Last year in a forum not related to my LOST blog, I picked the Top 10 movies that I saw in 2009. Not the 10 best movies, just the 10 movies that I saw that year. Now that LOST is over and THE WALKING DEAD is the new thing, instead of making a Totally Amazing Walking Dead Blog of Awesomeness, I have decided to do my Top 10 movies list right here, as a Christmas present to the three people who still check this blog. (Why, keep your eye on this site, cause I may have LOST my mind and decided to post my thoughts on the finale a mere seven months after it aired).
Sadly, this year I can’t even do a Top 10 list, as apparently I only saw 9 movies. And what really smarts is that it’s almost all Hollywood fare . . . I missed great low budget and independent stuff like Life During Wartime, Splice, Enter the Void, Survival of the Dead, MacGruber, The Kids Are All Right, and so on. I am a disgrace to my people.
Anyway, without farther or do, here is my Top 9 of 2010:
Clash of the Titans – This used to be the title of my favorite movie when I was a little kid, a beloved and cherished childhood memory that seemingly could never be tarnished. Now everyone will associate it with a mostly unrelated movie starring Liam Neeson as Zeus, Hades as Ralph Fiennes, and the guy from Avatar who has to be in everything or else it’s just not as good. And now too everyone will look back at the original and laugh at Ray Harryhausen’s groundbreaking stop motion animation because if it’s not James Cameron releasing the Kraken all over your face while raking up fistfuls of your hard earned cash, then it’s generally worthless. But the original also has Harry Hamlin in his undies, and this new movie does not. That has to count for something. Titans wasn’t the only Greek mythology movie of 2010, and it definitely wasn’t the only 3D release this year, and it wasn’t the only movie featuring Ralph Fiennes as a scary demonic magical being, but it . . . oh wait, apparently this movie has nothing going for it. But the monsters were really cool, and I am grateful to this movie for making me realize that the creature from Cloverfield was actually the Kraken. Also, one of the characters in this update is randomly (and awesomely) a djinn from Middle Eastern mythology, which is not Greek but whatever. I guess what I’m saying is the terrorists have won.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1 – This is without a doubt the best half-movie of the year. They really varied the formula with this one: no Hogwarts, no Dumbledore, no pay off to the story. I’m not sure why they actually bothered to title it Harry Potter, but I guess that’s what draws the audience. The main wizard kid, whose name I cannot recall, is really upset this time. And his friends are also upset, so to make things better they go camping. And then they go camping again. And then again. And then they get attacked by a giant snake, so to get over it they decide to break with tradition and go for a little camp or two. Or five. But the snake is awesome, Voldemort turns in another terrifying performance as Ralph Fiennes, the acting is all top notch throughout, and it really does feel as if the previous six movies had all been building to THIS ONE EPIC MOMENT OH EM GEE. And then the movie stops, because we have to wait seven more months for that moment. Okay. Also, Tim Burton’s evil hag-bitch life partner snuffs Dobby. Not cool. However, big up for somehow finding a way to work a Nick Cave song into the Harry Potter franchise. And to think, they said it could never be done . . .
Inception – Cue spinning top! Or is it????????? Now that everyone in the world has washed his feet and sucked his toes in adoration of The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan decided to tease us because he knows we'll put up with anything he does (for a while). So instead of just getting to it and making a third Batman movie, he went ahead and did this much-hyped glossy remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. For some reason, they got the woman who played Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose to be Freddy Krueger this time out, and then confusingly kept playing Edith Piaf songs anyway, so I guess what they are trying to say is that Edith Piaf is Freddy Krueger. Leonardo DiCaprio leads the latest gang of dumb horny teenagers who are supposed to get picked off one by one. But most of them don’t die, not even the girl from Juno (the cast of which really has it coming), and the deaths that do happen are pretty lame. And for no reason at all there is a James Bond-esque action scene at a ski resort snow palace, which is really just the movie saying “Yeah, we film in the Alps whenever we want. Why? Cause we’re rich and you’re not, that’s why.” Plus, the writers got lazy and made it impossible to know what parts are really a dream and what parts are really real and what parts are really real for real real, so at no point is there ever actually a way to understand what’s going on. It’s just way too complicated for an Elm Street movie. I mean, Dream Warriors was never this hard to follow, and that had a Dokken song in it, so you know some intelligent filmmaking was going on there. But this? This is just lazy filmmaking all around. Pretty much no thought or imagination went into this movie. A huge disappointment. Or is it??????
A Nightmare on Elm Street – Somehow, despite the fact that Christopher Nolan was already filming a remake of Elm Street, the wonderfully talented Michael Bay’s company went ahead and actually made a movie called A Nightmare on Elm Street. They even had the audacity to name the villain Freddy Krueger! (It’s like Hollywood isn’t even trying anymore). Except this time, instead of being Robert Englund or Edith Piaf or Ralph Fiennes, Freddy is played by Rorschach. It seems that after Dr. Manhattan sploded him, Rorschach became a ghost demon that kills people in their dreams, which suspiciously all look like bad music videos. Seriously though, I’m not sure why Jackie Earle Haley has centered his career comeback on playing child molesters and sociopaths, but whatever works, I guess. If he keeps this up he’ll probably have to start alerting his new neighbors whenever he moves. One plus about this movie is that it’s easier to follow than the Christopher Nolan remake. Come to think of it, they probably should have got the people who made this movie to do an actual remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. I bet that would have been awesome.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians – This is the other movie from 2010 featuring a Hydra. It is a very new and unique tale, unlike any other movie released this year, about a downtrodden youngster with a sad home life who finds out that they are really a magical being and then subsequently swept into a hidden world of supernatural intrigue. But with only a minimum of camping! This movie gets a lot of points for having awesome monsters AND Uma Thurman as Medusa AND featuring a Lady Gaga song AND somehow managing to weave Pierce Brosnan into all this madness. The only bummer is that Hades was busy with Clash of the Titans IT’S IN 3D SEE IT NOW WE DEMAND IT, so unfortunately they got Russell Brand or whoever to play Ralph Fiennes in this film. He just doesn’t do as good a job. I took one look at him and said, “Get him to the Greek . . . mythology. Not!” I sincerely hope no one is still reading this.
Piranha 3D – Remember all the popular pretty people in high school who partied and had social lives and thought 311 was a great band and weren’t awkward all the time? Well, those morons all get ripped to quivering hunks of meat in this, the third entry in the blockbuster Piranha franchise. James Cameron thought that no one could top his flying mutant piranha-grunion hybrid movie from 1981, but--just like the time he claimed that Avatar was very original--it turns out he was wrong and even a bit delusional. And did Avatar have a prehistoric fish regurgitating Jerry O’Connell’s member right at the audience? No. No it did not. This is pretty much the best movie ever made. Glad we can finally put that issue to rest.
Resident Evil: Afterlife – After taking a break from the Resident Evil franchise to direct stinkers like There Will Be Blood, Paul Anderson returned to the series to helm the fourth installment, which of course is in freaking 3D oh my gosh big whoop. Milla Jovovich, returning yet again as Alice, continues to kick all sorts of zombie and mutant butt in this movie, most notably in an awesome scene featuring a dude with a big axe who clearly walked off the set of 300 and into this movie by accident. You just cannot go wrong with the Resident Evil series: Milla Jovovich in skimpy clothes killing zombies and tentacled demonspawn, industrial metal blasting over the soundtrack, repeat. This, my friends, is a winning formula. It is also most likely Trent Reznor’s deepest, darkest fantasy come to life. Alas, as with Piranha I did enjoy the 3D on this one, but the very next day went ahead and saw it in 2D and guess what??? Nothing about the movie was different. Same wonderful little film, minus the annoying sunglasses. I think that when Alice finally takes down the ubiquitous Umbrella Corporation, 50 years from now in Resident Evil: Raccoon City Nemesis Apocalypse Rebirth Annihilation , the evil head of the company should be revealed to be none other than James Cameron. And once she fights her way through his army of flying mutant piranha-grunion hybrid hench-fish, she should paint the floor with his bearded head in glorious, glorious 2D. Would that it were so!
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World – Not bad.
The Social Network – This is a hard-hitting yet understated character drama about the perils of success, the difficulties of the creative process, the struggle between the privileged and the visionary, the slippery nature of ownership, and the way technology increases our ability to connect whilst simultaneously depersonalizing those connections and contributing to a broader sense of existential isolation. Whatever. All I know is that David Fincher made Se7en and Fight Club. Those were real movies that spoke to me, because they described exactly what I was going through at the time. Fincher used to have cajones. He used to talk about how happiness is fake and the only real true reality is the one of darkness and pain and serial killers. He used to be Tyler Durden. Now he makes boring “important” movies like The Social Network and Zodiac (which wasn’t even gory and they never even told you who did it at the end! Saw VII was WAY better) and The Boringest Case of Benjamin’s Button Collection. Lame. It also seems like Fincher doesn’t understand kids today. I mean, Facebook is awesome, computers are awesome, and being a 26-year old billionaire is awesome. You get to party every night! I think Fincher is just jealous of Mark Zuckerberg’s success. He obviously doesn’t know what it’s like to be a successful young hotshot living in California, I will tell you that much. Even the score by Trent Reznor, who in the 90’s rocked so hard but now is yet another sellout babbling about sobriety, is just a bunch of wimpy techno music. They might as well have got Enya to do the soundtrack. I think Trent was just ticked because he didn’t get the composer job for Resident Evil: Afterlife. Terrible. And Ralph Fiennes isn’t even in this! Instead it’s this Jesse Iceberg or what have you. He’s like a less pathetic Michael Cera. Could they not just get Michael Cera for this movie? I guess he was busy with Scott Pilgrim. Seriously, kill the f***ing cast of Juno already, is what I am saying. And then waste everyone involved in The Social Network, once Diablo Cody is out of the way. I hated this movie more than Christopher Nolan’s remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, and I almost hated it as much as I hated the ending of LOST (no fairy tale endings for me thank you, I live in the REAL world). Booo!
Worst Movie That I Did Not See: Meet the Fockers – Actual scene: Ben Stiller has to give Robert DeNiro an injection in his throbbing gristle because the old man has taken too much of something that enhances male performance, all in front of his little kid. Sounds hilarious. Christmas fun for the whole family. And the name Focker sounds like F***er! Do you get it? LITTLE F***ERS! Fock you.
Worst Movie That I Actually Did See: Alice in Wonderland – Okay, I hope it’s obvious how much I actually loved The Social Network. I hate to kneel before the boner of public opinion, but I do agree that it was one of the year's best (and the soundtrack by T-Rez does rule). Not so for Tim Burton’s latest attempt to boost merchandising sales at Hot Topic. Somehow managing to drop or otherwise lose every single element from Lewis Carroll’s stories that is actually interesting, Alice in Wonderland replaces the logic puzzles and mildly disturbing surrealism with a half-hearted Harry Potter/Percy Jackson “chosen one” fantasy type story, then caps it with a totally unearned girl-power motif. The 3D is awful and like trying to watch the movie behind a dim window pane, Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen is such an obvious attempt to appease and appeal to the self-hating narcissism of Goth girls that it’s actually insulting (plus she killed Dobby), and Johnny Depp is in major recycle mode as the Mad Hatter, whose CGI hip-hop dance is the single worst thing that I have seen on a movie screen, ever. You know, something like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a completely pandering movie, gleefully selling itself to nerds and hipsters alike, exploding in a masturbatory burst of self-congratulatory nostalgia and pop culture references. BUT, the movie’s got a heart. It totally earns the right to do whatever it wants, and underneath all the Nintendo references is a real story that surpasses the slam-dunk self-marketing of the movie’s sheen. Not Alice in Wonderland, which is so cynically put together and lazy that there might as well be cue cards telling you when and how to respond to the movie. Here is Crispin Glover as the Knave of Hearts; Laugh Knowingly and Loudly To Demonstrate That You Get It. Here is Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter; Dress Up As Him For Halloween, Costume Available Now! Look At Alice; She Is So Different and Unlike Her Stuffy British Counterparts, Whatever Will She Do Next?! Fock you too. I don’t even count this movie as something that I saw, hence its absence from the above list; it’s more like something bad that happened to me, such as SARS or Glenn Beck or the time I was robbed at gunpoint. As far as I’m concerned, there is only one movie from this year about an ass-kicking girl named Alice set loose in a fantasy land of monsters and mayhem and corruption, and that movie is Resident Evil. Oh yeah, and Underland? What a crock of shit.
Best Movie That I Have Yet To See: Black Swan – Okay, so I still haven’t seen it, but every Darren Aronofsky movie is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. This stupid jerk can’t stop being talented and awesome all the time. So I’m looking forward to seeing this butt nugget’s latest movie, which I’m sure will be great, and I will probably love it so much I’ll want to kill myself because I am nothing compared to this guy’s latest masterpiece. Thanks a lot, Aronofsky.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
THE END
LOST ended three months ago. Hard to believe that we’re already looking down the barrel of the gun for the DVD release of both season six as well as the complete series. Time goes by quickly, I guess, even if you have a magical electromagnetic island to slow things down.
I spent a decent amount of time this summer composing my each and every thought on both the finale as well as the series as a whole, organizing it all into what was intended to be my final major blog post about LOST. Since it had taken me so long, I decided to wait until shortly before the DVD release, as that would give both myself and anyone who may be reading a fresher and clearer perspective on the show, as well as tapping into the excitement over the final DVD set and its inclusion of the show’s epilogue, “The New Man in Charge,” a humorous and slightly emotional goodbye forever to the world of LOST (as well as an attempt to clarify certain mythological questions, and give closure to the one character who had to be glossed over in the final season’s narrative).
Yes, there are many reasons to finally post my thoughts on “The End,” and I almost did just that. But I’ve decided against it. LOST is over. LOST is gone. Therefore, I think this blog has outlived its reason for being, too. There is not much point in posting my thoughts about the show. Not now. I have other things I’d rather think about, and I doubt many people will be visiting this site much in the future, or even currently. And anyone who may have been eagerly awaiting my post about the finale has, I’m sure, long since given up (and rightfully so).
The reaction to the final season of LOST was an intense one, and I’d be lying if I said I’m okay with being a part of that reaction. I’m very much not okay with it, actually. The sheer amount of anger, hate and feelings of betrayal directed at the series in the wake of the finale was staggering, even to me, and I expected a pretty strongly negative reaction to begin with. But constructive criticism seems to have flown out the window in favor of a response that is grudgingly unfulfilled at best and passionately spiteful at worst. And hey, everyone is free to feel however they’re gonna feel. I just don’t want to be part of it.
Three months after the finale and message boards, blogspots and chat rooms are still filled with ridiculous comments, the collective pitter-patter chitter-chatter of so much empty and angry cyber-rhetoric being flung at all sides like so much bullshit. Liked the finale? Then you’re a moron who doesn’t know what a good story is, who’ll buy any touchy-feely religious claptrap thrown your direction, and who can’t accept that Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are two no-talent jackass hacks who conned the audience every step of the way. Didn’t like the finale? Then you’re just a cold-hearted creep who only cares about answers to the show’s mythology and couldn’t appreciate the characters, and were never a “real fan”. Yep, real productive there.
When “Across the Sea” aired, this seemed to be the beginning of the type of polarized, name-calling bickering masquerading as conversation. I remember wanting to write an in-depth discussion about the episode, about why people hated it so much and about why I liked it. But I didn’t. Couldn’t. At the time I thought it was just general laziness, and while that certainly was a factor, I realize now the reason I didn’t defend the episode was because there was no point. I had no real overwhelming drive to discuss or defend LOST in a public forum. It was the end of the show. I just wanted to watch it.
I understand now that my laziness was actually a type of fatigue, a bored and disinterested attitude not toward the show but towards writing about the show on the internet. Online discussions about LOST have always been contentious, but in the furor over the last season, those increasingly rare and tenuously constructive conversations were largely replaced with something else, a growing disillusionment that was really the end point of the game we’d been playing with the show for years.
You see, LOST is the case of the show that offered itself to the audience, and that audience tore it to pieces. The series had built such loyalty and dedication that it seemed like the viewers would be willing to go along for the ride. And that’s where LOST made the mistake. It encouraged the willingness of the core audience to hang on every word, to investigate every subtle reference, despite serious misgivings from those audience members about the show’s characters, storylines, pacing, and direction. The situation was such that, the further the show went along, if anything it actually discouraged people from going along for the ride. People stayed, but many seemed to do so reluctantly.
The series coasted for years on ambiguity and mystery, and those enigmatic gaps were filled by the imaginations of viewers who enjoyed trying to decipher What Is Really Going On. Clues were handed out through alternate reality games, websites, tie-in novels, jigsaw puzzles and podcasts. It all seemed to be leading somewhere, to some defined endpoint where everything would make sense, and many people were willing to accept LOST on the condition that this would turn out to be true. And it wasn’t true. LOST was indeed telling a complex and grandiose story, but not in the way many viewers had assumed. Therefore, the almost paranoid attention to minute details added up to not much in the way of anything when it came to the grand scheme of things.
This isn’t to say those elements didn’t matter. For those interested, they offered a richer background to the universe in which LOST took place. But fun mystery games providing extraneous mythological details were not what many of the most dedicated viewers were hoping for. Again, many people accepted these elements conditionally, on the notion that LOST would bring it all together in the end. And that faith was misguided. LOST, albeit somewhat inadvertently though not totally blamelessly, bred a fanbase almost incapable of just sitting back and enjoying the ride, as the series actually encouraged its own scrutiny, cultivating a cultural hysteria that came back at the show in a major way. Many viewers were incapable of accepting the series in total as they were too busy hypercriticizing every single step along the path, trying to ensure that each move made concise sense and added to the complete picture. And it’s difficult to enjoy something when you’re trapped in the details, lost with no perspective in an endless tangle of mythological questions seemingly going nowhere. John Locke didn’t really believe, but he wanted to. LOST’s viewers were the same way: they weren’t really convinced, but they hoped they would be.
The show’s open-ended mysteries allowed viewers to create their own speculative answers, which in turn gave audience members the license to more or less invent their own LOST. You could decide what was acceptable in terms of the direction of the series, and then hold the series to that expectation. Don’t like Jack and Kate? Hopefully they’ll die before the end of the show. They’d better. Is the mysticism of the island too New Age hocus pocus for you? Well, you heard that everything on the island can be explained scientifically, so that stuff should go away. It’d better. Fascinated by the Egyptian stuff, and need to know more? Rest assured the series will explain all of that in detail, as the writers wouldn’t just be adding that stuff for stage dressing. Right???
I could go on. When you don’t know where things are going, it’s easy to make mountains out of mole hills, and that most certainly happened in the audience’s fascination with the island mythology. Eventually it became so big in the minds of viewers that no answer could ever really be satisfying, as the answers were dwarfed by the questions which spawned them. In the final season there was an overwhelming outcry about answers . . . about not having answers that were deserved, about the answers given being ultimately lame and unsatisfying, about the delivery of those answers having been underwhelmingly written. It was a lose-lose situation, which perhaps makes the title of the series ultimately more fitting. LOST was really doomed from the start, when you think about it.
Perhaps LOST’s biggest failing was that it led people to believe, or at least allowed them to believe, that the series was a solvable mystery . . . a kind of cosmic whodunit with the revelation of the killer replaced with the revelation of What Is The Island. But it wasn’t that kind of mystery. LOST was about the ungraspable nature of mystery, the ineffable experience of truly encountering the unknown, and how people make sense of that encounter as they come to terms with their own lives. But enough of that.
I don’t really think it’s entirely the fault of the show’s writers that good portions of the audience decided to read what they wanted into the series and ignore what the show was actually doing. After all, you can’t control how the audience will react or interpret. All the writers could do was tell the story they wanted to tell, the story they knew they were telling. And ambiguity is the nature of the game with LOST, so it would never be possible to fully clarify to the audience without being pedantic, didactic and condescending, not to mention dramatically inert. But this worked against the show as it bred resentment, when LOST turned out not to be the show many people imagined or wanted it to be. Was the audience really listening to the series or just hearing what they wanted to hear? I have no idea. Furthermore, I don’t give a shit at this point.
Sadly, LOST is heralded as the series that used the internet to become a runaway success. Because of online communities, message boards, fan podcasts and devoted blogs, LOST created a net-based community that supposedly kept the flame alive. Damon and Carlton’s own podcasts as well as the producer-run message board the Fuselage contributed to the increased interactivity between author and audience. However, all of this ultimately turned against the show. The internet community the series helped to foster was the first segment to attack the series when it became abundantly clear that expectations were not going to be met. And Damon and Carlton’s increased media exposure simply ensured that fans would hold them personally responsible for wasting six years of their precious lives.
It was the sense of ownership, entitlement and even co-authorship that LOST provided to the audience which ultimately led to its unraveling in the minds of that very audience, because that authorship was an illusion. The audience really had no say in the direction of the show, nor should they have. But an entire network of rabidly devoted websites would seem to suggest otherwise. When it dawned on viewers that LOST was not beholden to their wishes or demands, people took it very, very personally.
It also doesn’t help that LOST trod out themes that people tend to take personally anyway, especially when they become so mentally engaged in a particular work that its status as a piece of fiction becomes less prominent than its status as something really important and meaningful. (And I consider it a good thing that people found it meaningful; I did as well). Good and evil, life and death, science and faith are all philosophical issues that strike chords with people and rightfully so, but LOST did not play those particular chords or cards especially well for many viewers. LOST was perhaps invested with too much meaning, so that when all was said and done, its failure to live up to that level of meaning has caused it to be perceived as ultimately meaningless.
The criticism of the show is more of a blur than a consensus. LOST should have had more science and less mysticism. It should have been more religious and less sci-fi. It should have been more about good and evil. The good and evil were too ambiguous. They weren’t ambiguous enough. The mysteries were over-explained. The mysteries were under-explained. More Jacob, more Man in Black. Jacob and MIB suck. No afterlife please, this is a show about time travel. Less time travel please, this is a show about people. Less people please, this is a show about mystery. Less mystery please, this is a show about plane crashes. Enough plane crashes, this is a show about tropical fruit. LOST was too complicated. It was too simple. It wasn’t enough of anything.
This glut of boringly dissatisfied feedback hangs over any attempt to discuss the show online like the black smoke monster waiting to pounce after a particularly mind-numbing bender. Why? Because it isn’t just with LOST that many attempts at meaningful conversation dissolve into hyperbolic white noise. It’s with the internet at large, as the web is a medium which encourages a sense of entitlement, in this case an entitlement to opinion. And of course we all are entitled to our opinions, but the internet encourages the broadcasting of those opinions. Everyone is a critic, and everyone is a cynic. As a forum for conversation, the internet often fails because it simultaneously strokes our sense of self-importance and self-righteousness, which ultimately results in a breakdown of actual communication, as our words fall upon eyes that simply will see what they want to see, and the words themselves were probably self-satisfied gibberish anyway.
Even this blog posting is likely a bunch of nonsense, and possibly guilty of everything I’ve said above.
And that’s the problem. By maintaining this blog, I’ve added to the white noise, and inadvertently contributed to the negative and hostile atmosphere surrounding the discussion of this show. People don’t want to have a calm and fun conversation about something they thought was cool. They want to scream and moan and bitch about how much it sucked and what a waste of time it was, or they want to dismiss those who didn’t like it as being less than human (over a TV show???), or they want to sit back with cool indifference and write the whole thing off as an exercise for idiots. The internet—not all of it, but in decent amounts—is a place of gossip, of self-absorbed whining, of ego-stoking fantasies and always justified indignant negativity.
Visit the comments on a Yahoo news article, an IMDB message board, or a LOST blog and you’ll see the same predictable antagonism being recycled ad nauseum. By criticizing the internet on the internet I am in fact fulfilling those same functions. It’s truly like a Hydra: cut off the head, and two grow in its place. It cannot be defeated. The moronic beast that was television is now giving us shows like LOST; thankfully, we can use the internet to destroy such things. Plus, TV is still giving us shows like “My Super Sweet 16,” so the dream hasn’t died completely. We can use the internet to destroy such things. Cyberspace is the equal opportunity destroyer, after all. It is a toxic, poisonous place where everyone gets to be fashionably disappointed together. And, as the Comedian is fond of pointing out, it’s all a joke.
We know too much. Simple as that. The internet spreads information so quickly that we’ve become accustomed to feeling entitled to that information, and parade this supposed knowledge about as if it’s stone hard fact. Take the instances on LOST of characters being written out of the show. People base their feelings on characters like Ana Lucia, Mr. Eko, Libby, Nikki, Paulo, etc. not just on how those characters’ stories were presented onscreen, but also on what they’ve heard the behind-the-scenes reasons were for those characters being killed off. Ana Lucia sucks because everyone knows Michelle Rodriguez was fired for being difficult to work with, and for her drunk driving arrest. Mr. Eko was great but his death was lame because everyone knows Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje demanded to be written out of the show. Everyone knows there were big plans for Nikki and Paulo but they were killed off because we, the viewers, refused to accept them. But honestly, who cares?
Who gives a fuck if someone was written out because they demanded more money, drove drunk or fought with the caterer? The only thing that matters should be what made it onto the screen, not what our tabloid culture feeds us about the alleged truth. We are killing the illusion, exposing the magic trick before it’s even done being performed, because our hunger for facts that justify our skepticism outweighs our ability to enjoy. We’ve been spoiled by knowledge becoming so available that it’s teetering on disposability.
We contribute to an online culture which claims to appreciate something but then despises that very thing at every turn, just because the internet provides a suitable venue for an arrogant cynicism we don’t get to overtly display in daily life. We treat the things we enjoy as if they’re hunks of meat and we’re ravenous piranhas, the strands of gristle that remain the only bits and pieces we’re willing to appreciate and leave standing, and even then we’ll only appreciate them cautiously, on a trial basis. All of which is just my highly melodramatic (remember, this is the internet) way of saying that I’m tired of talking about LOST online, and it’s time to move on. It’s also my way of saying that I can’t wait to see “Piranha 3D”.
My point isn’t that I hate talking about LOST, or that criticism of LOST is a bad thing. I understand that much of the vitriolic disappointment directed at the show arises from the fact that people were passionate about it. People cared. It’s just that the internet is shaping up to be one of the worst possible places to have these discussions. It’s simply not interesting anymore. I don’t care enough what I think about LOST to write any more expansive blog entries nitpicking every nook and cranny of the show. (Not every nook and cranny, John . . . haha, get it?!). Who gives a shit what I have to say about it, really? Who cares if everyone thinks the characters were dead the whole time? (They weren’t. Sorry, still can’t let that one go). It’s just a TV show, and these are just a bunch of ramblings posted among endless other ramblings in some pervasive net of polished opinions we currently call the blogosphere.
I loved LOST, everything about it, from start to finish, Pilot to The End. But I love it enough that I don’t need to talk about it in a public forum. There will always be plenty of other people who will do that. I’ll keep my ultimate thoughts on the series to myself. I’ve had enough of opinions, even my own. This isn’t a place for living words. The internet is a dead place, with frozen words set to echo effect, disembodied and omnipresent like the whispers which supposedly should have been coming from anything but ghosts. I don’t want to write dead words about a dead show. I want to write something that is alive, and that, my friends, is what I shall do. Time to let go and move on.
I won’t be deleting this blog or anything, as I put too much into it over the last few years. All of the many highlights of my foolishness will remain on display here. (My favorite being when I got mad at season three for not fulfilling my wish about an alternate timeline where the plane never crashed . . . a wish mostly fulfilled three years later, when I thankfully stopped taking the show so personally). Even my whining about Libby’s backstory, Claire’s implant, and Miles’ paranormal abilities are laughable in retrospect. So silly.
Still, I don’t regret this blog. Thank you so much to anyone who visited here, and who cared to read what I had to say. I enjoyed all of the conversations, and I will still read any comments people may leave, even the ones from automated worms that post porn ads in foreign languages and broken English. (“You like a happy time with his slug??? Make a yesterday for satisfying!!!”). Also, to my fellow LOST bloggers who I’ve gotten to know over the years, please don’t take anything said here as being directed at you. It was a pleasure getting to read your thoughts as well. I may one day post my thoughts on the finale, but for now I consider this my final entry and this blog having met its end.
Namaste, and see you in another life.
I spent a decent amount of time this summer composing my each and every thought on both the finale as well as the series as a whole, organizing it all into what was intended to be my final major blog post about LOST. Since it had taken me so long, I decided to wait until shortly before the DVD release, as that would give both myself and anyone who may be reading a fresher and clearer perspective on the show, as well as tapping into the excitement over the final DVD set and its inclusion of the show’s epilogue, “The New Man in Charge,” a humorous and slightly emotional goodbye forever to the world of LOST (as well as an attempt to clarify certain mythological questions, and give closure to the one character who had to be glossed over in the final season’s narrative).
Yes, there are many reasons to finally post my thoughts on “The End,” and I almost did just that. But I’ve decided against it. LOST is over. LOST is gone. Therefore, I think this blog has outlived its reason for being, too. There is not much point in posting my thoughts about the show. Not now. I have other things I’d rather think about, and I doubt many people will be visiting this site much in the future, or even currently. And anyone who may have been eagerly awaiting my post about the finale has, I’m sure, long since given up (and rightfully so).
The reaction to the final season of LOST was an intense one, and I’d be lying if I said I’m okay with being a part of that reaction. I’m very much not okay with it, actually. The sheer amount of anger, hate and feelings of betrayal directed at the series in the wake of the finale was staggering, even to me, and I expected a pretty strongly negative reaction to begin with. But constructive criticism seems to have flown out the window in favor of a response that is grudgingly unfulfilled at best and passionately spiteful at worst. And hey, everyone is free to feel however they’re gonna feel. I just don’t want to be part of it.
Three months after the finale and message boards, blogspots and chat rooms are still filled with ridiculous comments, the collective pitter-patter chitter-chatter of so much empty and angry cyber-rhetoric being flung at all sides like so much bullshit. Liked the finale? Then you’re a moron who doesn’t know what a good story is, who’ll buy any touchy-feely religious claptrap thrown your direction, and who can’t accept that Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are two no-talent jackass hacks who conned the audience every step of the way. Didn’t like the finale? Then you’re just a cold-hearted creep who only cares about answers to the show’s mythology and couldn’t appreciate the characters, and were never a “real fan”. Yep, real productive there.
When “Across the Sea” aired, this seemed to be the beginning of the type of polarized, name-calling bickering masquerading as conversation. I remember wanting to write an in-depth discussion about the episode, about why people hated it so much and about why I liked it. But I didn’t. Couldn’t. At the time I thought it was just general laziness, and while that certainly was a factor, I realize now the reason I didn’t defend the episode was because there was no point. I had no real overwhelming drive to discuss or defend LOST in a public forum. It was the end of the show. I just wanted to watch it.
I understand now that my laziness was actually a type of fatigue, a bored and disinterested attitude not toward the show but towards writing about the show on the internet. Online discussions about LOST have always been contentious, but in the furor over the last season, those increasingly rare and tenuously constructive conversations were largely replaced with something else, a growing disillusionment that was really the end point of the game we’d been playing with the show for years.
You see, LOST is the case of the show that offered itself to the audience, and that audience tore it to pieces. The series had built such loyalty and dedication that it seemed like the viewers would be willing to go along for the ride. And that’s where LOST made the mistake. It encouraged the willingness of the core audience to hang on every word, to investigate every subtle reference, despite serious misgivings from those audience members about the show’s characters, storylines, pacing, and direction. The situation was such that, the further the show went along, if anything it actually discouraged people from going along for the ride. People stayed, but many seemed to do so reluctantly.
The series coasted for years on ambiguity and mystery, and those enigmatic gaps were filled by the imaginations of viewers who enjoyed trying to decipher What Is Really Going On. Clues were handed out through alternate reality games, websites, tie-in novels, jigsaw puzzles and podcasts. It all seemed to be leading somewhere, to some defined endpoint where everything would make sense, and many people were willing to accept LOST on the condition that this would turn out to be true. And it wasn’t true. LOST was indeed telling a complex and grandiose story, but not in the way many viewers had assumed. Therefore, the almost paranoid attention to minute details added up to not much in the way of anything when it came to the grand scheme of things.
This isn’t to say those elements didn’t matter. For those interested, they offered a richer background to the universe in which LOST took place. But fun mystery games providing extraneous mythological details were not what many of the most dedicated viewers were hoping for. Again, many people accepted these elements conditionally, on the notion that LOST would bring it all together in the end. And that faith was misguided. LOST, albeit somewhat inadvertently though not totally blamelessly, bred a fanbase almost incapable of just sitting back and enjoying the ride, as the series actually encouraged its own scrutiny, cultivating a cultural hysteria that came back at the show in a major way. Many viewers were incapable of accepting the series in total as they were too busy hypercriticizing every single step along the path, trying to ensure that each move made concise sense and added to the complete picture. And it’s difficult to enjoy something when you’re trapped in the details, lost with no perspective in an endless tangle of mythological questions seemingly going nowhere. John Locke didn’t really believe, but he wanted to. LOST’s viewers were the same way: they weren’t really convinced, but they hoped they would be.
The show’s open-ended mysteries allowed viewers to create their own speculative answers, which in turn gave audience members the license to more or less invent their own LOST. You could decide what was acceptable in terms of the direction of the series, and then hold the series to that expectation. Don’t like Jack and Kate? Hopefully they’ll die before the end of the show. They’d better. Is the mysticism of the island too New Age hocus pocus for you? Well, you heard that everything on the island can be explained scientifically, so that stuff should go away. It’d better. Fascinated by the Egyptian stuff, and need to know more? Rest assured the series will explain all of that in detail, as the writers wouldn’t just be adding that stuff for stage dressing. Right???
I could go on. When you don’t know where things are going, it’s easy to make mountains out of mole hills, and that most certainly happened in the audience’s fascination with the island mythology. Eventually it became so big in the minds of viewers that no answer could ever really be satisfying, as the answers were dwarfed by the questions which spawned them. In the final season there was an overwhelming outcry about answers . . . about not having answers that were deserved, about the answers given being ultimately lame and unsatisfying, about the delivery of those answers having been underwhelmingly written. It was a lose-lose situation, which perhaps makes the title of the series ultimately more fitting. LOST was really doomed from the start, when you think about it.
Perhaps LOST’s biggest failing was that it led people to believe, or at least allowed them to believe, that the series was a solvable mystery . . . a kind of cosmic whodunit with the revelation of the killer replaced with the revelation of What Is The Island. But it wasn’t that kind of mystery. LOST was about the ungraspable nature of mystery, the ineffable experience of truly encountering the unknown, and how people make sense of that encounter as they come to terms with their own lives. But enough of that.
I don’t really think it’s entirely the fault of the show’s writers that good portions of the audience decided to read what they wanted into the series and ignore what the show was actually doing. After all, you can’t control how the audience will react or interpret. All the writers could do was tell the story they wanted to tell, the story they knew they were telling. And ambiguity is the nature of the game with LOST, so it would never be possible to fully clarify to the audience without being pedantic, didactic and condescending, not to mention dramatically inert. But this worked against the show as it bred resentment, when LOST turned out not to be the show many people imagined or wanted it to be. Was the audience really listening to the series or just hearing what they wanted to hear? I have no idea. Furthermore, I don’t give a shit at this point.
Sadly, LOST is heralded as the series that used the internet to become a runaway success. Because of online communities, message boards, fan podcasts and devoted blogs, LOST created a net-based community that supposedly kept the flame alive. Damon and Carlton’s own podcasts as well as the producer-run message board the Fuselage contributed to the increased interactivity between author and audience. However, all of this ultimately turned against the show. The internet community the series helped to foster was the first segment to attack the series when it became abundantly clear that expectations were not going to be met. And Damon and Carlton’s increased media exposure simply ensured that fans would hold them personally responsible for wasting six years of their precious lives.
It was the sense of ownership, entitlement and even co-authorship that LOST provided to the audience which ultimately led to its unraveling in the minds of that very audience, because that authorship was an illusion. The audience really had no say in the direction of the show, nor should they have. But an entire network of rabidly devoted websites would seem to suggest otherwise. When it dawned on viewers that LOST was not beholden to their wishes or demands, people took it very, very personally.
It also doesn’t help that LOST trod out themes that people tend to take personally anyway, especially when they become so mentally engaged in a particular work that its status as a piece of fiction becomes less prominent than its status as something really important and meaningful. (And I consider it a good thing that people found it meaningful; I did as well). Good and evil, life and death, science and faith are all philosophical issues that strike chords with people and rightfully so, but LOST did not play those particular chords or cards especially well for many viewers. LOST was perhaps invested with too much meaning, so that when all was said and done, its failure to live up to that level of meaning has caused it to be perceived as ultimately meaningless.
The criticism of the show is more of a blur than a consensus. LOST should have had more science and less mysticism. It should have been more religious and less sci-fi. It should have been more about good and evil. The good and evil were too ambiguous. They weren’t ambiguous enough. The mysteries were over-explained. The mysteries were under-explained. More Jacob, more Man in Black. Jacob and MIB suck. No afterlife please, this is a show about time travel. Less time travel please, this is a show about people. Less people please, this is a show about mystery. Less mystery please, this is a show about plane crashes. Enough plane crashes, this is a show about tropical fruit. LOST was too complicated. It was too simple. It wasn’t enough of anything.
This glut of boringly dissatisfied feedback hangs over any attempt to discuss the show online like the black smoke monster waiting to pounce after a particularly mind-numbing bender. Why? Because it isn’t just with LOST that many attempts at meaningful conversation dissolve into hyperbolic white noise. It’s with the internet at large, as the web is a medium which encourages a sense of entitlement, in this case an entitlement to opinion. And of course we all are entitled to our opinions, but the internet encourages the broadcasting of those opinions. Everyone is a critic, and everyone is a cynic. As a forum for conversation, the internet often fails because it simultaneously strokes our sense of self-importance and self-righteousness, which ultimately results in a breakdown of actual communication, as our words fall upon eyes that simply will see what they want to see, and the words themselves were probably self-satisfied gibberish anyway.
Even this blog posting is likely a bunch of nonsense, and possibly guilty of everything I’ve said above.
And that’s the problem. By maintaining this blog, I’ve added to the white noise, and inadvertently contributed to the negative and hostile atmosphere surrounding the discussion of this show. People don’t want to have a calm and fun conversation about something they thought was cool. They want to scream and moan and bitch about how much it sucked and what a waste of time it was, or they want to dismiss those who didn’t like it as being less than human (over a TV show???), or they want to sit back with cool indifference and write the whole thing off as an exercise for idiots. The internet—not all of it, but in decent amounts—is a place of gossip, of self-absorbed whining, of ego-stoking fantasies and always justified indignant negativity.
Visit the comments on a Yahoo news article, an IMDB message board, or a LOST blog and you’ll see the same predictable antagonism being recycled ad nauseum. By criticizing the internet on the internet I am in fact fulfilling those same functions. It’s truly like a Hydra: cut off the head, and two grow in its place. It cannot be defeated. The moronic beast that was television is now giving us shows like LOST; thankfully, we can use the internet to destroy such things. Plus, TV is still giving us shows like “My Super Sweet 16,” so the dream hasn’t died completely. We can use the internet to destroy such things. Cyberspace is the equal opportunity destroyer, after all. It is a toxic, poisonous place where everyone gets to be fashionably disappointed together. And, as the Comedian is fond of pointing out, it’s all a joke.
We know too much. Simple as that. The internet spreads information so quickly that we’ve become accustomed to feeling entitled to that information, and parade this supposed knowledge about as if it’s stone hard fact. Take the instances on LOST of characters being written out of the show. People base their feelings on characters like Ana Lucia, Mr. Eko, Libby, Nikki, Paulo, etc. not just on how those characters’ stories were presented onscreen, but also on what they’ve heard the behind-the-scenes reasons were for those characters being killed off. Ana Lucia sucks because everyone knows Michelle Rodriguez was fired for being difficult to work with, and for her drunk driving arrest. Mr. Eko was great but his death was lame because everyone knows Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje demanded to be written out of the show. Everyone knows there were big plans for Nikki and Paulo but they were killed off because we, the viewers, refused to accept them. But honestly, who cares?
Who gives a fuck if someone was written out because they demanded more money, drove drunk or fought with the caterer? The only thing that matters should be what made it onto the screen, not what our tabloid culture feeds us about the alleged truth. We are killing the illusion, exposing the magic trick before it’s even done being performed, because our hunger for facts that justify our skepticism outweighs our ability to enjoy. We’ve been spoiled by knowledge becoming so available that it’s teetering on disposability.
We contribute to an online culture which claims to appreciate something but then despises that very thing at every turn, just because the internet provides a suitable venue for an arrogant cynicism we don’t get to overtly display in daily life. We treat the things we enjoy as if they’re hunks of meat and we’re ravenous piranhas, the strands of gristle that remain the only bits and pieces we’re willing to appreciate and leave standing, and even then we’ll only appreciate them cautiously, on a trial basis. All of which is just my highly melodramatic (remember, this is the internet) way of saying that I’m tired of talking about LOST online, and it’s time to move on. It’s also my way of saying that I can’t wait to see “Piranha 3D”.
My point isn’t that I hate talking about LOST, or that criticism of LOST is a bad thing. I understand that much of the vitriolic disappointment directed at the show arises from the fact that people were passionate about it. People cared. It’s just that the internet is shaping up to be one of the worst possible places to have these discussions. It’s simply not interesting anymore. I don’t care enough what I think about LOST to write any more expansive blog entries nitpicking every nook and cranny of the show. (Not every nook and cranny, John . . . haha, get it?!). Who gives a shit what I have to say about it, really? Who cares if everyone thinks the characters were dead the whole time? (They weren’t. Sorry, still can’t let that one go). It’s just a TV show, and these are just a bunch of ramblings posted among endless other ramblings in some pervasive net of polished opinions we currently call the blogosphere.
I loved LOST, everything about it, from start to finish, Pilot to The End. But I love it enough that I don’t need to talk about it in a public forum. There will always be plenty of other people who will do that. I’ll keep my ultimate thoughts on the series to myself. I’ve had enough of opinions, even my own. This isn’t a place for living words. The internet is a dead place, with frozen words set to echo effect, disembodied and omnipresent like the whispers which supposedly should have been coming from anything but ghosts. I don’t want to write dead words about a dead show. I want to write something that is alive, and that, my friends, is what I shall do. Time to let go and move on.
I won’t be deleting this blog or anything, as I put too much into it over the last few years. All of the many highlights of my foolishness will remain on display here. (My favorite being when I got mad at season three for not fulfilling my wish about an alternate timeline where the plane never crashed . . . a wish mostly fulfilled three years later, when I thankfully stopped taking the show so personally). Even my whining about Libby’s backstory, Claire’s implant, and Miles’ paranormal abilities are laughable in retrospect. So silly.
Still, I don’t regret this blog. Thank you so much to anyone who visited here, and who cared to read what I had to say. I enjoyed all of the conversations, and I will still read any comments people may leave, even the ones from automated worms that post porn ads in foreign languages and broken English. (“You like a happy time with his slug??? Make a yesterday for satisfying!!!”). Also, to my fellow LOST bloggers who I’ve gotten to know over the years, please don’t take anything said here as being directed at you. It was a pleasure getting to read your thoughts as well. I may one day post my thoughts on the finale, but for now I consider this my final entry and this blog having met its end.
Namaste, and see you in another life.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
16 Questions LOST Actually Answered (Sort of), and 8 That It Didn't (Sort Of)
Well, LOST is over. I loved, loved, LOVED the finale and could not be happier with it. I’m still collecting my thoughts on the episode as well as the series as a whole, but until I’m finished I thought it might be fun to address some of the series’ supposedly unanswered mysteries. I actually think the show has given us enough information so that we can really piece together the answers to some of these mysteries ourselves. The issue of unaddressed questions really hindered some people’s enjoyment of the finale, so I think this is a somewhat timely topic for LOST fans. Plus, this is no less than the third time I have attempted to post this, so this post has been cooking for a while. I swear to the island that I will personally destroy the Source itself if Blogger eats my post once more time.
Ahem.
Before I get to the topic at hand, two things. First, the season six DVD will supposedly include about 15 or 20 minutes of newly filmed footage which will attempt to wrap up some of the below questions in an entertaining way, completely in-story. Rumor has it that even Malcolm David Kelley filmed scenes for this extra material (awesome!). So, in the event that my ideas below are invalidated in a few months by the bonus material on the DVD, my apologies. Secondly, these are just my interpretations. I have tried to hew as closely as possible to evidence provided by the series itself and not project too many of my own opinions, but I’m sure I failed in some respect.
#1. Where did the polar bears come from?
The polar bears were brought to Hydra island by the DHARMA Initiative, who were conducting biological and behavioral experiments on various animals at the Hydra station. The blast door map reveals that DHARMA was genetically altering the bears to adapt them to warmer climates. Once the Hydra station was abandoned, the bears were let loose and eventually swam to the main island, where they took up residence in some of the island’s many caves.
#2. Why is Aaron special?
The supposed psychic Richard Malkin was lying when he told Claire that a horrible fate would await Aaron if she didn’t raise him herself. Essentially, Malkin was a fraud and he was conning Claire, tricking her into giving Aaron to the couple in Los Angeles. Malkin himself revealed that he was a scam artist when questioned by Mr. Eko. (And in a deleted scene, Malkin did explain that he was paid $16,000 by an American couple to scare a pregnant woman into giving them her baby). As for Charlie needing to baptize Aaron, this was likely the island’s way of trying to protect the baby from the monster, given that it was planning to “claim” Claire. The Man in Black even ensured that Aaron was taken off of the island (“the baby is exactly where he needs to be,” is what he said), indicating that he could have wanted to keep Aaron safe from the chaos he was planning to unleash. In other words, the series has more or less suggested that MIB manipulated Aaron’s leaving the island . . . probably out of a weird empathy, wanting the baby to avoid a life of being trapped on the island with a crazy mother. He essentially confirmed this when talking to Kate about his own mother.
#3. What’s the deal with Walt’s powers?
We have seen many characters who seem to exhibit supernatural abilities: Walt, Hurley, Desmond, Miles, Jacob, the Man in Black (both before and after he became the smoke monster), and even Isaac of Uluru (the faith healer who explained the electromagnetism to Rose). The idea seems to be that exposure to the island’s energy can invest certain people with more or less magical powers; those who already have these abilities find them magnified when coming to the island. Walt was just the first of many characters who would experience this, and his powers were particularly strong. The Others took him because they could no longer have children of their own (and he was supposedly on Jacob’s list). Walt was kept in Room 23 on Hydra island after his kidnapping. However, his powers were so weird that he terrified the Others, and this is why they ultimately decided to let him go back to Michael. Walt himself was not necessarily aware of or in control of his abilities, meaning he would cause bizarre things to happen without necessarily meaning to. It seems he maintained some kind of connection to Locke even after leaving the island, which might explain his appearance when Locke was in the DHARMA body pit.
#4. What is the Sickness?
From what we’ve seen, the Sickness is a type of corruption caused by exposure to the dark energy of the black smoke. It drove Rousseau’s team mad, and nearly destroyed Sayid and Claire. The DHARMA vaccine was likely the Initiative’s way of protecting people from the influence of the monster (and possibly the negative side effects of the electromagnetism in general). It is probably not even an actual vaccine, but a chemical agent keeping the black smoke at bay, which would explain why DHARMA members had to use repeated injections. And remember that the vaccine is labeled CR 4 8-1516-23 42. The letter C was used by DHARMA to stand for Cerberus, the DI’s code name for the black smoke, so there’s a decent chance “CR” meant “Cerberus”. We know the vaccine was largely supplied by the Staff station, which likely was devoted to studying the positive and negative effects the island has on people’s health (i.e. the healing properties). This also explains why the Others were injecting Aaron with the vaccine when he was still in the womb; they were trying to protect him from the monster’s corruption. As for the Quarantine sign on the hatch, this was probably just the DHARMA Initiative’s way of keeping Swan station members inside, considering the threat posed by the Others, the monster and the Tempest station, as well as the importance of pushing the button.
#5. Where did the DHARMA supply drop come from?
As we know, the island exists within a warp in the spacetime continuum. Since time on the island is somewhat out of sync with the outside world, it would cause something like the supply drop to seemingly appear out of nowhere. DHARMA was still sending supplies because the Swan station remained in operation after the Purge; whether or not they even knew about the Purge at all is largely insignificant. The “Mysteries of the Universe” feature on the fifth season DVD reveals that DHARMA sometimes had trouble locating the island and would mistakenly drop supplies at incorrect locations, further indicating the disconnect between the island and the rest of the world.
#6. Why was Libby in the mental institution?
Libby explained to Desmond that her husband had just recently died, and not long afterwards we see her at the Santa Rosa mental hospital. Essentially, Libby had a nervous breakdown after the death of her husband, and had herself hospitalized. This was always the explanation that the writers intended, but intense fan speculation about Libby’s reason for being in the mental institution caused them to concoct a much different backstory, supposedly more conspiratorial and along the lines of Libby having a connection to Charles Widmore and the freighter. This would have been revealed in season four, but was cut short due to the writers’ strike. The writers attempted to revisit this plotline in the fifth season, but the actress who plays Libby (Cynthia Watros) turned down their offer, and the entire storyline was ultimately scrapped. Thus, Libby’s backstory remains what the writers originally intended anyway.
#7. Who built the statue? The frozen donkey wheel? The Temple? The Lighthouse?
It’s a safe bet that the giant statue of an Egyptian deity covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics was built by, you know, the Egyptians. They were clearly on the island at some point after Jacob and the Man in Black became the dynamic duo. As we’ve seen, the Egyptians built many monuments and other structures all over the island, not just the statue of Taweret. There’s a good chance they’re the ones who finished the MIB’s donkey wheel, as well as contributed to the Temple (which drew from several different cultures) and constructed the Lighthouse. They were simply one of a variety of civilizations that have come and gone on the island. DHARMA probably used the Egyptian symbols in the Swan countdown timer (as well as in the Valenzetti Equation) because they were studying the island’s ancient history.
#8. Why do pregnant women die on the island?
This is possibly the biggest question people have. By 2004, we know that the island causes a pregnant women’s body to turn on the fetus, ultimately killing both mother and child. It’s almost as if the island is trying to heal the women of their pregnancies. But when the characters went back in time to 1977, DHARMA had no trouble with women conceiving and giving birth on the island. Neither did the Others, since Eloise was pregnant with Daniel and again there were no issues. Juliet is nervous about delivering Amy’s baby (who turned out to be Ethan), but Sawyer mentions that whatever causes pregnant women to die probably hasn’t happened yet. He’s right, and Ethan is delivered no problem. But what happens not long after? The Incident. And everything we’ve seen post-Incident indicates that women who conceive on the island will die not long into their pregnancy. Eloise quickly left the island and fled to the outside world to give birth to Daniel (and hide from Widmore), and over the next 27 years the Others wound up kidnapping/adopting Ethan, Alex, Zach, Emma, Walt and also tried to take Aaron. Most likely, the Incident either damaged the island’s healing properties or simply inhibited human reproduction, and this is causing pregnant women to die. Women who conceive off-island are not affected by this phenomenon (which is why Claire and Rousseau were fine but Sun needed to leave). It’s possible that detonating the Swan station may have fixed this problem—or for that matter, resetting the Source, killing the smoke monster, and/or instituting Hurley as the new leader could have fixed it as well—but we’ll never really know unless this is clarified further.
#9. Who was really in Jacob’s cabin?
The Man in Black. Since Ilana and her team first went looking for Jacob at the cabin, and given the circle of ash surrounding it, we can determine that Jacob did reside there at one time. But eventually he abandoned the cabin and went back to his home under the statue. The circle of ash was broken and the Man in Black started occupying the cabin, which is why Ilana says “someone else has been using it” before setting the place on fire. We saw Christian in the cabin on a handful of occasions, and we know that he was really the Man in Black. So, the smoke monster stayed in the cabin and allowed Ben and Locke to think he was Jacob, which was all part of his long con to use the two of them in order to finally destroy his brother. So when Locke hears “help me,” he is hearing the Man in Black. (And the figure who briefly appears in the chair, while not the same actor, is dressed exactly like the Man in Black).
#10. What happened to Annie?
A lot of people are really concerned with this one, and it does seem that Annie played an important role in Ben's childhood. But where did she go? Given that the two of them are best friends in 1973/74 but she’s no longer around by 1977, it can be extrapolated that her family most likely moved away and that Ben never saw her again. That might seem like a lame or anticlimactic answer, but I think that’s more or less the conclusion you can draw from watching the show. Apparently Damon and Carlton confirmed as much in a recent podcast, but that aside, this is pretty much what the series implies when you look at the whole story.
#11. Who was the guy murdered by Sayid on the golf course? Who was the economist? Who was Jill the butcher? Who tranquilized Sayid?
There were a lot of shady people stalking our characters in seasons four and five, and it gets difficult to keep track of them. As far as the people Sayid assassinated while working for Ben, the show pretty much told us they were all part of Charles Widmore’s secret network. Remember that Widmore was one of the most powerful men in the world, and led a corporate conspiracy to relocate and exploit the island. Sayid was picking those people off one at a time. The goons shooting tranquilizer darts everywhere and terrorizing the Oceanic 6 at the beginning of the fifth season were most likely all working for Ben (just like Dan Norton and Jill the butcher), which was Ben’s weasely way of manipulating and motivating the characters to return to the island.
#12. Who was shooting at the characters in the outrigger canoe?
Admittedly, the show didn’t really answer this question, though the writers originally intended to. But most likely, the outrigger shootout occurred during the chaos of Widmore’s people storming the island. This moment in season five was meant to offer a brief glimpse into the insanity of season six. Of course it would have been cool to see the other side of the outrigger shootout, but oh well.
#13. Did Jughead explode or not?
Yes, Jughead exploded. Richard claims that everyone who tried to detonate Jughead died, which most likely is referring to the fact that he assumed (understandably) they’d all been vaporized. Plus, the screen turns white and the characters are all magically transported back to present day. Juliet detonated the bomb, but it didn’t create an alternate timeline. Instead, the detonation of Jughead is what stabilized the island after the Incident. Otherwise, the catastrophic release of the EM energy would have destroyed the island and subsequently the world. This is what happened and what always happened; Juliet set off the nuke, and the radioactive energy negated the burst of electromagnetism and sent the characters forward in time. (Remember that Faraday explained in season four how electromagnetism and radiation are the two forces which distort time). The island itself was still damaged and necessitated the building of the Swan station to control the static buildup of electromagnetic energy, but it would have been much worse otherwise. Our characters went through time because that’s what needed to happen; their sojourn in DHARMA 70’s was them fulfilling their fate of detonating Jughead and saving the island.
#14. Who is Mother? Where did she come from?
Okay, this wasn’t answered either, but I’m including it because there is something important about this which “Across the Sea” basically explained to us: it doesn’t matter where she came from. As Mother herself said, “Every question just leads to another question”. There has been a long line of quasi-immortal island keepers, and Mother was just one more link in that chain. Who was before her? Before them? When did humans first arrive on the island? These questions are not answerable and are not important for the main story. It’s not like if we knew where Mother came from we would then have the key to the One Big Answer which explains the whole series. All we need to know is that she was guardian of the island, had been so for a long time, and was tired of the job and needed a replacement. This is one of those questions which the show itself actually told us was insignificant, and at some point you either just have to accept that this is a magical island facilitating the events which transpire in the story, or be mad at the show for not providing a logical schematic why everything happened the way that it did.
#15. What’s up with the pool, the plug and the Source?
The series finale essentially implied that some ancient culture had tried to tunnel into the Source via the island volcano (props to the long lost Annie for mentioning the island’s volcano back in season three) and tried to harness the light or the water (or both), causing a release of the Source’s energy a la the Incident. Notice all of the imagery recalling when the characters first ventured into the hatch; the plug is just an ancient version of pushing the button. The island is made stable by the light from the energy source and the cooling water from the island’s streams. Essentially, the island is almost like a self-contained, fully functioning organism, with the energy as its heart and the water flowing into it like lifeblood. Cutting off the flow of water to the Source causes it to go dim and overheat, activating the volcano and hastening the island’s destruction. Whoever built the plug must have used it as their last ditch effort to save the island. The writing on the plug is supposedly cuneiform, meaning it possibly predates the island’s Egyptian civilization, if of course it wasn’t just one of the many pieces of evidence left behind by the Egyptians themselves. It’s unclear if the drainage system in the pool is meant to help distribute water to the Source or drain water from it, but the specifics are less important than the implication of this being some ancient culture’s near-apocalyptic island blunder.
#16. So wait, the characters were dead the whole time?
No! As Christian Shephard explained, everything that happened on the island really happened. The sideways world was a way for the characters to all find each other again after death, and move on to the Source (whatever that may be). Aside from that, the mirror universe, like the Source itself, is very open to interpretation. But the characters did not all die in the original plane crash, or the Ajira crash, or the Jughead detonation. The footage of the silent wreckage of 815 was added by the network merely as a moment of pause before heading into regularly scheduled local programming.
Lest I seem like a LOST apologist, here are eight questions the show really didn’t even try to answer, nor give us enough to go on aside from vague guesswork (of which I shall provide plenty!), and in a handful of cases just abandoned entirely:
#1. Why was Desmond in military prison?
Considering the drama that could be mined from this explanation and given LOST's penchant for answering these types of questions about the characters, especially a fan favorite like Desmond, you'd think this lingering mystery would have been addressed. But you would be wrong. It seems we got close to seeing Des locked up, considering how he was acting like a complete flake in boot camp when his mind starting jumping around in time. But his flashbacks ended at that point, and we've never seen anything between then and his first flashback in "Live Together, Die Alone". Before Desmond went to Oxford he mentioned that he had leave available, so it's doubtful he was sent to jail for taking off and bothering Daniel, Widmore and Penny. All we know is that he was imprisoned and dishonorably discharged for not following orders. Maybe there can be a bonus scene when Libby gives Des the boat, where she explains exactly why she was hospitalized and he explains exactly why he was in military prison.
#2. Who or what was Dave?
When Hurley’s imaginary friend Dave was introduced, it seemed pretty clear he was just that: a hallucination created by Hurley’s mind in order to deal with his own perceived guilt over the deck collapse. Dave was named Dave after Hurley’s father David, and was a projection of Hurley’s own abandonment issues as well as his eating disorder. Or at least, that’s what Dr. Phil would say until learning that Hurley could make things happen just by wanting them to, as well as speak to the ghosts of the deceased that no one else can see or hear. So, this does make us go back and see Dave in a somewhat different light. After all, Hurley’s interactions with ghosts so closely echo his discussions with Dave that even Hurley himself thought he'd gone crazy again. So, was Dave merely a delusion created by Hurley’s mental problems? A projection of the island trying to test Hurley? A malevolent spirit, maybe even Libby’s deceased husband David? (Damon and Carlton nixed that one four years ago, but a lot can change in four years). I still lean towards the simple explanation that Dave was a creation of Hurley’s mind, but I do suspect it may have been a Danny Torrance type of situation, and that it prefigured or hinted at Hurley’s abilities. Regardless, it’s a question worth pondering.
#3. What was Claire’s implant?
Back in season three, Claire became deathly ill, and Juliet explained that Claire was withdrawing from a serum designed to help pregnant women successfully carry to term. This was all revealed to be bollocks at the end of the episode, when Ben seemingly steals a plot point from “Star Trek,” claiming that Claire’s implant has been activated and she’ll show symptoms within two days. Huh? Implant? From where? This storyline is never even mentioned again and leaves us with very little information. All we know is the Others must have put this implant in Claire during her abduction to later pull a con on the castaways, and that the DHARMA vaccine seemingly alleviates the symptoms. Considering that Claire’s symptoms would be experienced by many other characters later in the series (headache, confusion, nosebleed), I’m guessing that these implants must make people susceptible to the electromagnetic brain scrambling which can occur when people are exposed to the island’s energy. Granted, Claire’s mind didn’t seem to be time traveling, but there’s no rule which says that necessarily has to occur. So, this was probably another one of DHARMA’s myriad leftover sci-fi experiments. Assuming the DHARMA vaccine really counters these effects, this makes some semblance of sense, but even then it’s all pretty vague.
#4. How does the ash work?
We know the ash seems to fend off the smoke monster, almost like a magical version of the sonic fence. But how does it work? Is it connected to the way Jacob’s ashes still contained his life force? Is it charged with the same magnetism as the smoke monster and therefore repels it? Is it simply the magic of the island? Is it this way just because Jacob says so? Why did the ash no longer protect the Temple once Dogen was dead? Honestly, I don’t really care about the specifics and figure this should be chalked up to island mysticism, but it is a little weird no one ever asked about this at all.
#5. Why did Desmond foresee Claire and Aaron getting on the helicopter?
I’m guessing that Desmond must have misinterpreted his flashes of the future and assumed it was Claire getting on the helicopter with Aaron, when in fact it was Kate. A misconception about future events by someone who can supposedly see the future is a common sci-fi trope, and it works just fine here. (It could also simply have been a potential future which was never realized, meaning that the Man in Black knew this would happen and decided to intervene). But the series never picked up on this thread, having Desmond generally lose his precognitive abilities by getting smacked in the cranium with an ore. This plot point really wouldn’t be that big of a deal normally (what with all of the other weird stuff going on), but considering it fed into Charlie’s decision to allow himself to drown, it’s hard not to wonder about it.
#6. Miles can’t talk to ghosts. So what about the time he talked to a ghost?
Season five revealed that Miles doesn’t really speak with the dead: he is simply an empath who can read a person’s thoughts and see their past once they’ve expired. Fair enough. But in our introduction to him, we saw Miles go into a supposedly haunted room and interrogate the spirit of a deceased boy (to claim the kid’s drug money, no less). He asked the presence in the room where the money was located, and the ghost seemed to comply by shaking a piece of furniture. So if Miles can’t commune with the dead, what exactly was going on? Well, Miles technically didn’t communicate with the ghost. He spoke to it but it never spoke to him. So, my best guess is that Miles’ ability gives him some sway when it comes to the world of the deceased, but unlike Hurley, his power stops past a certain point. He typically needs the dead person’s body in order for his powers to work properly. Miles likely didn’t even know or believe for certain that a ghost was there; a cynic and a skeptic, he wasn’t concerned with the specifics of what happens after death. He just used his abilities to fleece people. Beyond that, this is a strange scene and it stands in contrast to most of what Miles would later do, but this is as close to an explanation as I think we can get.
#7. How does Harper manage to teleport across the island and harass Juliet?
In “The Other Woman,” Goodwin’s estranged wife (and Juliet’s love rival) Harper magically appears during a cacophony of whispers, then proceeds to give Juliet orders on behalf of Ben and make really annoyed faces at Jack, then magically disappears amidst more whispers. What was up with that? Well, the most obvious culprit would be the monster, but he can supposedly only take the forms of the dead and we don’t know that Harper was dead. (Damon and Carlton confirmed in a podcast that Harper is alive, but who the hell knows). So if it was Harper, how did she manage to pull a Houdini? Is she just really sneaky? Either that, or like Walt she is able to do that weird astral projection/teleporting thing they’ve never really explained. After all, we do know the island brings out certain powers in certain people. Harper says she followed and watched Juliet and Goodwin during one of their little trysts, and you have to wonder if maybe she didn’t use her freaky abilities to accomplish her PI work. I actually like the idea of Juliet’s rival having supernatural powers and doing a kind of “Witches of Eastwick” thing, but the show abandoned the idea and Harper become another one-off character like Sullivan, Isabel, and Oldham. We’ll never know either way.
#8. Just who exactly were Caesar and Ilana, anyway?
Season five went to a lot of trouble to introduce the character of Caesar, making him mysterious and shady and with the producers implying that he was significant in the endgame of the series. He was also clearly not in league with Ilana, hinting that he was intended to represent another interest at play in the island. However, he was anticlimactically shot by Ben and then never mentioned again. Although Caesar provided a voice for the background survivors of Ajira 316 and he was an intriguing character regardless, it does feel as if more was intended for his character. Turns out that the writers wanted to revisit Caesar in season six, but actor Said Taghmaoui opted against returning to the island in order to pursue various film commitments. It worked fine in the end but I’d love to know what they originally had in mind for Caesar. My guess is that he was supposed to be a Widmore operative, but that’s strictly speculation.
The Ajira crash also introduced Ilana Verdansky, an enigmatic woman with a double agenda. We come to learn that she’s really working for Jacob and she’s brought a whole cadre of people to team up with the Others and kill the Man in Black. Oh yeah, and she’s so close to Jacob that she considers him a father. Would you like to know more about her? Well, you can’t. She blew up. Why was she in the Russian hospital, covered in bandages? How did she meet Jacob? How has she been preparing for years and years for her island mission? All moot points once she ‘sploded. Apparently the writers intended to explore her character further, but they simply ran out of time. She fulfilled her role in the story and her death was shocking enough to jolt the characters into action, but it is a little disappointing Ilana never got to realize her full potential. Her forgiveness of Ben was also one of the most touching scenes of the entire season, so there’s that. As for the answers to all the many mysteries surrounding her? All we can glean is that Ilana had a tough life and that Jacob looked out for her and trusted her. Beyond that, no info is forthcoming. Aside from the fact that she’s smokin’ hot (and not just because of the dynamite).
Ahem.
Before I get to the topic at hand, two things. First, the season six DVD will supposedly include about 15 or 20 minutes of newly filmed footage which will attempt to wrap up some of the below questions in an entertaining way, completely in-story. Rumor has it that even Malcolm David Kelley filmed scenes for this extra material (awesome!). So, in the event that my ideas below are invalidated in a few months by the bonus material on the DVD, my apologies. Secondly, these are just my interpretations. I have tried to hew as closely as possible to evidence provided by the series itself and not project too many of my own opinions, but I’m sure I failed in some respect.
#1. Where did the polar bears come from?
The polar bears were brought to Hydra island by the DHARMA Initiative, who were conducting biological and behavioral experiments on various animals at the Hydra station. The blast door map reveals that DHARMA was genetically altering the bears to adapt them to warmer climates. Once the Hydra station was abandoned, the bears were let loose and eventually swam to the main island, where they took up residence in some of the island’s many caves.
#2. Why is Aaron special?
The supposed psychic Richard Malkin was lying when he told Claire that a horrible fate would await Aaron if she didn’t raise him herself. Essentially, Malkin was a fraud and he was conning Claire, tricking her into giving Aaron to the couple in Los Angeles. Malkin himself revealed that he was a scam artist when questioned by Mr. Eko. (And in a deleted scene, Malkin did explain that he was paid $16,000 by an American couple to scare a pregnant woman into giving them her baby). As for Charlie needing to baptize Aaron, this was likely the island’s way of trying to protect the baby from the monster, given that it was planning to “claim” Claire. The Man in Black even ensured that Aaron was taken off of the island (“the baby is exactly where he needs to be,” is what he said), indicating that he could have wanted to keep Aaron safe from the chaos he was planning to unleash. In other words, the series has more or less suggested that MIB manipulated Aaron’s leaving the island . . . probably out of a weird empathy, wanting the baby to avoid a life of being trapped on the island with a crazy mother. He essentially confirmed this when talking to Kate about his own mother.
#3. What’s the deal with Walt’s powers?
We have seen many characters who seem to exhibit supernatural abilities: Walt, Hurley, Desmond, Miles, Jacob, the Man in Black (both before and after he became the smoke monster), and even Isaac of Uluru (the faith healer who explained the electromagnetism to Rose). The idea seems to be that exposure to the island’s energy can invest certain people with more or less magical powers; those who already have these abilities find them magnified when coming to the island. Walt was just the first of many characters who would experience this, and his powers were particularly strong. The Others took him because they could no longer have children of their own (and he was supposedly on Jacob’s list). Walt was kept in Room 23 on Hydra island after his kidnapping. However, his powers were so weird that he terrified the Others, and this is why they ultimately decided to let him go back to Michael. Walt himself was not necessarily aware of or in control of his abilities, meaning he would cause bizarre things to happen without necessarily meaning to. It seems he maintained some kind of connection to Locke even after leaving the island, which might explain his appearance when Locke was in the DHARMA body pit.
#4. What is the Sickness?
From what we’ve seen, the Sickness is a type of corruption caused by exposure to the dark energy of the black smoke. It drove Rousseau’s team mad, and nearly destroyed Sayid and Claire. The DHARMA vaccine was likely the Initiative’s way of protecting people from the influence of the monster (and possibly the negative side effects of the electromagnetism in general). It is probably not even an actual vaccine, but a chemical agent keeping the black smoke at bay, which would explain why DHARMA members had to use repeated injections. And remember that the vaccine is labeled CR 4 8-1516-23 42. The letter C was used by DHARMA to stand for Cerberus, the DI’s code name for the black smoke, so there’s a decent chance “CR” meant “Cerberus”. We know the vaccine was largely supplied by the Staff station, which likely was devoted to studying the positive and negative effects the island has on people’s health (i.e. the healing properties). This also explains why the Others were injecting Aaron with the vaccine when he was still in the womb; they were trying to protect him from the monster’s corruption. As for the Quarantine sign on the hatch, this was probably just the DHARMA Initiative’s way of keeping Swan station members inside, considering the threat posed by the Others, the monster and the Tempest station, as well as the importance of pushing the button.
#5. Where did the DHARMA supply drop come from?
As we know, the island exists within a warp in the spacetime continuum. Since time on the island is somewhat out of sync with the outside world, it would cause something like the supply drop to seemingly appear out of nowhere. DHARMA was still sending supplies because the Swan station remained in operation after the Purge; whether or not they even knew about the Purge at all is largely insignificant. The “Mysteries of the Universe” feature on the fifth season DVD reveals that DHARMA sometimes had trouble locating the island and would mistakenly drop supplies at incorrect locations, further indicating the disconnect between the island and the rest of the world.
#6. Why was Libby in the mental institution?
Libby explained to Desmond that her husband had just recently died, and not long afterwards we see her at the Santa Rosa mental hospital. Essentially, Libby had a nervous breakdown after the death of her husband, and had herself hospitalized. This was always the explanation that the writers intended, but intense fan speculation about Libby’s reason for being in the mental institution caused them to concoct a much different backstory, supposedly more conspiratorial and along the lines of Libby having a connection to Charles Widmore and the freighter. This would have been revealed in season four, but was cut short due to the writers’ strike. The writers attempted to revisit this plotline in the fifth season, but the actress who plays Libby (Cynthia Watros) turned down their offer, and the entire storyline was ultimately scrapped. Thus, Libby’s backstory remains what the writers originally intended anyway.
#7. Who built the statue? The frozen donkey wheel? The Temple? The Lighthouse?
It’s a safe bet that the giant statue of an Egyptian deity covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics was built by, you know, the Egyptians. They were clearly on the island at some point after Jacob and the Man in Black became the dynamic duo. As we’ve seen, the Egyptians built many monuments and other structures all over the island, not just the statue of Taweret. There’s a good chance they’re the ones who finished the MIB’s donkey wheel, as well as contributed to the Temple (which drew from several different cultures) and constructed the Lighthouse. They were simply one of a variety of civilizations that have come and gone on the island. DHARMA probably used the Egyptian symbols in the Swan countdown timer (as well as in the Valenzetti Equation) because they were studying the island’s ancient history.
#8. Why do pregnant women die on the island?
This is possibly the biggest question people have. By 2004, we know that the island causes a pregnant women’s body to turn on the fetus, ultimately killing both mother and child. It’s almost as if the island is trying to heal the women of their pregnancies. But when the characters went back in time to 1977, DHARMA had no trouble with women conceiving and giving birth on the island. Neither did the Others, since Eloise was pregnant with Daniel and again there were no issues. Juliet is nervous about delivering Amy’s baby (who turned out to be Ethan), but Sawyer mentions that whatever causes pregnant women to die probably hasn’t happened yet. He’s right, and Ethan is delivered no problem. But what happens not long after? The Incident. And everything we’ve seen post-Incident indicates that women who conceive on the island will die not long into their pregnancy. Eloise quickly left the island and fled to the outside world to give birth to Daniel (and hide from Widmore), and over the next 27 years the Others wound up kidnapping/adopting Ethan, Alex, Zach, Emma, Walt and also tried to take Aaron. Most likely, the Incident either damaged the island’s healing properties or simply inhibited human reproduction, and this is causing pregnant women to die. Women who conceive off-island are not affected by this phenomenon (which is why Claire and Rousseau were fine but Sun needed to leave). It’s possible that detonating the Swan station may have fixed this problem—or for that matter, resetting the Source, killing the smoke monster, and/or instituting Hurley as the new leader could have fixed it as well—but we’ll never really know unless this is clarified further.
#9. Who was really in Jacob’s cabin?
The Man in Black. Since Ilana and her team first went looking for Jacob at the cabin, and given the circle of ash surrounding it, we can determine that Jacob did reside there at one time. But eventually he abandoned the cabin and went back to his home under the statue. The circle of ash was broken and the Man in Black started occupying the cabin, which is why Ilana says “someone else has been using it” before setting the place on fire. We saw Christian in the cabin on a handful of occasions, and we know that he was really the Man in Black. So, the smoke monster stayed in the cabin and allowed Ben and Locke to think he was Jacob, which was all part of his long con to use the two of them in order to finally destroy his brother. So when Locke hears “help me,” he is hearing the Man in Black. (And the figure who briefly appears in the chair, while not the same actor, is dressed exactly like the Man in Black).
#10. What happened to Annie?
A lot of people are really concerned with this one, and it does seem that Annie played an important role in Ben's childhood. But where did she go? Given that the two of them are best friends in 1973/74 but she’s no longer around by 1977, it can be extrapolated that her family most likely moved away and that Ben never saw her again. That might seem like a lame or anticlimactic answer, but I think that’s more or less the conclusion you can draw from watching the show. Apparently Damon and Carlton confirmed as much in a recent podcast, but that aside, this is pretty much what the series implies when you look at the whole story.
#11. Who was the guy murdered by Sayid on the golf course? Who was the economist? Who was Jill the butcher? Who tranquilized Sayid?
There were a lot of shady people stalking our characters in seasons four and five, and it gets difficult to keep track of them. As far as the people Sayid assassinated while working for Ben, the show pretty much told us they were all part of Charles Widmore’s secret network. Remember that Widmore was one of the most powerful men in the world, and led a corporate conspiracy to relocate and exploit the island. Sayid was picking those people off one at a time. The goons shooting tranquilizer darts everywhere and terrorizing the Oceanic 6 at the beginning of the fifth season were most likely all working for Ben (just like Dan Norton and Jill the butcher), which was Ben’s weasely way of manipulating and motivating the characters to return to the island.
#12. Who was shooting at the characters in the outrigger canoe?
Admittedly, the show didn’t really answer this question, though the writers originally intended to. But most likely, the outrigger shootout occurred during the chaos of Widmore’s people storming the island. This moment in season five was meant to offer a brief glimpse into the insanity of season six. Of course it would have been cool to see the other side of the outrigger shootout, but oh well.
#13. Did Jughead explode or not?
Yes, Jughead exploded. Richard claims that everyone who tried to detonate Jughead died, which most likely is referring to the fact that he assumed (understandably) they’d all been vaporized. Plus, the screen turns white and the characters are all magically transported back to present day. Juliet detonated the bomb, but it didn’t create an alternate timeline. Instead, the detonation of Jughead is what stabilized the island after the Incident. Otherwise, the catastrophic release of the EM energy would have destroyed the island and subsequently the world. This is what happened and what always happened; Juliet set off the nuke, and the radioactive energy negated the burst of electromagnetism and sent the characters forward in time. (Remember that Faraday explained in season four how electromagnetism and radiation are the two forces which distort time). The island itself was still damaged and necessitated the building of the Swan station to control the static buildup of electromagnetic energy, but it would have been much worse otherwise. Our characters went through time because that’s what needed to happen; their sojourn in DHARMA 70’s was them fulfilling their fate of detonating Jughead and saving the island.
#14. Who is Mother? Where did she come from?
Okay, this wasn’t answered either, but I’m including it because there is something important about this which “Across the Sea” basically explained to us: it doesn’t matter where she came from. As Mother herself said, “Every question just leads to another question”. There has been a long line of quasi-immortal island keepers, and Mother was just one more link in that chain. Who was before her? Before them? When did humans first arrive on the island? These questions are not answerable and are not important for the main story. It’s not like if we knew where Mother came from we would then have the key to the One Big Answer which explains the whole series. All we need to know is that she was guardian of the island, had been so for a long time, and was tired of the job and needed a replacement. This is one of those questions which the show itself actually told us was insignificant, and at some point you either just have to accept that this is a magical island facilitating the events which transpire in the story, or be mad at the show for not providing a logical schematic why everything happened the way that it did.
#15. What’s up with the pool, the plug and the Source?
The series finale essentially implied that some ancient culture had tried to tunnel into the Source via the island volcano (props to the long lost Annie for mentioning the island’s volcano back in season three) and tried to harness the light or the water (or both), causing a release of the Source’s energy a la the Incident. Notice all of the imagery recalling when the characters first ventured into the hatch; the plug is just an ancient version of pushing the button. The island is made stable by the light from the energy source and the cooling water from the island’s streams. Essentially, the island is almost like a self-contained, fully functioning organism, with the energy as its heart and the water flowing into it like lifeblood. Cutting off the flow of water to the Source causes it to go dim and overheat, activating the volcano and hastening the island’s destruction. Whoever built the plug must have used it as their last ditch effort to save the island. The writing on the plug is supposedly cuneiform, meaning it possibly predates the island’s Egyptian civilization, if of course it wasn’t just one of the many pieces of evidence left behind by the Egyptians themselves. It’s unclear if the drainage system in the pool is meant to help distribute water to the Source or drain water from it, but the specifics are less important than the implication of this being some ancient culture’s near-apocalyptic island blunder.
#16. So wait, the characters were dead the whole time?
No! As Christian Shephard explained, everything that happened on the island really happened. The sideways world was a way for the characters to all find each other again after death, and move on to the Source (whatever that may be). Aside from that, the mirror universe, like the Source itself, is very open to interpretation. But the characters did not all die in the original plane crash, or the Ajira crash, or the Jughead detonation. The footage of the silent wreckage of 815 was added by the network merely as a moment of pause before heading into regularly scheduled local programming.
Lest I seem like a LOST apologist, here are eight questions the show really didn’t even try to answer, nor give us enough to go on aside from vague guesswork (of which I shall provide plenty!), and in a handful of cases just abandoned entirely:
#1. Why was Desmond in military prison?
Considering the drama that could be mined from this explanation and given LOST's penchant for answering these types of questions about the characters, especially a fan favorite like Desmond, you'd think this lingering mystery would have been addressed. But you would be wrong. It seems we got close to seeing Des locked up, considering how he was acting like a complete flake in boot camp when his mind starting jumping around in time. But his flashbacks ended at that point, and we've never seen anything between then and his first flashback in "Live Together, Die Alone". Before Desmond went to Oxford he mentioned that he had leave available, so it's doubtful he was sent to jail for taking off and bothering Daniel, Widmore and Penny. All we know is that he was imprisoned and dishonorably discharged for not following orders. Maybe there can be a bonus scene when Libby gives Des the boat, where she explains exactly why she was hospitalized and he explains exactly why he was in military prison.
#2. Who or what was Dave?
When Hurley’s imaginary friend Dave was introduced, it seemed pretty clear he was just that: a hallucination created by Hurley’s mind in order to deal with his own perceived guilt over the deck collapse. Dave was named Dave after Hurley’s father David, and was a projection of Hurley’s own abandonment issues as well as his eating disorder. Or at least, that’s what Dr. Phil would say until learning that Hurley could make things happen just by wanting them to, as well as speak to the ghosts of the deceased that no one else can see or hear. So, this does make us go back and see Dave in a somewhat different light. After all, Hurley’s interactions with ghosts so closely echo his discussions with Dave that even Hurley himself thought he'd gone crazy again. So, was Dave merely a delusion created by Hurley’s mental problems? A projection of the island trying to test Hurley? A malevolent spirit, maybe even Libby’s deceased husband David? (Damon and Carlton nixed that one four years ago, but a lot can change in four years). I still lean towards the simple explanation that Dave was a creation of Hurley’s mind, but I do suspect it may have been a Danny Torrance type of situation, and that it prefigured or hinted at Hurley’s abilities. Regardless, it’s a question worth pondering.
#3. What was Claire’s implant?
Back in season three, Claire became deathly ill, and Juliet explained that Claire was withdrawing from a serum designed to help pregnant women successfully carry to term. This was all revealed to be bollocks at the end of the episode, when Ben seemingly steals a plot point from “Star Trek,” claiming that Claire’s implant has been activated and she’ll show symptoms within two days. Huh? Implant? From where? This storyline is never even mentioned again and leaves us with very little information. All we know is the Others must have put this implant in Claire during her abduction to later pull a con on the castaways, and that the DHARMA vaccine seemingly alleviates the symptoms. Considering that Claire’s symptoms would be experienced by many other characters later in the series (headache, confusion, nosebleed), I’m guessing that these implants must make people susceptible to the electromagnetic brain scrambling which can occur when people are exposed to the island’s energy. Granted, Claire’s mind didn’t seem to be time traveling, but there’s no rule which says that necessarily has to occur. So, this was probably another one of DHARMA’s myriad leftover sci-fi experiments. Assuming the DHARMA vaccine really counters these effects, this makes some semblance of sense, but even then it’s all pretty vague.
#4. How does the ash work?
We know the ash seems to fend off the smoke monster, almost like a magical version of the sonic fence. But how does it work? Is it connected to the way Jacob’s ashes still contained his life force? Is it charged with the same magnetism as the smoke monster and therefore repels it? Is it simply the magic of the island? Is it this way just because Jacob says so? Why did the ash no longer protect the Temple once Dogen was dead? Honestly, I don’t really care about the specifics and figure this should be chalked up to island mysticism, but it is a little weird no one ever asked about this at all.
#5. Why did Desmond foresee Claire and Aaron getting on the helicopter?
I’m guessing that Desmond must have misinterpreted his flashes of the future and assumed it was Claire getting on the helicopter with Aaron, when in fact it was Kate. A misconception about future events by someone who can supposedly see the future is a common sci-fi trope, and it works just fine here. (It could also simply have been a potential future which was never realized, meaning that the Man in Black knew this would happen and decided to intervene). But the series never picked up on this thread, having Desmond generally lose his precognitive abilities by getting smacked in the cranium with an ore. This plot point really wouldn’t be that big of a deal normally (what with all of the other weird stuff going on), but considering it fed into Charlie’s decision to allow himself to drown, it’s hard not to wonder about it.
#6. Miles can’t talk to ghosts. So what about the time he talked to a ghost?
Season five revealed that Miles doesn’t really speak with the dead: he is simply an empath who can read a person’s thoughts and see their past once they’ve expired. Fair enough. But in our introduction to him, we saw Miles go into a supposedly haunted room and interrogate the spirit of a deceased boy (to claim the kid’s drug money, no less). He asked the presence in the room where the money was located, and the ghost seemed to comply by shaking a piece of furniture. So if Miles can’t commune with the dead, what exactly was going on? Well, Miles technically didn’t communicate with the ghost. He spoke to it but it never spoke to him. So, my best guess is that Miles’ ability gives him some sway when it comes to the world of the deceased, but unlike Hurley, his power stops past a certain point. He typically needs the dead person’s body in order for his powers to work properly. Miles likely didn’t even know or believe for certain that a ghost was there; a cynic and a skeptic, he wasn’t concerned with the specifics of what happens after death. He just used his abilities to fleece people. Beyond that, this is a strange scene and it stands in contrast to most of what Miles would later do, but this is as close to an explanation as I think we can get.
#7. How does Harper manage to teleport across the island and harass Juliet?
In “The Other Woman,” Goodwin’s estranged wife (and Juliet’s love rival) Harper magically appears during a cacophony of whispers, then proceeds to give Juliet orders on behalf of Ben and make really annoyed faces at Jack, then magically disappears amidst more whispers. What was up with that? Well, the most obvious culprit would be the monster, but he can supposedly only take the forms of the dead and we don’t know that Harper was dead. (Damon and Carlton confirmed in a podcast that Harper is alive, but who the hell knows). So if it was Harper, how did she manage to pull a Houdini? Is she just really sneaky? Either that, or like Walt she is able to do that weird astral projection/teleporting thing they’ve never really explained. After all, we do know the island brings out certain powers in certain people. Harper says she followed and watched Juliet and Goodwin during one of their little trysts, and you have to wonder if maybe she didn’t use her freaky abilities to accomplish her PI work. I actually like the idea of Juliet’s rival having supernatural powers and doing a kind of “Witches of Eastwick” thing, but the show abandoned the idea and Harper become another one-off character like Sullivan, Isabel, and Oldham. We’ll never know either way.
#8. Just who exactly were Caesar and Ilana, anyway?
Season five went to a lot of trouble to introduce the character of Caesar, making him mysterious and shady and with the producers implying that he was significant in the endgame of the series. He was also clearly not in league with Ilana, hinting that he was intended to represent another interest at play in the island. However, he was anticlimactically shot by Ben and then never mentioned again. Although Caesar provided a voice for the background survivors of Ajira 316 and he was an intriguing character regardless, it does feel as if more was intended for his character. Turns out that the writers wanted to revisit Caesar in season six, but actor Said Taghmaoui opted against returning to the island in order to pursue various film commitments. It worked fine in the end but I’d love to know what they originally had in mind for Caesar. My guess is that he was supposed to be a Widmore operative, but that’s strictly speculation.
The Ajira crash also introduced Ilana Verdansky, an enigmatic woman with a double agenda. We come to learn that she’s really working for Jacob and she’s brought a whole cadre of people to team up with the Others and kill the Man in Black. Oh yeah, and she’s so close to Jacob that she considers him a father. Would you like to know more about her? Well, you can’t. She blew up. Why was she in the Russian hospital, covered in bandages? How did she meet Jacob? How has she been preparing for years and years for her island mission? All moot points once she ‘sploded. Apparently the writers intended to explore her character further, but they simply ran out of time. She fulfilled her role in the story and her death was shocking enough to jolt the characters into action, but it is a little disappointing Ilana never got to realize her full potential. Her forgiveness of Ben was also one of the most touching scenes of the entire season, so there’s that. As for the answers to all the many mysteries surrounding her? All we can glean is that Ilana had a tough life and that Jacob looked out for her and trusted her. Beyond that, no info is forthcoming. Aside from the fact that she’s smokin’ hot (and not just because of the dynamite).
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Update: in the event that LOST actually does answer these questions tonight, I've decided against typing a long-winded explanation for these mysteries and looking like a tool afterwards. Instead, I've just put a brief description of my theories in parentheses. LOST should speak for itself; whatever is left over, I'll address after the finale. Can't wait for tonight!
Well, I tried to post a really cool list of unanswered questions that I don't think will be answered in the finale . . . but the twist is, I think the show has already indirectly answered them. It was a good post, I thought. But the internet hates me more than MIB hates Jacob, and some glitch in the spacetime continuum caused my post to be devoured by the abyss. It's late so I'm not gonna rewrite it, but I wanted to at least post something since the last couple hours don't seem like a waste. I have to retype the whole thing, but I'll at least give a list of the mysteries that I feel the show has given us enough to answer on our own:
1. What's up with Walt's powers? (People who have certain abilities find their powers are amplified when exposed to the island's electromagnetic field/magic).
2. What is the Sickness? (The corruption caused by the dark energy of the black smoke. The DHARMA "vaccine" was used to protect against this).
3. What's the deal with the DHARMA supply drop? (The drops seem to appear out of nowhere because island time is somewhat out of sync with the outside world).
4. Who built the statue? (Um, the Egyptians, yo.)
5. Why do pregnant women die on the island? (The Incident damaged the island's healing properties, causing the island to kill pregnant women).
6. Who was in the cabin? (Used to be Jacob before we ever visited there, but the Man in Black by the time Ben brought Locke to the cabin).
7. Why is Aaron special? (The psychic was a fraud, so his prophecy about Aaron is not necessarily significant. What matters is if Kate raising Aaron was the right thing for him).
I really do think the show has basically answered these questions and I'm not so worried about them. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to post my actual thoughts, but then again the corrupt nothingness of the black smoke monster may see fit to destroy my work again. We'll just have to see.
Final prediction: the sideways world is a parallel universe where the characters never detonated the bomb. The island upholds the spacetime continuum with some type of cosmic creation energy, and it's the cornerstone of multiple universes. All of the multiverses need to be protected.
And that's all she wrote. See you after the finale!
Well, I tried to post a really cool list of unanswered questions that I don't think will be answered in the finale . . . but the twist is, I think the show has already indirectly answered them. It was a good post, I thought. But the internet hates me more than MIB hates Jacob, and some glitch in the spacetime continuum caused my post to be devoured by the abyss. It's late so I'm not gonna rewrite it, but I wanted to at least post something since the last couple hours don't seem like a waste. I have to retype the whole thing, but I'll at least give a list of the mysteries that I feel the show has given us enough to answer on our own:
1. What's up with Walt's powers? (People who have certain abilities find their powers are amplified when exposed to the island's electromagnetic field/magic).
2. What is the Sickness? (The corruption caused by the dark energy of the black smoke. The DHARMA "vaccine" was used to protect against this).
3. What's the deal with the DHARMA supply drop? (The drops seem to appear out of nowhere because island time is somewhat out of sync with the outside world).
4. Who built the statue? (Um, the Egyptians, yo.)
5. Why do pregnant women die on the island? (The Incident damaged the island's healing properties, causing the island to kill pregnant women).
6. Who was in the cabin? (Used to be Jacob before we ever visited there, but the Man in Black by the time Ben brought Locke to the cabin).
7. Why is Aaron special? (The psychic was a fraud, so his prophecy about Aaron is not necessarily significant. What matters is if Kate raising Aaron was the right thing for him).
I really do think the show has basically answered these questions and I'm not so worried about them. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to post my actual thoughts, but then again the corrupt nothingness of the black smoke monster may see fit to destroy my work again. We'll just have to see.
Final prediction: the sideways world is a parallel universe where the characters never detonated the bomb. The island upholds the spacetime continuum with some type of cosmic creation energy, and it's the cornerstone of multiple universes. All of the multiverses need to be protected.
And that's all she wrote. See you after the finale!
Saturday, May 15, 2010
I'M LATER FOR AN IMPORTANT DATE THAN THE RABBIT IN THE CRAPPY TIM BURTON MOVIE
For anyone who may still read this blog, my apologies that it's taken me so long to post anything. Been busy with some personal things. Plus, the last two episodes have been so controversial and divisive that it's proven difficult for me to entirely collect my thoughts. Anyway, despite the polarizing reactions, I did love "Across the Sea," and I think, given some time, many of the people who intitially hated the episode will eventually come around and see its place in the grand scheme of the show.
Anyway, I should have my "Candidate" and "Across the Sea" thoughts posted before the end of the weekend. Namaste!
Anyway, I should have my "Candidate" and "Across the Sea" thoughts posted before the end of the weekend. Namaste!
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
:(
****! Holy ****ing ****. I can't ****ing believe this ******* show. Still crying. More thoughts tomorrow.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
MY FINAL THEORY
Note: All this pontificating and I realize that I neglected the most obvious Biblical source for my twin brothers theory: Jacob and Esau. There has been so much discussion of this angle ever since "The Incident" introduced the Man in Black, that I guess my mind just glossed over it. I've now added a little bit of Jacob/Esau, but since others have done a much better job of connecting LOST to this famous tale from the Bible, I've kept it brief.
Alrighty. Well the season is quickly drawing to a close, and we have but a few episodes left before the sun sets forever on LOST. Which more or less means that I am running out of time to synthesize and post any of my often wrong uber-theories. I spent a little while over the past week or so giving the series a good think-through, and I’ve developed what is essentially my final theory about the end game of the show. Except, here’s the thing: this time, I think I’m pretty damn close.
That being said, I don’t really care if any of this turns out to be true or not. It’s fun to theorize, but at the end of the day, LOST is what it is, not what we thought it was. Is that Mike Brady enough for ya? Anyway, here is my best and last guess as to what is really going on with LOST:
The island has an electromagnetic anomaly. (Really, Sherlock? I promise to blaze through the obvious stuff quickly). We may never learn what's generating the electromagnetic field. For lack of a better word, the explanation may be dialed down to something as vague as "magic," which actually would make a lot of sense. I truly believe the island is the meeting point between science and magic, and that some sort of pseudo-scientific answer will explain some but not all of the island's weirdness, a la the Force. But if the series really does offer an attempt to reveal the source of the electromagnetism, my guesses would be: energy that has fallen from space (maybe even a distant galaxy), alien technology, or an actual mystical-religious answer like Heaven and Hell. I do think those cards are on the table, but I'm not sure how likely it is the show's writers will really play them.
Whatever may be causing it, this electromagnetism heavily affects people who are born on the island, meaning they are often born with psychic abilities and powers. Those who already have latent psychic abilities find those talents amplified or magnified when they come into contact with the electromagnetic energy. Think Walt, Ben, Miles, Locke, Hurley, Desmond, Isaac of Uluru . . . all of them have been transformed or enhanced by the electromagnetism in some way. (Isaac wasn’t on the island as far as we know, but it did seem he was affected by the EM energy at Ayers Rock).
Anyway, a long time ago on a weird island far, far away, there was a woman. This would be the lovely lady discussed by the Man in Black in “Recon”. Somehow, she came to the island, maybe via a shipwreck as so many others have. This woman was pregnant. With twin boys. She gave birth to them on the island, meaning these children were born with powers afforded them by the electromagnetic energy. One was Jacob. The other’s name we do not know, but he came to be called the Man in Black. Jacob and his brother grew up on the island and always carried with them a rivalry, possibly related to their mother, who herself was driven a bit mad by the island’s strange spacetime fluctuations. As the boys grew older and became men, their powers continued developing until they more or less had abilities that normal people would consider godlike.
The competition continued between Jacob and the Man in Black as they grew older. They played games with each other such as backgammon, where they used black and white rocks that would later become symbolic of their rivalry. Jacob’s brother was always jealous and frustrated with him, as their mother doted on Jacob.
This is where things get weird. Somehow, some way, the Man in Black died. I have no idea how. Maybe his mom was nuts and she killed herself and him. Maybe he died in an accident. Maybe Jacob had to kill him for some reason (that could explain why the knife seems to be so significant). Regardless, Jacob’s brother died, as did their mother, and their corpses were laid to rest in the caves. That’s right . . . I think the Adam and Eve skeletons are the Man in Black and his mother, whom he spoke of so strangely when he was talking to Kate. To be honest, I really wanted them to be Rose and Bernard, just because I think there is something beautiful and poetic about that. But too much emphasis has been placed on the black and white stones this season, and those stones were present in the pocket of one of the corpses. I think those stones belonged to Jacob and the Man in Black. And truthfully, I do lean most toward the idea that Jacob killed his brother, maybe in self-defense or maybe because Jacob was a lot meaner when he was younger. Locke may have gotten it wrong. This isn’t necessarily Adam and Eve: it’s more Cain and Abel. The ultimate rivalry between brothers. This would also explain why the Man in Black blames Jacob for the reason he is no longer strictly corporal.
(I have no real idea where the father figure is in all of this. Since the concept of absentee fathers is very important to the show, it would make sense if he wasn’t around for whatever reason. Neither Jacob nor MIB have really mentioned anything about a father, but on the other hand, that doesn’t preclude the concept either. If there is a daddy who plays into the equation, it’s quite plausible that he could be Adam, instead).
Whether or not the Man in Black is the male skeleton in the cave, I think that he definitely died somehow and that whatever happened gave him just cause to blame Jacob. As we’ve seen, the island facilitates a gateway between this life and the beyond, and souls who are not ready to move forward remain trapped in the island’s energy field. I suspect the Man in Black, either not willing or not able to depart (could Brother J be trapping souls on the island?), found a way to more or less reassemble himself. Since he had deific powers, his life force remained on the island and used the island’s energy to reconstitute into a new physical form, much like Dr. Manhattan in WATCHMEN. This is how he became the black smoke, which is really just a cloud of magnetic dust or some other particles contained within an energy field. And considering the fact that he died, the Man in Black now dwelled in the realm between life and death. This is how and why he always takes the forms of the dead; the realm of the deceased is his realm, his domain. He can adopt their forms if he pleases, using the faces of the dead as a mask, and he oversees the many souls who are still trapped on the island. This is also how he is able to claim people. Those who are dying on the island pass into the realm between places and become his property, and he is able to return them to life, but with a hefty price. They are infected with his energy. Even the living are in danger of corruption, as getting too close to his energy field can eventually induce madness. But being “claimed” by MIB doesn’t necessarily mean that one is damned; it may be possible to break away from his influence.
After becoming this new type of being, the Man in Black continued his dramatic disagreement with his godlike brother. Civilizations came and went on the island, worshipping both brothers, with Jacob acting as a healer/giver of life and the Man in Black acting as the judge, jury and executioner. After many centuries (maybe even millennia), the Man in Black grew tired of people, and tired of these games between himself and his brother. All he wanted was to leave. It’s unclear if he wanted to physically leave the island, or if he wanted to move on to the next world. But he couldn’t leave. Someone (maybe Jacob) built a contraption under ground which restrains his force, via magnetism. The black smoke is invisibly tethered to this subterranean device, and the Man in Black is unable to destroy it. This essentially chains him permanently to the island, offering further humiliation by reducing him to the level of a guard dog. (It’s also possible that he is tied to whatever is generating the electromagnetic anomaly). Being trapped on the island for century after century has more or less driven MIB insane.
The Man in Black has desperately tried to leave the island but needs someone to free him. This could not happen until Jacob died. However, there were rules in place making it so that the Man in Black could not kill his brother. Maybe these are strictly arbitrary rules agreed upon by Jacob and the Man in Black, who both seem to have a thing for games, or maybe it’s something else. What if the energy on the island has two different poles or different ends of the spectrum, and Jacob is harnessing one form of energy while the Man in Black is harnessing the opposite? What if, in other words, they are positively and negatively charged, respectively? This could mean that they literally are not able to kill each other; they both need to exist in order for the energy of the island to be balanced and stable.
What if the protective ash essentially contains one type of charged energy (like traces of magnetic rock transformed by the island’s volcano into ash), and the black smoke is similarly charged, causing the ash to repel the smoke if it gets too close? This would explain why the monster cannot cross the ash, and possibly even why Dogen was testing Sayid with the ash during his little electro-torture session. It also explains all of the black/white stone symbolism (everything from the Black Rock to the white flashes), and could be applied to the contamination of the healing fountain (more on that below).
Perhaps Jacob is trying to protect the world from the black smoke because his brother’s death was his fault, and he has a sense of guilt over what happened, especially since the black smoke would not exist without him. Eventually, I think Jacob found a way to further contain the Man in Black, once he realized that MIB was never going to stop trying to leave the island. He imprisoned MIB’s soul in a cabin that Jacob had originally been using. Separating the Man in Black’s essence from his physical form (the black smoke) weakened his power considerably, and reduced the threat to Jacob. The Man in Black’s life force remained in the cabin, plotting how to free himself and ultimately arrange Jacob’s death. His key pawns were Ben and Locke. We know the rest.
Now that Jacob is dead, the Man in Black is stuck in the form of Locke because he no longer has exclusivity when it comes to departed souls. MIB is as physically incarnate as he possibly can be, since Jacob is rendered incorporeal. Jacob now inhabits the realm of the beyond and can prevent the Man in Black from assuming the forms of the deceased.
However, the Man in Black can still claim those who are near death, and even before these events transpired he has already claimed (or attempted to claim) one character unbeknownst to anyone else: Aaron. The baby stopped moving after the crash, and didn’t start moving again for some time. This is why the “psychic” Richard Malkin told Claire there would be no happy life for her baby if he wasn’t raised by his own mother. She is what he thought would be needed to combat the corruption Aaron would experience in the womb. Maybe in some sense Aaron is already the way MIB has gotten off the island, or is his tool for eventually moving his misanthropic/apocalyptic stage show to the outside world, and he saw to it (through Christian's form) that Claire would be nowhere near the child. The question we now have to ask ourselves is if being raised by Kate or anyone other than Claire had a positive or negative influence on Aaron. (I've raised the possibility before that Jacob may have claimed Aaron, and I still think that idea has some potential. But if Aaron's future really is in question, given what we've seen this season I'm more inclined to suspect MIB).
I don’t really think that the Man in Black has any intention of using the Ajira plane or Widmore’s sub to get off the island, though I could totally be wrong. I’m more in line with the thought that he will be wreaking much more death and destruction, including disposing of even those who have helped him. I strongly suspect he intends to kill every single person on that island. He needs the candidates dead, and I think many of the offers and promises he is making to the characters are partially his way of testing them, and by agreeing to help him they are all failing his test. And if he does want to physically leave the island, my guess is that we’ll find out Locke never really blew up the DHARMA sub. He merely hid it to use as a playing card later, and the MIB knows this because he has inherited all of Locke’s memories.
It seems quite plausible that the flash sideways are what will happen if the Man in Black gets his way: the island is destroyed, he is nowhere to be found, and the lives of all of the characters are supposedly better. But as we’ve seen, their lives are not necessarily better, as many of them are missing out on the destinies that were seemingly meant for them. For instance, Sayid has Nadia again, but not in the way that he would like; Hurley is lucky, but his life is empty; Locke is content but unacquainted with his destiny; Desmond is respected by Widmore, but Penny and little Charlie are absent, etc. Their fates seem to have been erased and replaced with Reality 2.0; perhaps this is the “end of everything” which everyone seems to fear will happen if the black smoke escapes. It seems that Ms. Hawking is well aware of what is really going on, and she is respecting the rules of this “better” reality. If I were her, I probably would too, considering in this chain of events she doesn’t murder her own son and instead is able to keep him by her side, coddling him. Maybe Desmond needs to continue waking these characters up so that the Man in Black does not win.
What if Jacob foresaw all of this? Is it feasible that the creepy kid we keep seeing in the jungle is in fact young Jacob, projecting into the future and witnessing everything that was coming down the pipe? It is extremely possible that the many strange appearances of Walt were due to a similar psychic projection, so is there any reason young Jacob couldn’t have done the same thing? If so, it would mean that Jacob was ready for his death, and has patiently and subtly been manipulating time (or allowing things to happen a certain way, which seems to be more his modus operandi), in order to prevent his rival from destroying the island and to set up his plan of attack well in advance. It would mean he’s been more than one step ahead this entire time. Of course, it could also be as simple as Jacob's ghost appears as a child when in the presence of the Man in Black. Either way, this begs the question: what else could Jacob be planning?
As far as the island storyline goes, I'm guessing that the imbalance created in the island's positive and negative forces will be activating the volcano and hasten the potential destruction of the island. What if MIB's force is dependant upon fire and heat (as I mentioned above, if he is using magnetic ash, it may relate to the volcano and to lava), whereas Jacob's force is dependant upon water and the cold? That could tie into why the donkey wheel is located in a well that is now frozen. Cold water might preserve the pocket of energy, and perhaps Jacob built the wheel in the frozen chamber, which would explain some of his abilities. The Man in Black may even be trapped because his energy is frozen into place, and he needs heat to be released. If the island is going into meltdown in the finale, it could be literal: the ice core keeping the energy stable may actually be melting, releasing the island's energy and causing the volcano to erupt, finally freeing MIB (and possibly the other souls trapped on the island as well). This could also explain how the island is under water in the second timeline, though I'm at a loss as to how it explains anything else.
This would be a literalization of the conflict between fire and water, two forces which are oft-referenced on the series, most directly in the episode actually titled "Fire + Water". (Remember that fire and water are the two elements which always seemed to be taking turns trying to kill Charlie). Water would be an apt symbol for Jacob, given its association with baptism, cleansing, purifying, life-giving, not to mention the healing fountain in the Temple, whereas fire is a perfect metaphor for the Man in Black, with its relation to the concepts of Hell, damnation and destruction, as well as the fact that MIB himself appears as, y'know, smoke. Regarding the healing spring, perhaps the water turned dirty because Jacob's death allowed the fountain to be contaminated by the dust of the black smoke; this could also relate to the muddy pool of water which Ben used to summon the monster. Certainly food for thought.
Lest it seem like I’m pulling all of this fraternal rivalry stuff out of nowhere, let me explain my thought process. First of all, the idea of two brothers was part of the original concept of LOST went it was a pilot script called “Nowhere” written by Jeffrey Lieber (who still shares co-creator credit on the series due to a WGA arbitration). Well before the series had a sci-fi / supernatural sheen and was just an island survivor story somewhere between “Cast Away” and “Lord of the Flies,” the two main characters were half-brothers and rivals. Eventually, the survivors would split into two camps, with the more righteous sibling leading one and his morally questionable brother leading the other.
Beyond that, take a look all the way back to season two’s “The 23rd Psalm”. Eko and Claire discuss why she named the baby Aaron, and Eko talks about how the biblical Aaron was the brother of Moses and that, despite the fact that Moses gets much of the prophetic credit, he wouldn’t have been who he was without his brother. Claire suggests that Aaron was probably always jealous of Moses, which at the time was meant to foreshadow the backstory between Eko and Yemi. In hindsight, this suggestion of a vague competition between two brothers who were mystical prophets again sets up the larger idea of Jacob and the Man in Black being related.
Then of course, as I mentioned earlier we have the classic Cain and Abel story, which does relate to the tale of Adam and Eve. (Let’s not forget other mythological examples of this type of fraternal rivalry and jealousy . . . Romulus and Remus, for example).
And finally and perhaps most relevantly, there is the Biblical story of Jacob and his brother Esau, which has been a major topic of discussion amongst fans ever since Jacob's rival entered into the story last season. Esau and Jacob were twins but Esau was the firstborn; however, he was hairy and red and preferred to live off the land, whereas Jacob's skin was smooth and he was more quiet and introspective. Jake's mom doted on him and even helped Jacob deceive his father in order to steal the blessing of the firstborn from Esau, which understandably pissed Esau off. The rivalry between the two brothers and their subsequent families very much defines their characters in the Bible, and it seems to go without saying that their story is a major influence on the mythology of LOST. It seems likely that the tale of Jacob and the Man in Black is probably a mix of Cain & Abel and Jacob & Esau (with a little Adam & Eve as well, in regards to at least the mother mentioned by MIB), since LOST isn't overtly trying to be directly analogous with Biblical stories, but more providing a general sci-fi riff on various mythological themes.
But to be honest, my main source of inspiration for much of this theory was the mythology of HBO’s terrific and short-lived CARNIVALE, which I have always considered to be a sister show to LOST. In the CARNIVALE mythos, every generation sees the birth of two avatars. One is a representative of light, the other of darkness. These avatars have mystical and magical powers, but every avatar is more skilled at certain abilities than others, and there is not necessarily any rhyme or reason as to which avatars are naturally skilled at which powers. (An avatar of dark could be naturally inclined to heal with the laying on of hands, for example). Anyway, though the series did not last long enough for its mythology to be fully explored, the creators of the show did reveal some key after-the-fact info about the story’s background.
Apparently, the origin of the avatars was a female named the Alpha, who was a magical being not inclined specifically to light or darkness (or creation and destruction; however you want to read it). She gave birth to male twins. Unfortunately, giving birth to avatars often drives the mothers crazy, leaving them batshit nuts after their avataric children are carried to term. One son was the first being of light, and his twin brother was the first being of darkness. One eventually killed the other, but not before a bloodline was sired. Through their avataric blood, the interplay and conflict between good and evil began, the universe striving to maintain a balance between the two. Various avatars have demonstrated a variety of abilities, including but not limited to: healing, telepathy, precognition, empathic powers, telekinesis, summoning of storms, the ability to send dreams, visions and hallucinations, teleportation, astral projection / remote viewing, and communing with the dead. Ahem. Sound familiar?
Not to say that LOST is ripping off CARNIVALE or whatever. Just that they are two shows made in a similar spirit. Anyway, I think my theory does have some precedent, so we’ll see if any of this even comes to pass. Regardless, this is my final major theory.
At least until next week.
Alrighty. Well the season is quickly drawing to a close, and we have but a few episodes left before the sun sets forever on LOST. Which more or less means that I am running out of time to synthesize and post any of my often wrong uber-theories. I spent a little while over the past week or so giving the series a good think-through, and I’ve developed what is essentially my final theory about the end game of the show. Except, here’s the thing: this time, I think I’m pretty damn close.
That being said, I don’t really care if any of this turns out to be true or not. It’s fun to theorize, but at the end of the day, LOST is what it is, not what we thought it was. Is that Mike Brady enough for ya? Anyway, here is my best and last guess as to what is really going on with LOST:
The island has an electromagnetic anomaly. (Really, Sherlock? I promise to blaze through the obvious stuff quickly). We may never learn what's generating the electromagnetic field. For lack of a better word, the explanation may be dialed down to something as vague as "magic," which actually would make a lot of sense. I truly believe the island is the meeting point between science and magic, and that some sort of pseudo-scientific answer will explain some but not all of the island's weirdness, a la the Force. But if the series really does offer an attempt to reveal the source of the electromagnetism, my guesses would be: energy that has fallen from space (maybe even a distant galaxy), alien technology, or an actual mystical-religious answer like Heaven and Hell. I do think those cards are on the table, but I'm not sure how likely it is the show's writers will really play them.
Whatever may be causing it, this electromagnetism heavily affects people who are born on the island, meaning they are often born with psychic abilities and powers. Those who already have latent psychic abilities find those talents amplified or magnified when they come into contact with the electromagnetic energy. Think Walt, Ben, Miles, Locke, Hurley, Desmond, Isaac of Uluru . . . all of them have been transformed or enhanced by the electromagnetism in some way. (Isaac wasn’t on the island as far as we know, but it did seem he was affected by the EM energy at Ayers Rock).
Anyway, a long time ago on a weird island far, far away, there was a woman. This would be the lovely lady discussed by the Man in Black in “Recon”. Somehow, she came to the island, maybe via a shipwreck as so many others have. This woman was pregnant. With twin boys. She gave birth to them on the island, meaning these children were born with powers afforded them by the electromagnetic energy. One was Jacob. The other’s name we do not know, but he came to be called the Man in Black. Jacob and his brother grew up on the island and always carried with them a rivalry, possibly related to their mother, who herself was driven a bit mad by the island’s strange spacetime fluctuations. As the boys grew older and became men, their powers continued developing until they more or less had abilities that normal people would consider godlike.
The competition continued between Jacob and the Man in Black as they grew older. They played games with each other such as backgammon, where they used black and white rocks that would later become symbolic of their rivalry. Jacob’s brother was always jealous and frustrated with him, as their mother doted on Jacob.
This is where things get weird. Somehow, some way, the Man in Black died. I have no idea how. Maybe his mom was nuts and she killed herself and him. Maybe he died in an accident. Maybe Jacob had to kill him for some reason (that could explain why the knife seems to be so significant). Regardless, Jacob’s brother died, as did their mother, and their corpses were laid to rest in the caves. That’s right . . . I think the Adam and Eve skeletons are the Man in Black and his mother, whom he spoke of so strangely when he was talking to Kate. To be honest, I really wanted them to be Rose and Bernard, just because I think there is something beautiful and poetic about that. But too much emphasis has been placed on the black and white stones this season, and those stones were present in the pocket of one of the corpses. I think those stones belonged to Jacob and the Man in Black. And truthfully, I do lean most toward the idea that Jacob killed his brother, maybe in self-defense or maybe because Jacob was a lot meaner when he was younger. Locke may have gotten it wrong. This isn’t necessarily Adam and Eve: it’s more Cain and Abel. The ultimate rivalry between brothers. This would also explain why the Man in Black blames Jacob for the reason he is no longer strictly corporal.
(I have no real idea where the father figure is in all of this. Since the concept of absentee fathers is very important to the show, it would make sense if he wasn’t around for whatever reason. Neither Jacob nor MIB have really mentioned anything about a father, but on the other hand, that doesn’t preclude the concept either. If there is a daddy who plays into the equation, it’s quite plausible that he could be Adam, instead).
Whether or not the Man in Black is the male skeleton in the cave, I think that he definitely died somehow and that whatever happened gave him just cause to blame Jacob. As we’ve seen, the island facilitates a gateway between this life and the beyond, and souls who are not ready to move forward remain trapped in the island’s energy field. I suspect the Man in Black, either not willing or not able to depart (could Brother J be trapping souls on the island?), found a way to more or less reassemble himself. Since he had deific powers, his life force remained on the island and used the island’s energy to reconstitute into a new physical form, much like Dr. Manhattan in WATCHMEN. This is how he became the black smoke, which is really just a cloud of magnetic dust or some other particles contained within an energy field. And considering the fact that he died, the Man in Black now dwelled in the realm between life and death. This is how and why he always takes the forms of the dead; the realm of the deceased is his realm, his domain. He can adopt their forms if he pleases, using the faces of the dead as a mask, and he oversees the many souls who are still trapped on the island. This is also how he is able to claim people. Those who are dying on the island pass into the realm between places and become his property, and he is able to return them to life, but with a hefty price. They are infected with his energy. Even the living are in danger of corruption, as getting too close to his energy field can eventually induce madness. But being “claimed” by MIB doesn’t necessarily mean that one is damned; it may be possible to break away from his influence.
After becoming this new type of being, the Man in Black continued his dramatic disagreement with his godlike brother. Civilizations came and went on the island, worshipping both brothers, with Jacob acting as a healer/giver of life and the Man in Black acting as the judge, jury and executioner. After many centuries (maybe even millennia), the Man in Black grew tired of people, and tired of these games between himself and his brother. All he wanted was to leave. It’s unclear if he wanted to physically leave the island, or if he wanted to move on to the next world. But he couldn’t leave. Someone (maybe Jacob) built a contraption under ground which restrains his force, via magnetism. The black smoke is invisibly tethered to this subterranean device, and the Man in Black is unable to destroy it. This essentially chains him permanently to the island, offering further humiliation by reducing him to the level of a guard dog. (It’s also possible that he is tied to whatever is generating the electromagnetic anomaly). Being trapped on the island for century after century has more or less driven MIB insane.
The Man in Black has desperately tried to leave the island but needs someone to free him. This could not happen until Jacob died. However, there were rules in place making it so that the Man in Black could not kill his brother. Maybe these are strictly arbitrary rules agreed upon by Jacob and the Man in Black, who both seem to have a thing for games, or maybe it’s something else. What if the energy on the island has two different poles or different ends of the spectrum, and Jacob is harnessing one form of energy while the Man in Black is harnessing the opposite? What if, in other words, they are positively and negatively charged, respectively? This could mean that they literally are not able to kill each other; they both need to exist in order for the energy of the island to be balanced and stable.
What if the protective ash essentially contains one type of charged energy (like traces of magnetic rock transformed by the island’s volcano into ash), and the black smoke is similarly charged, causing the ash to repel the smoke if it gets too close? This would explain why the monster cannot cross the ash, and possibly even why Dogen was testing Sayid with the ash during his little electro-torture session. It also explains all of the black/white stone symbolism (everything from the Black Rock to the white flashes), and could be applied to the contamination of the healing fountain (more on that below).
Perhaps Jacob is trying to protect the world from the black smoke because his brother’s death was his fault, and he has a sense of guilt over what happened, especially since the black smoke would not exist without him. Eventually, I think Jacob found a way to further contain the Man in Black, once he realized that MIB was never going to stop trying to leave the island. He imprisoned MIB’s soul in a cabin that Jacob had originally been using. Separating the Man in Black’s essence from his physical form (the black smoke) weakened his power considerably, and reduced the threat to Jacob. The Man in Black’s life force remained in the cabin, plotting how to free himself and ultimately arrange Jacob’s death. His key pawns were Ben and Locke. We know the rest.
Now that Jacob is dead, the Man in Black is stuck in the form of Locke because he no longer has exclusivity when it comes to departed souls. MIB is as physically incarnate as he possibly can be, since Jacob is rendered incorporeal. Jacob now inhabits the realm of the beyond and can prevent the Man in Black from assuming the forms of the deceased.
However, the Man in Black can still claim those who are near death, and even before these events transpired he has already claimed (or attempted to claim) one character unbeknownst to anyone else: Aaron. The baby stopped moving after the crash, and didn’t start moving again for some time. This is why the “psychic” Richard Malkin told Claire there would be no happy life for her baby if he wasn’t raised by his own mother. She is what he thought would be needed to combat the corruption Aaron would experience in the womb. Maybe in some sense Aaron is already the way MIB has gotten off the island, or is his tool for eventually moving his misanthropic/apocalyptic stage show to the outside world, and he saw to it (through Christian's form) that Claire would be nowhere near the child. The question we now have to ask ourselves is if being raised by Kate or anyone other than Claire had a positive or negative influence on Aaron. (I've raised the possibility before that Jacob may have claimed Aaron, and I still think that idea has some potential. But if Aaron's future really is in question, given what we've seen this season I'm more inclined to suspect MIB).
I don’t really think that the Man in Black has any intention of using the Ajira plane or Widmore’s sub to get off the island, though I could totally be wrong. I’m more in line with the thought that he will be wreaking much more death and destruction, including disposing of even those who have helped him. I strongly suspect he intends to kill every single person on that island. He needs the candidates dead, and I think many of the offers and promises he is making to the characters are partially his way of testing them, and by agreeing to help him they are all failing his test. And if he does want to physically leave the island, my guess is that we’ll find out Locke never really blew up the DHARMA sub. He merely hid it to use as a playing card later, and the MIB knows this because he has inherited all of Locke’s memories.
It seems quite plausible that the flash sideways are what will happen if the Man in Black gets his way: the island is destroyed, he is nowhere to be found, and the lives of all of the characters are supposedly better. But as we’ve seen, their lives are not necessarily better, as many of them are missing out on the destinies that were seemingly meant for them. For instance, Sayid has Nadia again, but not in the way that he would like; Hurley is lucky, but his life is empty; Locke is content but unacquainted with his destiny; Desmond is respected by Widmore, but Penny and little Charlie are absent, etc. Their fates seem to have been erased and replaced with Reality 2.0; perhaps this is the “end of everything” which everyone seems to fear will happen if the black smoke escapes. It seems that Ms. Hawking is well aware of what is really going on, and she is respecting the rules of this “better” reality. If I were her, I probably would too, considering in this chain of events she doesn’t murder her own son and instead is able to keep him by her side, coddling him. Maybe Desmond needs to continue waking these characters up so that the Man in Black does not win.
What if Jacob foresaw all of this? Is it feasible that the creepy kid we keep seeing in the jungle is in fact young Jacob, projecting into the future and witnessing everything that was coming down the pipe? It is extremely possible that the many strange appearances of Walt were due to a similar psychic projection, so is there any reason young Jacob couldn’t have done the same thing? If so, it would mean that Jacob was ready for his death, and has patiently and subtly been manipulating time (or allowing things to happen a certain way, which seems to be more his modus operandi), in order to prevent his rival from destroying the island and to set up his plan of attack well in advance. It would mean he’s been more than one step ahead this entire time. Of course, it could also be as simple as Jacob's ghost appears as a child when in the presence of the Man in Black. Either way, this begs the question: what else could Jacob be planning?
As far as the island storyline goes, I'm guessing that the imbalance created in the island's positive and negative forces will be activating the volcano and hasten the potential destruction of the island. What if MIB's force is dependant upon fire and heat (as I mentioned above, if he is using magnetic ash, it may relate to the volcano and to lava), whereas Jacob's force is dependant upon water and the cold? That could tie into why the donkey wheel is located in a well that is now frozen. Cold water might preserve the pocket of energy, and perhaps Jacob built the wheel in the frozen chamber, which would explain some of his abilities. The Man in Black may even be trapped because his energy is frozen into place, and he needs heat to be released. If the island is going into meltdown in the finale, it could be literal: the ice core keeping the energy stable may actually be melting, releasing the island's energy and causing the volcano to erupt, finally freeing MIB (and possibly the other souls trapped on the island as well). This could also explain how the island is under water in the second timeline, though I'm at a loss as to how it explains anything else.
This would be a literalization of the conflict between fire and water, two forces which are oft-referenced on the series, most directly in the episode actually titled "Fire + Water". (Remember that fire and water are the two elements which always seemed to be taking turns trying to kill Charlie). Water would be an apt symbol for Jacob, given its association with baptism, cleansing, purifying, life-giving, not to mention the healing fountain in the Temple, whereas fire is a perfect metaphor for the Man in Black, with its relation to the concepts of Hell, damnation and destruction, as well as the fact that MIB himself appears as, y'know, smoke. Regarding the healing spring, perhaps the water turned dirty because Jacob's death allowed the fountain to be contaminated by the dust of the black smoke; this could also relate to the muddy pool of water which Ben used to summon the monster. Certainly food for thought.
Lest it seem like I’m pulling all of this fraternal rivalry stuff out of nowhere, let me explain my thought process. First of all, the idea of two brothers was part of the original concept of LOST went it was a pilot script called “Nowhere” written by Jeffrey Lieber (who still shares co-creator credit on the series due to a WGA arbitration). Well before the series had a sci-fi / supernatural sheen and was just an island survivor story somewhere between “Cast Away” and “Lord of the Flies,” the two main characters were half-brothers and rivals. Eventually, the survivors would split into two camps, with the more righteous sibling leading one and his morally questionable brother leading the other.
Beyond that, take a look all the way back to season two’s “The 23rd Psalm”. Eko and Claire discuss why she named the baby Aaron, and Eko talks about how the biblical Aaron was the brother of Moses and that, despite the fact that Moses gets much of the prophetic credit, he wouldn’t have been who he was without his brother. Claire suggests that Aaron was probably always jealous of Moses, which at the time was meant to foreshadow the backstory between Eko and Yemi. In hindsight, this suggestion of a vague competition between two brothers who were mystical prophets again sets up the larger idea of Jacob and the Man in Black being related.
Then of course, as I mentioned earlier we have the classic Cain and Abel story, which does relate to the tale of Adam and Eve. (Let’s not forget other mythological examples of this type of fraternal rivalry and jealousy . . . Romulus and Remus, for example).
And finally and perhaps most relevantly, there is the Biblical story of Jacob and his brother Esau, which has been a major topic of discussion amongst fans ever since Jacob's rival entered into the story last season. Esau and Jacob were twins but Esau was the firstborn; however, he was hairy and red and preferred to live off the land, whereas Jacob's skin was smooth and he was more quiet and introspective. Jake's mom doted on him and even helped Jacob deceive his father in order to steal the blessing of the firstborn from Esau, which understandably pissed Esau off. The rivalry between the two brothers and their subsequent families very much defines their characters in the Bible, and it seems to go without saying that their story is a major influence on the mythology of LOST. It seems likely that the tale of Jacob and the Man in Black is probably a mix of Cain & Abel and Jacob & Esau (with a little Adam & Eve as well, in regards to at least the mother mentioned by MIB), since LOST isn't overtly trying to be directly analogous with Biblical stories, but more providing a general sci-fi riff on various mythological themes.
But to be honest, my main source of inspiration for much of this theory was the mythology of HBO’s terrific and short-lived CARNIVALE, which I have always considered to be a sister show to LOST. In the CARNIVALE mythos, every generation sees the birth of two avatars. One is a representative of light, the other of darkness. These avatars have mystical and magical powers, but every avatar is more skilled at certain abilities than others, and there is not necessarily any rhyme or reason as to which avatars are naturally skilled at which powers. (An avatar of dark could be naturally inclined to heal with the laying on of hands, for example). Anyway, though the series did not last long enough for its mythology to be fully explored, the creators of the show did reveal some key after-the-fact info about the story’s background.
Apparently, the origin of the avatars was a female named the Alpha, who was a magical being not inclined specifically to light or darkness (or creation and destruction; however you want to read it). She gave birth to male twins. Unfortunately, giving birth to avatars often drives the mothers crazy, leaving them batshit nuts after their avataric children are carried to term. One son was the first being of light, and his twin brother was the first being of darkness. One eventually killed the other, but not before a bloodline was sired. Through their avataric blood, the interplay and conflict between good and evil began, the universe striving to maintain a balance between the two. Various avatars have demonstrated a variety of abilities, including but not limited to: healing, telepathy, precognition, empathic powers, telekinesis, summoning of storms, the ability to send dreams, visions and hallucinations, teleportation, astral projection / remote viewing, and communing with the dead. Ahem. Sound familiar?
Not to say that LOST is ripping off CARNIVALE or whatever. Just that they are two shows made in a similar spirit. Anyway, I think my theory does have some precedent, so we’ll see if any of this even comes to pass. Regardless, this is my final major theory.
At least until next week.
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