Smoke Monsters, Whispers, Science Stations and All The Rest

As a Lost fan, the past eight months since The Incident aired have gone very slowly.

I had a plan I started last summer to take a look at some of the mysteries of the show that I wanted to see answered.  Because of timing issues, I was never able to go into as much depth with I Want Some Freakin’ Answers as I had planned.  Sure, I wrote about a handful of questions, but there are a lot more.  And with the final season of the Kingdom’s favorite show starting up next Tuesday, there’s not really enough time to explore all of them thoroughly.  So I’m just going to go through the rest of my list, along with some comments:

Who built the Lamppost? And why doesn’t Widmore use it to find the island?

Hawking said a “very clever” person built the DHARMA Lamppost station to  locate an island up until then only theorized to exist.  Is he tied into the survivors of Oceanic 815? And if the station can find the island in time and space (and assuming he knows of its existence), why doesn’t Widmore take over the station?  Did the U.S. Army use the Lamppost? or was it just through dumb luck that they found the island?

How does Daniel’s journal end up in the Hydra station?

Daniel Faraday was given a notebook by his mother after graduating college.  He told Sawyer that the journal contained all the information he learned about the DHARMA initiative.  The journal traveled with Daniel through time as the island skipped along like a record.  When Daniel was killed by his mother in 1977, Jack and Sayid referenced the journal to enact his plan to reset history.  In 2007, when Caesar is going through Ben’s office on Hydra island, he finds pages from the journal in a desk drawer.  How did it get there?

What happened to the Arrow Station?

The tail section survivors found the abandoned Arrow Station (designed as a defensive location) in their first weeks on the island in 2004.  When they got there, it was abandoned.  There was still electricity and a box, containing a hollowed-out bible, film strip and a glass eye.  Did the eye belong to Mikhail?  Who cut the Swan Orientation Film and hid it there?

Who did Locke hear/see during his first visit to Jacob’s cabin?

I’ve already written about the inhabitants of Jacob’s cabin.  But who was reaching out to Locke? Was it the Man In Black making a first move at trying to take over Locke’s life, or was it the island looking for help?

Was the Pearl used for anything worthwhile, or did DHARMA just stick people there to mess with them?

The workers at the Pearl were told they were doing important work.  But their subjects were the ones doing the important work, while the notebooks that were the fruits of their diligent efforts went through a system of tubes to a pile in the middle of the island.  Did DHARMA do anything with those notebooks?  Was there any purpose to the observation station?  And (I’ve asked this before too) why didn’t Dr. Chang use his real name?

What’s the deal with the whispers?

The earliest proof of other inhabitants of the island were through whispers heard at random times.  These whispers are actually dialogue, many times relating to the scene at hand.  The only proof we have that they’re tied to the others is when a teenage Ben tells Rousseau that if she wants to live, when she hears whispers to “run the other way.”

How did Ben get back into DHARMA?

Sawyer and Juliet took young Ben to Richard to be healed.  Richard warned that letting the Island heal Ben would mean Ben’s “innocence will be gone.”  We see Ben spending time with the Others, and he even raises Alex, at the same time while DHARMA folk are inhabiting the island before the purge.  How did Ben return from the Others’ camp and how did he manage to spend so much time among the Others while still living in DHARMAville?

Will we ever find out about what happened between Ben and Henry Gale?

The story of the poor Minnesotan balloonist who crashed on the island has fascinated me since Season 2.  It’s not really integral, but it would be interesting to find out what happened between Ben and the man whose identity he stole.

How did the pallet drop happen?

In season 2, the survivors find a pallet loaded with DHARMA supplies in the middle of the jungle.  This happened during a lockdown at the Swan station, leading one to think that the two are related.  If DHARMA’s been out of business since the ’90s, how did the pallet drop happen?

Why didn’t the Others take over the Swan station?

You wipe out DHARMA and take over their facilities.  But there’s one place left on the island, that’s probably the most dangerous, and you let a guy man it all by himself as he slowly goes crazy.  Why not take it over too, and have a few people working on shifts to push the button and save the world?

What was with the DHARMA Door?

Another Season 2 mystery…when Michael was looking for Waaalt, the Others took him to a seaside camp with a mysterious door.  That led nowhere.  What was the reason for the door?  Not to mention the whole decoy village…

Why do the Others have childbirth issues?

From sometime after Alex’s birth (and maybe even before) to the birth of Aaron, things don’t go too well for pregnant women on the island.  What caused the island to “reject” pregnant mothers and their babies? And why did the Others think they could fix their problems?

Why put an escape hatch in the medical station?

Chances are, if there’s an emergency, people would be fleeing to a medical facility.  Seemingly, not so in the case of the Staff, DHARMA’s medical station, which has a built-in escape hatch.  Why would an underground facility need an escape hatch? How would it work?

What did the Others do off-island?

When we were first introduced to Richard Alpert, he was recruiting Juliet to work for Mittelos Bioscience, a front company.  Throughout Season 3, we learned that the Others controlled other companies, and even used the excuse that Bonnie and Greta were doing off-island work in Canada.  In Season 5, we meet Jill, a Los Angeles butcher who works for Ben.  What are all these Others doing off-island?  Is this how Ben/Widmore accumulated their wealth?  Does this have something to do with how the Others were able to develop files on all of the Oceanic 815 survivors?

Why is Desmond special?

Faraday says it himself- Desmond Hume is special.  The rules of space-time don’t apply to him.  For some reason, his destiny was to end up on the island and not be affected by the shifts in space-time.

Why is Hurley blessed?

Sure, Hurley thinks he has a few screws loose, but as Jacob said, he gets to talk to people he’s lost.  He also has a connection to the island.  And he can’t get rid of those damn numbers.

Who put the numbers back on the radio?

Shortly before the controlled crash of Ajira Flight 316, we heard the numbers transmission (the same transmission heard a few episodes earlier) being read by a voice sounding suspiciously like Hurley.  Rousseau turned off this transmission in 1988 before recording and broadcasting her distress signal.  The distress signal was turned off in 2004.  Yet in 2007, as Lapidus tries bringing the plane down safely, the numbers are back on the air.

What happened to the rest of the Statue?

As Sayid said when we first saw the four-toed foot, he didn’t know what freaked him out more, the fact that it was a foot with only four toes, or what could have happened to cause the destruction of the rest of the statue.  We know the statue is whole in the mid-nineteenth century.  So something happened in the last 150 years to blow it up real good.  Hopefully we’ll see this demolition this season.

Why did Locke see a white light?

Locke described his early encounter with the monster as “beautiful” and as a white light.  Most other people who have encountered the monster think Locke got off easy, as some have seen smoke, others have seen visions of their past and others weren’t long to live.  Is Locke special? Or was this just the man in black’s way of getting to know his latest pawn?

Did DHARMA spin the wheel and move the island?

When we first meet Charlotte, she’s at a desert in Tunisia, picking through polar bear bones.  The polar bear was wearing a DHARMA collar.  We know that location is the exit point for those who have spun the wheel.  It’s also implied that Widmore at some point in the past spun the wheel.  So has the island been moved before we saw Ben move it in Season Four?  Did the island’s inhabitants also experience catastrophic events?

And of course….

What’s the Smoke Monster?

Why doesn’t Richard ever age?

Are the dead people on the island really dead? Spirits? The Smoke Monster in disguise?

How did Locke figure into Jacob’s plans if he was being used by the Man in Black?

I’m sure the obsessive fanboy in me has a hundred other questions.  I’d just like a few of these answered.  Is there anything I left out?