"Raised by Another" shines the spotlight on the adorable Aussie and mother-to-be Claire. It opens with her in the midst of a terrible dream. She wakes in the middle of the night and hears a baby's cries. She wanders around, finding Locke sitting at a table. He's dealing cards (probably tarot cards) and he tells her that "everyone pays the price now" because she gave her baby away. As he looks up at her from the card table, we see that his eyes are two different colors: his right eye is black and his left eye is white. And like good Lost students, we'll take note of that. Departing from here, she continues to follow the cries of the baby. They lead her to a bassinet in the jungle which contains bunch of blankets. She sifts through the blankets to get to the baby, but there's nothing in them except blood. She screams, and her shrieks in the dream carry her back into reality where she continues to scream. Charlie tries to console her, but he's not very effective. Now, here comes the twist: the blood she had on her hands in the dream is present in reality, too! Spookiness, right?
The haunting dream sets the tone for the remainder of the episode, which has some other freaky-deaky stuff. On the island, it mainly has to do with Claire getting attacked by some unidentified assailant with a long syringe. Sadly, we won't find out who the culprit was 'til season two. But of course, we should know that it was Ethan. Remember? He was tryin' to make sure Claire delivered a healthy baby, 'cause it probably would've been the first one delivered on the island since Juliet delivered him in 1974 (season five).
Ah, yes. Ethan. He's another freaky-deaky part of the episode. Good ol' Hurley decides to keep a record of everyone on the island, and his episode-long efforts culminate in the discovery that Ethan wasn't on Flight 815. In the final scene, Ethan's got Charlie and Claire alone and cornered in the jungle. Viewing this for the first time, we don't know what's gonna happen. We don't even know if Ethan has bad intentions. But we find out soon enough!
So, someone's trying to do something to Claire's baby, we just don't know much more than that. What of the baby, though? I thought you'd never ask, dear reader! That's where the flashbacks come into play. And, you guessed it: more freaky-deakiness.
Turns out Claire got pregnant when she wasn't expecting it. Baby-Daddy was all about it in the beginning, but then he decided he didn't want any part of it, so Claire was going to deliver the child and give it up for adoption. That is, until she visited some Australian John Edward who kept giving her different stories regarding the future of the baby. At first he declined to give her any reading because something he saw spooked him (he later claimed that he saw a "blur," which was a bad sign). At a later reading, he told her that she couldn't give the baby up for adoption and that she was the only one who could raise the child. According to him, the baby needed Claire's good energy incorporated into its life. Disregarding the psychic's admonitions, she attempted to give the baby up to some lucky couple. She reached an agreement with a husband and wife and was about to sign the child away when some greater force intervened. The pen with which she was prepared to sign the contract didn't work, nor did a second pen. Holding a third pen, she hesitated and backed out of the deal, going back to the psychic who had told her that he had some sort of a solution to her problem.
Get on the plane to Los Angeles, was the solution the psychic offered. He told her that there was a willing couple there, but that she had to take a specific flight. Oceanic 815 to be exact. While recounting the story to Charlie, Claire realizes that the psychic probably foresaw the crash of the plane on the island and told her about the Los Angeles plan so that she'd be stranded halfway there with no alternative but to raise the child herself.
So, the big questions posed in this episode about Claire and her baby (Aaron) are yet to be answered. There's been no sign of Claire since the fourth season, but the producers have said that the mystery surrounding her will be addressed in the final slate of episodes. I have to say that it's a storyline that I'm looking forward to for next year. Claire's not among my favorite characters, but everything with her has been so weird since Keamy's troops attacked her island house in the fourth season. She up and left Aaron and then was chillin' out in Jacob's Cabin with the specter of Jack's father. Awesomely spooky, if you ask me.
And why's Aaron so important? What's happened to him since Kate left him with his grandmother before returning to the island? Why was it so important that he not be raised by anyone else but Claire? Has he been imbued with special powers because he was born on the island? And what was the blur in the psychic's vision? Smokey?
The questions, my friends, pile up. And there'd better be some good ones about Claire and Aaron in the sixth season. I'm sure there will be.
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