"Whatever Happened, Happened" Mega-Review

Ten out of ten.

The more I think about this episode, the more I go over it in my head and organize my thoughts in order to write them down, the more I realize this episode was about as flawless as Lost gets. It answered some mysteries (what Sawyer whispered to Kate) and provided clues to others (the climactic business about Ellie, Charles, and the Temple). It told one character's story (Kate's, of course), and in doing so, deepened our understanding of her, even redeemed her, and gave her a newfound purpose ("I'm going back to the island to find your daughter."). And it dealt with the big, fickle mythology device of the season -- time travel -- not only by making it palatable (witness Hurley and Miles's audience-proxy conversations) but by using it to illuminate character: witness each of the castaways' very different reactions to Ben's gunshot wounds.

Let's start with Kate's story and her off-island arc:

First of all, it was a great performance by Evangeline Lilly (and lived up to her own hype about it). She regained the audience's sympathy by owning up to her own shortcomings: she admitted that she kept Aaron for her own interests, not his, and ended her time off the island by finally doing the right thing and giving Aaron to his grandmother.

Kate She was helped on this journey of self-realization by Cassidy, her old friend and the mother of Sawyer's daughter Clementine. (In no big surprise, but with a certain sense of satisfaction, we found that Sawyer's whisper was a request that Kate look her up.) Cassidy had her own ideas about Kate and Aaron: still bitter about Sawyer, she believed that Kate was keeping Aaron to fill the void Sawyer left by staying on the island -- and what's more, Sawyer only jumped off the copter in the first place because he was afraid of commitment.

The psychology of both of those ideas is questionable, but there's no doubt a hint of truth: Kate was keeping Aaron not necessarily as a replacement for Sawyer, but as a replacement for all the castaways she left behind. And Sawyer: did playing the hero come easier knowing that he wouldn't have to worry about Kate or Aaron once they reached home? Maybe. But it doesn't really matter: Cassidy's allowed to be wrong. The point is that she was a good friend to Kate and steered her in the right direction when that's what was needed. Over the three years Kate was off the island, she built up a solid friendship with Cassidy (note Clementine calling her "Aunt Kate"), and it was nice to see a castaway hanging out with someone outside of their little clique.

I also can't stress how satisfying it was for Kate to decide her purpose was to go back to the island in order to find Claire. Turning over Aaron to Claire's mom was the end of a big chapter for Kate, and giving her direction going forward not only gives us continued interest in her character but sets the gears in motion for future episodes. How will Kate find her? How will she return? And is she actually dead, or what? I think she is (and Cabin Claire = Ghost Claire), but Kate doesn't; she point-blank told Claire's mom that she was still alive.

On the island:

I was very impressed that, during Hurley and Miles's time travel arguments, the writers came right out with their big potential plot hole: if there's only one version of the time line, then why didn't Ben recognize any of the castaways as the people from his youth? I assumed they would just gloss over it by explaining that Ben, impenetrable as he is, did recognize them but never let it on. But I underestimated them. The real reason was that Richard's miracle cure for Ben involved a memory wipe -- but more on that soon.

The way each castaway dealt with Young Ben sitting at death's door was pretty fascinating, both as a study of each character and seen in the larger context of the "whatever happened, happened" rule: whatever they do is contributing to Ben becoming the man he is today.

All of them are complicit, but in very different ways: Sayid and Jack, taking the wrong path, and Juliet, Kate, and Sawyer staking the moral high ground. Sayid would make the argument that he was trying to circumvent the future genocide of the Dharma Initiative. But Jack's decision not to help Ben was motivated by selfish reasons, because unlike Sayid, he's privy to Miles's explanation that nothing they do will change anything -- and therefore, the decision was not motivated by any Greater Good desire to stop the Purge. Because if he had helped, chances are Sawyer and Kate wouldn't have had to take Ben to Richard.

Juliet, Kate, and Sawyer all agreed that Ben needed rescue, on the grounds that Ben's not "Ben" yet, and you can't just let a kid die. In that light, it's somewhat tragic that Ben won't remember what they did for him; I have to wonder if the island will reward their good deed in the future. (Of course, you could make the argument that they're saps and they should've taken Jack and Sayid's position. But their "we're reluctantly doing the right thing because it's the right thing, dammit" attitude was, to me, very admirable.)

Jeff Jensen expounds on Juliet's line of thinking in his recap:

One of the episode's more intriguing moments came when the camera doted on Juliet's face as actress Elizabeth Mitchell allowed a dreadful epiphany to pass across it. It came as she and Kate banged their heads against the wall to find someway to save dying Ben--and then, suddenly, Juliet thought of one. The Others. Her old people. But whatever she was thinking, I got the sense there was slightly more to it than, ''Hey! Richard! He's got magic potions and healing powers and stuff!''

Jensen suggests that Juliet was actually telepathically receiving instructions from the island at that moment. I think it was simpler: she suddenly saw all the timeline pieces falling into place. So this is how Ben becomes Ben. Jack wouldn't help, and now we have to take him to the Others, where he'll be changed forever. He's the man he is...because of all of us. That's the kind of moment where great acting really comes into play, so kudos to Elizabeth Mitchell.

We also saw a very different side of Ben's dad than we've seen before: friendly, flirting with Kate, confessing that he always thought he'd be a great dad. It added a fascinating set of nuances that we hadn't yet seen; until this episode, he's been yet another in Lost's repertoire of Bad Dads. He still is, of course, but now he's a three-dimensional human being, and one looking for redemption...and yet, we know he ends up tragically murdered by Ben himself. I hope future episodes continue to fill in the blanks. (I also really admired Sawyer's swift, calculated discovery that Young Ben was the one who released Sayid by offhandedly asking for his janitorial keys. Great small moment.)

lost holy trinity And finally, the end of the episode: Sawyer and Kate's fateful meeting with Richard.

Richard dropped plenty of hints in only a small amount of dialogue: Ellie and Charles (that would be Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore) seem to be the leaders of the Hostiles at this point. This raises some important questions: one, are they a couple? Two, if they're a couple, could that mean Faraday is Widmore's son? Three, if Faraday is Widmore's son, wouldn't he be Penny's sister? Four, wouldn't Penny be Hawking's daughter? Five, even if Widmore and Hawking are not romantically entangled at all and the previous questions are moot, doesn't Widmore's presence on the island mean Penny was born there? She's certainly older than twenty-seven.

And though Ellie and Charles seem to be the leaders, Richard doesn't take his orders from them. Well, sure, we know that: Richard is way too cool for that. Again I'll quote Jeff Jensen on Richard's status among the Others:

My current take on Richard is this: He is like an angel to be wrestled with and overcome, like a sphinx to be solved and beaten, and should you be successful, you get the keys to the kingdom, the Island, and as part of the deal, he serves you faithfully until someone else comes along and knocks you off the mountain.

I generally agree with that assessment: though Richard seemed to be the leader of the Others during the 1950s period seen in "Jughead", he has exhibited none of Ben or Widmore's power-hungry desire to lead, and in Ben's period of leadership he seemed happy to take on an advisory role (and even suggested to Locke that they were getting ready to usurp Ben on the grounds that he was spending too much time dealing with fertility issues instead of "the things we should be focused on").

As Richard carried Ben into the temple, a thought struck me: since the temple is probably the Smoke Monster's home, what if Richard is the Smoke Monster? We've already seen that Smokey can either take on human form or at the very least summon it (witness Eko's vision of Yemi, etc.); could Richard actually be its main human embodiment?

Expanding on that a little, though, and you could basically say that Richard is Jesus -- God in human form -- and once you reach that point, it's not hard to peg Jacob as the Father and Smokey as the Holy Ghost in an island version of the Christian Holy Trinity. If there is a Christ figure on Lost, most people would say it's Locke. But in terms of living island enigmas, there are three: Jacob, Smokey, and Richard. That they so easily fit into the Holy Trinity paradigm can't be just a coincidence, not with all the Biblical references they float around, can it?

TAGS: Kate, Recap, Reviews, Richard Alpert, Season 5, Whatever Happened Happened, Young Ben
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