5.11 Whatever Happened, Happened

Summary and Spoilers

When Jin awakens from his Sayid bashing, he finds the almost dead body of young Ben. He brings Ben back to camp and alerts other that Sayid is the culprit. Juliet tries to patch Ben up, but she can’t stop the bleeding, and the Dharma surgeon is inaccessible at another station. Sawyer asks Jack to help, but Jack refuses. Later, Jack explains to Kate that he already saved Ben once, at Kate’s request, because Ben was going to kill Sawyer. He says he won’t do it again.

This discussion with Kate takes place in a house where Sawyer has put Miles and his rifle in charge of keeping Jack, Kate, and Hurley under house arrest lest they talk to anyone. Hurley questions Miles about time travel. Kate gets fed up with Jack’s indifference, and she leaves, despite the earlier warning from Miles that he would shoot anyone who left in the leg.

Kate gives blood (she’s a universal donor) but that isn’t enough. Juliet suggests the Others may be able to help. Kate loads Ben in a van and drives to the border of the Dharma camp. Sawyer arrives soon after, but he isn’t there to bring her back – he wants to help her.

Sawyer disables the barrier fence, and together they bring Ben to Richard, who reacts as if he already knew that Ben was coming. Richard agrees to take Ben, but says he will never come back, he will forget all that happened, and he will lose his innocence. Kate agrees to those conditions.

Richard carries Ben into the Temple.

On the other island, big Ben wakes up in his weakened state and finds himself face to face with a very alive John Locke.

In flashback, Kate visits Cassidy and brings her money, saying it is from Sawyer (even though it isn’t). Cassidy wants none of it. She is still angry at Sawyer, and she is convinced that the reason Kate took Aaron was to help mend the heart that Sawyer broke when he did his cowardly dive out of the helicopter. Kate leaks a lot of details about what really happened on the island. Later, she leaves Aaron with Claire’s mother, and leaks even more details.

Comments

Miles says that time-traveling islanders like himself cannot change events that have already happened, because even though those events happened in the future, it is from their past. Hurley then wonders why Ben did not remember Sayid in the future. Miles doesn’t have an answer for this. However, later we learn (from Richard) that Ben will forget all that happened.

This doesn’t make sense to me and doesn’t gel with how time travel and the timeline is normally handled in fiction. Surely, if you travel back in time and do things differently, this would affect the future. I wonder why the creators have chosen the opposite path. Are they saying that nothing the time travelers do will change the future? Logical or not, it seems like a more boring strategy – I was looking forward to a different, Ben-free future where the Dharma people were not mass murdered.

Kate tells Claire’s mother that Claire is still alive. This seems like a big call – Claire is missing and presumed dead, isn’t she?

One of the Others suggests to Richard that before taking Ben, he should consult with Charles and Ellie. So in this time period, Widmore is still in a position of power with the Others.

Nits

Sayid has just spent a couple of years traveling around assassinating people. So why, when he had his chance to kill young Ben, did he shoot him from a distance and then run away? There was no one in the vicinity who was threatening him. I would have expected Sayid to fire a couple of shots into the head of young Ben; normally, that has a greater chance of guaranteeing death. Or is it possible that Sayid did not want to kill Ben?

Young Ben’s internal injuries would be exacerbated by a bumpy ride on a dirt road…so I’m not sure if Kate’s decision to move him was such a good idea. I suppose she had no alternative; Juliet stated he would die anyway.

Lost Quotes

Jack: I’ve already saved Benjamin Linus, and I did it for you Kate…I don’t need to do it again.
Kate: This is our fault; we brought Sayid back; we caused this.
Jack: No, when we were here before I spent all my time trying to fix things, but did you ever think that maybe the island just wants to fix things itself? That maybe I was just getting in the way?
Kate: You know, I don’t like the new you. I liked the old you who wouldn’t just sit around and wait for things to happen.
Jack: You didn’t like the old me, Kate.

Hurley: Let me get this straight, all this already happened?
Miles: Yes.
Hurley: So, this conversation we’re having right now, we already had it.
Miles: [claps] Yes!
Hurley: Then what am I gonna say next?
Miles: I don’t know.
Hurley: Ha! Then your theory is wrong!
Miles: For the thousandth time, you dingbat, the conversation already happened. But not for you and me. For you and me, it’s happening right now.
Hurley: Okay, answer me this. If all this already happened to me? Then why don’t I remember any of it?
Miles: Because once Ben turned that wheel, time isn’t a straight line for us anymore. Our experiences in the past and the future occurred before these experiences right now.
Hurley: [pause] Say that again?
Miles: [frustrated, hands Hurley his gun] Shoot me, shoot me please.
Hurley: Ah-ha! I can’t shoot you, because then if you die in 1977, then you’ll never come back to the island on the freighter 30 years from now.
Miles: I can die! Because I’ve already come to the island on the freighter! Any of us can die, because this is our present.
Hurley: But you said Ben couldn’t die because he still has to grow up and become the leader of the Others.
Miles: Because this is his past.
Hurley: But, when we first captured Ben, and Sayid, like, tortured him? Then why wouldn’t he remember getting shot by that same guy when he was a kid?
Miles: [pause] Huh. I hadn’t thought of that.
Hurley: Huh.

"Hello Ben. Welcome back to the land of the living."
- Locke to Big Ben