As the series barrels towards its final six episodes and inevitable denouement, the stakes have been made abundantly clear. Gone are all the notions that the show is “about” some massive scientific experiment gone wrong that was perpetrated by the Dharma Initiative. Indeed, I can’t remember off hand the last time the group was mentioned by name, although as it so happens the name “Dharma” means “righteous path.” And it’s become evident that that is what the show is truly about: following a righteous path toward, perhaps, enlightenment. The light is now dawning for all the remaining survivors and, thank God, for the viewer.
In a season of startling developments, one of the two most startling is the revelation that the black smoke monster is actually a shape shifter with its own agenda. It makes thematic sense: Until now the black cloud has been shapeless and unknowable, much like the island. But as the endgame and the priorities of all those involved become clear, the cloud now takes form and shape and a name, even if it’s an assumed one. John Locke the philosopher was noted for his groundbreaking work on the subject of one’s identity. So somehow it makes a sort of twisted sense that his namesake on “Lost” would have his very identity usurped and twisted into something monstrous. Passing comments from earlier seasons now start to make sense and have new relevance.
I honestly don’t believe for a moment that the braintrust behind the series had all this as the endgame from the very beginning. Maybe some vague ideas, some general thoughts, yes. But I suspect that, for instance, the recurring numbers were something they tossed in there to provide ongoing discussion and continuity, and that the significance that they developed for them–that they’re representative of specific survivors from the flight–is something they only came up with after the fact. That’s fine, though. If I’m right and they’re basically reverse engineering their mythology, then it might well be an even more impressive achievement than if they’d had it all planned out from the get-go.
Who or what is the smoke monster? Well, one of the island residents is Jacob. Perhaps the smoke monster is Esau, his Biblical brother who swore to kill his fraternal twin after being screwed out of his inheritance. Locke/the monster spoke disparagingly of his mother, and the Biblical Esau’s mother, Rebecca, openly favored Jacob to Esau’s detriment. Or perhaps Jacob and the smoke monster are the two angels who were set to guard Eden after the expelling of humanity, and that’s what the island is. It’s not just “Lost.” It’s “Paradise Lost.” Ultimately I suppose it doesn’t matter what Smokey’s true name or origin is: His function on the series is to serve as the ultimate evil, not just of the show, but possibly the world. The stakes, as is proper when a story is being propelled into its third act, have been raised. It’s no longer about a half dozen or so people struggling with their lives. This is now a biblical epic of good and evil, and the fate of the entire world is apparently on the line should Dead Locke break free to become Master Locke.
The other major development has been the “flash sideways,” sliding door storyline in lieu of the show’s trademark flash forwards and backs. The original conceit was that we were seeing what our character’s lives would have been like if flight 815 had landed safely in LAX, but that turns out not to be true. Instead the entire backstories of a number of the characters have changed completely. Upon reflection, it appears that the difference is not the safe landing of the plane–that’s just a byproduct–but that Jacob never came to any of the characters and change the course of their lives. Which leads us to wonder whether Jacob’s involvement in their lives was helpful or harmful. Sawyer, for instance, is a cop rather than a criminal. Benjamin Linus, rather than a selfish, power-obsessed bášŧárd, is instead a conscientious and self-sacrificing teacher. All of which casts Jacob into a different light. How can he be on the side of good if his involvement in our heroes’ lives left them worse off? Is this not a battle between good and evil after all, but instead between two evil entities and we’re supposed to decide which of them is the lesser of the two evils?
I am, frankly, ecstatic that the series has taken on his sort of sprawling, cosmological feel to it. Somehow that seems to be the only theme big enough to measure up to the expectations that the series has raised. Basically we seem to be viewing a modern retelling of the 1977 film “The Sentinel” in which one person has to take up the position of being a guardian against the release of the forces of Hëll. Who will the new sentinel of the island be? The obvious answer seems to be Jack; he is a shepherd, after all. For some reason, to me, Hugo seems the most apt; he would probably enjoy the relative peace compared to the outside world, plus he can chat with dead people to keep himself occupied. Besides, there seems to be something fitting about Dead Locke snarling at him, “I’m going to kill you” and Hugo sanguinely replying, “Dude, chill, okay?”
PAD
• 
.
“I honestly don’t believe for a moment that the braintrust behind the series had all this as the endgame from the very beginning.”
.
I actually read an interview with J.J. Abrams a month or so ago where he was talking about the next Trek film and the endgame with Lost. They asked him a question about how well worked out everything was and he basically said it wasn’t. He said they offered him a deal to do a TV show and he wasn’t big on the idea at that time until he thought up the basic ideas for what we saw in the pilot, called the other guys who are now working on it with him and pitched it to them. Everyone thought it was a great idea (mysterious island, crash survivors, Twilight Zone vibe) and went to work before they realized that they really had no idea where they were going with it.
.
All in all, for what appears to have started as a concept with no plan for the longest time, I think a lot of it has come off well and the final season is really keeping me glued to the TV.
.
Not the one I read, but here’s one with him saying much the same about the long term plotting.
.
http://www.collider.com/2010/01/12/jj-abrams-on-the-star-trek-sequel-lost-fringe-and-nbcs-undercovers/
.
“JJ: Oh, no way! No. There are little threads and elements, here and there, but truthfully, when we started it, we didn’t know exactly what was in the hatch. We had ideas, but we didn’t know to what extent it would be. The notion of The Others was there, but we didn’t know exactly what that would mean. Damon hadn’t come up with the idea of flash forwards yet. To see where we are and what they’ve created is insanely gratifying and it’s something that no one could have predicted, at the beginning of it. The evolution of it is really part of their glorious experiment of taking a show that we were all, at the beginning, saying, “How do you make this a series?,” and to see what Damon and Carlton have done is amazing to me.”
“Everyone thought it was a great idea (mysterious island, crash survivors, Twilight Zone vibe) and went to work before they realized that they really had no idea where they were going with it.”
There’s a shocker. This is the main reason why it’s just not a good show, and never was (aside from some strong individual episodes and plot threads). It shows in the writing, and I feel like the viewing audience has been duped.
.
Meanwhile, FlashForward, a strongly written show that actually does feel like it’s been thought through properly, is struggling to find an audience and will most likely be canceled. I don’t get it.
Sorry, Robert, but I have to hit you with the old question of internet criticism – if you don’t like ‘Lost’ why do you watch it? There’s plenty of stuff on TV that I just can’t get into, even if friends and family have raved about it.
Because I liked it in the beginning, and I’ve liked it sporadically since then, and now I just want to know how it ends.
You don’t like Lost and honestly think FlashForward has better writing? I’m all for difference of opinion but, dude, was that an April Fools comment?
.
“Everyone thought it was a great idea (mysterious island, crash survivors, Twilight Zone vibe) and went to work before they realized that they really had no idea where they were going with it.”
.
When someone has an idea and has no idea where to go, they do one of two things: give up, or figure it out. In the case of Lost, they figured it out. There’s nothing wrong with making stuff up, that’s what writing is. As long as it all fits, which it has.
.
My opinion, anyway.
Flashforward is one of the many shows that learned the wrong lesson from Lost. Lots of continuity! Big, building mystery! It’s all about putting together the details!
.
There have been lots of shows like that (Day Break is a good example). What they miss is that at first Lost *wasn’t* all continuity, all the time. The first couple of years had the flashbacks as very self contained stories. So every episode had a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Most of these shows just run everything together like a soap opera. None of the episodes are distinct, it’s just one continuous plot. That makes it harder for people to jump in on the third episode and it makes each episode less satisfying.
.
Lost also kept the present day story pretty light at first. They had hints of weird stuff going on, but the conflict with The Others didn’t start until the tenth episode. Before that you could sum up the show by saying that it was about survivors on a mysterious Island. You didn’t have to know who was kidnapped and which group went after her last episode. That relaxed period at the beginning made it easier to learn the characters and the setting before things got intense. Shows like Flashforward go into full continuity-required mode immediately.
.
Lost managed to be a mythology based, continuity heavy show *and* have stand alone stories every episode that centered on the characters. I don’t think any show has really even tried to do that since.
I don’t see a problem with the way FlashForward does things, especially since they recap everything you need to know each episode (jn fact, one of the chief complaints about the show is the way they keep hitting you over the head with brief flashbacks to explain what’s going on, which only occasionally annoys me). My husband had never seen an episode until last week, and yet he watched it and was instantly hooked. He gave up on Lost a long time ago.
.
And yes, Adam, FlashForward has much better writing than Lost. FlashForward is incredibly complex and thought-provoking, with all sorts of fascinating thematic material and human drama, and yet it’s never confusing, or confused. Each episode divulges a lot of information, and the plot is always moving forward. Lost, on the other hand, is both confused and simple-minded, and the plot moves forward only in small increments at a time. Its aptly titled, because it lost its way a long time ago.
Only someone with no understanding of the show would say it’s simple minded with no thematic depth.
It’s one thing to not like it – it’s another to misrepresent it entirely. THAT is simple-minded.
It’s not possible to have no understanding of the show, unless you’re an infant or a small rodent. It’s not exactly rocket science. There’s nothing in it that a bright fifth grader wouldn’t grasp. And I didn’t say it had no thematic depth. Even a kiddy pool has SOME depth.
storymark: Only someone with no understanding of the show would say it’s simple minded with no thematic depth.
Luigi Novi: And only someone with no ability to respect unpopular opinions would say that they “lack understanding” of it. I’m a huge fan of Lost, and I don’t regular watch Flash Forward, and if that’s how Robert feels about the former, then good for him.
.
I will never understand why some people feel they have to fall back on finding fault with someone because they don’t share their views of creative works, as when they start off saying, “I’m all for freedom of expression buuuuuuuuuut…”, and then follow that up by essentially showing that they’re not. Or worse, pretend that perceptions or assessments of creative works are somehow empirical.
.
storymark: It’s one thing to not like it – it’s another to misrepresent it entirely.
Luigi Novi: He didn’t he simply expressed an unpopular opinion about it.
People still watch Lost?
Unfortunately, yes. But at this point, for me, it’s a matter of “There’s only nine episodes left, might as well see it through to the end”… “Only eight episodes left, might as well…” and so on.
.
“People still watch Lost?”
.
Yeah, because other than one kinda so-so season the show has always been very good.
The only show on TV I make a point to watch.
PAD: I honestly don’t believe for a moment that the braintrust behind the series had all this as the endgame from the very beginning. Maybe some vague ideas, some general thoughts, yes.
.
You hit it on the head, PAD. The current producers/head writers of the show have said that the first season just had a few general ideas about where they wanted to go. Things like the numbers, black and white representing the two sides, etc. It was between the first and second season that they figured out the overall plot for the rest of the show. Even that was left loose enough that they’ve diverged from it since then, though they say that they’re still ending up pretty much where they planned in that planning stage from before season 2.
.
Also, JJ Abrams was the one who came up with the numbers even though he had no plan for their resolution, because he likes those kind of very mysterious details. Abrams left the show after the first season. Despite directing an episode in season three, he’s essentially been out of it since the first season and the show has long been run by Carlton Cuse Damon Lindelof. Maybe Abrams’ leaving is what lead to the greater planning after season 1. However, don’t expect too much more with the numbers. The writers say that a certain amount of the show has to be magical and mysterious. They said in an interview that trying to come up with a completely logical explanation for the numbers would be like midiclorians in Star Wars, it takes away so much magic that it’s not only lame, it makes everything that came before it retroactively lame.
.
Personally, I’ve been very happy with how things have shaped up. Not every episode is perfect, but it really does feel like the major mysteries are being answered. The introduction of Jacob and a personified Smoke Monster was extremely satisfying. This is where Battlestar Galactica screwed up, they answered all their questions with a nameless, faceless, motivationless “God”. I’d much rather see a story about characters than see mysteries answered with, “God did it.”
Yeah, as I understand it they had the basics of who the main characters were, that there were others on the island, that there had been a team of scientists investigating the odd nature of the island, and a basic sense of the battle of light and dark. They figured out the major bits once they were sure they would continue. Then, during season 3, when they negotiated with ABC that the show would end after season 6, they really nailed down the direction for the rest of the show. That’s early enough for me to say “we had a plan”.
It’s not jsut a matter of Jacob not meeting the passengers of oceanic (whatever) moving them toward the isalnd. You have to realize that jack/juliet/Sawyer/et al blew up the dharma facility in the 70’s — almost 30-40 years in their past.
.
It would appear the entire Dharma Initiative was aborted at that point in time. Lots of people never came to the island (Linus Sr. and Ben) the polyglot from last nights epidode, etc. That’s a lot of little butterlies.
Actually, Ben and his Dad did go to the island, but left at some point seemingly by their own decision.
.Troy Phillips correctly corrects me: w/
.”Actually, Ben and his Dad did go to the island,
. but left at some point seemingly by their own
. decision.”
.
Now that yoiu say that, I do remember that snippet of dialogue.
Yeah, see, at first, Jim, I was with you. I thought that because the island was depicted as having sunk, that nobody ever came there at all. And that theory lasted until we learned that Ben and his dad did go to the island but then decided to leave, at which point I was left going, “Hunh. Okay. Well…what else could the point of departure be?” Jacob not entering their lives was the only thing I could think of.
.
PAD
PAD: that nobody ever came there at all.
.
I take it you missed that the sunken island had the Dharma barracks on it and the Dharma-tattooed shark swimming around?
.
My current theory is that the timeline split when the bomb went off. In one timeline they had the incident, but the Dharma people came back to the Island, while in the other timeline the Island sank. So not only does Jacob not mess with people’s lives, but there’s a domino effect as the people who should be on the Island spread out and interact with the world. The Dharma Initiative puts the efforts elsewhere or just fires everyone, the people Jacob interacted with have a different effect on everyone else’s lives, etc.
.
As for Ben and Roger leaving the Island, I think there are two possibilities. 1) The split in the timeline actually happened before young Ben got shot, which I’m not sure makes sense but it explains how they got off the Island or 2) The Island didn’t sink instantly. That doesn’t make logical sense, but an island sinking doesn’t make sense in the first place, so let’s just say the bomb combined with the energy from the incident and did something weird. If the Island sank over the course of a couple of weeks, that would have given everyone plenty of time to get off safely, including injured young Ben.
.
My personal theory is that Jacob died underwater. With nobody to replace him, Smokey started swimming for land. He should get to the mainland in about three episodes, at which point the world will end in the Alternative Timeline. The Losties will never know that the Alt-Timeline was destroyed, so while the audience has proof that the Island must be protected to save the world, Jacob replacement will just have to take it on Faith with no actual proof other than Jacob’s word. Kind of like how pushing the button in season 2 really wasn’t a cruel experiment, it was necessary to save the Island and they only found that out when it was too late.
.
The timeline was split in two when the bomb when off. To borrow from PAD’s Q-Squared there were two tracks. Track 1 is what we have seen in the previous seasons and Track 2 is the current “flash sideways”. Everything else up to the point of the explotion is the same. So Ben Linus was shot as a kid in the island and all that.
.
My theory is that the Track 2 storyline is going to progress to the point the characters are going to move in time again and return the timeline to normal to merge the two tracks into one. And that merged timeline is what we are seeing now. The way it is going to happen will probably involve the Faraday from the Track 2 timeline and definetly involve Juliet because she told Sawyer that Jack’s plan worked in the season opener.
.
Desmond and Jack had a sort of Deja Vu when they saw each other on the plane in Track 2 so probably we’ll see more of this in the next episodes with Sawyer and Kate.
.
.
“Desmond and Jack had a sort of Deja Vu when they saw each other on the plane in Track 2 so probably we’ll see more of this in the next episodes with Sawyer and Kate.”
.
But was that from the island or the fact that they actually met once before? They did cross paths before the island in the other reality.
I am also really curious as to what would happen if anybody “met themselves”.
What do you mean?
I think he means what would happen if there was some sort of genuine time paradox at which the island was the center, and people who are currently on the island returned home only to discover the sideways versions of themselves.
.
PAD
In the episode that concentrated on Richard Alpert, Jacob told him the island was a “cork” keeping the evil of the Man in Black from infecting the rest of the world. I had to think how much more evil would the world be? We already have serial killers, Osama bin Laden, there was Hitler and the Holocaust, Pol Pott, Stalin, a number of corrupt Roman emperors. Really, what would the Man in Black do that we haven’t already had to endure?
You really think this is the worst of all possible worlds?
.
It can always get much, much worse.
Well, I guess I’m an optimist.
PAD said, “…Which leads us to wonder whether Jacob’s involvement in their lives was helpful or harmful. Sawyer, for instance, is a cop rather than a criminal. Benjamin Linus, rather than a selfish, power-obsessed bášŧárd, is instead a conscientious and self-sacrificing teacher. All of which casts Jacob into a different light.”
.
PAD,
.
The only problem with the differences in the lives of the characters being because Jacob hadn’t encountered them is that not everyone met him as children. Hugo met Jacob after he’d left the island as one of the “Oceanic Six”, so Hugo’s believing himself to be cursed in one timeline and lucky in another can’t be Jacob-related. Unless we find in a later episode that Jacob did visit Hugo as a child, as he did with Sawyer and Kate. As far as we know he didn’t visit Ben (Ben didn’t recognize him as an adult), but Ben did grow up in a Jacob-centered environment. That had to have had an impact.
.
Jack likewise met Jacob as an adult. Unless there was a previous childhood encounter, I can’t see the adult Jack’s encounter with him (or lack thereof) affecting whether Jack would have started a family. And Jack got divorced in both timelines, though I suppose the circumstances might be different.
.
As to Sun and Jin, Jacob greeted them at their wedding, so we can discount his having a role in their falling in love and deciding to get married.
.
And he encountered Locke after Locke had been pushed out the window.
.
As to having the endgame from the very beginning, I’ve read that the producers had in mind a vague idea that the black and white Backgammon pieces Locke showed Walt would eventually be personified in opposing people/philosophies, but I doubt they had anything more concrete than that mapped out.
.
Some of the questions I’ve raised myself include why the Others were so hostile to the crash survivors? One probable answer: the creators hadn’t quite worked out who these people were and what they were all about when they were first introduced. When you think about it in retrospect, you have to wonder why Ben didn’t come forward (or send someone), and offer assistance. And then say, “oh, we can get you back to civilization (via the sub), if your doctor performs a spine operation.” Since the island is supposedly always moving around, even if the survivors tell the world about the people with the sub who dropped them off somewhere, and Whitmore recognized those people as his old pals, it’s not like he could just go there.
.
Another point I’ve raised is that we can pretty much conclude that every deceased person the characters have seen on the island (and probably Kate’s horse, too) were manifestations of Jacob’s enemy. Doesn’t explain how Jack saw his father off the island, though. In fact, in re-watching the season 5 DVDs, I saw that Fake-Locke was conveniently not around when Ben was confronted by dead Alex.
.
I wonder if the Smoke Monster will reveal that he’d hatched his plan when he’d first “scanned” Locke? In retrospect, that’d be one way to read his not having attacked Locke when Locke first encountered it.
.
Also unanswered are how many crash survivors are left? Other than our regular cast, the only ones we know about are Rose and Bernard, encountered back in the Dharma days (I wonder if theirs are the skeletons in the caves?); but are there any others? I think there should be, though I don’t know if they’d have been time jumped to the present with Jack, et al when the bomb went off. Yes, a lot were killed by those flaming arrows, but that shouldn’t be all of them.
.
This week, Sun asked Fake Locke why he killed all the people in the temple. Fair question, but the one I was hoping she’d ask (and maybe someone will before the season ends) is “why did you kill our pilot?” The probable real world answer: “we didn’t know what the smoke monster was at the time.” But what’s the in-universe answer? “I read his mind, and he cheated at Backgammon one day when he was in third grade”?
.
It would be interesting if we could travel to another universe where Lost was planned out from the beginning and compare the two versions of the show. Unfortunately no one’s gotten around to building any dimension crossing thingamabobs (at least not for the mass market), so we’ll just have to wonder.
.
For the record I don’t believe the Smoke Monster is the Devil (nor is Jacob). I think they could best be described as Jacob representing Order and the Smoke Monster representing Chaos (with Siegfried representing Kaos). It would, however, be ironic if the Smoke Monster were the Devil and Jacob were, essentially, his jailer, because Mark Pellegrino plays Lucifer on Supernatural.
.
Hadn’t considered the angels guarding Eden angle. Interesting.
.
Rick
We actually don’t know that Jacob didn’t interfere with their lives until the scenes that we were shown. He could have had many other interactions with them or with people who affect their lives.
.
He watched Jack, for example, ever since Jack was a child. Yet the scene we saw of him interacting with Jack was after Jack was a surgeon. Jacob obviously doesn’t wait that long with everyone, he contacted Kate when she was very young. So either Jacob watched Jack for twenty years before doing anything with him, or else he took some action earlier that we haven’t been shown.
.
I think it’s very likely that there was more action than what we were shown. They just didn’t need to show us every time that Jacob cuts someone off in traffic to make them late for a meeting or sticks some gum on the floor to get on Jack’s shoe and distract him when he should be meeting his future wife.
My (probably unsatisfying) take as to why the Others acted like such bášŧárdš to the crash survivors: Jacob told them to do it. The possible candidates must be tested and the paths they choose in response to those tests is what makes the decision. On the other hand, Ben’s corrupt nature probably subverted the goal, and made things worse. Additionally, if the Others have info which suggests people are “bad / infected”, they’re going to kill them, and take the choice out of their hands.
I’m just afraid that if too many more people show up on the island it might tip over.
Hank Johnson has all the answers.
I found it interesting that the resurrected Sayid seems to have no soul. Reminds me of something else I read recently…
I’ve never seen ‘Lost’. For the longest time I just assumed it was some sort of Gilligan knock-off.
I missed the first few episodes when it started and decided I didn’t want to be behind. Then a few years later Sci-Fi Network (as they were known at the time) ran a marathon to catch everyone up.
Now the first 5 seasons are up on Hulu.com. If you want, you can watch the first episode and see if you like it.
Theory going around, that the Desmond we saw this week, is from the current flash-sideways world.
I don’t believe we’re dealing with a timeline split, per se. If a new timeline in which the plane never crashed had been created because of the explosion of Jughead, then when Jack, et al. returned to the present it would have been the present of that timeline; and there would have been no beach camp.
.
No, we don’t have “what if the plane never crashed?” stories. We have “what if the plane never crashed, and these people’s lives were different to begin with?” stories.
.
A time traveler being shunted into a new timeline upon changing the past avoids the so-called “Grandfather Paradox.” Yes, you can go back in time and kill your grandfather before he had kids (or go back in time on an island where your plane crashed to detonate a bomb in order to keep your plane from crashing on that island); but when you return to the present, you’d be an anomaly, because there’d be no record of you in that timeline. Meanwhile, back in the present of the original timeline, you’ve disappeared (“Ralph said he was going to go back in time and kill his grandfather. His Grandpa’s still alive, but I haven’t seen Ralph since then.”).
.
Even if there were a way to overcome the “Grandfather paradox” without creating new timelines, and we had a storyline where the plane landed and these people went on with the lives we’ve seen, how engaging would that have been? They wouldn’t have known each other, and many wouldn’t have met at all.
.
While we still don’t know why things are different for these characters in the “flash sideways” timeline, we also don’t know how they’re different until we get to see their stories. It’s been interesting to see some of the revelations. We can bet on getting Kate and Desmond “flash sideways” stories; and I suspect we might even get a Charlie one (or Charlie will appear into someone else’s). Otherwise, why the brief scene with Charlie’s brother at the police station?
.
Rick
.
P.S. Mary said she’d assumed Lost was a Gilligan’s Island knock off. No, but like the island in Lost, Gilligan’s kept moving around. That’s why it took 15 years before the castaways got rescued. Also, can you imagine if Gilligan were on the Lost island and the arguments he’d cause among the various factions: “You take him.” “No, you take him.”
We already got a Kate flash sideways story. It was the second episode of the season. I think it was actually the weakest episode of the season.
.
As for your theory, I don’t think that’s how they’re doing it. Yes, in some sci-fi stories the time traveller returns to an altered future, but there’s no law that it has to be that way. It can be any way the writer wants. In this case, I think the Losties created an alternate timeline where everything was different after the bomb went off, then returned to their own timeline.
Rick, I think the point is that Jack and Kate and the rest of our losties were always responsible for the Jughead detonation in 1977. That’s why Eloise Hawking and Widmore were so insistant on Faraday going to the island, they remembered how it happened and schemed for things to go the way they should – even though it meant sacrificing their son. The alt timeline (though the producers balk at using that term) shot off from some point after Ben arrived on the island. I originally thought the split was Jughead, but now it seems to have occured before that. Ben’s father seemed to believe that Ben’s life would have been better if they stayed on the island. I don’t think he would say that if Ben had been shot and then disappeared while some crazy people tried to detonate a bomb.
It looks to me like the “sideways” universe is what would have happened had Jacob not existed or had been killed. So without Jacob there’d be no manipulation of the canidates/survivors lives…
So perhaps this “sideways” universe is merely the after-effect of Smokey winning in the end… with the main timeline wrapping back around to the beginning of this new one, only without Jacob and a free Smokey.
I’m still pìššëd they passed on showing new episodes of BETTER OFF TED to air week-old reruns of LOST. But anyway…
I always thought the show was about probability control and influence (Hurley’s numbers, the Oceanic passengers happening to interact in their lives before the crash), but the struggle of good vs. evil and its shades of gray is interesting. (Jacob is supposedly good, yet Jack felt like he’d been spying on them and controlling them all; the Smoke Locke (Locke in a Smoking Jacket?) claims he just wants to leave, yet he killed everyone at the temple who didn’t go with him.)
I wonder: In the last episode Jack’s final speech to Sun sounded almost identical to Locke’s: “Trust me, I’ll take you to Jin, I’ll never make you do anything you don’t want to do, come with me.” Earlier this season the temple guardian had said Locke was trapped in his current body; was she wrong, or was this foreshadowing Jack becoming the new guardian of the island?
I’m not that interested in the flash-sideways stories (Hurley is happy! Locke’s back in the chair!) but I wonder if that means their leaving the island would either create a reality-wrecking paradox or one set of lives would cancel out the others. Or they could pull a TWIN PEAKS and have evil win after all…
Well, evil didn’t win in Twin Peaks, unless you mean the evil of ABC for canceling it prematurely.
Sorry to break it to you, but…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rjJ51N7qZY
Ps. Prematurely indeed.
I think that in terms of the flash sideways storytelling that it will continue to the end and have no real resolution. In many ways it will serve to tell the audience more about the characters that are the core to the current storytelling as well as visit with characters that have died or that the current storytelling has lost track of.
Other than that I don’t think that there is any correlation between the sideways world and the “real” world. I don’t think that you see characters from different timelines interacting or any of that there just simply isn’t enough episodes left and the current momentum of the series is too strong to be bogged down with that sort of unimportant detail.
I also think that the jughead bomb had repercussions that we may never know about. By exploding it not only caused the timeline to diverge, but it also may have killed the man in black and/or jacob. Think about it. Their both mystical figures, but their powers are based on real life rules. Some sort of energy source is keeping both of them alive and allowing them to do what they have been doing if that energy source is damaged or destroyed it could mean death for them.
I’ve seen a lot of snippets of how people disagree over whether or not the show should have a happy or sad ending. Anyone else wonder if they didn’t design the flash-sideways to appease both schools of thought?
What I think the “flash sideways” represents is a temptation for the candidates that it will come down to – Jack and Hurley. Jack has a son he can be a better father to than his dad was to him. Hurley is one lucky dude (and while we didn’t see Jacob directly dealing with Hurley like with the other candidates, perhaps his “bad luck” is the result of Jacobs meddling?). I think the smoke monster will use the alternate “time-line” to illustrate how Jacob messed with them, and if you can just get me off the island, this will be your reward.
Or something like that.
What I would like to see as the final shot is Jack and Smoke Monster-Locke sitting on the beach, with Locke turning to Jack and asking, “Do you realize how much I hate you?”
Jason M. Bryant said, “We already got a Kate flash sideways story. It was the second episode of the season.”
.
I thought that was more Claire’s story than Kate’s (we find out that the couple who were going to adopt the baby broke up, and the woman now doesn’t want to; Claire goes into labor, etc.). We still don’t know what Kate’s crime is in the “flash sideways” world. I’ve read that people were told something at one of the conventions (San Diego, probably), but we haven’t seen anything in an episode as yet.
.
Unless Kate made an offhand comment, and I missed it.
.
Jason also said, “We actually don’t know that Jacob didn’t interfere with their lives until the scenes that we were shown. He could have had many other interactions with them or with people who affect their lives.”
.
Yes, he could have, but that raises the question, why not show Jacob with young Jack? Or, at the very least, have Jacob say something like, “nice to see you again, Jack.” He’d either then walk away, or do so after waving off Jack’s apology for not being able to place him. Such a scene would have let the audience know that Jacob had encountered a younger Jack without the necessity of hiring an actor to play young Jack. Obviously, if these people had never met Jacob, there lives would be different in some ways, but I find it unlikely that all these differences are due to Jacob’s absence in the “flash sideways” stories.
.
When I was in third grade, we moved from one state to another, and I finished my grade school education at a particular school down the street from our new home. But my parents had looked at houses in other neighborhoods, and we might well have ended up buying one of those. If we had, I’d have gone to a different grade school, and thus would have had a different set of friends. But my junior high and high school path would not have changed. And I probably would have gone on to the same college and met the same people, etc. Those would have been a few minor differences. Major differences would have occurred if we’d never moved, or had gone to some other state entirely. Jacob not encountering James Ford as a kid and giving him that pen = major difference in James’ life. Jacob not encountering Jack at a candy machine as an adult = minor difference in Jack’s life.
.
Jason also said, “yes, in some sci-fi stories the time traveller returns to an altered future, but there’s no law that it has to be that way. It can be any way the writer wants.” And Troy Phillips said, “I think the point is that Jack and Kate and the rest of our losties were always responsible for the Jughead detonation in 1977…. The alt timeline (though the producers balk at using that term) shot off from some point after Ben arrived on the island. I originally thought the split was Jughead, but now it seems to have occured before that.”
.
Jason, yes, it is pretty much up to the writer which “rules” of time travel to follow, but creating an alternate timeline into which the time traveler is then shunted is the only logical way (at least the only one I can think of) to avoid paradox.
.
Troy, I could accept Jack and company always being part of events in 1974-1977, and that whatever damage Jughead caused, it wasn’t sufficient to prevent the need for the hatch to be built. That would explain the beach camp still being there in the “present” of 2007. But a timeline shift of Roger and Ben leaving the island before the explosion raises interesting questions. Obviously Ben’s life would be very different, and the crash survivors’ on-island lives would have been different, too (they might still have been hassled by the others on Jacob’s orders, according to Lorinheller’s theory; but, according to that same theory, not to the extremes that Ben took matters.). But their pre-crash lives would not have been affected by Ben’s absence from the island.
.
It’s possible we’ll learn the two “timelines” are connected in some way, but I still think the “flash sideways” stories are “imagine if these people’s lives were different from the get-go” stories. “How would these characters behave differently, especially if they met?” Why, for example, did “flash sideways” James Ford, who we now know is a cop, let Kate escape in the airport? Just as we learned surprising things in the flashbacks (Kate’s the one being escorted by the Marshal?) and flash forwards (Sayid’s working for Ben?!?), so too do we get unexpected twists in the “flash sideways” stories. They’re Lost’s versions of Marvel’s What If? series.
.
Rick
Personally, I don’t care all that much if a showrunner and staff sit down and reverse-engineer the end of their series, as long as they do a decent job of it. I was watching X-Men: Fight the Future at the gym this morning and I realized how Chris Carter and Company let the show get away from them and never really managed to tie it up in any kind of satisfying way, at least in my opinion. The problem of course, with reverse-engineeing an ending is it becomes a bit like taking an old clock-radio apart and putting it back together again, only to find that you’re left with all these leftover pieces that don’t seem to fit. That’s the feeling I get with Lost now. There seem to be lots of bits and pieces that seemed to have great importance at the time only to disappear for whatever reasons. I’m sure I could put together quite a list, but the one that comes to mind is Walt.
Funnily enough, the show that seems to have learned a lesson from both X-Files and Lost is the latter’s Bad Robot sister series, Fringe. Watching last night’s episode, in which a huge chunk of the back-story was spelled out was a quite a satisfying mix of drama and exposition. Watching some scenes, you could feel the tumblers clicking into place- oh, that’s what happened to Nina, that’s why they fell through the ice, and so forth. And seeing an alternate universe movie marquee advertising Back to the Future starring Eric Stoltz was pretty much worth the price of admission alone. I think the difference here is that the producers on Fringe managed to wrestle their mythology back into their control midway through season two, while other serialized shows such as X-Files lost that control and never got it back. As for Lost, they’re got a handful of episodes to tie it all up, but I think it’s an awfully tall order.
I have a few questions for Peter: As a writer yourself, how often do you write and publish a multi-issue story arc and have no idea where its going? Would that be frowned upon in the comic world or even allowed from your editors?
Do you enjoy when a writer can eventually pull something out of their butt to make sense of a unknown rambling narrative or do you expect a more strict outline from others before the story is actually produced?
I second this question.
I always have a general idea of where I’m going. I’m not always sure how I’m going to get there, and the trip may go off in unexpected directions, but I DO have most of the endgame worked out in my head.
.
It doesn’t give me a warm, fuzzy feeling when other writers are just hoping they’ll make it all make sense in the future. Yes, “Lost” seems to be doing a superb job pulling it all together. But for every “Lost” you get an “X-Files” or “Twin Peaks,” hopelessly caught in a morass of its own mythos with no clue and no end game.
.
PAD
X-Files is the reason I haven’t even tried to watch Fringe, I’m too afraid it will end up like X-Files…
.
Oh lord that was such a waste of a great show. X-Files started out so good and only got better and better for a few seasons there. It was so painful to watch, and then stop watching, the train wreck that it became.
People keep talking about the 70’s/Jughead as the point of divergence…. but if the plane didn’t crash, the ripples go back to at least the 50’s, when Sawyer, Faraday and the rest encountered teenage Widmore and first encountered the jughead.
Part of me suspects the flash sideways are not “what if Jacob never touched them.” But rather it is a “wish fulfillment-everyone getting a variation on what they wanted from life-but it was twisted.” Last night started to make that apepar a bit more concrete with the Desmond story. I think that is why some island folks are showing up in places they might not have been expected to be seen (Rose for example) and people are “re-connecting” in the new timeline. It isn’t a temptation, it the end result of something Smokey offers someone (maybe Desmond?) in exchange for helping him, and they will have to undue the false timeline and keep smokie on the island and pick Jacob’s successor.
My current line of thinking is somewhat similar as far as the wish fulfillment angle… but what if the Sideworld was actually created for the remaining candidates by Jacob, to keep them safe and able to act without Smocke’s knowledge. This could explain why the other island folk have been showing up in the oddest places, as the only people showing up are the people that the candidates have run into (whether they actually know them or not) up to the point the bomb went off, which is how we get Keamy as a thug, Ethan as a doctor, Ben as a history teacher, etc.
All of the changes to the backstories are to support the candidates and no one else. Jack, with his daddy issues, gets to raise his son better than his father. Kate, who went back to the island to reunite Claire and Aaron, gets to help Claire get to the hospital and the adoptive parents are all of a sudden not an option. Sawyer gets to be a good guy and so on…
Desmond appears somehow able to exist in both realities simultaneously, thanks to Widmore’s re-jolting him with the EM waves. I think this also explains how Juliet knew ‘it worked’. When the bomb went off, she was also exposed to the same type of field which let her exist in both, until her injuries killed her. I think Desmond’s purpose is to reunite the candidates in SW to somehow help the islanders to defeat Smocke…
Thoughts?
From this weeks I still believe that during the flashsideways is leading to a point were they are going to restore the timeline. That is what we are seeing as “current time” in the island, the restored timeline. So the flashsideways are also flashbacks. Soon with Desmond’s help the people of the island will remember the other reality also. In the flashsideways there are two ways to realize something is wrong. Finding your soulmate (Desmond, Penny, Hugo etc) and a near death experience (Charlie and probably John Lock).
.
I think that is also the case for the “real timeline” Juliet knew the plan worked in the season opener because she was near-death and probably remembered the changed timeline. That is why she told sawyer “it worked” in the season opener.
.
Everything seems to be heading to a climax at the hospital were Jack lives. I think Jack’s wife will be Juliet in that timeline and she will have to go to the hospital probably because of something with their son and she will meet Sawyer who will be there with Kate for some reason. Juliet and Sawyer will remember the real timeline because they are soulmates so will Kate and Jack.
.
These are my theories.
.
Who is the kid that appears to Smokey? Is the island really purgatory? I have no clue yet.
After the last two episodes I still believe that the flashsideways are flashbacks. They will restores the Island to the original timeline and that is what we are seeing as the regular timeline.
.
Two things seems to make people remember the other timeline: finding their soulmates(like Desmond, Penny, Hugo, Lili, etc) and having a near death experience (Charlie and maybe John Lock). Near death experiences is probably also true for the normal timeline because Juliet seems to remember before she died in the season operner.
.
The flashsideways seems to be leading to a climax in the hospital were Jack works. I am guessing Jack’s wife will be Juliet and she will be in the Hospital when Kate and Sawyer go there for some reason. Jack and kate will remember the previous time line because they are soulmates and so will Juliet and Sawyer.
.
Something will happen in the real timeline, probably with Desmond’s help were everybody will remember the other timeline.
.
Who is the kid that appears to Smokey? Why don’t Sun and Jin remember the other timeline if they are soulmates(Desmond will probably help)? Is Smokey aware of the other timeline?(I do not think so).
.
What do you all think?