LOST: Like (crazy) mother, like son & Desmond vs. Esau in the Heart by cabinboy

This is a multi-part ramble that starts with smoke monsters and walks thru some LOST-logic to arrive at a couple of possible finale scenarios. I try not to get caught turning over details, but it still ends up being on the lengthy side, sorry. Here's a quick outline for you to scan to try and judge its worth...

1. The Heart of the Island doesn't kill you.
2. Crazy Mother is a monster (that's not hyperbole, either =).
3. Esau kills Momster—how?
4. Who can kill the Locke-ness Monster?
5. Why hasn't Esau turned the Wheel?
6. The Losties win *and* Esau leaves.

A couple of notes on my jargon... I call Jacob's brother Esau. I call the original timeline LOST1 and the new/alternate timeline LOST2 and they diverge in 1977 at the Incident. The Island exists outside of normal reality inside the snowglobe, a pocket dimension. Until now, as far as we know, all the beings we've met on the Island have their origins and histories in LOST1. If I need to distinguish between the same person in the different realities, I'll add a 1 or a 2 to the person's name.

OK! Making my own kind of music...

THE HEART OF THE ISLAND DOESN'T KILL YOU.

When a human being is sent into the Heart of the Island, his or her consciousness is forced from its body, leaving behind a lifeless human corpse. The consciousness is given the form of a smoke monster. The identity, will, consciousness, memories, and experiences of this monster are those of the human. The person has NOT died but been transformed. Among a smoke monster's abilities are the scanning of living people's memories and the co-opting of the forms and experiences of anyone whose dead body is located on the Island.

CRAZY MOTHER = MOMSTER.

Crazy Mother was a smoke monster and the Island Protector. Sometime in the past, perhaps the very distant past, she entered the Heart of the Island and came out as a monster. She knows firsthand what happens to someone who enters the Heart, and she uses her monster's strength to fill in Esau's well and wheel chamber as well as destroy the settlement of the XENA extras.

ESAU KILLS MOMSTER.

Esau kills his crazy mother, and with her last breath, she thanks him. The only thing that's come close to hurting the Monster we know in 2004 on is some special ash and intense sonics, so how does Esau do it? I'm gonna list what seem like unique qualities of the scenario...

1. Esau was born on the Island.
2. Esau might have been Infected (I suspect that Momster Kelvined him when she smacked his head into the wheel chamber wall).
3. Esau used a steel/iron knife.
4. Esau loved the Momster.
4a. The Momster loved Esau.
5. The Momster WANTED to die (she thanks Esau).
6. Esau catches the Momster by surprise (she's distracted by his game pieces when he stabs her from behind).
6a. The Momster doesn't speak to Esau until after the killing stroke (a lot has been made about not letting the Monster speak).

WHO CAN KILL THE LOCKE-NESS MONSTER?

So, given these possible monstercidal prerequisites, who do we know that fits the bill?

1. Island born? We know that the DI's policy in 1974 was to have women deliver their children off-Island, but after Amy's successful delivery of Ethan, maybe that changed, allowing for Miles to be born on the Island in 1977. Maybe?

We don't know about Desmond's childhood. Could he also be an orphan of the Island? A crummy 11th hour reveal, but maybe.

2. Infected? Claire.

3. Iron weapon? Now, where has that pesky old dagger got to?

4/4a. Love? A resurrected Jacob? A Crazy Mother or Claudia doppelganger or apparition? Perhaps, in just the right light, given all the time Esau spent as Christian, Claire might evoke something akin to love.

Now "stuck" in Locke's form, could Locke's identity be imprinting on Esau's enough that Esau would feel what Locke would? If so, MAYbe there's a case for someone like Jack reaching him emotionally.

5. Deathwish? So close to success, I don't see Esau wishing to check out. Unless... Dying is part of the process. So, perhaps, when the time is right, he will want the last human-Candidate survivor to kill him. Hrmm...

6/6a. Surprise attack/no talking? Y'know, I'm pretty sure that Miles is the only living Lostie on the Island in 2007 who hasn't had a conversation with Locke-ness.

But if the speaks-first-counter resets with every encounter, it could be anyone. And y'know, we've witnessed several times on LOST how Losties lose their hearing for minutes after being caught in the wake of an explosion or energy discharge. If Esau's voice IS a factor, a moment like that would give the Losties temporary protection against it.

Hrmm... *tallying up* Looks like it's either Claire (for Infected + love) or Miles (for Island born + no talking). I like the sound of Miles the Monster-killer, don't you?

But maybe killing Esau isn't the way to go...

THE WHEEL GETS BUILT, SO WHY HASN'T ESAU LEFT?

I don't know who completes Esau and the Atlanteans' (that's right, I said it—deal with it!) wheel chamber project, or when (Locke turns the wheel during a time when Tawaret is whole, right?), but it gets completed *and* Esau and his super-alchemist buddies were correct about the wheel as an exit from the Island.

So, why hasn't Esau turned it? I think that as a monster, the close proximity and exposure to the energies that transformed him is painful and/or deadly to Esau. I believe that was why the Monster Christian that appears in the chamber with Locke is an apparition and not a corporeal dupe. He cannot help Locke get up, remember?

This is why Esau has spent millennia planning and orchestrating his loophole to kill Jacob, the first step in his plan to rid the Island of all human life, a strategy he sussed out that would "tilt" the Rules and allow him to leave the Island (somehow).

But hey! This means that Esau the monster can be defeated or destroyed or maybe somehow transformed again when exposed to the Heart of the Island, or enough of a concentration of its electromagnetic energies. Now...

WHO DO WE KNOW WHO EATS EM FOR BREAKFAST? (SCENES FROM THE ENDGAME)

Desmond! Is anyone else envisioning a wrestling ring with Widmore's sonic fence as the posts, surrounded by a circle or three of ash, with Luchador Desmond in the red (a color he hates) in one corner, Luchador Esau in the black in the other, and an entrance to the Heart of the Island in the center of the ring?

No? Just me then? OK. =)

I don't know exactly how we get to this scenario, but it doesn't seem THAT hard to engineer from where we last left our Losties, right? Basically, Esau is rendered non-smoking, stuck in his human Locke-ness form, and Desmond gets him in a headLocke and launches them both down the rabbit hole to the Heart of the Island. For Desmond, it's traumatic, but y'know, the net effect will be nothing worse than a visit to the tanning salon. For Esau, tho, it'll be the end...

Or will it? Remember...

THE HEART OF THE ISLAND DOESN'T KILL YOU.

LOST1. Esau and Desmond plunge down the well into the light and splash into a subterranean pool. Separated by the impact of their landing, they drift apart, unconscious. Underwater, we see Esau's body disappear...

Flashover to LOST2, where Claire2 is about to give birth to her son, the vessel for Esau's spirit. This Aaron's entrance into the world is Esau's escape from the Island, his return home, a life with a real mother. It would be nice for me if Claire went into labor and delivers at Helen and John's wedding, held at the chapel above the Lamppost station in Los Angeles. And with traffic being whatever it is for whatever reason, Claire and her newborn Aaron end up being airlifted to the hospital. Wedding crasher Desmond2 looks up into the sky as they leave, and then faints, as Desmond1's consciousness returns to Desmond1's body in the generator shed.

Flashover to LOST1. Underwater, we see Desmond's body disappear...

Up on the surface of the Island, the remaining Losties realize that they've survived. They mourn their losses. Those who must stay and choose to stay stay. Those who wish to return home return to the outside world. Weeks later, Jack, the new Protector, shows enters a cave on the Island where a stream flows out of an opening in a rock face and into a luminescent pool. He waits. Suddenly, Desmond breaks thru the surface of the pool and gulps for air. Jack jumps in to help him out of the water.

JACK: Welcome to another life, Brother. *

If you enjoyed this ramble, you might like to check out my collected works of LOST rambling at http://wuzzon.blogspot.com/search/label/LOST .

Man, I'm not looking forward to not looking forward to this show anymore...

*sigh*

Namaste.

* Remember the Orchid Station orientation video that ended up crapping out before Locke could get to the end? "Halliwax" and some DI minions were exploiting using the Vault to send a rabbit into the future. They place it in the chamber, they power it up, the rabbit disappears, but then—this is the part we don't get to see—reappears so milliseconds later, shunted thru time. This is how Desmond gets his "extra life" after sacrificing himself to take out Esau.

Bonus question: What do Crazy Mother and Esau learn from the Heart? I have a feeling it's like the Dark Side tree on Dagobah in that all that's in there is what you take with you. Momster gets a worldview that connects the energy of the Heart to life everywhere and believes that because of this, the Island needs to be protected. Given all of Esau's actions after his visit to the Heart, he seems to have received an understanding of the Island as an inert thing, a physical and metaphysical construct that has been fashioned into his prison.