Rewatching LOST: 2.07 “The Other 48 Days”

The story of the tailies is revealed in a series of highlights from their first 48 days on the island.

• Day 1: Unlike the fuselage, the tail section of Oceanic 815 crashed into the ocean, just off the coast of the island, and eventually sank there, leaving the tail section survivors with no supplies from the plane with which to make their start on the island. A large number of the tail section’s crash victims died by drowning as the plane went under; those that survived were mostly those who were thrown free of the craft before it impacted. Ana-Lucia and Eko were instrumental in saving the lives of several survivors, repeatedly returning to the water to fish out more of them. Ana-Lucia resuscitated a little girl named Emma, who survived along with her brother, Zach. Eko takes them to Cindy the flight attendant and asks her to look after them, so that he can fish out the dead bodies and bury them. Libby, the clinical psychologist, is the closest thing the tailies have to a doctor. A man named Goodwin runs out of the jungle and calls for help, saying there’s a man who needs help. Ana-Lucia runs with him to find the man we know as Bernard, Rose’s husband, who’s still buckled into his seat from the plane, but stuck high up in a tree. Ana-Lucia rescues him. Later, Goodwin claims to be a member of the Peace Corps, and becomes fast friends with Ana-Lucia. Bernard checks with Eko to see if she was one of the ones pulled from the water, but Eko assures him she was not. Late that night, the tailies are awakened to the sound of struggling and run to find Eko nearby, having just killed two strangers who were not on the plane.
• Day 2: Eko is visibly shaken by having to murder the two strangers. Ana-Lucia questions him, but he refuses to speak. Another survivor runs up and says they’ve discovered that three more of the tailies are missing. Ana-Lucia suspects something is very wrong, noting that the Others who attacked them have no identification, no technology, and were obviously on the island before they arrived. While she rallies the survivors to find a safer place to live, Eko pulls a thick tree branch out of the ground and fashions the stick we’ve later seen him using as a weapon. A man named Nathan argues with Ana-Lucia about leaving behind the beach and its signal fire as a beacon for help. Cindy backs up Nathan’s assertions with what she heard from the pilot just before the crash, that they had flown for two hours in the wrong direction, so rescuers will not know where to look for them.
• Day 3: The survivors find sustenance among clams and sea urchins washed up on the shore. Libby informs Ana-Lucia that another of them is going to die, his injuries from the crash too severe. Ana-Lucia coldly asks what they’re supposed to do about that, and a stunned Libby walks away without another word.
• Day 5: Donald is buried in a shallow grave along the other dead tailies. By this point, Eko has begun to keep himself separate from the others, and does not attend the funeral.
• Day 7: Goodwin leads a group of survivors in catching a wild chicken they’ve come across in the jungle. Later, Libby takes a piece of chicken to Eko to eat, but he doesn’t respond to her. She asks why he won’t speak, and tells him it wasn’t his fault that those men were killed, that he was just defending himself. He doesn’t answer, but carves words into his stick with a sharp rock.
• Day 12: Ana-Lucia fashions a rudimentary bladed weapon, hoping to kill a “pig” she heard in the jungle. Meanwhile, Nathan has gone missing, but he soon returns, walking into camp as if nothing’s wrong. When questioned, he tells Ana-Lucia that he had to go to the bathroom, but she chastises him for ignoring their system of never going anywhere alone. That night, the Others return and take all of the remaining children, along with several adults. Ana-Lucia kills one of them amid all the mayhem, and on the body she finds a pocket knife and a list of nine names — “nine of us,” she explains, along with descriptions of their appearances, including what they were wearing. Eko ventures into the jungle to find track the Others, but he’s unable to find any sign of them. Nathan is unusually calm about the evening’s events, so Ana-Lucia immediately suspicious: someone from the camp had to have given the Others the list they used to abduct the nine who were taken, and maybe it was Nathan, since he was gone for a while yesterday. Everyone else, including Libby and Goodwin, insist that it’s time to leave the beach; Ana-Lucia regards Nathan dangerously, her unspoken words obvious: she was right over a week ago when she wanted everyone to leave the beach, and if they had listened to her, the evening’s abductions might not have happened.
• Day 15: The tailies journey through the jungle in search of a safe haven. Nathan stops at a creek with fresh water, and Ana-Lucia tells everyone they can stop for five minutes. When the others complain about walking for three days straight, Nathan uses the opportunity to question Ana-Lucia’s authority yet again, suggesting that this is the place they should set up their new home, arguing that there are fruit trees and rock walls surrounding them. Ana-Lucia reluctantly accedes.
• Day 17: Libby tells Ana-Lucia privately that Nathan “creeps me out,” and that she shares Libby’s suspicions about him. Ana-Lucia digs a large hole in the ground that will become the pit we saw Michael, Sawyer, and Jin imprisoned in later.
• Day 19: Without warning, Ana-Lucia approaches Nathan and knocks him out cold. She throws him into her homemade prison pit, and says he’s going to stay there until he tells her the truth. She tells the other survivors that in the two hours they were on the plane, she never saw Nathan onboard. Cindy agrees, she didn’t see him either, and Libby backs them up by pointing out that Nathan never talks about his past. Goodwin and Bernard argue that this is too extreme an action, but Ana-Lucia merely says she’s going to find out the truth about Nathan. That night, she returns to the pit and questions Nathan about where the kids have been taken. Nathan doesn’t respond, but says he’s from Canada when asked about his past, explaining he was on a company retreat in Australia. He claims he was in the lavatory on the plane for a long while, and that’s why no one remembers seeing him.
• Day 23: Ana-Lucia’s interrogations of Nathan have continued for four days, and she’s angry to discover that one of the survivors gave him food to eat. When she confronts them about the food, Eko suddenly shows up, but still says nothing. Ana-Lucia suggests from his body language that he gave Nathan the food, though he doesn’t confirm or deny. Goodwin goes to Ana-Lucia later, alone, and expresses his concerns over the situation, suggesting that they let Nathan go. Late that night, Goodwin lets Nathan out of his cage, but just when it appears that Nathan is free, Goodwin suddenly breaks the man’s neck from behind.
• Day 24: Ana-Lucia awakens to Cindy’s news that Nathan is gone, escaped from his pit. Ana-Lucia declares that the Others have found them, so it’s time to move on.
• Day 26: Their trek takes them past another beach on the island, where Ana-Lucia casts a leery eye on Goodwin as he walks by.
• Day 27: They discover a door in the jungle that leads them to the Dharma Initiative’s Arrow station, a bunker of some kind. Without warning, Eko opens the door. They go inside to investigate and find it to be “some kind of storage facility,” which has electrical power. They find a chest full of unusual objects: a glass eye, a well-worn Bible, and a radio. Eko keeps the Bible, while Bernard takes the radio outside to try and get a signal. They get nothing but static, so Goodwin volunteers to take the radio up to higher ground, alone, to get a clearer signal. Ana-Lucia goes with him, despite his protests, and as they walk, she casually gauges his opinion on the Others. He suggests that the Others weren’t attacking them per se, and that the first night the ones who were taken were the most threatening, such as Eko. When they stop to take a break, Goodwin asks for Ana-Lucia’s pocket knife to carve an apple. She asks where the Others could have gotten the knife from, which is U.S. military in make, since they don’t appear to live with technology or creature comforts like shoes. She asks for the knife back and shows him a stamp that indicates it’s at least twenty years old. She asks how he knew where to find Bernard the day of the crash, and he claims to have heard Bernard calling for help from the beach. She asks if Bernard saw Goodwin walking or running through the jungle, and if that’s why Goodwin pretended to be one of the survivors. She points out that when she saw him run out of the jungle, he wasn’t wet just ten minutes after the crash. The jig is up, and Goodwin drops all pretenses. She asks if he killed Nathan, and Goodwin says, “Nathan was not a good person. That’s why he wasn’t on the list.” He assures her that the children are fine, that they’re “better off.” She attacks him and they tussle, but she gets the upper hand and impales him on a tree branch. When she returns to the Arrow, she tells the others that they’re safe here now, because Goodwin is gone.
• Day 41: Bernard continues to work with the radio, trying to get a signal a couple of minutes a day. Suddenly, Boone’s voice comes over the radio — from his perch in the beech craft — and Bernard answers! When Boone says that he is one of the survivors of Oceanic 815, Bernard says that he is too. But Ana-Lucia takes the radio from him and switches it off, saying that it wasn’t other survivors — it was the Others, trying to trick them, draw them out of hiding. Bernard still wants to believe that there could be other survivors out there, but Ana-Lucia tells him that this is their life now, and he’d better get used to it. She retreats to a nearby creek and breaks down into tears. Eko finds her there and tells her everything’s going to be okay, speaking for the first time in forty days. She can’t believe that he waited forty days to talk, but he counters that she waited forty days to cry, and she lets it all out as he holds her.
• Day 45: Libby and Cindy are fishing in the ocean when they spot Jin, unconscious, washed up on the shore. They bind him and Eko questions him, but of course Jin is unable to understand or answer. Ana-Lucia points out that Jin is wearing a broken handcuff on his wrist. When Eko goes to tell his friends that he doesn’t believe Jin to be a threat, Jin escapes back to the beach and right back to Michael and Sawyer, who’ve just washed up as well. Events then play out just as we’ve already seen: Michael, Sawyer, and Jin are imprisoned in Ana-Lucia’s pit, Ana-Lucia tells Eko to hit her so she can join them in the pit and gain their trust to ascertain the truth about them. He does as she asks, and she goes into the pit.
• Day 46: Michael, Jin, and Sawyer are freed and the entire group returns to the Arrow.
• Day 47: The group begins their journey across the island to the fuselage survivors’ camp.

Day 48: As before, Cindy disappears just as the Whispers are heard in the jungle, and disoriented from the rain and the Whispers, Ana-Lucia shoots her gun at the first thing she sees moving: Shannon.

• The inside of the Arrow station door, just like the interior of the Swan hatch, has the word “quarantine” stamped on it.

• The tail of the plane crashed on a different shore of the island, far from the fuselage.
  Question: Did the tail of the plane crash on the island? 1.01
• On the other end of the radio were the tail section survivors. Bernard was doing the talking.
  Question: Who did Boone talk to on the beech craft’s radio? 1.19
• The other survivors are all either dead, or abducted by the Others.
  Question: What happened to the other survivors from the tail section? 2.04
• The tailies found a radio in a box alongside some other mysterious objects in the Arrow station.
  Question: Where did the tailies get a radio? 2.05
• Goodwin was a man who appeared to be one of the tail section survivors, and claimed to be part of the Peace Corps, but in reality he was an Other who infiltrated their group.
  Question: Who was Goodwin? 2.05
• Ana-Lucia killed Goodwin.
  Question: Who killed Goodwin? 2.05
• The Others took several kids from the tail section survivors, including a pair of siblings named Emma and Zach.
  Question: Libby asked Eko if he “saw the kids” when he and Jin saw the Others. What kids? 2.06

• Why did the Others attack the tailies almost immediately after the crash, when they waited weeks to go after anyone from the fuselage camp?
• Why did the Others abduct so many of the tailies, and especially the children?
• Who or what is the source of the list used by the Others to know who to abduct from the tailies’ camp?
• What is the meaning of the Others’ list of names? Goodwin claimed that only “good people” were on the list. Who made that determination, and what does it even mean?
• Where did the Others take everyone they abducted?
• Where did the objects in the Arrow station’s box (the glass eye, the Bible, the radio) come from?
• Where did the Others get a U.S. military pocket knife?

• “The Other 48 Days” grabbed you with that gripping first scene (preceded by no “previously on Lost” montage) and didn’t let go, resolving lots of mysteries along the way and hitting the highlights of the tailies’ first two months on the island. The episode, which could only be penned by Lost masterminds Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, is a high water mark for the series to this point — and impressively, it manages this feat with all but no involvement from any of the show’s Season 1 regulars. The way it weaved in and out of the tailies’ first 48 days on the island, highlighting the biggest and most dramatic moments, it was like watching a recap show or a highlight reel — of a series that never happened. It was also the first episode of the series to break the “single character flashback” formula, outside of a season-bookending ep.
• Unlike the fuselage passengers that we know so well (aka, the main cast), the story of the tailies allowed us to see the actual crash of the tail section of the plane. To this day, we have never seen the impact of the fuselage on the island.
• It was nice to see the Ana-Lucia we met briefly in “Exodus” return here, and witness her transformation into the hard-nosed leader the island turned her into. It was well depicted how their experiences with the Others made her so cold and unyielding.
• We witnessed Ana-Lucia kill three people on the island: the female Other who attacked her in the night, Goodwin, and Shannon.
• This is the first episode in which one of Jacob’s lists of names appears. We know now that Goodwin, the tailies’ very own version of Ethan Rom, was sent by Ben to infiltrate the tailies’ camp and create a list of names, but we do not know if this is the same list that would later be used to abduct the “good people.” That implies that Goodwin alone made the determination of who was “good” and who wasn’t. Later episodes imply that Jacob is the only person capable of deciding whose name goes on one of these lists, meaning only he knows who’s good and who’s not. What does this say about Jacob, exactly? “The Incident” made it appear that Jacob is engaged in a contest of some kind against his as-yet-unnamed counterpart, warring over… well, we don’t exactly know. But it has something to do with good and evil, and redemption. Season 5 episodes introduced the term “candidate” in reference to people who could be of service to Jacob. Do Jacob’s lists consist of these potential candidates? And what exactly are they candidates to become? Members of his army? Proof that his worldview — and not his nameless counterpart’s — is right? Methinks this could be the fundamental question that Season 6 will revolve around.

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Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 2 cast promotional image and Dharma Initiative logo: American Broadcasting Company.