My Serious, Logical Thoughts on This Place is Death

TITLE
Something Charlotte said shortly before she died.

YOU WATCH YOUR TEMPLE
Ben told Richard to take everyone to the temple. Finally in this episode we see the temple. It looks ancient and reminds one of the ancient Mayans. Remember the four-toed statue. Both the temple and the statue may have been created by the same ancient people. Note the hieroglyphics on the temple. They are the same symbols we saw in the swan hatch when the timer ran out. The symbols appear instead of a countdown and the symbols were red with a black background. This may prove that DHARMA was well aware of the temple and its markings. Charlotte was on the island before as a child and she knew about the well, and we have already seen that DHARMA knew about the wheel room. Surely they saw the temple at some point. We also know DHARMA was well aware of the monster. They even built a shield against it.

THIS SCENE IS PERFECTLY ARMLESS
The story of Danielle is finally told. The details have sort of already been told to us by Danielle in past episodes. Before this episode Danielle had already revealed the following facts:

One of her people lost an arm
She had to kill her own people because they were sick. We did not know what they were sick with.
The monster is a security system. Danielle actually calls it that and tells Sayid that there is no such thing as monsters.

The men of Danielle apparently were changed somehow when they were dragged underground ala invasion of the body snatchers. Danielle even tells her husband that he is not her husband. Perhaps the monster reprogrammed them to be its slaves. Their first step would be to change Danielle also. Perhaps she picked up on this and shot them. Her own husband did lie to her on the beach, and he tried to kill her. The only thing that saved Danielle was that his gun was empty. Danielle revealed in a previous episode that she had to kill them because she could not let them off the island in their state. Whatever that was. Also we have seen the monster also try to pull John Locke down into a hole before. Jack stopped it with dynamite. If he had not would Locke also have been changed? Note when the men got pulled under a survivor calmly tells the others that he is hurt and that he needs help. He seemed a little too calm. Perhaps he had already been changed by that point. If so that means the change is immediate. Another idea is that it was not a human calling out to them at all but rather the monster luring them in.

RUIN ME
The situation with the temple is eerily similar to a book\movie called THE RUINS. In the movie (SPOILER ALERT! Skip to next paragraph if you did not see THE RUINS) a group of young people are quarantined on top of what appears to be an ancient Mayan temple. What they do not know is that the temple is infested with a bizarre plant that feeds on people. The vines can move and wrap around you much like the monster does in this episode. Notice how it grabs one of the crew and drags him underground. It also wraps around the arm of one of them much like a vine.
The husband of Danielle revealed that the monster was actually a security system for the temple. We already knew it was a security system, but we did not know what for. Now we know. How did the husband of Danielle know it was a security system? Did he just surmise this or did he learn something when he was down in the hole? Now since Ben told Richard to take his people to the temple Ben must not be afraid of the monster. How does Ben know that the monster will not attack his people? After all, if the monster is there to protect the temple would it not attack anyone who got near it like the crew of Danielle? The answer may be that Ben has figured out a way to control the monster. We have seen that Ben seemed to conjure the monster at will and unleashed it on the mercenaries. Like when smoke is used near a beehive to neutralize bees from attacking, Ben may have found some way to make his followers immune from the monster attacks. The monster may pass over them because they have the neutralizing agent of Ben. Like when the Angel of Death passed over the jews in Egypt when they placed blood on their doorposts but visited the Egyptians with the death of the firstborn. (See the movie The Prince of Egypt). Ben has also alluded to a Magic Box. He said that you could wish for anything, and it would appear when you looked into the box. Could the box be the temple? It did seem rectangular shaped.
The question is to who or what is this temple erected? May I guess and say that it is to the island itself. The island being as special as it is could have been worshipped by an ancient society. Why not? People have worshiped the sun, moon, trees and everything else. Why not an island? This brings up the question of the monster. If the temple was erected by an ancient people then how could they build the monster and what is it? It could be that the people built the monster to protect the temple. Now that they are all dead the monster still exists and continues to mindlessly protect the temple like a computer program that continues to perform actions programmed into it by a programmer. This same premise was used in a star trek episode called That Which Survives. According to www.startrek.com the description of this episode is:

A deadly computer image protects a long dead outpost.

In this episode the security system was a hologram in the appearance of a woman, and she would kill people by touching them to defend the outpost. She was the “monster” so to speak. The monster on LOST could be just like that. But this still does not answer the question as to how a primitive ancient people could possibly have the technology to build the monster and how it still exists today. The answer could be time travel. By time travel advanced technology could have ended up back in time, and these ancient people were not so primitive as we might think, or they could be modern people transplanted back in time. As far as we know the farthest back in time that our LOSTaways have gone is 1954, and many of the jumps have been fairly recent. But that does not mean that jumps to ancient times are impossible. Who says they cannot go back in time thousands of years?

SMOKE ON THE MOUNTAIN
Jin sees a pillar of smoke in the distance. Danielle has said that before the Others took her baby she saw a pillar of smoke. The LOSTaways also saw a pillar of smoke when the Others were planning something. When they investigated they found a fire on the beach with no footprints around it. It has never been explained why the Others build these fires before striking. Though Danielle is only 7 months pregnant. Unless she is going into early labor it should be 2 more months before Alex is born and the Others arrive to take her. This would mean that the smoke Jin saw was not the smoke Danielle saw right before Alex was taken but another smoke. If it was different smoke what were the Others planning when Jin saw the smoke?

REMEMBER ME
At just the right moment, Charlotte has a memory of herself on the island that has to do with when she saw Faraday warning her to leave. But why did she not remember this important detail before? Charlotte may be the last surviving member of DHARMA. Desmond also had a memory of Faraday that he did not recall until a very convenient time which led him to the church just as Ben and the others arrived. Why did Desmond only recall seeing Faraday at the right moment? Also notice that the mother of Faraday is Eloise Hawking. The mouse of Faraday in the episode The Constant was also named Eloise. Now we know why. Faraday knows that he will encounter Charlotte as a child and tell her and her mom to leave the island. He will also tell them that if Charlotte ever returns to the island she will die. In the words of commander Data from the episode Times Arrow: “It has happened. It will happen.”

THE GHOST AND MISTER CHRISTIAN
The reason why Christian is unable to help Locke up may be because his body is not really physical much like the appearing disappearing cabin. He may not really be there, but may just appear in the mind of Locke. Also when Christian says to say hello to my son (Jack) this is similar to what Ana Lucia said to Hurley when she said that Libby says hi. But these visions of people are probably just visions though we did see Hugo actually touch a shoe of the guy Dave he saw in a vision. But Dave was never really a person so even touching the shoe could have been in his mind. Recall in season one when Locke drugged Boone using only ingredients found on the island. The island itself (or Jacob) seems to be able to enter into the mind of these people and cause them to see visions of people and other things. Recall when Kate saw the horse. Proof that these dead people are not really the people they seem to be comes from the vision that Eko had of his brother. And his brother said to him “You talk to me like I am your brother.” To which Eko replied “Who are you?” So Jacob or the island or the monster appears to people as other people usually dead people (except Walt!) and can act exactly like the dead people since the island can read the minds of the people it is talking to.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Although this episode tries to answer the question as to why all of the missing LOSTaways must be returned to the island, the answer Locke gives: “that is just the way it works” is no answer. Notice that Locke keeps his promise to Jin by not forcing Sun to return. However he does give the ring to Ben so he can get her. Technically he does not break his promise.
Why must Locke die?
Is Locke really dead? There is a tiny amount of evidence that he is not. Hurley asked Ben if Locke was really dead and Ben avoids the issue.
Why were the Hurley numbers being broadcast from the tower? Presumably DHARMA did it. We know that Sam Toomey heard the numbers also being broadcast on some island, but that was during WW II which we believe was before DHARMA. Sam Toomey was a guy in Australia that Hurley went to see. That is why he was there when he boarded the doomed flight 815. So who broadcasted the numbers during WW II and why?
Why does Sun tell her daughter that she has a new friend for her? Is she planning on taking Aaron back to Korea?

Q