"The Candidate" Discussion

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the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 14, "The Candidate".

Season 6 Episode 14 "The Candidate":
2004 "flash-sideways":

• Locke wakes up from surgery and sees Jack
• Jack asks what caused Locke's original spinal injury that put him in a wheelchair
• Jack: "Because I think you're a candidate"
• Jack offers to fix Locke, but Locke refuses

2007 on the Island:

• Sayid to Jack: "Welcome to Hydra Island"
    
• Sawyer and Kate get put back in the cages
• Charles Widmore reveals that Kate isn't on his list, but Ford, Reyes, and the Kwons are
• Interesting... then why was Austen not crossed out in the lighthouse, as confirmed on an Official LOST Podcast?
• "i stopped taking damon and carlton seriously in season 3" -diesel929
• Widmore asks if the fence is live yet, and they say in about an hour
• Widmore says they haven't got an hour because "he's coming"

2004 "flash-sideways":

• Jack introduces himself to Bernard Nadler and asks about Locke's original injury
  Bernard gives Jack the name of the man who was with Locke: Anthony Cooper
• They realize that they were both on Flight 815

2007:

• Sayid to Jack: "Locke saved you."
• Sayid says "It's just the three of us now" because the rest of them scattered when the bomb was dropped
   
• The Man in Black asks Jack to help him convince his friends to trust him
    
• Sun puts Jin's wedding ring back on him
• The power goes out and the pylons stop working, and then the smoke monster appears and kills one of Widmore's men
• Jack shows up and takes the dead Widmore guy's keys and sets his friends free, explaining "I'm with him"
    
• Jack says that Sayid turned off the generators

2004 "flash-sideways":

• Anthony Cooper is in a nursing home
• Sawyer had been looking for Anthony Cooper
• "the james ford con may have been the last of his cons. he had been redeemed." -diesel929's theory
• Or perhaps Anthony Cooper was still in the middle of his long con of John Locke when the accident happened

2007:

• MIB finds a strange wire in the plane; is it rigged with explosives?
• MIB explains to the candidates that the plane was rigged with C4
• MIB says they need to take the submarine instead
• Sawyer pretends to be on the MIB's side, saying "Maybe I was wrong about you"
• Claire apologizes to MIB and he says it's all right
• Sawyer tells Jack to not let the MIB in the sub because he doesn't trust it

2004 "flash-sideways":

• Locke mutters in his sleep, "Push the button" and "I wish you had believed me"
• Lines from original timeline!  Explanation?
• Claire shows up and asks if she can talk with Jack
• Jack gets an Apollo bar from the machine
• Jack figures out that Claire was also on Flight 815; he's starting to figure out that something is weird
• Claire said she'd never even met "this man" presumably meaning her father
• In the original timeline, Claire remembered that Christian Shephard used to sing "Catch a Falling Star" to her when she was little.  Apparently in this timeline Christian didn't visit her and sing to her, or at least he stopped visiting her earlier in her life prior to the time she can remember
• Claire asks how Christian died; Jack gives the same cause of death as the original timeline
• Claire has a music box that Christian left for her that plays "Catch a Falling Star" and she doesn't know why
• Jack offers to let Claire stay with him instead of her hotel

2007:

• Sawyer and Frank Lapidus enter the sub and take control
• MIB tries again to convince Jack to board the sub, and says whoever told him he should stay didn't know what he was talking about
• Jack says that John Locke told him that, and Jack pushes the MIB into the water
• Jack made the point that he can't kill them, so the MIB couldn't directly get revenge on Jack
• Kate is shot
• MIB gets out of the water and begins taking out Widmore's men with gunfire along with Claire
  Sawyer chooses to leave Claire behind on the dock because the MIB begins to approach the sub
  Jack discovers that the MIB gave him a backpack with a bomb in it; it has less than 4 minutes left
• Sayid tries to defuse the bomb
• Jack says "Locke can't kill us" and tries to convince Sawyer not to pull the wires because they'll be killing themselves
• Sawyer pulls it anyway and it ticks down rapidly
• "when did Sawyer work for the bomb squad?" -baileybear
• Sawyer inadvertently killed Jin, Sun, and Sayid (and Frank?) if Jack is correct
• Sayid tells Jack about Desmond and then runs with the bomb to get it away from them, and sacrifices himself
• "Sayid was redeemed" -baileybear
• Here's confirmation that Desmond really is still alive; Sayid didn't kill him
• Jack, Jin, and Sawyer try to rescue Sun, who's trapped, but it's not enough to save her
• Sawyer gets knocked unconscious and Jack takes him to the surface
• Jin stays with Sun and they die together underwater
• Who will raise Ji-Yeon?  Why did neither of them think of their child?
• It's frustrating that Jin wouldn't save himself; this is similar to Charlie deciding to shut himself in rather than shut himself out with Desmond

2004 "flash-sideways":

• Locke explains how he got injured: "I was in a plane crash" and his father was his first passenger, and the accident was his fault, and now his father will never walk or talk again
• Jack: "What happened, happened.  And you can let it go."
• Jack: "I *can* help you, John.  I wish you believed me."

2007:

• Jack, Sawyer, Hurley, and Kate are all alive on the beach
    
• MIB: "It sunk."
• Claire: "What, they're all dead?"
• MIB: "Not all of them"
• Somehow he seems to have a connection with the candidates where he knows if they die
• MIB tells Claire he's going to go finish what he started

Other questions, comments, and theories from the chat:

• Question in chat: "do we think ajira plane isnt done yet?"
• I never thought it had a chance of working to leave the Island anyway
• "im telling you i could swear that wndshield busted. didnt a stick impale the copiloot? a stick that crashed through on impact of the olanding... lostpedia:  The co-pilot died when a tree branch came through the window and harpooned his chest, spraying blood over Frank Lapidus." -diesel929
• "Maybe MIB just used the excuse of the plane to get all the lostees together" -baileybear
• "that is the only thing that makes sense" -diesel929
   
• "interesting tidbit from lostpedia:  As of the end of this episode, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Claire, and Walt are the only main cast members from Season 1 who are still alive in the original timeline." -diesel929
    
• "the only candidates left are Jack, Sawyer and Hurley" -baileybear
• ...unless Ji-Yeon is the Kwon candidate!
• Maybe Widmore does know that Kate is still a candidate, but he was tricking Sawyer
    
• Theories: Will Kate die?
• "she can' die.  she has to resolve something with Claire first" -baileybear
• "someone needs to tell claire that her mom is out of the coma. i thnk kate should be that person. and that aaron is with his grandma" -diesel929
• "weird thing is Claire never asked where her son is" -baileybear
• ...unless that conversation happened off-camera, or was filmed but didn't make the cut to the show
• "the lost lowdown went into deep discussion about this on their podcast. the last recruit" -diesel929
   
• "what is desmond there for?" -baileybear
• Has he already fulfilled his purpose?  Widmore got him to consciousness-travel to the alternate timeline, and now in the alternate timeline Des is bringing together the Flight 815 people and getting them to have memories of the original timeline.  Perhaps that was Widmore's whole purpose in bringing Desmond back to the Island
   
• When Des ran into Locke he may have wanted to get Locke to have a near-death experience so he would remember the original timeline; we didn't get confirmation that Locke remembers it in this episode, other than his mutterings while asleep in the hospital being from the original timeline

LOST News:

• The series finale episode has been extended from 2 hours to 2.5 hours, as reported here and later confirmed on The Official LOST Podcast (thanks to KateJack for the tip)

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

• There were once again reflections in the flash-sideways: a reflection of Jack and Claire was seen in the music box's mirror (screenshot)

SPOILERS:

Preview for next week's episode:

• Locke from Season 1: "Two players, two sides.  One is light, one is dark."
• Shots of the Man in Black and Jacob
• Looks like it may be a MIB/Jacob-centric episode about their origins
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyulYb5wUVA 

Geronimo Jack's Beard: (spoiler about characters in the finale)

• Hurley, Kate, and Ben are all in the series finale episode (listen here)

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