And the Baby Momma Is ...

I couldn't be more embarrassed that it took me all of a week to think of this as it is so completely obvious. Penny is Jack's baby momma! Who do we know that runs a tour de stade? Jack!

Picture this: 1989. Penny and Jack are married and she's just given birth to a son. He's like, "I have an idea for how you can drop this baby weight. I like to run up and down all the stadium stairs behind the hospital. So why don't you bring me dinner (have a lettuce leaf yourself) and then go run the stairs." And she's all, "Bullocks to that. Why don't you go take some more pills!" And they split up. But then she's back in the dating world and ends up taking his advice about the stadium stairs. And she's been rockin' those stairs for the last 15 years.

Which would make David Shephard Widmore's grandson and heir-apparent to the Widmore empire. It would also make Widmore Jack's ex-father-in-law. I love that!

Another clue: David Shepard plays Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor by Frédéric Chopin -- the same song Daniel played in his flashback. In the flash-sideways Daniel is a musician. He lives in the same city as his half-sister. He could have easily taught his nephew this piece.

Desmond Is Destiny's Bitch

So here I was thinking Ilana was the one to watch when sneaking up out of the corner of my eye was old lady Hawking. Eloise the Rat.

This is almost a guest post in that my trusty barista at Cafe Bella generously gave me the scoop (as my eyes popped out of my head in amazement).

Eloise Hawking -- since shooting her son on the island while she was pregnant with him (only on Lost, right?) -- has been plotting, planning and scheming to stop that event from happening. Here's what she's got to work with in this equation:

The Island. She was leader of the Others and in Richard's confidence, so I'm thinking she knows everything he knows. But then again, Ben was leader and didn't seem to know jack about the smoke monster even though Richard did. But Richard never did really like him. Maybe Rich got more tight-lipped with leaders after getting burned by Eloise. On the Island (which still doesn't have a name ARGH!), she's got magnetism, a healing-water pool, two powerful gods fighting it out, and all the mangoes you can eat.

Charles Widmore. The variable. Maybe she loves him, but he's just a pawn in her game. Now she's sent him back to the island by packing his ears full of lies about the end of the world. She really just wants to solidify the existence of the flash-sideways world and stop it from course-correcting -- which it is doing rapidly with Desmond's unwelcome help.

Desmond. The constant. We don't know when she found out but at some point, Eloise got wise to Desmond's unique ability to change the future. She's been on him like white on rice ever since. She appears in photos he looks at, drags him into parallel dimensions, the works. Now she's got her husband kidnapping him; it's no longer just subtle manipulation.

The Dharma Initiative. Eloise ran the Lamppost station for several years, so I'm starting to think she may be behind the Dharma Initiative, as a silent partner to Widmore. She created the D.I. to investigate the Island's properties and see what she can use to get her son back. She personally flies over the Island (sans chopper) each month and drops the D.I. food crates.

So where does Ilana come in? Well I'm getting to that. So Ilana is no demi-god like Eloise (or an alien). She can't shift through time and space and alternate realities. She is just a humble servant to Jacob. But humble servants have taken down demi-gods before. My prediction: Eloise gets frustrated watching her husband botch the job she sent him to do on the Island. She trashes the Lamppost and then flies to the Island atop a tub of Dharma ranch dressing yelling, "If you want something done you've gotta do it yourself!"

Ilana is there to greet her. And what we thought was a mono-a-mono e.g. Ben-Widmore/Jacob-ManInBlack turns out to be womano-a-womano. Judging by the state of Ilana's face the first time we saw her, she's a scrapper. But Eloise does drop scaffolding on people without remorse. It will be a close one!

Lost: Uncorked

We now have all the answers we need to figure out the secrets of Lost, thanks to the last phenomenal episode, "Ab Aeterno." It's all about wine. And who is our island wine expert? Desmond, of course (Oh He of the exposed chest hair)!

Desmond was a monk at the Moriah Vineyards; Moriah being the name of a biblical mountain in Jerusalem. That's important because lately the show has been all about bored gods on a mountaintop. I'm talking specifically about Jacob. He explains to us that the island is a cork that holds an evil wine (maybe an alcohol-heavy blend from Argentina). We don't yet know how an evil wine might pop its cork, but an even-money bet would be: by killing Jacob. So why then, if this would allow the evil to escape, would Jacob ever bring people to the island who might kill him? That would make him a pretty crappy guardian.

Jacob says it's to prove a point to the man-in-black. To prove to him that man is good and can change. But what happens if he makes his point? Man-in-black turns into a happy wine? Doubtful. This isn't the reason. It's because immortality is just boring. Jacob needs people to play with. He brings them to the island to watch them struggle. It's him who needs the entertainment. Bringing people has the added bonus of tormenting his nemesis until he gets so mad he smashes bottles in the wilderness.

But now for the big answers. Sure we have a metaphor for the island, but still what is it? In an earlier post I said it was a machine. I stand by this prediction. It's a machine built by Egyptians and run by magnets. When the Dharma Initiative drilled into the magnet and caused an explosion, they risked releasing the man-in-black. They then had to build the Swan station to continually build up the magnetism and retain the island's original properties. I'm thinking after the explosion in Season 5, Marvin Candle picked up the remnants of his arm and then had a visit from Jacob who told him he had popped the cork and needed to plug it back up again, which Candle did.

But now the cork is again comprised. We have no Jacob. Ilana is feckless in installing a replacement. The man-in-black has already begun his march off the island. Desmond better show up tonight and put a cork in this thing already.