Ageing

There have been hints of it before, but after the latest episode we really get a chance to see something about the island - is there a fountain of youth on it somewhere or what?

The strangest thing is that children do grow up, it's not that people are stuck at the same age they start at when they come there. They seem to hit about 30 and stay that age - Richard when Ben was a kid looked the same as he does now.

If it was just the island though you'd think that if they went back to the outside world the magic would stop working - there's an old Irish legend about Oisin, a warrior who falls in love with Niamh, the queen of Tir Na nOg - the land of youth - and goes to live there with her, but he misses his homeland after a few hundred years and goes back. He's fine while he sits on the special horse Niamh gives him, but when he lets his foot touch the ground he ages in seconds and turns to dust. Richard was in the outside world as recently as three years ago when he recruited Juliet and it doesn't seem to have had any ill effects on him.

Is it the same quality about the island that makes wounds heal quickly? And why do children grow up - and who was the old woman we saw in the book club, how did she get old? Mikhail was supposedly younger when he was recruited, so why is he older? Ben does look older than he did when the gas attack happened as well.

Maybe it's only the real Others who don't age? Richard was one of them before Ben was, and we still don't know where they came from.

Anyone have any thoughts ???

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