It drove me crazy that we never got to know who was in that coffin. We never got a really clear shot of the obituary that Jack ripped out of the newspaper. Well, that’s not entirely true. Some clever folks with TiVo and hi-def grabbed some screencaps to try and make sense of it all. But the props and editing folks were on the ball, and made it difficult to draw any real conclusions.
Facts revealed to the casual LOST viewer:
- No one showed up to the funeral except for Jack, who said he was neither friend nor family.
- The coffin looked small.
From the first part, we know it cannot be Claire or Christian in the coffin. (I know, Christian is supposed to be dead. But there are those who think he’s not.) Because Jack talks to Kate after the funeral, we know it’s not her either. From the second part, it’s not likely to be Hurley. We’re looking at the coffin’s occupant being either a child, someone really short, or someone who ends up as an amputee. Because of the [remote] possibility of an amputation, this really doesn’t rule anyone out.
We get a little bit more information dangled in front of us from an insider who leaked the text of the obituary, which admittedly may be a hoax.
What did we learn from this, the devout fans who scour the internet for this type of thing? (Assuming this information is legitimate, of course.)
- John Lantham, the alias of the dead guy, is from New York.
- He is survived by a teenage son.
- He appeared to have hung himself.
- He is a man.
The only concrete evidence this gives us is that the coffin is not occupied by a woman. A lot of people jumped to the conclusion that it’s most likely Ben, because he’s short and would be an obvious choice for having no friends to attend his funeral. Who would be his teenage son, though? I find it unlikely that he’d let Karl masquerade as his son if they both ended up off the island.
Other people think it may be Sawyer, but I think Sawyer is the “he” that Kate has to get back to.
I think the dead guy in the coffin is Michael. Assuming he and Walt didn’t perish in the open sea, he probably wouldn’t want to use his real name and draw attention to the fact that he was supposed to be dead in a plane crash. There would be far too many questions that he just doesn’t have the answer for. Let’s not forget that he murdered a few people in cold blood. It would be far harder for any of his fellow survivors to identify him if they should ever get rescued. Although it wouldn’t appear that any of them would want to attach themselves to the plane crash anyway, and certainly not to anything that happened on the island. They’ve all done things they’re not proud of.
Michael wouldn’t have many friends from the island because of his killings and because he betrayed them to the Others in order to leave with Walt. He has a teenage son that wouldn’t have to be contrived. And he’d likely have a lot of issues that could drive him to suicide – perhaps guilty feelings, perhaps estrangement from his son.
If I were a betting woman, my money would be on Michael. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
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