Lost thoughts - the smoke monster, the temple, kate's black horse

I won’t be able to watch Lost tonight, so I’ll try to watch it on Thursday night and blog my response then. However, I have a few questions and thoughts right now, since my office has “Lost for Lunch” days on Wednesday. We started it a good six months ago or so, and are near the beginning of the second season now. For dedicated Lost-watcher like myself, it’s great because I see so many things watching old episodes the second time around.

Today’s rerun was “What Kate Did”, which revealed a number of things – Kate killing her step-father who turns out to be her father, the missing clip in the orientation video, and Walt’s first contact with Michael through the computer in the Hatch, and the rather awkward combination of Kate kissing Jack right after he hears Sawyer saying he loves Kate.

What confused me most about the episode was watching Kate’s “visions” of the black horse. She sees it several times in the episode, both on the island and off of it. Back when I saw the episode the first time I assumed it was a figment of her imagination, since everyone seemed to be having strange visions of people from their past. The weird thing about the black horse is that SAWYER SEES IT TOO. When Sawyer regains consciousness Kate takes him out of the hatch for some fresh air, he looks up sees the horse and comments that maybe he should go back inside. At that comment, Kate looks up and see the horse, and then Sawyer looks at her and asks, “You see it too?” Kate goes up and STROKES the horse, and Sawyer says, “Kate, do you know that horse?” Kate nods the affirmative.

So… here’s the thing. It’s not a figment of her imagination, because Sawyer sees it too. It could be just a horse on the island, because we see horses at other times and know that there’s random animals on the island. However, given that it stands there and responds to her calmly, it really does seem to know her. So… is this a time travelling horse?

The other thing is – some of the “apparitions” seem to have actually been the smoke monster. Is the horse one of these?

Speaking of the smoke monster, I just cannot figure it out. There seem to be two things that appear as a smoke monster, but sometimes I think it’s just little explosions that either Dharma or the hostiles are setting off to scare people. Other times… there is definitely a smoke monster, known as Smokey to the fans and Cerberus to the Dharma initiative. The appearance of Yemi in particular seems to embody the monster. Yemi/Smokey challenges Eko’s belief that he is really his brother, and then suddenly the smoke monster appears and kills Eko. It would appear that Eko WAS the smoke monster.

Danielle says that the monster is a security system, and it’s interesting that the Dharma Initiative’s security system seems to be built partly to keep the monster out. And, at one point when Ben is trying to repel the invading forces from the Dharma compound, he disappears into a secret door in his house that reveals a stone doorway covered with hieroglyphics. When he reappears, covered in dust, the monster shows up and decimates Keamy and his mercenaries. Ben seems to either control or know how to unleash the monster, and he’s doing it through a tunnel that seems connected to the same stone and hieroglyphics that we see in the Temple, which is where the monster sucked a member of the French team into.



What IS the temple?? It seems like it was there before Dharma, perhaps from the four-toed statue days? The temple seems to recognize some sort of power and it must be significant, because at the end of Season III Ben told all of the Others to head to the Temple, saying it might be the last safe place on the Island. At that point, most of the Others didn’t know where it was, only Ben and Richard, and Ben said the Losties shouldn’t go there, just the Others. Hmmm. It’s also in a territory that Rousseau has dubbed “The Dark Territory”, and it holds her camp, the Black Rock, and the area where the Monster is most active. On the Island map on the blast door, the area is labeled "Primary nexus of Cerberus related activity",

Will the temple end of being the source of the mystical/spiritual aspect of the show? They’ve definitely emphasized that scientific aspect this season, but the Monster and the Temple still hold a lot of mystery.