The outrigger chase was a shootout between two groups of time travelers, one consisting of survivors and the Kahana science team and the other consisting of sailors from the Black Rock. A time flash cut the battle short, and neither group learned the others' identity. ("The Little Prince") (Black Rock journal transcript)
Lead-up
After a time shift Sawyer's group found themselves in daylight and made their way to the beach. On the beach, they found that the camp existed at that moment, but seemed disheveled, with a number of the structures in disrepair and all the supplies either stolen or consumed. The group boarded a canoe they found at the beach and began in the water, planning to row closer to the Orchid station.
Six men from the Black Rock were also in the water, having traveled through time after leaving their main ship. Around December 15th, 1867, the Black Rock became stuck inside the pull of the Island unable to escape. The crew of the ship began showing symptoms of time flashes. The party of six people tried to row to the Island in the hope of discovering their location. (Black Rock journal transcript)
Conflict
2007 or later
The survivors find their abandoned beach camp.
After a timeshift Sawyer's group found themselves in daylight once more, and made their way to the beach. On the beach, they found that the camp existed at that moment, but seemed disheveled, with a number of the structures in disrepair and all the supplies either stolen or consumed.
An Ajira water bottle, found inside one of the canoes
With no one nor the Zodiac in sight, the group wondered where everyone had gone. Noticing a pair of wooden outrigger canoes, they speculated that the other survivors may have fled from attackers. Inside one of the canoes, Sawyer found a water bottle with a label for Ajira Airways, which Juliet recognized as an international airline based in India. They took one of the outriggers and began paddling toward the Orchid. After a short while, they noticed that a group of people were pursuing them in another outrigger. As the other canoe gained on them, the crew began to shoot. After trying to escape for a while, the group had Juliet returning fire with a rifle, apparently hitting one of the pursuers. Before the pursuers could get any closer, there was another time flash.
Black Rock Crew
Explanation from the producers
In an interview, the producers declared they probably won't solve the outrigger chase mystery:
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Okay, finally, I have to ask, simply because it's been driving me nuts for a year and a half: what's going on with showing the other half of the outrigger shootout? Carlton Cuse: The outrigger shootout is not something we're bending around in gyrations so we can solve it. In the grand scheme of the show, that is a fairly obscure piece of the show. It is your particular obsession... Damon Lindelof: ...and you're not alone in it. CC: You're not alone in it. And yes, it would have been great if we had had the opportunity to close the time loop. But you can't get everything done and keeping the narrative going in a straight line. This is one of those things where we made a very conscious choice to ask, "What are the big questions? And most importantly, what are the paths of these characters? Where do they lead?" And we followed those paths and tried not to trip ourselves up getting too diverted from that. We felt that that's the thing that's ultimately going to make the finale work or not work. We got to the point where we made the finale we wanted to make, that was our approach, and I think it was the only approach we could take. We sat here in my office, had breakfast every day for six years, talked about the show, and we used this gut check methodology, where if we both loved something and thought it was cool, that would go in. We applied that same methodology to the finale, and that was the only way we could do it. We came up with a finale that we thought was cool, that was emotional and one we really liked. That's the best we could do. DL: When we wrote that scene and somebody started shooting at them, we knew exactly who was shooting at them. That is not a dangling thread that we don't know the answer to. That being said, as we started talking about paying that off this season, it felt like the episode was at the service of closing the time loop, as opposed to what the characters might actually be doing in that scenario. It never felt organic. We decided we would rather take our lumps from the people who couldn't scratch that itch than to produce an episode that was in service of putting people in an outrigger and getting shot at. You put people in a lot of outriggers this season. It feels, frankly, like you're taunting me. DL: We can't entirely deny that we're taunting you. CC: Honestly, though, the logistics of getting all the participants in the outriggers in the configuration that was on the A-side of the time loop was actually really daunting. DL: Considering half of them had been killed off CC: It's not like we didn't want to do it. Like Damon says, it was just too much of a narrative deviation to do it. |
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Black Rock journal entry
The Black Rock journal entry page included in the Lost: The Complete Collection (DVD) seems to imply members of the Black Rock crew were in the attacking outrigger (even though this would imply that the Ajira water bottle would be in the same time period as the members of the crew, explained in the journal by the fact that the crew would have also suffered time flash symptoms)
Statement from Jorge Garcia
In the last episode of Geronimo Jack's Beard, Jorge Garcia claimed that a script had revealed the identity of the outrigger chase attackers but the scene had never been filmed. He announced his intention to find the old script after moving back to Los Angeles.[1]
On September 24th 2010 Beth stated through the GJB podcast that it was Ben whom was intended to be shooting at the outrigger. "Okay, so here's the deal regarding the OUTRIGGER ISSUE: We went back and looked at the scripts, but since new pages were put in that deleted the scene and the original pages were tossed, we don't know specifics on the answer to the outrigger scene. BUT, when we listened to the unedited GJB for #604, we say that it was BEN in the other boat shooting at them"
Unanswered questions
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- For fan theories about these unanswered questions, see: Outrigger chase/Theories
- Who were the attackers in the other outrigger?
- Who ransacked the beach camp?