Yeah, so, I missed a few weeks. I'm persevering though, and I am currently on track. This is week 5 of the Lost Rewatch.
". . . In Translation" "Numbers" "Deus Ex Machina"
In various interviews, Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, and Jack Bender have all been proclaiming that Season 6 will be very much like Season 1. They haven't said much more than that, so it's hard to say exactly what they mean by that. I think one thing we can be fairly certain of though is that S6 will really hone in on the themes of redemption and rebirth that were so central to S1. Actually, even though these themes are central to the entire series, we have yet to seem them featured so explicitly as we did in S1.
These three episodes for this week are particularly heavy on the redemptive notes. ". . . In Translation" is primarily about Jin and Sun, and how their relationship has been marked by wrongs done and then being forgiven. The big question is, how many times can they "start over"? And their story just pulls on our heartstrings to answer, "Please, one more time." Jin and Sun are the perfect example of the true focus of the show. Even though their characters seem to be among the least important to the mythology of the show, their episodes are always among the most beautiful and heartwrenching of each season. Also in this episode, Shannon, after a great pep talk from Locke, decides that she can also start over and find freedom from her odd relationship with Boone.
"Numbers" follows the story of Hurley and his struggle to be believed. Oddly enough, he finds some redemption in an encounter with a character who had recently shared his struggle, Rousseau (see S1E9, "Solitary").
In a temporary inversion of these themes, "Deus Ex Machina" presents us with a Locke who seems to be having his second chance taken away from him. He, of course, got a fresh start the moment he crashed on the island and his paralysis was healed. In this episode however, he has a crisis of faith after his paralysis starts to come back, Boone gets severely injured, and he repeatedly fails in his attempts to open the hatch. In the end, a deus ex machina saves the day when a (literal) flash of light renews his quest.
And throughout it all, we have a subplot that appears to be, on the surface, nothing more than good comic relief, but it actually holds a much deeper meaning. Sawyer battles severe headaches and eventually finds out he should be wearing glasses when reading the books he's become so fond of. The particular book he is seen reading in these episodes is Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, a children's science fiction/fantasy novel in which the characters travel through space and time (via a wormhole-like concept called a tesseract) to a mechanistic dystopian planet to save their dad from an entity that appears as a dark cloud and is referred to as "The Black Thing." Those resonances with Lost aside, it's the themes of the book that truly strike a harmonious chord. By the end of the novel, the characters have learned two essential lessons: 1) That love and faith can conquer any obstacle, including space, time, and evil; 2) Heroes are usually called from the least likely of places. L'Engle puts a passage from the Bible into the mouth of one of the characters to support this idea: "The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are." (1 Corinthians 1:25–28)
Jin and Sun are full of weaknesses that hamper their marriage. Shannon has been called "useless" and is certainly not very wise. Hurley can't seem to catch a break in life and doesn't seem very "mighty" or "noble." Locke has been fooled, conned, deceived, and used more times than we would care to count. And yet, as Damon Lindelof recently stated, these characters do indeed have a destiny. Whatever surprises and answers to mysteries season 6 brings, we can be sure that these characters will finally find their respective purposes, the reasons they were brought to the island in the first place.
