The Tail Section

Your Voice: Rousseau - Shipwreck Survivor or Rampant Liar? Part 2

Lost Theories — February 27, 2008 at 10:55 am by Matt

Submitted by Rich Handley

Read part 1 of Rich’s theory here.

Previously, I discussed several instances in which Danielle Rousseau—Lost’s enigmatic "French woman"— has provided the Flight 815 survivors contradictory or erroneous accounts of her past.  Her background is not internally consistent, and often does not jibe with other known facts.  But how much of what she has told the Losties is true, how much is fabricated—and how much is the product of a delusional mind?


Without a flashback tale for Rousseau, it’s difficult to be certain wherein the truth lies.  However, there’s strong evidence she’s a Dharma survivor—and, quite possibly, Ben’s childhood friend Annie.  (There are some potential flaws with this theory, of course:  Danielle appears to be French, whereas Annie had an American accent.  She claims to have arrived in 1988, yet Annie was there as a child in the 1970s.  And she seems to be working against Ben, which begs the question of why he would let her live if she opposed the purge.)  Whatever the case, the explanation is clearly a complex one.  Consider:

Rousseau tells Sayid she’s been on the island for 16 years, but later informs Jack she won’t leave with him since the island is the only place she knows.  Mikhail, meanwhile, claims he’d been there for 11 years and witnessed the purge of Dharma.  Assuming Mikhail is telling the truth, this means Danielle was on the island for at least five years while the Initiative was active.  Why, then, has she never told the survivors about it?  Dharma used boats and helicopters and submarines, and had several large visible wooden docks on the shores.  It’s inconceivable she would never have encountered them in their travels around the island.

She claims to be French, but has a Yugoslavian accent.  Granted, this could be attributed to the casting of a Yugoslavian actress in the role of a French woman, particularly since the characters never acknowledge the discrepancy, as if it’s (wink wink) not really there, but given the many things she’s not been entirely truthful about, she might not even be French.  She speaks French, sure—but she also speaks English, German, Spanish and other languages.  More on this in a moment.

Then there’s Danielle’s attire, which is decidedly military, much like Naomi’s and the Looking Glass crew.  Who also wore military clothing?  Kelvin—Desmond’s comrade in the hatch—who served with Kate’s dad in the military before joining Dharma.  Could Rousseau, Naomi, Greta and Bonnie, like Kelvin, all be connected to Dharma and the military?  As with Rousseau, Naomi and Bea Kluge also speak multiple languages—and Ben might as well, since he has passports from around the world.  Additionally, Kelvin was mapping the entire island—again, just like Rousseau.

Given all this, how can we even be sure it’s Danielle’s voice on the radio-tower message?  It sounds nothing like her—naturally, as it’s a different actress—and has an authentic French accent.  Could she be pretending to have crashed, just as Ben posed as Henry Gale, just as Ethan and Goodwin claimed to have been on 815, just as Cindy may have pretended to be a stewardess, just as Naomi lied about working for Penny, and just as Marvin Candle keeps changing his name from one orientation video to the next?

Is Rousseau from Dharma?  She tells Sayid one member of her team, Montand, lost an arm after reaching the Dark Territory.  Who else is missing an arm?  Marvin Candle himself.  Are Montand and Candle one and the same?  Was she part of his Dharma science team, along with Brennan, who stole her keys?  Could Brennan be…Mikhail?  And did he lose his eye in the same incident that took Montand/Candle’s arm?

For that matter, could Rousseau be working for Ben?  She captures him in a net rather easily, even though he’s a very resourceful guy who knows the island inside and out, then delivers him to the survivors and just departs, despite the fact that the Others supposedly stole her daughter.  This deposits Ben exactly where he wanted to be all along—was her delivery of Ben all a setup to get him into the hatch?

When Danielle brings Locke, Sayid and Kate to Mikhail’s station, she refuses to go inside, waiting instead in the jungle, as though avoiding something—or someone.  When he comes out, he says he never stepped over "the line," and when they call out to her, he reacts startled, as though recognizing her name.  Could the line be between her territory and his, established after the former Dharma comrades ended up on opposite sides?  Or, perhaps, could they both have escaped the gassing by helping Ben?  Is she deranged—or, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is she only pretending to be crazy so she can serve as his most covert operative?

Consider this:  Annie gave Ben a doll when she was a child, and kept a matching one for herself. Rousseau, meanwhile, has a music box her husband gave her, which has a little doll of a dancing ballerina in it—and she uses dolls to snare people in traps.  Will she eventually also be shown to have the doll Annie kept for herself…because she is Annie, and Ben is Alex’s actual father?  Annie was conspicuously absent during the purge, and Lindelof and Cuse have described her importance to Lost as being "seismic."

If Rousseau is Dharma, and in fact Annie, did she oppose Ben and face a brain-scrambling in Room 23 before being exiled to the jungle?  Or did she remain loyal, marrying Ben after the purge?  Did Ben make the music box for her?  Could she have gotten pregnant and, rather than dying, survived childbirth but was rendered deranged by the infertility sickness?  Could this, perhaps, have left her convinced she was someone else, and with an entirely fabricated history?  Or is she, like Sawyer, Cooper, Kate, Nicky, Paolo, Ben and others on Lost, pulling off a massive con?  Will Danielle ultimately be the LaShade/Cobra character foreshadowed on Exposé, revealed as the villain in the fourth-season finale?

Or, could the reason Danielle has been allowed to live be the key to why Ben is so obsessed with curing the infertility sickness—because if he finds a cure, then he can eventually heal Annie and be with her once more?  Has he, like Batman’s Mr. Freeze, been working for years to cure his diseased wife, keeping Alex safe until the day he can restore her mother to sanity so the three of them can be a family?  Is Rousseau the "lost" one of the show’s title?

It’s certainly something to ponder as the second half of the series unfolds.

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"Your Voice" is a new TTS series in which average Tail Section fans submit their articles, theories or reviews to be published on The Tail Section for all their fellow fans to read.  Have you spent far too much time pondering the origins of the DHARMA Initiative?  Have you alienated your co-workers by rambling about Daniel Faraday’s wacky time anomaly experiment?  If so, we want to hear from you.  Send your own Lost theories, reviews, or general thoughts to Editor(at)TheTailSection.com.  Please keep all submissions between 300 and 1,000 words.  We will read through all submissions and contact you if we publish your entry.  You will also receive byline credit on our site.

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