Wow! This was a great episode. I totally don't remember it being as awesome as it was. There was mystery, there was action and there was character development. Really good episode all around. It was a Charlie-centric episode that gave us a little bit of insight into why he does the things he does in this episode. Claire is back with amnesia. We see Ethan briefly, but it won't be the last of him for us.
The basic crazy mysteries that in the episode have been resolved. We know where Claire was. We know what they do to her. We know who Ethan was. We know where he came from. And even though this episode was jammed with action stemming from those mysteries, I was able to sit back and watch this episode for the characters. And no matter what mysteries they presented in the story, when you strip those out it becomes a story about people learning from their past.
These flashbacks are never random. And Charlie's flashback is quite relevant to what is going on. He wants whatever happened in that flash to be a lesson learned. He wants to take care of Claire. He wants to be respectable. And even though what he did was shocking, I think he accomplished it. Sure - killing Ethan was shocking. But in everybody's eyes at that moment, he kind of protected them.
The Claire and Charlie moments were just amazing. And again, minus the mystery fluff - I could really see their relationship growing. His thing is taking care of/saving a woman. Similar to Jack's fixing problem. He does take care of Claire the whole time he is on the island. When he leaves is when she goes missing and eventually turns into the Claire we see in Season 6. If he would have lived, would she have stayed on the island and turned into that? I don't think she would have.
His death was completely avoidable. But I think that the moment he decided to sacrifice his own life for Claire's is when he was able to let go and move on. It wasn't about Charlie saving someone because he wanted to. He was doing that entirely for Claire and Aaron and not to satisfy his flaw.
Whether they knew they were going to have MIB be what we know it as or not, they knew that John Locke was going to be the bad guy. And, for me, I like to color it as Locke has been influenced by MIB. I don't know how. I have no evidence for it. And I could be wrong. I will believe this until I find some evidence that proves me wrong. He said something really interesting to Jack while they were planning what to do with Ethan:
"...What if he delivered his threat so that we would gather like sheep to the slaughter in a confined space where they can roll in and take us all in one fell swoop."
Hm, does that sound familiar? I am pretty sure that "Smocke" tried to do that to the candidates in the sub. Now, I know that they weren't planning that whole sub scene, but it was really interesting that they had Locke say these lines. Why not Jack or Sayid? Just really interesting to me.
I want to spend a minute on Ethan. He died this episode but we don't stop seeing him. He is in every season but Season 4. He is creepy and intriguing. I have so many questions about him. The one I answered for myself this week pertains to Claire. Why was he so obsessed with Claire? I don't really think he was telling the truth in the Missing Pieces mobisode when he said he lost a wife in childbirth (Others are liars). I think it pertains more to himself being born on the island. I think that he feels attachment to Claire and the baby because of this. To me, that is where the obsession comes from.
This was a good episode because I wasn't confused while watching. It was a character story when all of that madness was plucked away. And I think they kind of show that to us when Charlie kills Ethan. Charlie said he shot him because he knew they would never get answers from him. And Lost is not about answers. It's about the survivors.
