Season 6, Episode 8: "ReCon"

The more and more we see of the alternate realities of each of the survivors, it seems that each of them has become a better version of their self. This week we focus on Sawyer, who has spent his life as a conman, the same man that he is hunting (the real Sawyer)...he has actually become that man (his worst enemy). However, now in this new lifeline we see that Sawyer is actually a cop. Turns out he had a choice, to become a criminal or a cop, and he chose to go the GOOD route. Even despite this change in his lifestyle, however, he is still chasing "the real Sawyer" and won't give up until he kills him. Does that mean that deep down he really is a bad person after all? (He is using his role as a cop to do something to benefit himself, and to kill a man without any remorse).

We also learn that Sawyer, both in the past and in the future, can't hold on to a relationship. He is so fixated on chasing down the real Sawyer that he lets it get in the way of forming relationships, both with women as well as with his friend and partner Miles. Perhaps he is just destined to be alone. Back on the island, when Kate asks if he is with Locke, he replies "I ain't with anybody." I think that has always been the case with him. Sawyer only looks out for Sawyer. And even if he insinuates he is "with" Locke, he is only doing it for his own benefit. Every man for himself.

So back to the alternate reality...I am loving all the connections between the island castaways. Sawyer and Miles are partners in the LAPD. Miles sets him up with Charlotte, the archeologist who was sent on the freighter. Sawyer runs into Charlie's brother Liam in the police station (who is there to bail him out of jail after being arrested on the 815 flight). Then at the very end we see him chase down Kate after she crashes her car into his and takes off running. (I am reminded also of when she crashed the car killing her childhood friend Tom and then took off running). Kate is always running. Yet now it is Sawyer who catches her. Funny how they were in the elevator together after their flight landed in L.A., and he noticed the handcuffs on her, yet being a cop he didn't do anything to stop her. This insinuates to me that Sawyer, as a cop, does not have the "good" intentions that a cop should have. He only became a cop so he could pull some strings and help him do the detective work to find the real Sawyer. Most cops would see an escaped convict in handcuffs and would do something to stop them, yet he actually helped Kate get past the security guards coming off the elevator. Just goes to show that Sawyer is still the same guy deep down, a womanizer, a flirt, he is still "Sawyer" - he just happens to be a cop in this life.

There was also an interesting little find in Sawyer's apartment, he had a copy of the book "Watership Down" on his dresser. I've never read it, but here is the description I found when I looked it up: Watership Down is a heroic fantasy novel about a small group of rabbits. (Rabbits have played a large role in LOST...the Dharma test rabbits, the metaphors with Alice in Wonderland and the "looking glass" white rabbit). In the novel, the animals live in their natural environment, but possess their own culture. Evoking epic themes, the novel recounts the rabbits' odyssey as they escape the destruction of their warren to seek a place in which to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way. This sounds very similar to the plight of our Oceanic survivors.

So back on the island in "real" time, there is a lot going on. Fake Locke tells Sawyer who he really is (the smoke monster) and he shows Claire that he is boss (he slaps her and says that was "totally inappropriate" of her to go after Kate). Fake Locke actually seems like he is genuine in a lot of what he is doing. There was a very important conversation that he had with Kate, when he tells her about his childhood. He says that he had a crazy mother (yes, even he had a mother, back when he "didn't look like this, in this body.") This is very interesting because for the first time, someone has issues with their MOTHER, instead of with their father, as all the others have had (Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, Hurley) and father/abandonment issues. Anyway, he talks about how even if things had been different, it wouldn't have changed anything. This goes along with our theory that DESTINY truly guides one's life, that even if certain events are different in one's life, it all will still end the same. As we have seen in each of the survivor's alternate realities, many of them have very different circumstances of their lives (Sayid's brother is married to Nadia, Locke is with Helen, Sawyer is a cop, etc.), but regardless of these major changes in their lives, things still end up the same. (Sayid is still a torturer, Locke is still in a wheelchair, Sawyer is still searching for the man who killed his parents). This also reminds me of when we saw Jacob and the man in black (smoke monster) sitting on the beach talking about how everything "always ends the same."

So we also learn that Widmore has commissioned a submarine and has made his way back to the island along with his own team. Sawyer makes a deal with him and also makes a deal with fake-Locke (see, he is still a "conman" at heart, making deals left and right just to further his own benefit...to get off the island). Sawyer's plan is to let the two of them "go at it" and meanwhile he and Kate can sneak off the island with the submarine. Here is what I think is going to happen: In the "locked box" inside the submarine I think is a bomb. Somehow they are going to get Jack and Hurley and Miles and use Faraday's plans for detonating the 1977 bomb and use it to carry out their plan of "erasing" their past so that Flight 815 never crashes on the island. Remember Juliet's dying words to Saywer: "it worked." She just didn't say WHEN it worked. So I do think they will erase their past, and everything we've seen so far of them on the plane, landing in L.A., and their lives afterwards is the future. So, as I said above, even with this huge change in their lives (not crashing on the island), they all still end up the same, deep down. Destiny prevails.

I read an article today that says next week's episode is going to tell us the backstory of Richard Alpert and apparently is going to give us a lot of answers, including WHAT exactly the island is.

There was a clue about what the island is, saying it is a 4-letter word, it does not have an A or an E in it, but there is an O. Anyone have any ideas of what that could be?

Here are my guesses:
— TOMB (thinking about all the Egyptian things on the island, the foot statue, the hieroglyphics on the cave walls, when I think Egypt I think of tombs. The island could be a "tomb" of all those who have died there)
— WOMB (problems with fertility on the island? The island metaphorically being the "womb" of the bad twins Jacob and Esau)
— LOOP (the island "looping" through time")

Leave your guesses of 4-letter words with an "O" in the comments section.