I had promised myself that I wouldn’t watch the epilogue “The New Man in Charge” until the DVD finally came out down here. I did well, I didn’t read anything about it, and I resisted the urge to find/watch a copy online. Was it worth the wait?
On one hand, yes, it was worth it, because it was more new Lost goodness. On the other hand I kind of wish I’d just watched it a couple of months ago. Why? Well for starters I was expecting it to be 15 minutes long, not 10 minutes. I would swear that I’d read it would be 14-15 minute long. 10 minutes just wasn’t long enough, but maybe that’s just because too much Lost is never enough. And it wasn’t as “packed full of answers” as everyone was claiming it was/would be – not that I actually expected that it would be, and not that I found that aspect overly disappointing. After all, the best bit about Lost is the mysteries, in particular those that remain unresolved.
So, what did we find out. Ben is off-island wrapping up some Dharma business that’s no longer needed. We find out that two guys have been stationed in Guam for the last 20 years preparing the automated Dharma supply drops for the island, and now Ben is here to shut them down because they’re no longer needed. They weren’t even aware that the Dharma Initiative had been wiped out over 20 years ago, all they knew was that they kept getting the supply order. Why were they still getting the orders? Because it was an automated message coming from the Lamp Post.
Ben says that the Lamp Post hasn’t been occupied for a long time, which seems a little odd since that’s where Eloise Hawking was hanging out. Only reason I can think that she wouldn’t have turn off the automated orders was so that nothing appeared to have changed. After all stopping an automated order that had been running for so long is sure to raise questions.
They also didn’t know where the supply drones were being sent, just that co-ordinates they received were different every time – which as Ben explained is because the island moves. It becomes clear that these two have pretty much no idea who they are/were working for or why. One of the asks Ben why Polar Bear biscuits are part of the supplies if the destination is an island in the pacific, so Ben plays them an orientation tape from the Hydra station which explains a little about what was going on in that particular station and why there were polar bears, and also a bit about Room 23 and what its was used for.
At the beginning of the second act we head to the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute, only to find someone playing Connect 4 (seems to be the only thing mental patients do in the Lost universe). Who was playing Connect 4? Well it was Waaaaaalt. This was no surprise to me, since Walt’s appearance in the epilogue was basically the only thing I actually knew about it. Why was Walt in the institute? He says that no one would believe him, so I presume he’s there because he started telling people about the island etc and they though he was nuts.
Fair enough. If you said that you were on a plane flying from Sydney to Los Angeles, and it crashed on an island with 48-ish survivors. And on this island there were polar bears, and ‘monsters’, and in addition the survivors there were ‘other’ people who already lived there before the crash. And that these ‘other’ people kidnapped you because you were ‘special’, only to give you and your father a boat and a specific co-ordinate to allow you to leave the island…. yeah, not hard to see why that could get interpreted as insane.
Anyway, Ben says he’s there because a friend sent him. That friend is Hurley, its not said at this point, but if you can’t work that out for yourself, then why are you even watching. Walt leave Santa Rosa with Ben and they get into one of the blue Dharma combi vans. And, dude, who should be sitting in the back, but Hurley. Hurley says that they need to go back to the island, because Walt is special and that’s where they’re meant to be, and then Hurley offers him a job, and they drive off into the darkness.
So, “a job”, can we assume that Hurley has had enough of being ‘Number 1’ and wants to hand over the reigns to Walt, or at least start preparing him for the handover when the time comes. Also how is the ‘new man in charge’, it could be (and probably is) referring to Hurley, but maybe its also pointing to Walt as being (or becoming) the ‘new man in charge’ in the future.
If Walt were to take over as the leader on the island then that also explains his non-presence at the church in the sideways/afterlife timeline, and Michael’s absence is explained by the fact that he (or his soul) is still trapped on the island.
Great to have one last little bit of lost, shame it wasn’t a little bit longer.
