The Others

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The Others

The Others is a term the survivors of the crash and Danielle Rousseau use for the other inhabitants of the island.

Most commonly, The Others refer to the Simple Living group that kidnapped Walt at the end of Season 1 (aka the seabillies) and appear in the episodes The Hunting Party, Maternity Leave, Three Minutes, Live Together, Die Alone, and will reportedly be the focus of Season 3 [1]. This group is also refered to as "them" (by the tail section survivors) and "the hostiles" (by Kelvin and then Desmond.)

The Whispers are also said to come from some of them. In one of the Lost Podcasts, the producers gave a hint by saying that the term The Others is arbitrary - it can be based on any group of people, making everyone outside that group an "other". Based on that and the variety of descriptions of "The Others", it is very possible that they do not constitute a defined single group on the Island.

Members

Prominent Others:

• "Him"
• The fake Henry Gale.
• Ms. Klugh (aka Bea)
• Mr. Friendly (aka Tom)
• Ethan Rom, killed by Charlie in retaliation for kidnapping Claire and himself.
• Goodwin, killed by Ana-Lucia after revealing himself as an "Other"
• Pickett

Children and people taken by The Others:

• Alexandra Rousseau
• Thirteen tail-section survivors, including children Zack and Emma and flight attendant Cindy Chandler
• Claire, rescued by Alex and Danielle
• Charlie, hanged but revived by Jack and Kate
• Walt returned to Michael in exchange for the Meeting Party

Redshirt Others:

• Three people (2 men, 1 woman) killed by Mr. Eko and Ana Lucia when they came to kidnap people.
• Several unknown persons in the The Staff
• Molotov woman the one who destroys the Second Raft during Walt's kidnapping.
• Twin #1 and Twin #2 (seen during Walt's kidnapping alongside Mr. Friendly and "Molotov woman").
• Two men accompanying Michael, Mr. Friendly and Pickett in Three Minutes
• Many Others at the beachside camp, including two guarding the fake hatch door.
• Two people tailing the Meeting Party. One shot and killed by Sawyer.

Facts

• According to the Tailies, the Others don't leave tracks (except for Ethan while he was hauling Claire and Charlie) and presumably Goodwin or someone would have noticed.
• Ethan Rom, whose name is an anagram for "Other Man", kidnapped Claire and Charlie
• Charlie was found hanging from a tree by Jack and Kate. We assume that this is the work of "The Others". After Jack and Kate took his body down from the tree, Jack resuscitated him. Charlie also stated he had no memory of the events that occurred during the time he was with Ethan.
• Claire escaped from Ethan/"The Others" and returned to the camp. She had amnesia that went all the way back to before the plane crash.
• Rousseau claims that they captured her child, Alex.
• Rousseau also says they "were the carriers", possibly referring to The Sickness.
• They are "like animals" according to Ana-Lucia.
• They seem to be responsible for the backwards whispering that happens in the jungle.
• They attempted to compile a list of the survivors.
• They claim the island is "theirs."
• They appear to have some type of insight into the survivors doings or some monitoring capability as indicated in the episode "The Hunting Party" where they knew Locke had more than one gun when the survivor party came looking for Michael. It has been suggested that Walt gave them this intelligence, especially since Mr. Friendly refers to Locke as "Mr. Locke" which is something that Walt, and only Walt, called him.
• Have access to guns, tazers, and crude explosives.
• They carry knives, one of which was found on the female Ana Lucia killed when they kidnapped people from the camp. Ana Lucia later states that it is a U.S. Army knife that is "probably 20 years old", which could belong to Goodwin since he said that he was with the Peace Corps.
• Quoted Alvar Hanso: "From the dawn of our species, Man has been blessed with curiosity". From http://www.thehansofoundation.org Referred to Hanso as "somebody a whole lot smarter than anyone [on the island]"
• There is a member of The Others called Alex, this Alex is Danielle's daughter.
• On The Staff there are costumes, fake beard and theatrical glue, possibly belonging to Mr. Friendly and the group of barefoot, savage-looking Others which attacked the tailies.
• Are organized and have an agenda with the survivors
• All Others we have seen so far have American accents; most are Caucasian, but Ms. Klugh and one extra in the background of the scene at the Others' camp in Three Minutes appeared to be African-American.
• Michael claims to have found the Others and claims that the crash survivors can fight them.
• Michael claims that there are only about 22 of them and they live in tents and teepees and are worse off than the crash survivors.
• Michael claims they live on dried fish.
• Michael claims they are mostly "old" and that half of the group are women.
  • Michael's claims may not have merit, for reasons explained below in Theories.
• Michael thinks Walt, Cindy, Emma, Zack and the other captured survivors are in a hatch near The Others camp, which is guarded by two people with guns. The two guns are the only two guns he saw.
  • We learn in Live Together, Die Alone that the hatch is fake; just a set of metal doors with nothing but rock behind it.
• The Others think that to be "kidnapped" by them you have to be "good people" / "a good person". This suggests that Jack, Locke, Kate, Sawyer, and the other survivers are not good people. However, Henry Gale later calls Locke "one of the good ones".
• According to Walt, the others are only "pretending",
• Want Michael to bring Hurley, Jack, Kate and Sawyer to their camp for an unknown reason.
• Kelvin Inman and Desmond refer to them as the hostiles instead of the Others.
• They frequently claim to be "good people" or "the good guys."
• The Others have killed two survivors (Nathan, and assumedly Scott), and the survivors have killed six Others (Ethan by Charlie, Goodwin by Ana-Lucia, and four redshirts by Eko, Ana-Lucia & Sawyer.)

Theories

• The Others have four toes by way of genetic modification. Without the pinky toe it might make them faster and walk quietly. They built the Statue to honor their four-toed foot.
• Gerald and Karen DeGroot (from the Orientation Film) may be part of The Others, or perhaps are just another group of people on or near the island.
• In "...And_Found", we see one of them carrying a teddy bear. The teddy bear seems to be from one of the two children from the tail end of the plane, who we learn about in "The Other 48 Days".
• The Others are connected to the (as yet unseen) DHARMA Initiative station studying "utopian social _____" (listed in the Orientation Film as one of the six foci of the Initiative). Reaching utopian society is attempted through the development of a virus (the sickness) that selectively kills only "bad" people. The secluded island is the test area for this DHARMA-made virus and the survivors are test subjects (mixed group of sinners and good people). When the initiative is certain the virus will only harm "bad" people, it will be released to the world - and create utopia.
• The Others are researchers left on the island after the DHARMA Initiative lost funding. They have either been forgotten or were left on purpose. They are possibly all insane and obsessed with completing their research.
  • This theory does not work because The Others were around 16 years ago (to take Alex), before Kelvin could have arrived (being sent by DHARMA after his work in the first Gulf War). Therefore, DHARMA still had funding.
• The Others are good people trying to save the good people and the kids from a danger, though they are willing to be ruthless for the "greater good".
• The Others are resurrected people of those who died on the island ala Adam and Eve, Boone, Shannon etc.
• The Others are descendants of the crew of the Black Rock perhaps mingled with survivors of the Dharma Initiative.
• The others are clones. Two of them (at least) look similar to Gerald and Karen DeGroot and there were twins on the boat, as well.
• There is evidence that there is not simply one tight group of "others". There is also a hint to this in the podcasts, that of course the division between "us" and "others" is arbitrary. We have seen the group of scientists in the Medical Station, who also walk around on the island in disguise (possibly carrying out some sort of social experiment à la "Lord of the Flies" with the survivors). And then there are the ones that appear rather insane (possibly "infected" by some illness - something that the Quarantine signs support). And there may be more people on the island. Danielle Rousseau and Desmond, for example.
  • We have to keep in mind, that the survivors of the crash have not yet ventured much into the island.
  • What is rather harsh is, that people get killed, which would indicate that it is either a very radical experiment or something went wrong.
  • To expand on this thinking: The experiment may be so radical, that the reason for the island is so that the experiment isn't subject to any law and the scientists are not subject to arrest. Perhaps by being so isolated, they are hoping to avoid pesky medical ethics and the spirit of the 3rd Geneva Convention. (Especially the part about experimentation on POWs.)
• There is strong suggestion to that the Others are infact workers from Dharma Initiative. In The other 48 days Ana Lucia finds a list of survivors from a dead attacker. In Maternity Leave Zeke is angry at Ethan for kidnapping Claire without being finished with a list. This can likely be the same list of people who are going to be taken.
• The Others are linked to Oceanic Airlines, or at least to Flight 815.
• The Others are the social utopian experiment referred to in the Orientation film, and they take the "good people" from the groups of survivors to be part of their community. They leave all the bad people, which is why the main characters all have so many problems and there doesn't seem to be any decent people around.
• They do not leave tracks as they travel around the island underground.
• Cindy is one of the Others' link to the outside world and from whom they got the "good people" list.
• The Others could be monitoring events in or around the hatch remotely, and have contacted Michael via the terminal for the express purpose of capturing him.
• Similarly the others could have determined that Henry Gale was the best person to try to use to recruit Locke, based on their observations. This would explain why the Others are primarily interested in people who spend time in the hatch.
• Michael has joined the Others so he can be close to Walt.
• The others are "fast-grown", in that they're children who have been grown into adults much faster than naturally. This could explain the child-like distictions of "good people" and "bad people" that Henry Gale seems to have, as well as explain away Walt's growth over the past few months.
• The Others are responsible for the cloning and Eternal Life program that is taking place on the island, therefore they want to have full control over the way genes are mixed on this island. This explains why they kidnapped Claire while she was pregnant and got killed the two women who had a love affair on the island, Shannon thanks to Walt's sudden appearance and Ana-Lucia through Michael.
• There may be two groups of Others on the island:
  • A "high-tech" one in charge of the DHARMA Initiative and making sure everything stays under control. They are led by Him and sometimes dress as savages to fool people.
  • A "Low-tech" one made of people who have escaped from the control of the previous group and who do actually live as savages.
• They have different procedures for different situations that arise on the island, e.g. with a large group of people who are unfamiliar with each other, infiltration is an option. A commercial airliner is easier to infiltrate than a presumably one-manned sailing boat (Desmond) or a small science boat (Danielle). perhaps the others infected Danielle's crew and immunized her; that is why she didn't die (perhaps they did this to get Alex with little struggle). With Desmond they sent out Kelvin (possibly an other) to persuade him to push the button (this way he stays out of their hair and does the work they were meant to be doing themselves.
  • They do all this because of a sense of paranoia or just because Him tells them to.
• May be taking Jack, Kate, and Sawyer to a hatch / facility in the ocean for season 3. Then when the lostaways go after them they take the sailboat to try to get them back.
• May have a link to the outside world. Assuming that the compass heading given to Michael by Henry Gale will actually take him away from the island, the Others have a way to reach people outside of the island.
• The Others used to man the stations and rebelled once they found out that they where all part of an experiment, with each station having its own experiment. They all rebelled believing nothing would happen if they stopped doing their tasks. That's why they think they are "the good guys", fighting against DHARMA / the system. The only people that didn't rebel were the original occupants of The Swan, who believed that their station wasn't just an experiment. When they didn't leave The Swan and join with them, 'The Others' turned hostile and later abandoned them. (Kelvin called 'the others' the 'Hostiles').

• The others reside on a neighbooring island called PALA hence Pala Ferry. DHARMAPALA the name means "Dharma-defender" in Sanskrit, and the dharmapalas are also known as the Defenders of the Law (Dharma) or the Protectors of the Law in English. When Henry gale says that they are the good guys he means they are the defenders of the Dharma initiative.