Several copies of Christopher
In the closing monologue of the episode, Nina Sharp indicated to William Bell that the incident with Tyler was part of the Penrose-Carson experiments. Now, we met Carson in that episode — he was the boy’s surrogate father. But who was Penrose?
Some of you with good memories will be able to think back to when we first met Penrose. It’s been a very long time — over a season — but I was still able to put the name to the face. Who was it?
Why, Claus Penrose appeared in episode two of the first season, “The Same Old Story.” If you’ll remember in that episode, which centered around Christopher Penrose, a serial killer who ate pituitary glands to postpone rapid aging, it was revealed that Christopher’s father Claus was the true perpetrator, and Christopher only a victim. We then lost Penrose, when, after a few shots from Peter were fired, he disappeared, and has not been seen since.
Claus Penrose
In the episode, however, Penrose was interviewed by Olivia and Peter before the confrontation took place, and it was discovered that he ran experiments on rapid growth and manipulating growth hormones. At one point, he was a colleage of Walter. After discontinuing his research for the U.S. government, Penrose continued them on his own, working out of a Massachusetts warehouse.
After the younger Penrose was killed, there were several more copies of him seen gestating in an unknown hospital room (as pictured above). While this is probably due to some form of cloning, it’s interesting to note that there are similar numbers of copies of Tyler lying around in the lab we last saw Carson entering. Will the Christopher copies and the Tyler copies come back into play? Possibly. But I think that now, especially since the seemingly peripheral from an early first season episode has been mentioned again, I think it’s safe that we’ll see Claus Penrose once again in the future, possibly before the season is out.
Sam McPherson began writing for Walter's Lab in August 2009. He also writes for the sites TVOvermind, MovieOvermind and SpoilerTV, in addition to being an administrator on Lostpedia since March 2009. Sam's favorite shows are Lost, Fringe, Doctor Who, Flight of the Conchords, FlashForward, True Blood, and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Follow him on Twitter (@mcphersonator) or send him an email (sammcpherson@tvovermind.com).
Wow, nice find!