5821

From the first season we’ve known The Black Rock was a slave ship with dynamite. Dynamite wasn’t invented until 1867, the same year the ship is shown crashing onto the island. It’s late for slavery but it had to be that late to have dynamite on board.

5822

In my defense I will admit to reading the summarized notes of all the ARG content long after it had all been revealed, and never followed any of it. You must be in the same boat; if you did not follow it, yet know it to be as silly as I do.

and to reference a character here who never appeared on the show,
And referenced in silly detail to point out how silly it is, as the logical conclusion of any question about the Hansos has to end up being, given that he’s the hook a great deal of the ARG material ties into.

I think it is very reasonable though, to use the ARG information to make connections between plot elements shown on the screen–since that is precisely their entire reason for existence.

but this plot inconsistency that’s not really an inconsistency at all
It makes sense to sight the boat during the fish breakfast, and it’s easier to use cheap CGI to make the boat landing appear to happen at night. This is the reason, not some desire to expand the story to include other boats (MiB/Jacob specifically reference other boats in their conversation anyway), and in spite of this, the boat landing in the jungle still looked dumb.

has you ready to give up on the show.
I feel like 70% of whatever emotional investment I had in the fates of the characters has vanished in a puff of logic. Of course I’m not giving up on the show. You’re being absurd.

5823

I forgot about that. You’re right. I guess it’s just something I’ll have to deal with - feels weird in my brain. I keep wanting to put the entire Richard story back into that short-lived Robinson Crusoe series on NBC.

5824

My assumption is that the Black Rock knew where the island was, and had visited it more than once. The slaves and the dynamite were “supplies” for the island.

I mean - its pretty obvious the “new” world mentioned ain’t the Americas - so they knew they were going to the Island, and not the Americas (where the foreign slave trade had been banned for decades by ~1870).

5825

Oh, so you didn’t watch the episode.

5826

No nose bleeds or bulging veins so far - but keep trying - I could use an excuse to get outta work!

5827

I didn’t follow it and don’t know much about it. I had to look up Mittelwerk on Lostpedia to figure out wtf you were talking about.

5828

Did they ever actually refer to Richard and the other Spanish prisoners as “slaves”? They were criminals, at least one of whom (Richard) was set to be executed, so I simply assumed they were bound for Australia as convict labor and indentured servants which was common enough at the time (though not usually from Spain I suppose). Their status as violent criminals would have made the chains a believeable safety precaution, and it makes the obvious old age of the ship more believeable as well since you don’t use brand new ships to transport criminals.

Anyway, I thought it was a fantastic episode. Aside from the creative physics involved in having a wooden ship crash into the head of a giant stone statue and shatter said statue like glass (I suppose the force of the wave was what really broke the statue, but then the entire area around the statue for hundreds of yards should have been swept clean by the force of the wave) I didn’t have a hard time with anything presented. I loved that we pretty much completely focused on one guy the whole time, and the story was very well told. I feel very sympathetic for Richard now, and am hoping he has a moment of vindictive justice at the end of the series.

5829

That all works for me.

I loved it too - having a Richard episode felt like a well-earned treat. Every time he’s on screen, I can’t resist saying “Bat Manuel!” but he really is a good actor and an interesting, sympathetic character. It was a fun episode, although I’m not really keen on the biblical smackdown the final season is shaping up to be.

5830

So you knew Richard was a “murderer”?

And was still mourning a dead wife after 150 years?

And had the Ben/Sayid roles before they did?

I’ve watched every episode and didn’t. And if you “knew” stuff from sources outside the show, that doesn’t count…

5831

My read was that, while his statement of “I brought you here” (or whatever it was) sorta sounded like that, I assumed he’d actually done another of his endless series of Butterfly Effect things. Nudge key people and events at key points in time so that the Black Rock sailed when and where he wanted it to. The people on board that ship were pretty much there, because he (indirectly) put them there. And they hit that storm and ended up on the island, because he brought them there; to that place, at that time.

5832

Money changed hands, and the Officer said, “this man is now the property of the Captain.”

5833

1867 - the earliest that the writers painted themselves into a corner on by placing dynamite on the ship. Further, it wasn’t a Spanish slave ship as we can pretty much guess by it’s non-Spanish name. The ship was English, as further evidenced by the captain and crew, and the interest in Richard because he could speak English. Whether or not it would be legal for an English ship to be a slaver at this point is immaterial - they could probably hide behind condemned prisoner transfer. The 815 survivors simply looked at the shackles and assumed (I would have explored the ship specifically for the logbook myself, but of course it wasn’t there).

5834

I’m really hoping this entire Richard storyline ties into the end of the series. The priest in his prison cell told him he needed redemption for forgiveness, but that there was not enough time. Richard told Jacob he wanted to never die so that he could avoid going to hell. What I’d like to see is Richard come to the realization that he can redeem himself by stopping Unlocke from “uncorking the bottle” (to use their analogy) and in doing so finally find peace after 160+ years of self-torture.

5835

I hope the end is a giant rickroll

5836

Dang, I always thought the dynamite belonged to the French expedition, and was brought to the Black Rock by Rousseau as she knew where it was and what was inside. I’d always assumed she’d put it there for safety purposes since it made no sense for dynamite to be aboard a sailing vessel to begin with.

So yeah, maybe some inconsistencies. Oh well.

— Alan

5837

Did they actually say the dynamite was on the ship when it crashed? It could have been stored in the ship any time over the last 150 years…

5838

They got the dynamite from the ship (Rousseau, our brave 815 survivors, pretty much everyone), and since the French expedition was shown getting to the island sans dynamite, it is a reasonable conclusion that the ship brought the dynamite, especially since they were careful to make sure it arrived the year dynamite was patented.

5839

Even so… there is lots of time, and people, between the Black Rock landing and Rousseau winding up on the island. It is a reasonable conclusion, sure, but it has not been definitively confirmed as of yet.

5840

The Cork in the Bottle

So who is everyone’s guess will be the candidate that replaces Jacob, and becomes the cork in the bottle?

The official list is
4 - Locke (kinda dead, but given the show, you never know)
8 - Reyes (Hurley - has all the dead to keep him company)
15 - Ford (Sawyer - wants to leave as bad as UnLocke - would be cosmic comeuppance for him to be it)
16 - Sayid (seems to be going down a very dark path, doesn’t seem likely)
23 - Jack (the man of science being given the position of faith, and the actor claims to be the only one who knows the ending other than the writers)
42 - Kwon. Take your pick which one.

The most obvious name left out is Kate. Maybe a committee, maybe a team (both Kwons), maybe someone not on the list (the pilot, Kate, Ben, Richard, etc.). The most obvious is Jack - the man of science at last embracing faith. Locke, well, dead really does seem to mean dead, but I’ve been wondering if Locke would put in a message to Hurley at some point. Sawyer - it would seem more that he would want to join up with non-candidate Kate and leave and burn anything in his path preventing him from accomplishing it. Sayid - watching Kate fight for her life listlessly seems to leave him as someone who has failed a final test. The Kwons - no, just too wrong for it, both of them. They became unLost spirtually when they found each other again, and have been fighting to rejoin pretty much since that point. Doesn’t seem like it would be either of them.

And of course, the writers can pull whatever rabbit out of a hat on motivation and reasoning in the final episodes to unbalance all that, but Jack and Hurley seem to be the leading candidates by my reasoning at the moment, with Sawyer as a dark horse.

That is, assuming that the cork gets replaced and the genie doesn’t get out of the bottle…