He's hadnt had too much of an impact yet

Dude. He served the time skippers boar for supper. What have you done for me lately?

;)

He's hadnt had too much of an impact yet

He helped Daniel determine there was a nuclear bomb in 1954. He knew that Kate and Jack did not kill Naomi. He was terrified when seeing Richard Alpert which gives us a nice clue about Richard's state of being.

When I learned what Miles can do I knew it was going to have a huge payoff on the island. I have complete faith that it still will. There is plenty of time for his gift to reach full potential. I agree though, since he got there I wanted a Miles' interaction with the dead each and every week, but we all know the show doesn't work like that.

He's been vastly underused this season. I'm hoping to get a Miles-centric epi at some point soon here. You'd think a guy who can communicate with the dead would be way more important than he seems to be.

I'm hoping for some explanation of his ability. It seems really oddball for the show.

You'd think a guy who can communicate with the dead would be way more important than he seems to be.

Exactly. We know that both Miles and Hurley can communicate with the dead but in a different way. Up to now, for one reason or another, these two have never been together. Now that Hurley is back on the island I bet it will be curious to see how they will interact! ;)

I'm hoping for some explanation of his ability. It seems really oddball for the show.

In Watchmen, consciousness exists in some sort of "electromagnetic" form after the destruction of the body - at least it did in Dr. Manhattan's case. I kinda hope they're not lifting this idea for the show - seems kinda cheesy. It feels to me they might be headed that way.

Exactly. We know that both Miles and Hurley can communicate with the dead but in a different way. Up to now, for one reason or another, these two have never been together. Now that Hurley is back on the island I bet it will be curious to see how they will interact! ;)
That's a good point. I hadn't considered that Hurley might be doing the same thing.

The point of Miles is that he can talk to dead people. But with Hurley seeing them and even playing chess with Eko, it seems Miles is a little out gunned in the talking to dead people department.:biggrin:

He was terrified when seeing Richard Alpert which gives us a nice clue about Richard's state of being.
.
I completely missed this. Can you tell me when it was so I can rewatch it. I'm gutted I missed that one!!

I completely missed this. Can you tell me when it was so I can rewatch it. I'm gutted I missed that one!!

In "LaFleur" when Richard walks into Dharmaville after the truce was broken.

FROM LOSTPEDIA:
[Miles peers out of the window of the house he and Sawyer's group have taken refuge in. He can only hear Richard and Horace argue indistinctly in the distance, while Richard's torch continues to burn further away. Richard raises a finger to Horace, and Horace raises a hand back in debate.]
MILES: [Turning to the group inside] You know what? Gettin' on that sub is starting to sound like a great idea. What do you say? Sub anyone?
SAWYER: Hold your horses, Banzai. No one's gettin' on a sub.



He definitely had a bad reaction after seeing Richard. What could it mean?
Is Richard the walking dead?

In "LaFleur" when Richard walks into Dharmaville after the truce was broken.

FROM LOSTPEDIA:
[Miles peers out of the window of the house he and Sawyer's group have taken refuge in. He can only hear Richard and Horace argue indistinctly in the distance, while Richard's torch continues to burn further away. Richard raises a finger to Horace, and Horace raises a hand back in debate.]
MILES: [Turning to the group inside] You know what? Gettin' on that sub is starting to sound like a great idea. What do you say? Sub anyone?
SAWYER: Hold your horses, Banzai. No one's gettin' on a sub.



He definitely had a bad reaction after seeing Richard. What could it mean?
Is Richard the walking dead?
Thank you, I missed that. I was obviously too busy getting giddy at the prospect of seeing Richie Alpert.

I didn't really read it as Miles reacting to Richard specifically. Just getting tense about the entire situation. But then, Miles did meet Richard in the 50s, and here he is again looking almost exactly the same.

What I'm looking forward to is Miles meeting Locke again. Hope that happens. I guess I'll take Miles meeting Christian as a runner up.

He's proof that Cyborgs can reproduce.

That is, of course, if speculation about Miles being Chang's baby proves to be true. If anyone in Lost is a cyborg, it has to be Pierre. :biggrin:

The point of Miles is to be awesome.

he's there to be an amusing & sarcastic side-kick to sawyer too as he's one of few people so far in the show to have enough attitude & cheek to give a bit of verbal stick back to him!

There's been various occasions where miles's psychic ability has helped out & I'd imagine the full reason for him being there shoudl play out either during this season or the next, otherwise it would be a bit of a waste of a character or an odd red herring in the ongoing plot.

I agree with the original poster. Why introduce a character with a special ability and then barely tease that ability? Must come into play later. And why hasn't anyone asked him about his ability yet?

I agree with the original poster. Why introduce a character with a special ability and then barely tease that ability? Must come into play later. And why hasn't anyone asked him about his ability yet?

Hey, yeah, good point. And when did everyone learn about his ability, anyway? We assume that Daniel and Charlotte know/knew about it. (Well, we know Dan did, from Jughead.) But when Sawyer calls him Mr. I-Speak-to-Dead-People, I thought, "Heeeeyyyy, when did Sawyer find out about that?" That would have been a good scene to see. I mean, by that point, they had only known each other, what, a week or so? Two weeks?

Miles is getting the absolute worst lines. And, he totally does look like Jon Gosselin.

He definitely had a bad reaction after seeing Richard. What could it mean?
Is Richard the walking dead?

I'm not convinced. Miles first meets Richard in Jughead and if you watch that scene he looks to be his usual calm, smirky self. And that's standing a foot away from the guy.

His reaction to Richard in LaFleur seems more like, "we've landed in a tense situation here, it's probably best not to hang around."

when he holds himself as a baby and go kaboom!!!

He definitely had a bad reaction after seeing Richard. What could it mean?
Is Richard the walking dead?

Zombie season! And so much sooner than expected. :biggrin:

I took his reaction to Richard (in Lafleur) to be like "uh oh Richard knows we iced those two guys and he's coming to ask for a pound of flesh." Before they got stuck in the seventies I was waiting for him to come across Nicky and Paolo and say MILES: Geez you buried them alive, they really suffered...I mean she was totally conscious while you were throwing the sand on her. HURLEY: Dude!

I think we do get a semi Miles-centric episode coming up soon which should tell us more. If he is the Chang baby,we will also maybe get to see what happens if he tries to interact with himself as a child. :eek2:

The whole communicating with the dead though must be something that comes into play in a bigger way than we have seen so far.
To figure out his role/purpose....he did flash back to Dharma time so it must have to do with something he does in the 70's. Who dies in the 70's??? Or maybe it is someone already dead on the Island in the 70's?

Seriously, this ability he has seems like it would be really important on this particular Island. I'd love for him to meet Christian. I can't believe LOST would introduce a character who could speak to the dead and not have that pay off in a meaningful way.

I think Sawyer knew about Miles because didn't Miles mention Danielle and Karl being dead during their trek back to the beach from New Otherton? Wasn't it right before Claire walked off into the jungle with Christian. Hey, I wonder how good a look at Christian Miles got in this encounter?

Seriously, I want Miles to give us his idea of what we are all seeing with all these seemingly dead people walking around.

Hey, yeah, good point. And when did everyone learn about his ability, anyway? We assume that Daniel and Charlotte know/knew about it. (Well, we know Dan did, from Jughead.) But when Sawyer calls him Mr. I-Speak-to-Dead-People, I thought, "Heeeeyyyy, when did Sawyer find out about that?" That would have been a good scene to see. I mean, by that point, they had only known each other, what, a week or so? Two weeks?

Remember when Sawyer, Claire and Miles were heading back to the beach? They stumbled in the buried bodies of Rousseau and Karl. Just a guess that maybe something came out from that moment.

I can't speak to the O.P. original intent (nor can I speak to dead people), but rather than asking/answering why this character has been introduced to the show (I'm sure his presence will pay off big time in coming episodes), to me the better question is:

Why did Widmore/Abbadon select Miles for the freighter mission?




And, he totally does look like Jon Gosselin.
Indeed!

I can't speak to the O.P. original intent (nor can I speak to dead people), but rather than asking/answering why this character has been introduced to the show (I'm sure his presence will pay off big time in coming episodes), to me the better question is:

Why did Widmore/Abbadon select Miles for the freighter mission?





Indeed!
Either he will become someone very important in the past because of the whole Miles being Candle's son or he will be used to communicate with some dead person with very specific information....
Whatever it is, I think Widmore knew that these people were gonna be taken to the past. That is why he knew about Ben wanting to use the Orchid to move the island. He anticipated all that and chose those people based on that...

But, for instance... What was Charlotte's purpose?

To tell Locke about the Well because she had already seen it when she was a kid?

We know that the rest of them play big parts in the past of the Island.
Now it is Miles' turn...

Miles seems to only talk to dead people who have not yet made the transition to the underworld/afterlife. My take is in the future he will be very important in talking to the "ghosts" on the island...the whisperers.

I took his reaction to Richard (in Lafleur)Before they got stuck in the seventies I was waiting for him to come across Nicky and Paolo and say MILES: Geez you buried them alive, they really suffered...I mean she was totally conscious while you were throwing the sand on her. HURLEY: Dude!Exactly why I'm glad they ARE in the 70's! How horrifying to find you had buried people alive! I hope they never find out. :eek2:

I think they're just keeping him around for some big plot point where they need to use him to answer a question or even introduce a new one.

I really don't like the way he's meandering around on the show right now. Seems like he's just there to make a sarcastic quip whenever Damon thinks of something funny to put in the show.

It's just bad writing having him doing nothing, waiting for his big episode or whatever.

Notice, though, that he's also mellowed. He's still sarcastic, but he's not angry. Again, everyone seems just fine in DHARMA land without the O6.

Keep in mind that the previous season was shortened due to the strike. That had an impact on Charlotte, Miles and Faraday's story lines. Only Faraday's seems mostly intact. Miles was supposed to take care of Charlotte in order to get the 3.2 million dollars from Ben. Given all that, I'm sure he has some hidden link to the past-present-future of the island like everyone else (Candle's son, etc).

I thought for sure Miles was there to tell the story of dead Dharmans. Now that they've gone to be the Dharmans themselves, it's a mystery to me whose story he is there to tell. His skill set seems to demand that he speak for the dead.

I didn't really read it as Miles reacting to Richard specifically. Just getting tense about the entire situation. But then, Miles did meet Richard in the 50s, and here he is again looking almost exactly the same.

I took it the same way. He didn't want to stick around for the ensuing hostilities.

I agree with the OP that Miles will probably eventually have a larger purpose down the road with his abilities... but then I would have predicted the same about Charlotte. But who knows... maybe some skirted bald priest brought her back to life, and now she's getting to study ancient cultures first hand.

For now though, Miles is being Charlie's replacement. He's getting the sarcastic one-liners. Charlie did it better though.

Yeh i forgot about that 3.2 million dollars. Are they ever going to answer that? Did they mention it in one of their podcasts?

It's great how they just raise big questions like that and never mention them again.

I'm not sure who is more pointless, Miles or Charlotte.

I'll be surprised if Miles is not Candle's son. The role was written specifically for the actor playing him, and I think his ethnicity was a part of that, though it's just a hunch. The producers talk about casting him here:

http://www.lost-media.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3011

Ken Leung.....guest-starred in an episode of the final season of the HBO drama series, The Sopranos. This memorable guest role inspired the producers of Lost to cast him in a regular role in the series’ fourth season.
“The part he’s playing—it’s a character we wrote very specifically for Ken. Nobody else read for it. It had to be him,” Damon Lindelof, one of Lost’s executive producers, tells Entertainment Weekly in a separate article.

“In fact, given the construct of the character, it wouldn’t have been the same if we didn’t have him in the show. It is so specifically geared to what we thought he could do as an actor [that] if he had said no, we would have had to scrap the character and rewrite him and come up with a different one,” adds Carlton Cuse, Lindelof’s co-executive producer.

Leung describes his new character as “alone in the world.”

He's hadnt had too much of an impact yet

No but I have a feeling when someone really gets under his skin, he'll hug & "spike" them, a la X-Men.

This observation belongs in the Lafleur thread because it was watching that episode this occured to me but i guess it applies to this thread as well.

It seems to me that Miles may posess similar abilities to Richard.

In Lafleur it was noted that the Sonar Fence does not affect Richard as it does other people or he has some way of breaching it that causes him no harm.

He arrived at the Barracks because he had somehow discovered that two of his people had been killed. Someone like Sawyer asks did they not bury them deep enough.

OK. We didn't see either event as it happened but when Richard arrived at the Barracks both those things made me think immediately of Miles.

In the Economist i think it was, when Sayid, Kate and Miles set off for the Barracks they arrive at the Sonar Barrier. Miles knows immediately that it is switched on and is wary. He warns the others.

We know he is capable of some type of communication with people who have died. He knew Rousseau and Karl's bodies were buried under the spot he walked over.

It seems likely that Miles has spent some time on the Island prior to his recent visit. His nose started to bleed after Charlottes yet the Losties hadn't. Miles himself notes this.

A couple of people have thrown out the idea that Ben usurped John's position as rightful leader of the Others. One of the things Ben needs to be able to do is communicate with Jacob. Ben has always claimed this ability, but we really haven't seen it. What if Miles is in 1977 to speak to Jacob (or speak to ghosts for information about the island so Ben can pretend it came from Jacob), in order to cement Ben's position as Other leader? It would have a dramatic affect on the time line - without Miles' intervention, Ben would not be the leader, and the future, as we saw it from season 1 forward, would be quite different.

Miles could even charge young Ben a fee for his service - $3.2 million. If Miles had that kind of money to invest in 1977, with knowledge of the stock market, he would be a billionaire. And if Miles from 1977 left himself a message that his younger self would find in 2008 ("Ask Ben Linus, leader of the Others, for $3.2 million"), it would explain that weird moment in Eggtown. Miles knew who he was supposed to talk to, and what to ask for, but not when he was supposed to pose the question. And remember how Ben's eyes bugged out at that specific number? Maybe he remembered Miles from his past, asking for the exact same amount.