Rewatching LOST: 5.05 “This Place Is Death”

Jin witnesses some important events in island history. Locke takes the final step on his quest to leave the island. Charlotte confides a startling secret to Daniel. And Sun prepares to kill Ben.

• At the Santa Monica Pier, Sun draws her pistol on Ben and prepares to kill him. She blames him for Jin’s supposed death, but Ben tells her that Jin’s still alive, and he can prove it by taking her to see Eloise Hawking, who lives at a local church. Kate takes Aaron and leaves, and Sayid departs as well. But Sun agrees to go with Ben and Jack.
• As Jin gets to know his new French companions, he begins to realize that he’s traveled back in time to 1988, the year a very pregnant Danielle Rousseau crashed onto the island. A man named Montand picks up the radio signal broadcasting from the island that repeats the Numbers over and over, and wants to find the signal’s source. Danielle’s lover, Robert, finds out from Jin that there’s a radio tower on the island, and he gets Jin to take them to it. Jin guides them through the jungle, but they soon discover that one of their number is missing, a woman named Nadine. The smoke monster suddenly attacks, and as they flee, Montand is grabbed by it and dragged toward a huge, ancient structure in the jungle covered in hieroglyphs: the Temple. The monster drags Montand under the Temple, ripping off his arm as his friends try to prevent the monster from taking him. Only seconds later, Montand calls out to them from beneath the Temple, begging for help and saying that it’s safe to come down because the monster is gone. Jin warns them against it, but Robert and the other men go anyway. Danielle tries to join them, but Jin stops her, reminding her that she’s pregnant. A time jump occurs, and Jin finds himself standing at the Temple a month or two later (evidenced by Montand’s decaying arm, still laying on the ground nearby). Jin returns to the beach to look for his French friends, and finds everyone from the team except Danielle and Robert to have recently been shot dead. From a distance, he watches a shocking scene play out between Danielle and her boyfriend Robert. The two of them hold weapons at each other as Robert appears quite sane while Danielle seems crazed and panicked. She accuses all of her friends, including Robert, of being different since they went down beneath the Temple, though he denies it. But things change as Robert suddenly pulls the trigger on his weapon, trying to kill the woman he loves and the child she carries. But his gun jams and she shoots him instead, just before Jin is taken by another time jump.
• Alone now, Jin returns to the jungle to try and find his old beach camp, but he’s found instead by an overjoyed Sawyer and the rest of his friends. With Charlotte’s help translating Korean, they bring Jin up to speed on what they’re up to, explaining that Locke’s intention is to find the Oceanic 6 and bring them all back, including Sun. Another time flash hits, followed immediately by a second, and now everyone has a nosebleed. Charlotte collapses, but when she comes to, she warns Jin not to let Locke bring Sun back to the island, because “this place is death.” Locke wants to keep moving to the Orchid, but Daniel refuses to leave Charlotte behind. After yet another time flash, Daniel says he’s staying behind but everyone else should go. As they’re about to leave, Charlotte tells them that if the Orchid hasn’t been built yet in whatever time they’re currently in, they should just “look for the well.” They soon come upon the Orchid, which is in a state of decay. But when another time flash occurs, they find that the structure is gone, having not yet been built. Close by, Locke finds a large well built from stone with a rope descending down its center. The well is in a clearing surrounded by ancient, manmade pillars.
• When they’re alone, Charlotte finally tells Daniel her secret. She says she grew up on the island, because her parents were part of the Dharma Initiative. But she moved away with her mother, and as she grew up, her mother tried to make her believe that she’d imagined the whole thing. She became an anthropologist to find the island again, and she’s spent her entire life looking for it. She tells him she remembers something else now: when she was living on the island, a “crazy man” scared her by telling her that when she left the island, she must never come back, because if she did, she would die. “Daniel, I think that man was you,” she cries. Another time jump hits, and Charlotte can’t hold out any longer. She dies in Danielle’s arms, and he’s deeply grief-stricken.
• As Locke is about to descend the rope, Jin steps forward and makes Locke promise not to bring Sun back here, because Jin fears for her life. He gives Locke his wedding band as proof to give to Sun that he “died” on the island, and Locke reluctantly gives him his word he won’t bring Sun back. Locke promises everyone to be back as soon as he can, and grabs the rope. But he only gets about ten or twenty meters before another time flash hits, and he loses his grip on the rope. Locke falls the rest of the way down and suffers a violent break to his leg. Up top, Sawyer and the others are stunned to see that the well has not yet been dug, and the rope that Locke was holding is now protruding out of solid ground.
• Down at the bottom of the well, Locke finds himself in a dark cavern. Christian Shephard appears and offers to help Locke the rest of the way. Christian reminds him that back when they met at Jacob’s cabin, Christian told Locke to move the island in order to save it. But Ben moved it instead. Christian reemphasizes that it was Locke who was meant to do it, not Ben. Christian tells Locke that once he’s left the island and persuaded all of his friends to return, he needs to take them all to Los Angeles to meet Eloise Hawking, who will be able to tell them how to get back. He shows him the room with the giant wooden wheel, which is in a chamber adjacent to where Locke fell. The wheel has slipped off its axis, and this is the reason the island has been jumping randomly through time. Christian says that Richard was right when he told Locke he would have to die to convince his friends to come back to the island, but Locke has to be willing to make that sacrifice. Locke musters his strength and agrees, pushing the wheel back onto its axis and disappearing into a flash of light, the same way that Ben did. As the light takes him, Christian tells him to “say hello to my son.”
• Ben, Sun, and Jack arrive at the church, and Ben gives Sun Jin’s wedding ring, which he says was given to him by Locke. Sun recognizes it as Jin’s, and agrees to go back to the island with Ben, to find her husband. Desmond suddenly appears, wondering what the three of them are doing there. Ben takes them all inside the church, where they meet Daniel Faraday’s mother: Eloise Hawking. She’s dismayed that Ben wasn’t able to bring them all to see her, but she decides it will have to do, and suggests that they get started.

• The enigmatic Eloise Hawking.
  Question: Who is Daniel Faraday’s mother? 5.01
• The “sickness” Danielle spoke of was, in reality, the smoke monster. It took the rest of Danielle’s team and changed them somehow, so that they became completely different people. “Sick” was the word she used to describe them, but they don’t appear to have ever been infected by any sort of actual pathogen.
  Question: Danielle’s story about the rest of her science team was ambiguous. What exactly happened to them? 1.09
• Only what she witnessed first-hand when it attacked her and her teammates, and then took the rest of her team and altered them somehow.
  Question: What does Danielle know about the monster? 1.09
• Danielle believed that after her friends encountered the monster, it altered their personalities, making them dangerous to her and her child.
  Question: What is the sickness that took Danielle’s teammates “one by one”? 1.09 & Question: What is the infection Rousseau spoke of? Is it the same sickness that “took” her French crewmember friends? Could it be related to the injections Desmond was taking daily in the Swan station — the same reason the Hatch door was labeled “quarantine” on the inside? Is it even real? 2.15>
• Danielle was prevented from getting close to the monster by Jin, while he was moving through time. When her friends went down beneath the Temple and found the smoke monster, she stayed on the surface.
  Question: Why was Danielle not infected by this sickness? 1.09
• Montand’s arm was ripped off by the smoke monster as it dragged him beneath the Temple.
  Question: How did Montand lose his arm in the Dark Territory? 1.23
• Presumably, the monster was taking Locke to the Temple — or rather, under it — just as it took Montand. I think we can infer that it planned to alter him the same way it altered Montand and his friends. To what end, is unknown.
  Question: Where was the monster taking Locke, and what did it intend to do with him there? 1.25
• After he had been changed by the smoke monster, Robert told her that the smoke monster isn’t a monster at all. He called it “a security system.”
  Question: Why does Danielle believe the monster to be “a security system”? 1.23
• Looks like.
  Question: Does the monster live in the Dark Territory, and that’s why it’s such a dangerous place? 1.23
• Charlotte grew up on the island because her parents were members of the Dharma Initiative, but after she moved away with her mother, her mother tried to convince her that the island wasn’t real. She returned to get back to the place where she was born.
  Question: What is Charlotte’s mission on the island? 4.02
• Because she knows it was where she grew up, and she needed to prove to herself that it was real.
  Question: Why has [Charlotte] been trying to get back [to the island]? 4.13
• To get the Oceanic 6 to return with him. Locke had been told by both Richard Alpert and Christian Shephard that the only way to save the people on the island (presumably from the time jumps) was to bring back everyone that left.
  Question: Why did Locke leave the island? 4.14
• The same way Ben did: by turning the frozen wooden wheel.
  Question: How did Locke leave the island? 4.14

• Why did the smoke monster kill Nadia, but leave Montand, Robert, and the others alive? Was it so it could “change” them, as it seemed to?
• What exactly happened to Montand and the other Frenchmen beneath the Temple? Did the monster do something to them, as Danielle believed?
• Why did the monster single out Montand to attack and drag beneath the Temple? Was he merely bait to get the others to go down there on their own, or was there some significance to the monster picking him over the others?

• “This Place Is Death” is the second Jin-centric episode of the series. (Shocking, I know. But he’s had several episodes where the focus was on both Jin and Sun.)
• What a crazy busy episode! In just 42 minutes, we get Danielle Rousseau’s backstory, Jin’s reunion with his friends, things are resolved with the Oceanic 6 and Ben at the Santa Monica Pier, Charlotte’s backstory and death, Desmond’s reunion with his friends, and the island survivors reach the Orchid so Locke can turn the wheel and exit the island. Whew! Despite all that was crammed into it, “This Place Is Death” is a surprisingly straightforward episode, without as many dramatic twists as a typical Lost episode contains.
• I still wonder about poor little Ji Yeon, and how long she’s going to have to get along without either of her parents, now that Sun’s course back to the island is set. Sun and Jin have to be reunited at some point, so what happens then? Will they leave the island together, and go live happily ever after with their daughter?

Need more depth and detail? Read my full recap of “This Place Is Death”.

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