Comments on: LOST: “Lighthouse”

By: BTD Greg

BTD Greg — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 02:49:13 +0000

I’ve been thinking about the Lighthouse, and I think this exchange between Ben and Locke from the season 3 episode, “The Man From Tallahassee” may turn out to be significant:

BEN: And now you have a choice. Because if you stop and if you think, I can show you things. Things I know you want to see very badly. Let me put it so you’ll understand. Picture a box. You know something about boxes, don’t you, John? What if I told you that somewhere on this island, there’s a very large box… and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it, when you opened that box, there it would be. What would you say about that, John?

LOCKE: I’d say I hope that box is big enough to imagine yourself up a new submarine. [drinks the water]

BEN: [looking away and smiling slightly] Why are you so angry, John?

LOCKE: Because you’re cheating! You and your people. [puts down his glass and walks around the room] Communicate with the outside world whenever you want to, you… you come and go as you please… you use electricity and running water and guns… You’re a hypocrite! A pharisee. You don’t deserve to be on this island. If you had any idea what this place really was… you wouldn’t be putting chicken in your refrigerator!

By: Jenny

Jenny — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:22:08 +0000

I think they realized it was a bit out of nowhere, and that’s why they wrote the exchange between Hurley and Jack about it, acknowledging that not only haven’t the characters seen it before, viewers haven’t either.

Which begs the question, why was it so important to introduce it now? The same scene could have essentially been played out at the cave with the names on the wall. No smashed mirror, but Jack would have still seen all the names and realized they were being tracked like others before them.

By: jjohnsen

jjohnsen — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:51:53 +0000

According to Lostpedia, we’ve never seen the Lighthouse before, and I couldn’t find it on any of the maps.

Being so close to the caves, it just seems strange they wouldn’t have stumbled on it earlier.

By: Mudhead

Mudhead — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:36:35 +0000

jjohnson: If Jacob's explanation to Hurley is to be believed, I suspect that it was less important that Jack smashed the mirror than it was that Jack saw what was in the mirror. Jacob was hoping Jack would have a reaction of some type that would get him to rethink his role on the Island and come to different conclusions about his destiny.

By: Clark

Clark — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:57:24 +0000

Actually that made sense to me. The Losties didn’t go around most of the island. I wouldn’t be shocked if there was something they didn’t see. Plus, wasn’t the lighthouse on the old hatch map?

By: jjohnsen

jjohnsen — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:35:36 +0000

A few complaints. You find a magic mirror that can see around he world and you destroy it? It seems like Jacob was assuming a lot if he was hoping Jack would do that. If he wanted the mirror destroyed, why not just get the guy that does whatever he asks (Hurley) to just walk up the stairs and destroy it? Why manipulate Jack and hope he does it?

And Hurley’s explanation of why nobody has seen the lighthouse in all these seasons? “I guess we weren’t looking”. Uh, yeah. Ok.

Jack’s scar seems to suggest the LAX timeline didn’t split from the original timeline during the flight. It would have to be a totally different timeline from the beginning if Jacks’ mom is telling the truth about his scar.

By: Mudhead

Mudhead — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:03:19 +0000

Very interesting, meems. It solidifies in my mind that the Lost writers are trying to tell us something with The Who references, particularly in regards to Jack’s destiny. Of course, using these clues to suggest that Jack will ultimately become the new Jacob could be a big red herring. But I no longer think that I was reading too much into the Tommy reference when Jack smashed the mirror. I’m now convinced the writers are doing this deliberately.

The Who song “The Substitute” has an interesting relevant lyric: “I look all white, but my dad was black.”

The question is whether Jack will ultimately be a Happy Jack, who lives “on the sand at the Isle of Man.”

By: Clark

Clark — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:57:51 +0000

That’s interesting. I was actually just watching a documentary about The Lighthouse on VH1 a few weeks back. It’s too bad his original vision couldn’t really come to life even if it did create those other two albums. They were doing this quasi-reality show documentary originally to be part of The Lighthouse too that was pretty interesting.

By: meems

meems — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:35:25 +0000

Well, you guys, I just made this comment over at another Lost Blog, but I have to repeat it here because it totally just occurred to me that the follow up to the Who’s rock opera Tommy was a project that Pete Townshend called… are you ready? The Lighthouse. No, I’m not kidding. I forgot all about that until just now. The songs that were written for this project, which eventually became Who’s Next and Quadrophenia (if memory serves correctly) includes Behind Blue Eyes, and Won’t Get Fooled Again, which so aptly has the line, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” which sounded kind of like, uh, well, getting a new boss. And don’t forget, last week’s episode was called The Substitute — another Who song!

By: Clark

Clark — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:56:54 +0000

I think that facet of Jack’s personality was the point of the flash sideways with his son. His son has this breakthrough with Jack (a break with how his relationship with his father went) In a sense we get the differentiation in Jack from his Father which may parallel some things on the island if smokey is also Jack’s dad doppleganger.

So the Tommy parallel is interesting in the structure of the episode too. Although I’m still not sure I trust Jacob.