on the boat shortly after being rescued, in which they make a pact: Kate will claim that Aaron is her son, and will support Jack in insisting to the other rescued survivors that they lie about the island. Already you have this sense of blood relation versus the bonds formed under extraordinary and traumatic circumstances, which the rest of the episode seemed to focus on.

There’s Sun, on a sinister mission, three years after the rescue; can I just say that I like the new, darker, vengeful Sun? She’s terrifying, and she’s out for Ben Linus’s blood in a bad way. Also, she hides her gun in chocolate, which is rad. And delicious.

Meanwhile, Kate is forced to deal with the smarmy lawyer who has requested that she and Aaron prove their relationship with a blood test. At first it appears that Claire’s mother has discovered that Aaron is her grandchild; though it turns out that this isn’t the case.

On the Island, Charlotte slowly recovers from the seizure caused by the last move through time, and Juliet begins questioning Faraday about the repercussions of time travel. Sure enough, Miles and Juliet start suffering from nosebleeds, suggesting that the trauma of skipping through time is starting to affect them (but not Faraday or Sawyer). Though Faraday claims that he doesn’t know why people are affected differently, he seems to have a theory involving the length of time spent on the Island. He and Miles seem to differ on how much time they’ve actually spent on the island…at which point I got a nosebleed.

Back in L.A. again, there’s the showdown a-brewin’ at the docks. I have to say, I love how noir-ish this episode was, with its plethora of intrigues and double-crosses unfolding in a darkened, rain-drenched Los Angeles. The episode ends with a heated confrontation between Kate and Ben, Jack, and Sayid, with Black Hole Sun and Her Chocolate Gun watching from a distance. And just as she seems poised to avenge Jin’s death, it’s revealed that he’s actually alive, uh, Somewhere in Time. And, as Theresa points out, his new best friend is a young, pregnant Danielle Rousseau. At which point I blacked out and woke up with another nosebleed, and a headache.

This episode, even in its title, seems to be stressing (once again) the importance of children born on the island and the various familial bonds between the survivors, in the midst of all the hemorrhaging and secret bloodlines. Is it all connected somehow? I have no idea, but it certainly seems like we’re being pushed in that direction.

Melissa: I think it is pretty much impossible for me to put together coherent thoughts on this episode, because I am so full of OMG right now.

I think that I may have another scene to add to my all-time top Lost scenes: first, the hatch light! I had a complete fangirl moment here. Somewhere, Boone is dying. And then, what may be Sawyer’s best moment in the series so far. Incredibly powerful (I have always been a Sawyer fan, though). This scene reassured me that my emotional connection to the characters is not all lost now that we’ve moved away from character-centric episodes. Am I the only one wanting to go back and obsessively study past episodes to see if we can spot Sawyer in the trees, watching Kate deliver Aaron? And, yes, the time travel intrigue continues. I officially believe that the whispers we’ve heard in past episodes are actually the various characters talking as they bounce around through time. But either way, the weekly questions again: when are we? What caused these events to happen? Who is shooting at them from that other boat??? (I hope it’s a past or future version of themselves, somehow.) It’s hard to make sense of all this, but I have a feeling the payoff is going to be huge. And I do like puzzles.

It turns out the payoff starts this week for me: Jin is alive??? And in ROUSSEAU’s time???? Wait wait wait. I now have a nearly uncontrollable urge to go back and watch the entire series over again. Did Rousseau have any kind of reaction the first time she met Jin (or rather, the first time we SAW her meet Jin)? I wish I could remember. Anyway, I’m hoping we don’t jump to another time too fast, because I’m dying to get the full story about the “sickness” that killed her team. Could it be related to our nosebleeders somehow?

Miscellaneous other reactions: Thank god Jack shaved off that horrible Furby growing from his chin. Sayid is a total ninja. And Sun is incredibly, unexpectedly creepy.

Theresa: I could see how pretending Aaron is her own would make Kate feel guilty, thinking he would be safer with his blood family. Moreover, Mrs. Littleton may never know her grandson exists. That lie has to hurt both Kate and Jack.

Sun is awesomely creepy. So different from the quiet, garden-tending wife we met back in season one. Now, if she kills Ben, I suppose they could just bring another corpse back to the Island. Assuming they can find it again without Ben. If the Island is skipping through time because they left, how can the people in 2007 find the other survivors? Jin, I think, is the biggest challenge. He’s all by himself. And he doesn’t speak French.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Pablo Defendini

Author

Learn More About

See All Posts About

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
19 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments