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).
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