Rewatching LOST: 5.01 "Because You Left"

The survivors left behind on the island start jumping through time at random, endangering their lives. Meanwhile, Locke gets some dire instructions from a higher power, and each member of the Oceanic 6 encounters complications that jolt them out of their everyday lives.

Editor’s Note: Because I’ve already written full recaps of this entire season, the Season 5 “Rewatching Lost” entries are going to be a little different. These recaps will be a bit shorter, covering the important plot points, along with the answered and unanswered questions, but leaving the intricacies by the wayside. (If you want longer recaps, hit up my existing write-ups for each; I’ll include a corresponding link with every recap.) Also, the structure will be slightly different as well. Instead of separating the off-island stuff and the island-based storyline, I’ll be including both under “What Happened” since they more or less happen concurrently.

• At the Hoffs/Drawlar Funeral Parlor, Jack and Ben steal Locke’s corpse. Later, they check into a hotel room and Jack reveals that when Locke visited him a month ago, Locke told him that Sawyer, Juliet, and everyone they left behind on the island would die if the Oceanic 6 didn’t return.
• Kate and 3-year-old Aaron are visited one day in their home by lawyers from Agostini & Norton, who are operating under orders from a mystery client to determine whether or not she and Aaron are actually related. Kate sends them away, but panics and flees the house with Aaron.
• While on her way to Los Angeles from London, Sun is detained at the airport by Oceanic Airlines security, under orders from Charles Widmore. Widmore asks her what the common interests are that she mentioned to him earlier, and she says that they both want Ben dead.
• Hurley and Sayid go on the run from the authorities when the body of the man Sayid killed outside the mental hospital is found. The police suspect Hurley of the crime, since he also escaped from the hospital the same night, so he is now a wanted fugitive. Sayid takes Hurley to a hotel room he believes will be safe for both of them, but armed men are waiting for them there. Sayid struggles but defeats all of them, though not before he’s shot with a tranquilizer dart. Hurley is forced to take him and flee the hotel. Unfortunately, Hurley’s been photographed near one of the dead bodies, implicating him in another murder.
• When the island moved, the survivors jumped through time, but the Others did not. Daniel and his group on the zodiac raft moved along with the island, because of their close proximity to it. Daniel returns to the beach and explains that when Ben turned the wheel below the Orchid station, it dislodged the island in time, so they will continue jumping through time until the situation is rectified. Dan asks Juliet and Sawyer to take him to a manmade structure, and Juliet selects the Swan station. Another time jump occurs, and the group reaches the Swan station, but now they’re in the present or the future because the hatch has already been destroyed. Daniel keeps Sawyer from returning to the beach to warn his friends of what’s to come by repeating a single mantra: you cannot change the past. “Whatever happened, happened,” he says, and failure will always result if you try to change history’s outcome. He shows Sawyer his journal, which he says contains everything he knows about the Dharma Initiative, and says that it’s the reason he’s here. Another time jump occurs and now the hatch is there, intact. Sawyer tries to contact Desmond, who’s still inside at this point in time, but Daniel again tells him that it won’t work because they can’t change the past. So the group heads back to the beach, though Daniel notes in private that Charlotte’s nose is bleeding, and that it was likely caused by the time jump. Dan makes an excuse to send her on ahead, and when he’s alone, he does the very thing he told Sawyer not to bother trying: he knocks on the door to the Swan station to contact Desmond. Desmond answers, and Daniel asks for his help, explaining that the rules of time travel don’t apply to Des, because he is “uniquely and miraculously special.” He instructs a very confused Desmond, in the future when Desmond has escaped from the island, to travel to Oxford University and find Daniel’s mother, who can help the survivors that have been left behind on the island and are now skipping through time.
• Locke finds himself all alone when the first time jump occurs, and soon he witnesses the crash of the beechcraft near the Pearl station. He ventures to the crash site but is shot in the leg by a still-alive-at-this-time Ethan Rom before he can reach the plane. Ethan nearly kills him but another time jump occurs and this time Locke is met by Richard Alpert, who knows all about Locke’s current situation and how to help him. He patches up Locke’s wound and instructs him to find a way to bring the Oceanic 6 back to the island, or the island is doomed. To convince his friends to come back, Richard says, Locke will have to die. Another time jump occurs before Richard can explain further, and Locke once again finds himself all alone.
• Desmond wakes up in bed next to his now-wife, Penny, suddenly remembering Daniel’s plea for help from the time they met years ago on the island. Desmond and Penny are living on a yacht, in hiding, but Desmond takes the helm to steer the boat toward England so he can try to find Daniel Faraday’s mother at Oxford.

• Sometime in the 1970s, the man we know as Marvin Candle lived and worked on the island. His real name was Dr. Pierre Chang, and he oversaw the construction of the Orchid station. He knew all about the wooden wheel buried beneath the station, and the pocket of “limitless energy” located there as well, which he claimed could potentially allow Dharma to manipulate time.
• Daniel Faraday, looking much the same as we know him from 2004, somehow found his way into the Dharma Initiative at the same time that Pierre Chang was there.

• The Arrow station’s purpose was to develop defensive strategies and gather intelligence on the Others, which the Dharma Initiative referred to as “the Hostiles.”
  Question: What is the purpose of the Arrow station? 2.04
• Daniel’s raft was “inside the radius” of the island-moving phenomenon, so they moved along with it.
  Question: What’s become of Daniel and the people he was ferrying on the zodiac raft? 4.14
• Daniel has come to the island to study space/time, and the Dharma Initiative’s experiments regarding it.
  Question: What is Daniel’s mission on the island? 4.02
• The question refers to a Dharma recruit come to replace whoever was manning the Swan station.
  Question: What’s the meaning of the question, “Are you him?” 2.02
• Benjamin Linus.
  Question: Who is the second person that Sun blames for Jin’s death? 4.12
• Yes, Sun wants to see Ben dead, and believed she could reach out to Ben’s archenemy for help in making it happen. Her appeal seems to have worked, as she and Widmore have apparently forged a tentative alliance.
  Question: What are the “common interests” Sun has with Charles Widmore? Did her comment about others who’d left the island besides the Oceanic 6 implicate a common enemy between them in Ben? 4.14
• The island appears to have move not only through space but through time as well. Although it’s possible the island moved through space while the people living on it are moving through time. (We never really get a definitive answer on that.) In any event, it’s probably safe to say that the island has relocated to a different, yet every bit as remote, position in the South Pacific.
  Question: The island has successfully been moved. Where did it go? 4.14
• His body has been embalmed and dressed in preparation for burial, so it seems safe to conclude that he is indeed dead.
  Question: Is Locke really dead? 4.14

• How did Daniel wind up in the 1970s as part of the Dharma Initiative?
• Chang selected the site of the Orchid station, based on his knowledge of the pocket of “unlimited power” beneath the site. How did he know ahead of time where to build the Orchid?
• Did Chang recognize the wooden wheel buried beneath the Orchid station? Does he know what it is, and who put it there?
• Who is Agostini & Norton’s client that’s trying to separate Kate from Aaron?
• When did Sayid stop working for Ben, and why?
• Who were the men waiting at Sayid’s hotel room, intent on killing him and Hurley? Who did they work for?
• Why are the Oceanic survivors, the Freighter Folk, and Juliet affected by the time jumps, yet the Others are not?
• How did Richard know where to find Locke, near the Pearl station?
• How did Richard know so much about Locke jumping through time, including how to help him?
• Why must the Oceanic 6 return for the island to be saved?
• Why must Locke die to convince the Oceanic 6 to return?
• Does Charles Widmore own Oceanic Airlines?
• Why is Charlotte’s nose bleeding in response to the time jumps?
• Who is Daniel Faraday’s mother?
• Why does Daniel believe his mother can help him and his friends stop jumping through time?

• There’s so much we know now that we didn’t know when this first aired… Like the fact that Ben was lying to Jack when he said the last time he saw Locke was in the Orchid station on the island. The truth was that he last saw Locke only days before this conversation took place, when he murdered Locke himself.
• Another scene that took on a whole new meaning was the Richard/Locke scene. We know now that Jacob’s-nemesis-in-Locke’s-form was the one that instructed Richard to tell Locke to bring his friends back to the island, and that he’d have to die to do it. Was the purpose of all this merely to convince Locke that he had to die, so Jacob’s nemesis could take on his form? All that stuff about the Oceanic 6 having to go back to the island to find their destinies and to save their friends’ lives — was this all a lie? Or did Jacob’s nemesis actually have a reason for wanting the Oceanic 6 to return to the island?

Need more depth and detail? Read my full recap of “Because You Left”.

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Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 4 cast promotional image: American Broadcasting Company.