Hurley, Whispers, and Bye Bye Black Rock

In Everyone Loves Hugo, some intriguing developments further take us towards combining forces in what appears to be a major confrontation with The Man in Black. Desmond’s role in the grand scheme of things, on the island and within the Sideways, continues to astound me like his seeming willingness to go anywhere with The Man in Black after following Sayid to the main island, away from Widmore who had requested his assistance in protecting the human race from he who wants to get away and the darkness that would be carried with him towards all he’d come in contact with. Desmond happily addresses both Sayid (who just seems soulless with no personality or humanity, a shell that basically appears to be a human weapon of destruction for MiB to use as he sees fit) and Man in Black, even following MiB to a well where he’s unafraid to go right up to it. In the form of Locke, MiB doesn’t really carry that absolute insidiousness but there is just this sinister edge to his presence that screams not to get too close or let your guard down. Desmond learns that when he’s tossed into the well with MiB returning to camp without a care in the world! And in the Sideways, just as inexplicable a moment as Desmond’s obliviousness towards following MiB to the well and naïveté at looking deep into its bowels as they discuss the electromagnetic energy at its location, he is in a car monitoring Locke in a wheelchair when schoolteacher Ben Linus asks him about why he’s parked near a playground just idle. And, the victim on the island, it is the reverse in the Sideways where Desmond plows through wheelchair Locke with his car, full vehicular-pedestrian assault! It is an absolute shocker as Ben runs up to a trembling Locke, bloodied and broken on the asphalt, with his fate most uncertain! On the island, when Ilana mishandles some unstable dynamite, resulting in her going KABOOM!, Ben surmises that the island once again takes another life when her time is up…once the island is done with you, it is literally done with you. I picture Ben as this goalless, purposeless man in spiritual unease, left to go to and fro until his reason for continuing forward is defined. He goes with Richard Alpert and Miles, as they set a course for the Ajira plane with plans to destroy it somehow so that MiB isn’t able to escape off the island. With Jack following Hurley and Sun towards a confrontation with MiB, this decision, on its face, seems rather questionable to say the least. But Hurley, on the island, appears compelled to not blow up the plane but instead chart a course towards confronting MiB. With Michael’s spirit visiting him on the island (Michael confirms to Hurley that the “whispers” (like what Danielle always heard) are those who have died but are unable to leave the island!), Hurley learns that blowing up the plane is a bad idea and would result in the loss of more lives. So that Alpert couldn’t gather more dynamite from the Black Rock, Hurley blows it up completely! So we get resolution on the whispers and the Black Rock is no more. There are spirits of those that have died on the island and Ilana’s mission to help Jacob results in her “explosive” passing. She forgave Ben, he rejoined her crew, and now he’s aligned once again with those who don’t trust him…and his disenchantment with Jacob and the island continues, as well.