Theories Related to "D.O.C." About Naomi, Juliet, and Mikhail

Tonight I watched "D.O.C." (Season 3, Episode 18) with my wife, and I had a few thoughts related to the episode. (You can listen to or read the initial commentary on "D.O.C." here.)

In "D.O.C.," Naomi turned to Mikhail and said "Eu não estou só" (which means "I am not alone" in Portuguese, not "Thank you" in Italian as Mikhail claimed). The fact that she spoke in a language that only Mikhail could understand seemed very suspicious at the time, especially after the show when people looked up the meaning of the phrase. It seemed as though Naomi was conspiring with Mikhail and The Others. It's interesting to note the stark contrast between this impression of Naomi and that given by Ben in the Season 3 finale when he told Jack that Naomi's people would kill every living person on the island. Where exactly did Ben get this information? Did he concoct that story because he's afraid of people leaving the island?

It also occurred to me again that Juliet may be pregnant (as I first discussed here), and since pregnant women on the island die within their second trimester, this would certainly give her a major reason to want to get off the island. Juliet was in bed with Goodwin on the day before the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, and with sperm production being five or six times higher on the island, it's possible that Juliet could have become pregnant—unless of course she and Goodwin had access to some type of contraceptive. The Season 3 finale took place on days 92 and 93. Assuming that Juliet could have become pregnant on the day before the crash, she could be roughly at the end of her first trimester, or perhaps farther along if she became pregnant on a previous date (although of course she would start to appear pregnant if she was much farther along). This wouldn't give Juliet much longer to live.

After Jin captures Mikhail, Hurley says "I thought Locke killed that guy with the electro-fence thingy." Then after Mikhail is threatened by Desmond, he admits, "As your friend pointed out I already died once this week." Are we to take this literally? At Comic-Con 2007, executive producer Damon Lindelof said that we left Season 3 with Mikhail dead. This would be at least the third time Mikhail has "died" on the show; he looked pretty darn dead earlier in the Season 3 finale after getting harpooned in the chest, yet he managed to swim outside the station and detonate a grenade, which (also) killed him according to the executive producers... even though it wasn't at all clear that he died. Is Lindelof's comment about Mikhail being dead irrelevant because he always seems to come back from the dead? Or in other words, will we yet see Mikhail alive on the show? The executive producers have indicated that dead characters will not return to the show except in flashbacks. Strange and creepy proposition though it may be, has Mikhail never been alive the whole time we've known about him? What if he, like Richard Alpert, is one of the mysterious original Others who doesn't seem to age, and about whom we don't know much yet? Is it possible that these island-native Others are some type of ghosts or manifestations of the island, and thus can never really age or die? That's a far-out theory, but there's got to be some good explanation. Either the writers are changing their minds about not resurrecting any characters who have died on the island, or Mikhail just has a lot of near-death experiences, or there's some unnatural phenomenon going on with Mikhail.

Charlie protested about letting Mikhail go free. He started to get in a fight with Mikhail but Desmond stopped him. Charlie said, "This is a mistake! We can't keep letting these people go!" It turns out that Charlie was right about it being a mistake; this scene was a foreshadowing of Mikhail killing Charlie in the Season 3 finale (not to mention destroying the equipment in the underwater station, The Looking Glass, that would have enabled them to communicate with the outside world).