We flashback to a goth-looking Claire in a car wreck. She’s OK but her mom has been seriously injured in the accident and is now on life support—and someone is taking care of the medical expenses. Turns out it’s Jack’s dad, who is also Claire’s dad. So Claire and Jack are indeed related. This I knew.
He tries to reconnect with Claire, but she tells him to take a leap. Jump ahead to Mom still on life support and the blonde, pretty Claire we know and love is pregnant. She goes to see her mom one last time before getting on the fateful Flight 815 to give her baby up, and tearfully tells her mother how sorry she is for being such a horrible daughter and inadvertently causing the accident.
Back on the island, Charlie is in a good mood since he escaped death with Hurley in the VW wagon, which somehow ends up on an island with no roads (that was stretching it, even for those Lost creators). Anyway, Charlie wants to go on a picnic with Claire, but Desmond shows up and tells Charlie it would be much better if he went hunting instead—‘cause, you know, Desmond can predict Charlie’s death. Just as it starts to get uncomfortable with Desmond standing there, all ominous-like, Claire gets a burst of energy after seeing a flock of sea birds fly over head. She comes up with a plan to get them off the island: Catch one of the birds and put a message on them. Seems she could tell these birds had been tagged (for reasons we don’t know but this IS the weirdest island ever) and wherever they land, someone will find them and the message.
But Charlie doesn’t want her catch a bird, thinks its giving her false hope. Claire gets all pissy about it and tells Charlie to bugger off. She’s so moody, isn’t she? Then she sees Desmond and Charlie arguing and ends up following Desmond to a place where he catches a bird, nesting on some rocks by the ocean. She doesn’t understand how Des knew exactly where the bird was, so he tells her that if Charlie had come, like he wanted to, he would have slipped on the rocks and died. He spills the beans about his “gift.” Now, a contrite Claire knows about Charlie’s death watch. As they attached the message to the bird, Claire tells Charlie nothing is going to happen to him.
Meanwhile, Locke, Sayid, Rousseau and Kate are still following the map, with Eye Patch in tow. Sayid once again chastises Locke for blowing up the communication center, but Locke counters that he if he’d known about the C-4 in the basement, he wouldn’t have blow it up. But later Sayid finds some C-4 in Locke’s pack. Hmmm, Locke’s all mysterious suddenly. In a separate moment, Kate wonders why Rousseau won’t ask questions about her daughter, to which Rousseau explains it’s because she doesn’t want to hear the answers. After 16 years, her daughter won’t even know her. Very true.
Walking along with Eye Patch, we find out he came to the island by submarine. But it seems the underwater beacon which used to let them know where the island is has stopped its emissions because of the electro-magnetic pulse from the imploding hatch. Damn that hatch! Therefore, people could now leave the island, but they could never come back.
Eye Patch also says the man who brought him to the island is “magnificent.” Kate scoffs, “If Ben was so magnificent, then why did he need their help to save him?” Eye Patch corrects her–it’s not Ben of whom he’s speaking. It’s someone else, someone with much greater power. (Remember when Ben was a captive at the Lostie’s camp, he alluded to another person, who’d be very angry if Ben spilled the beans and that this man was great?) Eye Patch continues, telling them the reason they are not on “the list” is because they are flawed, angry, weak and frightened. Eye Patch seems to know all about them, names, etc. But when he comes to Locke, he says “The John Locke I used to know is…” but Eye Patch is cut off by Rousseau. She sees something beyond the brush.
As they come through the jungle, they see an open space with giant stone columns circle around it, a fence of some kind. They’ve obviously reached the outer perimeters to the Other’s side of the island. Are these columns electrified? Are they motion detectors? Locke shoves Eye Patch into it to find out. To their horror, they all watch as some kind of sonic pulse fries Eye Patch’s brain right in front of them. Oh, so that’s what they do.
The Lostie crew figured out how to climb over the perimeters, however, and finally make it to the Others compound. And there they see Jack–not as a prisoner, mind you, but playing football catch with Tom. Has he turned into one of THEM?
