LOST Thoughts For S6E17 The End May 23rd, 2010 Part Three

So, how did I do in my predictions of what was going to happen this season? I’d give myself a C. I know that’s kind of vanilla but I was really way off on some of my theories. I could have never seen the big reveal with the Alterverse coming. That was a pretty nice touch.

Here’s the rundown of the remaining theories I had out there.

“Sundown”

1. The Flash Lefts are not reality and are just a metaphysical construct brought on by the MiB (Kind of like the Matrix) and Jack is becoming more aware of this in the Flash Lefts.

Result: DING! WRONG!
They were dead and the flash lefts, alterverse, etc. was a construct of their souls as a meeting place to find each other and make a spiritual connection in order to remember their lives so that they could move on to the afterlife. I don’t know if some accepted spiritual or religious doctrine speaks to this as a version of purgatory or the afterlife, but I connected with an 80s movie when I found out what the alternate timeline was. Made In Heaven was a movie with Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis as people who meet and fall in love each other after they are dead. McGillis’ character has not yet earned her wings and must do a tour of duty on Earth in order to do so. Hutton convinces the powers that be to send him to Earth, too but they will have no recollection of each other. They now have 30 years to find each other on Earth and fall in love or be fated to an unhappy life. Not quite the same thing but it came to my mind seeing how the characters didn’t remember one another.

“Dr. Linus”

1. The island sank after the Dharma Initiative left due to:
   
   1. The Incident minus the Jughead. Most DI non essential personal were off the island prior (Amy, Horace, Roger, Ben)
   2. The building of The Swan by the DI which hit the pocket of energy and with no way to contain it (i.e. Jughead, button) the island sank but not before Dharma Initiative were able to escape.

Result: WRONG! WRONG!
The sunken island was not real. And had it sunk for realsies it would have been because that stone carrot was removed.

2. Roger and Ben left the Dharma Initiative because:
   
   1. Roger did not want to be a Workman anymore and Horace couldn’t convince him to stay or was not there due to the birth of Ethan off island.
   2. He was fired.

Result: WRONG! WRONG!
They were dead.

“Happily Ever After”

1. Desmond is going to:
   
   1. Be the package.
   2. Deliver the package.
2. And his sacrifice will be:
   
   1. Die in the process.
   2. Become the new Jacob.
   3. Keep the alterverse the way it is.

Result: WRONG! on both parts.
Well, except if you count “being the package.”

3. Sayid is:
   
   1. Evil.
   2. Pulling a Sonny Crockett and playing evil
   3. Just plain crackers

Result: WRONG!
Redeemed.

4. The experiment was meant to:
   
   1. Show Desmond the alterverse and allow his doppelganger to realize the truth.
   2. Simply show that he can withstand a C.E.E. so that he can interact with the “Hot Pocket.”

Result: Indirectly DING! DING!
I was right on both counts but his doppleganger did not realize the truth because of this, it was just because of Charlie making the connection to his death on the island.

5. Widmore is able to find the island because:
   
   1. He is the friend Jacob was guiding towards the island and his name is actually Wallace.
   2. Desmond is on that sub and his name his family name is actually Wallace.
   3. Locke-Ness has killed Jacob leaving the island unveiled and seen by Widmore
   4. He went to the Lamp Post

Result: DING! DING!
Although I don’t know why, since we never found out what he planned to do with Desmond once he got to the island.  And I don't know that Wallace ever had anything to do with anything.  In fact, I don't really know what the purpose of the lighthouse really was or what is was showing since the Altervese was their purgatory after they all died.

“Everybody Loves Hugo”

1. Desmond plowed through Locke because:
   
   1. He loves Grand Theft Auto, brutha.
   2. He knows Locke is really MiB (The mirror to this is his response of “John Locke” when MiB asked if he knew who he was.)
   3. He wanted to show him something (Indirectly a nod to Charlie’s failed Lupe’s Escape move)

Result: DING! DING!

2. The pouch contains:
   
   1. Jacob’s ashes gathered by Ilana from the Foot.

Result: DING! DING!
That was an easy one.

3. MiB needs the others (no pun) because:
   
   1. He needs the conditions of the O6 leaving in order to be able to replicate it.
   2. He plans to just kill them in order to keep them from becoming the next Jacob.

Result: DING! DING!
He told the candidates that's why he needed them but it was really just to kill them.

The little boy is:

1. A rapidly growing Jacob getting ready to assume the persona of a candidate and that’s why his hair has changed color with every candidate that witnesses him in the presence of MiB. Blond for Sawyer, Brown for Desmond.

Result: DING! DING!
Although I was probably wrong about the hair color and that he was going to grow up to be the candidate. It was most likely a trick of the light or just casting.

“The Last Recruit”

1. Jack’s wife/ex-wife is Juliet. The age of David puts Jack’s age at the time of conception around 21. He could have conceivably met Juliet at medical school and fathered a child. Now that she is divorced or weary of men because of Jack she meets Sawyer and decides to get coffee but go Dutch. Perhaps Juliet will meet Sawyer at the hospital when he goes to talk with Sun about the shooting. Juliet will be the OB/GYN that helped save Sun’s baby.

Result: DING! DING! FULL OF WIN ON THAT ONE!
I made that prediction a month in advance.

“The Candidate”

1. The following are dead:
   
   1. Frank, Sayid, Jin and Sun
   2. Sayid, Jin and Sun (Frank is only mostly dead which means he’s slightly alive.)
   3. Sayid, Frank, and Sun (Jin is still a possible candidate and could not be killed, therefore he was able to swim away)
   4. THEY’RE ALL DEAD!?!?!?!?

Result: DING DING!
Yeah Frank!

2. The show will end with:
   
   1. Jack and Locke sitting on the beach having a conversation about killing each other.
   2. Locke and Locke sitting on the beach having the same conversation.

Result: WRONG!
Locke is lying in a broken bloodied mess over the cliff while Jack goes off to die in the bamboo where he woke up three years prior.

“What They Died For”

1. MiB will attempt to leave the island:
   
   1. Via the donkey wheel.
   2. Via Ajira 316 which will be disarmed.

Result: WRONG!
It was The Elizabeth.

2. The Alterverse Castaways are going to:
   
   1. Meet up on a boat to go to the spot where the island should be.
   2. Fly in another plane and somehow get back to the sunken island.

Result: WRONG!
They were dead.

3. MiB will attempt to destroy the island by:
   
   1. Throwing Desmond down the 100 watt cave.

Result: CLOSE! ½ credit.

4. MiB will be killed by:
   
   1. Blown up by the remainder of the C4 making Ben a suicide bomber who decides to kamikaze Smokey.
   2. Jack will go all Neo on him like he did Mr. Smith
   3. He won’t. Everything will simply go back to the way it was.

Result: ALMOST!
Jack, but Kate pulled a Schwarzenegger and one linered him after shooting him in the back.  But Jack did go kick ass on him.

5. The Survivors will leave the island by:


1. Ajira 316. Frank really isn’t dead and has been spending the last two episodes disarming the bomb. He’ll show up at the last minute like Bishop did in Aliens.
2. Penny will arrive on Penny’s Boat and rescue them but will lose Desmond
3. Each one will take a turn on the Donkey Wheel.

Result: DING DING!
Yeah Frank!

Ok, that was painful.   One mroe to go, I really promise this time.   Next I look at The End and after.

LOST Theories For S6E15 Across The Sea May 11th, 2010

Games. Across the sea was either the greatest gift to a baffled fan or the longest con of all. In it we get an answers to a few of the biggest head scratchers this side of the Tunisian bus stop on the Frozen Donkey Wheel line. But as C.J. Cregg, er Allison Janney tells Clauida, “Every question I answer will simply lead to another question.” Such is the nature of LOST, for every answer there is another question.

Now, I’ve tried and tried to look at this episode as objectively as possible and not read too much into it. After all, there’s no sense in postulating a lot of theories about the history of the island since we will probably not see anything of a pre 21st century timeline in the last three episodes. All we can hope for is Michael Emerson to give us some exposition over the highlight reel during the obligatory recap episode we’ll get just before the finale. However, I want to draw some parallels that have been running through the history of this show since "Pilot".

IN THE BIG INNING
In the beginning there was a woman. She delivered two boys. The mother was killed and the boys were raised by another. The fair haired angelic son was named Jacob. The other, the bad twin (get it LOST fans?) was given no name. He was the favorite. He was loved above others. He was manipulated into being a means to an end. The good son doted, obeyed, protected, defended his giver of life while “He who shall not be named” was curious, questioning, willing to disobey and discover. Fate vs. Free Will. And for every beginning there is an ending. Perhaps it’s a snake eating its own tail. A wheel spinning around, marking the events on an island, ultimately returning to its starting position.

We get the glimpse of Claudia floating on wood towards the shore of the island. She is pregnant. Right away we know who she’s carrying and that leads us to my second biggest theory debunker of all.

4. Jacob and Locke Monster are actually brothers and the whole mother thing will play out a bit more in a final showdown. We already know that Alpert is the only character to have a flashback this season so it stands to reason that any explanations will be done through exposition between characters.


1. Jacob was loved more than MiB
2. MiB will be known as either Samuel or Esau

It actually turns out that this works in favor of my theory. We know that Jacob and MiB are brothers but whether or not Jacob was loved more than his brother remains to be seen. Their mother said they loved each of them in different ways. (more on that) And we did get more exposition about their back story like I said. I was off on the name but frankly I like it that way. I thought it was a cruel joke by Team Lost to not give him a name. We’ve all been speculating and when we finally get a real chance to hear the magic name, we get “I only picked one name.” HAHA LOST fans, we screwed you. In actuality he needs no name. Voldemort, The Devil, Keyser Soze, whatever you want to call him is evil. And evil does not need a name, it only needs an audience.

So, after the babies are born…which look to be 2 months prior to being birthed… they are wrapped in swaddling, opposite colored clothes and there is a moment of “ah ha!” in C.J.’s... err Allison Janney's eyes. She then says “I’m sorry” and bashes in Claudia’s head with a rock. What was that moment? A revelation, a means to an end. One side is light and the other is dark. One will protect the island. The other will provide me an escape… a loophole.

Still… LOST? What if Claudia had washed up on shore and met Allison Janney and Allison Janney had said, “What did one snowman say to the other?” Would that clear it up for you? (Ok, we’ll come back to that.)

MAN OF SCIENCE VS. MAN OF FAITH
The players change but the game is always the same. There are two players, one side is light and one side is dark. The man of faith accepts what is happening and plays his part. The man of science searches for more answers, rallying against the status quo. From the get go, Jacob is the man of faith and his brother is the man of science. Jacob never questioned his origins nor did he leave his faux ma to be with his people. He accepted his role. His brother got a glimpse of another life with “his” people, off the island, and wanted to leave. He wanted to use science to leave the island. Just as Locke became the man of faith and Jack became the man of science when it came down to everything, the island, the button, the freighter.

Now, the roles have been reversed. Jack is now the man of faith, taking the leap of faith off the starboard bow of the Elizabeth, a baptismal if you will into the role of “Man of Faith” while Locke, now possessed by the soul of Jacob’s brother, has become the man of science using technology, a plane, a sub, explosives to leave the island. Ultimately we will see the donkey wheel again because I have no doubt that he intended to use every other means of escape as a means of disposal for the candidates only to return to his original work as the way to leave.

THE GAME
Whether it be Senet, Backgammon, Chess, or Stratego… Does anyone want to play Stratego… I have Stratego… the game itself is an overly complex design to achieve a simple task. But the game that Jacob’s brother found was simply a metaphor for what is really going on here. Manipulation of pieces on a board. One side moves the pieces into place. Some are used for sacrifice to expose the opponent to more substantial attack. The player cannot directly get at the opponent but can use his pawns to win the game. Think of the island and everyone on it as a game board and a bunch of pieces. In every age the game is adapted to the time. For Jacob and his brother it was what looked like to be a Senet board. For the LOSTIES it was backgammon. Two sides, two colors, two players, multiple pieces.

Perhaps since the dawn of time, the island has been a game. Maybe what we believe to be the game masters, Jacob and his brother are merely the newest round of players. I get the feeling that their mother was forced to play the game as she was handed the role from the previous player. In any case, the game continues and continues much like a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. That is a game which, if played correctly, will never have a winner. It always ends in a tie, the balance of power stays the same.

JUMPING THE DHARMA SHARK
When The Other Mother showed the brothers to the cave of light I wanted to throw my fandom at the television. WTF?!?! (Mandatory Internet Slang Quota Per Post Reached) It’s a cave with a hundred watt bulb hanging inside of it. I think we need to change the name of the show to LAND OF THE LOST because that was straight outta Sid and Marty Kroft’s playbook. I half expected there to be Sleestak running about and claymation dinosaurs chasing the family back to the cave to grab the flyswatter. It also looked as if Jacob’s brother went over a waterfall into the light before smokey appeared, much like the Marshalls went over the waterfall in the opening to Land of the Lost.

We have been told that there is a very simple explanation for what’s going on and that it was rooted in reality but this was just too much. I should give up that theory because this whole season has pretty much blown the rules of science and reality out of the water. However, cheesy metaphors for the source of life aside, the cave did serve a purpose. It sets up the tasks to be performed by the protector and the prize for mere mortals to fight and plunder over for centuries.

You get the sense that Other Mother blindfolded her sons so that neither one could assume control of power until it was time. Keeping the cave a secret allowed for them to be captured and not be able to tell the location.

THE LONGEST CON OF ALL
I’m coming back to my comparison of Jacob’s mother and the button. I have said before that we should not read too much into the glyphs and structures on the island because they are inconsequential to the overall story. Every set of people that have come to the island have used their culture to interpret what the island is and the mysteries that reside within it. The more we fish for rationalizations of the importance of the temple or the statue the more red herrings we catch. Quite simply, if I arrived on the island and experienced these weird things, I would interpret them as being a product of whatever culture or civilization I came from and would document or deify them as such. The players change but the game stays the same. So disregard all you think you know about Greek or Egyptian mythology. Forget trying to figure out why the button had to be pushed every 108 minutes. It means nothing.

The simple fact of the matter is that there has been a lie perpetuated by centuries of misdirection and misinformation. Allison Janney came to the island “by accident” as she told Claudia. However, instead of being part of the game, she was made a player. She opened the ancient equivalent to a hatch and the equivalent of Desmond popped out fed her a line and gave her some wine. Then she probably killed or found a way to cause the death of whoever was guarding the Easy Smoke Oven. Then she became the ageless guardian and with the birth of twins she found a means to the end. “One of them will take my place as guardian of the island and the other one will kill me finally ending my Richard Alpert problem.” All she needed to do was figure out which one was going to be which. She planted the seeds of destruction with the game. Think about The Long Con in which Sawyer happened to drop open a briefcase full of money. “Oh my, don’t look at all that money that you were obviously never supposed to see. Damn these cheap briefcases. That’s the last time I go to Staples.” Except in this case, the Senet game established the sides. The one who is devoted to me will be the protector while the one who chooses to keep secrets and deceive me will be the one to kill me. In fact, are we really sure she wasn’t involved with the “appearance” of Claudia to Jacob’s brother? After all, most dead people on the island are a product of the smoke monster. And if we’re pretty sure that, prior to Jacob kicking his brother to the cave, Smokey never existed then how did Claudia show up? Moving pieces. Strategy. Money in a briefcase. The Mousetrap Game.

By revealing the truth of their origins to Jacob’s brother she set him down the path of rebellion. He wants to leave. He’ll work his whole life to find an escape and just as he’s about to do it, I’ll take it away. He’ll be so pissed that he’ll kill me, right after I secure his brother as the protector of the island. And to think that she gave Jacob the same wine that Jacob gave Alpert is telling. Whether the wine is actually sacred or magical is debatable. The incantation she gave could be window dressing. One may simply have to accept the responsibility to be a part of something and the wine is a contract. A covenant. A pact. A handshake. Communion.

Over the centuries the torch has been passed. The cons continue. MiB conned Ben into doing everything he wanted in order to push Ben into the mindset that he had done everything at the behest of Jacob and Jacob never cared. Jacob may have never had any dealings with Ben. Ben was a fanboy who saw too much into the imaginary relationship he had with his hero, the rock star, and it was all the machinations of MiB to push Ben into killing Jacob. And now he has conned the con, Sawyer, into believing he could get him off the island when in fact he meant to trap every candidate and blow them up, allowing him the chance to leave the island.

THE SOURCE, THE SMOKE, THE SCIENCE, THE SKELETONS
So, we got some answers. The Source is the cave of the 100 watt bulb. The donkey wheel was constructed by Jacob’s brother. The wheel when connected to the source moves the island and drops you in Tunisia and the skeletons of Adam and Eve were Jacob’s family. That’s a lot of stuff crammed into one episode. I still don’t know what exactly the Source is but I don’t think it will matter much. It’s a trope of television and movies. What’s inside the Lost Ark in Indiana Jones? What’s inside the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? It is merely alien space bats or a macguffin. Look them up. It’s something that is shiny and pure and needs protecting from those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers…

Does the source turn you to smoke? Or is it Pandora’s box and using a human to open it unleashes all the evils of the world in the form of the smoke monster, leaving only hope. And why did Jacob’s brother’s body end up like the pilot from "Pilot?" Simple, he was spat out, blown out by the rushing smoke. He was the mentos dropped into the cave of diet coke and got shot out. The smoke monster took his form because he was dead, assuming the identity and memories of his host. That’s why it is possible for him to be Adam and why none of us would have ever seen it coming. Why? The possibility of Eve being their mother was never suggested to us until we learned from Smokey/MiB that he had a mother in "Recon" and that he never really had a body after the events of "Across The Sea."

Every time they find a place like this they dig. It doesn’t matter what culture whether it be Jacob’s people or the Dharma Initiative, when they find a hotspot they dig. In fact you could probably call Jacob’s brother a part of the original Dharma Initiative. Then they were purged. Probably because they were coming to close to finding The Source. Makes you wonder if the Orchid, The Well, and The Swan are a triangulation around the Source. But how does the wheel, water, and the 100 watt bulb work? Once again, it does not matter in the scheme of things. What does matter is that now that the submarine is gone and the plane is rigged to blow, it may pan out that MiB was going back to his old ways all along and that these other means of transportation were just more red herrings. Ones that could get a candidate killed. MiB will probably go back to the donkey wheel to escape.

Adam and Eve have been a topic of debate since "House of the Rising Sun" in Season One. With every new wrinkle of possibility introduced each season the list of candidates who they are has expanded. I always figured it would be Rose and Bernard. Turns out, I was way off on all my theories, and the whole white stone / black stone. Another red herring that really represented pieces of the game that Jacob and his brother used to play. An inside joke. Two players. One side light and one side dark. But the rate of decomposition does not jive with Jack’s assumption that they were only 60 years dead. Maybe the nature of the island is responsible or maybe Jack is really bad at that kind of thing and figured as a doctor, no one would question him.

THEORY DEBUNK TIME
"Sundown"

1. MiB, UnLocke, Flocke, Lockeness, Esau, Nemesis, Not Lock, whatever you call him is a fallen angel, perhaps the devil.

8. The reason why Jacob and MiB cannot kill each other directly is because they are the same entity and only through indirect contact can the scale of power be tipped towards one consciousness and eventually it will be revealed ala Tyler Durden.

Yeah, no fallen angels here. He was mortal. Also, I can scratch off number 8 because they are definitely two distinct people and their mother somehow made it impossible for them to directly hurt the other.

"The Package"

1. Adam and Eve are…


1. Rose and Bernard. 40% Most acceptable answer as we have not seen them yet in the OT
2. Jin and Sun 20% It would be the payoff of them finally being reunited.
3. Desmond and Penny. 10% Low score on this since if Desmond ends up being the new Jacob he wouldn’t have died and these skeletons died in the past.
4. Kate and Jack. 10% Unlikely since they would have to time travel again.
5. Kate and Sawyer 10% Unlikely in that Sawyer was married to Juliet, he’s done with Kate romantically.
6. Never explained. 9% I’d have a brain melt down.
7. Nikki and Paulo. 1% That would send me over the edge.

BUUURRRRRRR! Way wrong on all counts. Although, it begs the question of what happened to Rose, Bernard and Vincent after the time travel from the 70s to the present? I’ll accept the answer but it was really a softball one. I pretty much feel as if the producers said, “Everyone thinks they know who Adam and Eve are. Why not throw them the biggest curve ball ever?”

"The Last Recruit"

The biggest gamble of a theory I have is that at the end there will be a reveal that one or more of the remaining Losties aside from Locke will be MiB. Wouldn’t that be a trip if it all came down to Team MiB and Team Jacob standing on opposing sides only to have select members of Team Jacob turn and point their guns at Jack and Desmond. It’s a long shot theory because that would mean that Frank infected Hurley who was voted least likely to become a host for the smoke monster in his senior year.

Yeah, I think I can safely say that there is no need to go the route that one or more of the remaining cast is also part of the smoke monster. Whew!

"Everybody Loves Hugo"

1. The little boy is


1. A rapidly growing Jacob getting ready to assume the persona of a candidate and that’s why his hair has changed color with every candidate that witnesses him in the presence of MiB. Blond for Sawyer, Brown for Desmond.

Yay for me, sorta.

NEW THEORY TIME
Not much to theorize since we will never see this time on the island again.   I pretty much laid out my theory that MiB will attempt to use the donkey wheel to escape and probably Desmond will be involved with that.   Maybe Desmond is now the source and Jack is going to be the new Jacob.

Three and a half more hours to go.   Can you feel the tension or will you be glad to have it over?

P.S.
One more thing for your homework assignment.   Go watch Land of the Lost and a small obscure show called Children of the Stones.   Children of the Stones was on Nickelodeon when I was a kid.  It was a British Fantasy / Sci-Fi / Horror series about a Stonehenge like ring of stones in Britain that held mysterious paganistic powers that invloved astronomy and magic.   Very scary to a young kid but follows the same style of storytelling involving time looping and repeat actions toward an end that you get on LOST.   Go to YouTube and look it up.  I just watched the pilot epsiode last week.

LOST Theories for S6E11 Happily Ever After April 6th, 2010

Relationships. Whether it’s the relationships between strangers on a plane, parents and their children, husbands and wives, and even those who are kept apart by time, space, and a weirdo island, relationships make up the core of LOST. We saw it in Season One in a father and son trying to repair a broken relationship. We saw it on the island and we saw it off the island as each of the survivors’ back stories intertwined with one another.

Now, when we are so near the endgame, we see that relationships still drive the story of LOST. We see a husband and wife trying to desperately get back to one another. We see a mother struggling with sanity after her son was taken from her three years before. And we see two forces, opposite sides of the same coin struggling in their relationship to good and evil. But the biggest relationships are those that were possibly not meant to be. And the producers have said to not read too much into the relationship between the Flash Lefts and the Original Timeline. I say, “Screw that.” If anything, last night made that relationship all the more clearer.

Critics of the Flash Lefts may be brought back into the fold after last night’s episode or will just give up their relationship to LOST altogether. There will be some that will hail that Happily Ever After was the BEE of LOST and they will do it in their best Simpson’s Comic Book Guy voice. I think it was good, but it doesn’t sit above "The Constant" on my ever evolving top ten list of best episodes ever. Because in that episode lies the destiny of Desmond Hume in the following phrase, "If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant."

The good of the episode is that we get to see Desmond, of course, but also Charlie, Eloise, Penny and Daniel. The bad is that we get more mysteries than answers. The highlights are Charlie getting to reprise his death scene with a different ending from "Through the Looking Glass" (although it would have been funny if Charlie would have put his hand up to the glass and been missing part of his pinky finger in a nod to FlashForward) and the low points include Sayid having the chance to put us out of our misery with killing Zoe, the most hated character since Nikki and Paulo, and not following through for once with his homicidal tendencies.

The biggest mystery solved is the connection between the Flash Left Verse and the Real World and that some people are self aware that their seemingly perfect lives are merely a lie. The newest mystery is how does Desmond plan on convincing Locke, Hurley, and Claire, among others who are better off in this fake life, that they are better off being dead, unlucky, and crazy sometime else. Not to mention, how do you reconcile the two timelines and bring everyone three years forward and to the right?

My general theories about what the island is and how everything functions keeps getting turned about like a giant Rubik’s Cube. I work for hours to solve one side thinking I’m making progress only to have five other sides still unsolved. In order to work on them I have to screw up the one thing I thought I had figured out. In the case of LOST it’s the nature of who is the key to everything.

But while fans overly analyze and try and pick apart every little thing about every episode, every sentence, every prop, and every pop culture connection between the show, science fiction literature and religion I tend to skew the connections by offering the oddball ones. Before I move onto individual aspects of the episode let me pepper my section on Desmond with this. Everyone is discussing and theorizing that Demsond’s experiment was used to cause the acknowledgement of the Flash Lefts. I don’t know that is the whole truth. We’ve seen over the course of almost six years that when someone has a flashback or in this case a flash left the connection… or relationship between the two is implied but the action that is taking place at the moment of the “whoosh.” I’m not so sure this wasn’t simply the same thing.

Maybe Desmond, being forced to withstand another Catastrophic Electromagnetic Event wasn’t designed to make him see the alternate reality but see something else that makes him compliant with Widmore’s plan. His Flash Left doppelganger may have the same inherent talent as his Original Timeline self and can see the connections as well, not just because he licked a giant 9 volt battery in the original timeline. What C.E.E. did Charlie and Daniel experience that caused them to realize the truth? Perhaps that C.E.E. is more commonly known as L.O.V.E. and when Sideways Sawyer meets Sideways Juliet and Sideways Hugo meets Sideways Libby, they’ll see the truth, too.

CHARLIE IN THE ALTERVERSE
Alterverse? I like that, I can’t keep typing Flash Left because it just doesn’t have that great flow to it. Alterverse feels more natural to say. Anyway, I liken Charlie to a type of dream I’ve often had in my life. You may or may not have had this dream. The setting or characters in this dream are inconsequential as they can be interchangeable with nearly any others. The focus is that at some point in your dream you suddenly become self aware that you are dreaming. For me it’s usually a scenario where I am supposed to take a very important test that I haven’t studied for. I don’t even remember going to any of the classes. As the test gets passed around and I find that I cannot read the questions. Suddenly, I realize that I am over 30 and no longer sitting in my 11th grade U.S. History class. (akin to a Batman The Animated Series episode plotline) So, then I proceed to just sit as an observer, put my head down, or run around the classroom yelling and screaming obscenities for the hell of it.

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one. Charlie has the same self realization that he doesn’t belong in this reality. It’s almost like Groundhog Day where Bill Murray starts goofing around because he realizes there are no consequences to his actions because he will wake up to the same day, every day. So, Charlie shows Desmond that something is wrong. Desmond then goes to the Widmore estate to inform Mrs. Widmore of Charlie not showing up to perform. After he begins to question reality, Eloise steps in and tells him to stop. Well, of course she does. She knows full well what’s going on and doesn’t want to see a reality where she kills her own son and then 30 years later sends him to his own death by her younger self. But what is important is that Desmond meets Daniel and Daniel also realizes that something is wrong. Perhaps the trick is that you have to have died in the original timeline to recognize that something is off in the alterverse. The exception would be John Locke, but there is no telling whether or not Locke is really Locke in the alterverse, just yet.

DESMOND IN THE ORIGINAL TIMELINE
“The island isn’t done with you yet!” Is the phrase we keep hearing from characters about Desmond’s destiny. But what does that mean? Is the island a stage five clinger? Or have the puppet masters of Jacob and MiB not finished their game of Dungeons & Dragons yet and still need Desmond to prove a point one way or the other. Desmond’s role may or may not be that important to the overall mythology. I tend to look at these last few seasons as a giant Rube Goldberg machine (The Game Mousetrap to all you unfamiliar with the concept.) Basically, the island and everything on it is one overly complex machine with many parts that when activated performs a simple task. Think of MiB’s loophole scheme to kill Jacob. All of that work just so he could leave the island. However, in keeping him on the island or stopping him for good, another equally complex and intricate device needs to be activated. In that device all the castaways and island visitors have a part to play. Perhaps Desmond is just one cog in a bigger wheel. Us old school text adventure gamers will recognize this as a sort of Chekhov’s Gun, where a seemingly unimportant item or character will suddenly become important later on and “Will Know What To Do When The Time Comes." For me, I’d rather see Desmond be Chekhov’s Gun that Zoe. At some point, because of Desmond’s ability to withstand Catastrophic Electromagnetic Events, he may be useful in performing some task relating to Jin’s knowledge of where these concentrated electromagnetic “Hot Pockets” are. We already know the Swan and the Orchid have one but where is the third one?

THE PACKAGE
A friend commented on my facebook import of last week’s post and said that perhaps Desmond is not the package. This could be a plot twist. I didn’t believe the probability seeing as how Desmond was introduced to Snoopy eyed Sayid in the water, but perhaps there could be something to this. What if Desmond is not the package but merely the mailman? Why would he need to be drugged if he was double padlocked on the sub? Maybe someone is still on the sub or being held somewhere else and they are the package. Maybe that person has a special talent that makes them somewhat akin to a hydrogen bomb that can interact with a “hot pocket.” Maybe that person is Walt?

SAYID’S ROLE
If ever there was a case for IS HE BAD OR ISN’T HE it’s Sayid. His pa-pa-pa-poker face, his pa poker face leaves me wondering if he isn’t in some way working both sides against the middle. Still, he killed Dogen and Lennon and red shirt number 23 for Team Widmore but he let Zoe live and took Desmond with him. If Desmond was had some kind of clarity or epiphany maybe he sees that he’s supposed to go with Sayid or it could be that he’s just a little bit high. Not sure. In any case, the truly evil Sayid would have killed Zoe instead of letting her run back to Charles to report the abduction.

THEORY DEBUNK TIME
I have no energy to scan old posts right now and pick theories I postulated however, the ones about Zoe and Desmond’s role in the story still stand because I think that the “sacrifice” Widmore says Desmond will have to make is to either to become the new Jacob, die to save everyone, or in a really wacked out scenario keep the alterverse the way it is because it’s the way things should be. However, I did check back to a previous post and decided to debunk my theory from Recon.

5. The Ajira survivors were killed by...


1. Widmore because he’s a sick bastard.
2. Locke Monster because they didn’t want to go with him OR he used them as leverage for Sawyer.
3. Something else happened to them entirely.

We know that the MiB/Locke Ness Monster cannot travel over water in smoke form but he was able to travel to the Hydra Island to chat with Charles about Jin’s abduction. In that case, he either killed the other Ajira survivors before he went to the temple OR Widmore did it for whatever reason. I think the fact that they were beginning to smell bad and attract flies might indicate it was still MiB’s handy work, although I am not a doctor or forensic scientist. Either way I’m debunking C. because it probably won’t ever get explained anyway and that means that C. is irrelevant.

NEW THEORIES

1. Desmond is going to...


1. Be the package
2. Deliver the package


2. And his sacrifice will be…


1. Die in the process
2. Become the new Jacob.
3. Keep the alterverse the way it is.

His sacrifice must involve his love for Penny somehow otherwise it wouldn’t have been so important to focus on their relationship in previous episodes.

3. Sayid is


1. Evil
2. Pulling a Sonny Crockett and playing evil
3. Just plain crackers

I still can’t come to grips with the whole idea of who is good and who is evil. If that is going to be a big twist then they are really going to lose the audience members who don’t slice and dice the series as much as those who do. I mean that in the case of people who look back on episodes and say, “Well that makes perfect sense now because so and so was really good/bad. But I find Sayid’s lack of character motivation disturbing in that I can’t read him….much like History tests in dreams.

4. The experiment was meant to…


1. Show Desmond the alterverse and allow his doppelganger to realize the truth.
2. Simply show that he can withstand a C.E.E. so that he can interact with the “Hot Pocket.”

I’m going with B. on this one as I previously stated. Charlie and Daniel are the exception to A. in that they merely caught a glimpse of love by seeing Claire and Charlotte which caused them to experience the notion that “this life is not our real life.” Now, you may say that unless Desmond is in love with Charlie, that theory doesn’t jive. I say, ”What was written on Charlie’s hand?” That’s right, it involved Penny and that is his relationship to the original timeline, he loved Penny and would cross time and space to be with her.

That’s all for now. Can’t wait for next week’s episode entitled “Everybody Loves Hugo.” Because why shouldn’t they.

LOST Theories For S6E8 Recon March 16th, 2010

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all you pretending to be Irish today. I couldn’t think of a more fitting pastime than drinking heavily while trying to decipher the riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, stuffed into a tube and launched into a big ole pit of uselessness like LOST.

FLASH LEFT
First things first, there was no “Previously on LOST” intro. It just started with Sawyer making tea for Jin. But that’s not important. It was the flash left that really kicked things into gear. We see Sawyer in bed with a girl named Ava. He pulls his old briefcase trick on her like he did in Confidence Man and The Long Con. She doesn’t buy it and pulls a gun. Then in a twist of irony, Sawyer calls out his Dharma alter ego “La Fleur” and 5.0 comes bursting in the door with Miles bringing the shirtless Sawyer his badge. He’s a cop, see. That’s irony. Why? Because in the original timeline Jacob gives Sawyer the pen to write the Dear Sawyer letter and he grows up to be a con artist. Here, with no Jacobian influence, he turns out on the right side of the law. Well, chaotic good to be more precise. Sidenote: I did some digging on Ava to see if she somehow fit into the OT (Original Timeline) and she doesn’t as far as I know.

Sawyer (Jim Ford…might as well be Rockford) and Hutch (Miles) discuss his trip to Palm Springs (Australia) and he sets him up on a blind date with a coworker of his Dad’s at the museum. Clue Drop number one. Pierre Chang lives and left the Dharma Initiative which means that the evacuation either did not happen and his parents stayed together OR it did and he has since reconciled with him. I vote for "it didn’t happen," which will go against one of my theories from last week.

Anyway, Sawyer meets up with Charlotte who looks better than her island version which was akin to Rocky Dennis. Sorry, it’s a cruel comparison but that forehead just jutted out there and distracted me during season 5. After a tumble we find that Jim is still looking for the original Sawyer and takes it very personally. Also we find that Miles is either a very good cop or has some psychic abilities because he ran Jim’s credit card and found him in Australia instead of Palm Springs. It might just be a partner thing but he took the lying very seriously. After a doomed apology with a six pack and a sunflower Jim meets up with Miles and explains the real story about his trip and his mission. So, in either case he is going to or will kill Anthony Cooper. I wonder if that will bring him into Locke’s wedding to Helen since according to Locke, his father and him have a relationship in the alternate timeline? See theories. Just then their car gets sideswiped and they take off on foot to apprehend the driver, who had a hood up to conceal their face. That was a bit pointless because we all knew who it was. This is LOST after all.

OT
Sawyer wakes Jin and promises to get him and Sun off the island. Claire, Kate, Locke Monster, Sayid, Emma, Zach, Cindy, and the rest of the survivors from the temple show up. They start another trek and Sawyer calls Locke Monster out on it. They chit chat and Locke Monster (I keep using that because I saw that name in the episode info from my cable guide and liked it.) gives Sawyer a mission. Sawyer accepts and heads for the Hydra island. He stops by the station to reminisce about dirty sweaty polar bear cage sex that he had with Kate and then heads to Ajira 316 parked still parked in the Tilt a Whirl section. Hey Frank, nice job.

He then finds a pile o bodies and Zoe, a supposed survivor. He gets ready to take the outrigger with her in tow but her constant questions about “How many are there? Do they have guns? Do these glasses make me look like a fake passenger?” cause him to pull a gun on her. She turns the table on him and calls her own “La Fleur” safety word and armed soldiers come out of the woodwork. Seamus (Frederick Koehler) leads the charge like he’s busting Sawyer for eating too many Fiber One samples. Perhaps in the flash lefts he works in a grocery store instead of working for Widmore.

They take Sawyer into sub and he notices a double padlocked compartment which seems mysterious…well only because he pointed it out. It’s either Widmore’s private stash of MacCuthcheon Whisky or someone we haven’t seen for awhile. See Theories. Widmore and Sawyer discuss the freighter and Sawyer actually gives up the whole shebang about Locke Monster sending him over which leads to an arrangement. Locke Monster for safe passage. But after Sawyer goes back to Locke he informs him of the meeting and arranges a double cross. But it’s all subterfuge for Kate, Sawyer and the others…er other people to escape via the sub during the battle.

A subplot to all of this is the craziness that is Claire and Sayid. Claire attacks Kate and then gets put into timeout by the Locke Monster. Kate asks Sayid for help during the knife fight but he just kind of sits there and says, “Oooh chick fight” Afterwards Locke Monster apologizes because he gave Claire the notion that the Others had Aaron and she kind of went a little more looney than usual with the new information about Kate having him. Then he tells his sad sack story about his mommy issues before he “looked like this.” See Theories.


THEORY TIME
Last week I said the following.

1. The island sank after the Dharma Initiative left due to:
    a. The Incident minus the Jughead. Most DI non essential personal were off the island prior (Amy, Horace, Roger, Ben)
    b. The building of The Swan by the DI which hit the pocket of energy and with no way to contain it (i.e. Jughead, button) the island sank but not before Dharma Initiative were able to escape.

Well, we know that letter a is mostly false and b is pretty much false in that the Dharma Initiative simply ran its course or bugged out after meeting with hostile islanders. Perhaps a scary ghost frightened them off and no one was there to pull off his mask and say, “Hey, it’s old man Widmore from the Others.” And he would have gotten away with it too because there was no pesky kids from Oceanic 815 and their dog Vincent to screw it up.

So, new theory is that the island sunk for whatever reason
   c. without interference from the Dharma Initiative. I’m thinking that the leaky Jughead was still responsible and perhaps Faraday not being there to tell them to move it played into the cause.

3. Widmore is able to find the island because:
    a. He is the friend Jacob was guiding towards the island and his name is actually Wallace.
    b. Desmond is on that sub and his name his family name is actually Wallace.
    c. Locke-Ness has killed Jacob leaving the island unveiled and seen by Widmore
    d. He went to the Lamp Post

I’m thinking that c and d are a no go. I think Widmore finally pieced together enough information from the Black Rock diary and Ajira’s flight plan to figure out a way to get there and whatever or whoever is in the hold might have helped.

4. Locke-Ness is going to the Hydra:
    a. To meet Widmore.
    b. To see the bears
    c. To fetch a pail of water.

Obviously b and c were a joke. Turns out a is an indirect side effect of Locke Monster going to the Hydra Island.  He wants the plane. Question is, is it flyable and who is going to fly it? Lapidus is with Ilana.



NEW THEORIES

1. Locke Monster and Widmore hate each other.
   Perhaps Widmore was rightfully protecting the island all along and by keeping Locke Monster on the island a sort of white/dark force is still kept in check. Could you imagine him getting off the island?
2. Locke Monster and Widmore are on the same side.
   Doesn’t seem likely since we know that LM intends on using the plane to escape while Sawyer intends to take the sub. I originally thought that he was using the sub because, hey, 316 crashed, sort of. Not to mention they are constructing a sonic fence to keep him out….. or keep someone in? Hmmm. Perhaps there is a white smoke monster.
3. In the Flash Left Jim will meet and try to kill Anthony Cooper at the wedding of Locke and Helen which will mirror a turnabout in allegiance between Sawyer and Locke Monster in the OT.
4. Jacob and Locke Monster are actually brothers and the whole mother thing will play out a bit more in a final showdown. We already know that Alpert is the only character to have a flashback this season so it stands to reason that any explanations will be done through exposition between characters.
      a. Jacob was loved more than MiB
      b. MiB will be known as either Samuel or Esau
5. The Ajira survivors were killed by:
      a. Widmore because he’s a sick bastard.
      b. Locke Monster because they didn’t want to go with him OR he used them as leverage for
          Sawyer.
      c. Something else happened to them entirely.

STILL UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

1. Who was shooting at Sawyer and company on the outrigger during the time skips?
   Every time Sawyer got near that damn outrigger I thought we were going to get a glimpse of what happened. Perhaps we will never get an answer. I don’t think it’s Widmore’s men because they had machine guns and it seemed like single shots coming at the outrigger that held Sawyer before he time jumped into the rain storm. Maybe it’s Ilana and company thinking that the Sawyer from Season 5 (The Little Prince) was the same as Sawyer from Season 6 and chased him since they know he’s with Locke Monster. The reason why I believe that this happens in the present is that just before Sawyer and company left the beach in the outrigger they found a Ajira Airways bottle which puts them in after 316 crashed.
2. What the hell is up with Walt?
   Will he be back on the island at all this year? Will his abilities ever be explained? Is he still a candidate? Was the name Lloyd on the wall or Lighthouse dial? Was it scratched out? Was he a red herring or did his adolescent growth thwart his involvement causing them to shit can his storyline?
3. Where the hell are Rose, Bernard and Vincent? We know they were all living in 1977 and were pretty much staying out of it. However, with the jughead incident and jump to the present that kind of takes them out of the running to be Adam and Eve, doesn’t it? I guess the condition of the bodies were consistent with those found in the Dharma grave and Roger Workman Linus so it could be Rose and Bernard who ended up being left in 1977 but you wonder why they ended up in the caves since they had a cabin. Maybe the incident caused a huge explosion that forced them to relocate and they died of radiation poisoning or some other cause not long after….. Poor Vincent. I guess the only way we’ll know is to finish the season or ask President Obama. He moved his address as to not impede the premiere and was allowed to ask one question about the show and it would be answered. Supposedly, he asked about the identity of the skeletons.

Well, overall it was a pretty cool episode but the real payoff should be next week with the backstory on Alpert.  Cannot wait.

LOST Theories For S6E7 Dr. Linus March 9th, 2010

Wow. Wow. Can I say wow? Watching Dr. Linus was like eating Chinese food. It’s really good. You really enjoy every bite, but it only satisfies you for like a half an hour, then you want more. Watching Lost on any given day is like eating Chinese food, but this week was like being fulfilled on a lot of things. The revelations kind of sneak up on you and just stand there waiting to be noticed whereas I think we are usually expecting the old “Snake in the mail box” like in Season One when we saw down the long dark hole in the hatch.


First off, Michael Emerson is the best actor on television, right now. Say what you want about Bryan Cranston or Jon Hamm or Hugh Laurie or Steve Carrel or Alec Baldwin, but Emerson has the chops, delivery and whimsy of a first class thespian and he did win last year for Best Supporting Actor, so it is being noticed. Is it any wonder why he does the voiceover work on the recap and special episodes of LOST? The man has a voice that has all the timbre of Anthony Hopkins, the gravitas of Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones and what he does in between speaking those lines is downright scary as an acting observer. He says more with a blink of those walleyed peepers than most actors do in a Shakespearean soliloquy.

I could devote the next nine weeks to just analyzing his work but I won’t. This is all about the theories behind the final payoff at the end of the season. So, looking back at last week’s list of theories I give myself a half check for Jacob’s motivation on getting Jack to the lighthouse.

Jack’s purpose at the Lighthouse was to actually destroy the mirrors because:
    a. it allows the truth of the Flash Lefts to be revealed.
    b. It unmasks the island from Widmore who can put things right. That means that MiB has been manipulating Ben far longer than we thought.
    c. Desmond can return
    d. It was simply to give Jack a reason to become who he needs to be.

I think the main reason motivation was to get him and Hugo out of the temple away from Locke-Ness. The indirect result I believe is going to fall onto either b or d. I’ll get into b in a bit. For d. We head into the next theory.

Richard Alpert on the black rock as an Egyptian Slave. Something causes the ship to wreck into the middle of the island and the MiB frees him. He was given long life by the MiB as a wish fulfillment but somehow caused MiB’s non corporeal state when he realizes that he’s on the wrong side and takes the role of PR man for Jacob. “It’s nice to see you out of those chains.”

I give myself full credit on this first sentence in that it Richard makes reference to returning to the Black Rock for the first time since he came to the island and him being a slave is pretty apparent at his recognition of the chains. As to how he was freed is unknown yet, but I take a big old Red X on how he became forever young. Looks like Jacob gave him that gift but forgot to update his will to offer full disclosure and a take it back in the event that he died.

Now, Richard’s little trip to the Black Rock and his subsequent attempt to commit suicide coincides with Jack’s trip to the lighthouse. Being touched by Jacob has nothing to do with physical contact or maybe it does. I see “being touched” as being considered or being given a mark of protection. The actual physical touching could be part of it but he doesn’t touch Ilana and she is part of the plan.

We saw Michael exhibit the same inability to kill himself before he completed his mission on the Kahana. Furthermore, this might explain that Jacob is on an opposing side than Widmore seeing as how Jacob gave Michael the same gift/curse as Richard and by deduction Jack as that the dynamite did not go off. Jack is finally beginning to accept faith over science after he realized that Jacob has been watching Jack for a long time and there is something to all this hokus pokus with the island. He’s finding it easier to believe than before. Otherwise, we would have had an explosion and both Jack and Richard would have been reduced to Arzt size pieces.

Finally to all this…besides having a Real Genius reunion with the go to slimy weasel of choice, William Atherton, and an alive but ailing Jon Gries as Roger Widmore we learned a crucial piece of the puzzle that we were told not to spend too much time on, the fate of the island in Flash Left Universe.

The Dharma Initiative happened and Ben and Roger went there. For whatever reason they decided to leave. That little nugget of dialogue gives us the fortune cookie we were waiting for. The island must have sank either because of the incident caused by the Jughead OR something caused the Dharma Initiative to pull up stakes and leave.

Something to consider, though.

ETHAN GOODSPEED
Juliet detonates the Jughead and Oceanic 815 never crashes.
That means Sawyer, Locke, Jin, Miles, Charlotte, Faraday, and Juliet never time travel.
Sawyer and Juliet never intervene and save Amy. She goes off with The Others.
So, does she ever come back and get together with Horace? If so, who delivers Ethan? Did she get transported off the island sooner? Was that decision the same one that led Roger and Linus to leave as well?

CHARLES IN CHARGE?
Widmore is a lot like Principal Reynolds in that he makes Ben choose between power and a person. On the island, he chooses power and Alex is killed. Off the island he chooses Alex and loses his power. In either scenario he loses something but his choices off the island are more heroic than on the island. Yet, everyone needs redemption and he gets it except he looks like he needed a hug after everyone shows up. Instead we get Widmore’s submarine taking a peep at the reunion.

So, if 815 never crashes what happens to Widmore? Presumably, he was still the leader of the Others in 1977 since Ben is never around to exile him, nor is he there to kidnap Alex, or be shot by Sayid which integrates him into the Others collective. Which leads back to the expose of Widmore’s breaking of the rules, which mirror Reynolds’ infidelity and Ben’s use of that knowledge to try and oust the current “Administrator” of whatever playing field they are on. Is Widmore alive in 2004?

And one last great piece of fulfillment. Nikki and Paulo’s closure and the fate of the diamonds unknowingly buried with them. They were such a blight on the LOST landscape that they had to be killed or buried alive and left to suffocate. Either way they were a mistake that was corrected and provided the greatest Easter Egg of this episode. As Ben is left to dig his own grave he promises Miles that hefty payday of $3.2 million dollars he asked him for in Season 4. Miles jokes about it saying he can get more than twice that buy digging up the two ill fated walk ons and taking their loot. Then as the slow motion reunion kicks in and Lapidus builds a fire as Ben stands there all “Pick me. Choose me. Love me.” We see Miles examining a diamond. Thanks Nikki and Paulo, you served a purpose.

OK THEORY TIME

1. The island sank after the Dharma Initiative left due to:
   a. The Incident minus the Jughead. Most DI non essential personal were off the island prior (Amy, Horace, Roger, Ben)
   b. The building of The Swan by the DI which hit the pocket of energy and with no way to contain it (i.e. Jughead, button) the island sank but not before Dharma Initiative were able to escape.

2. Roger and Ben left the Dharma Initiative because:
   a. Roger did not want to be a Workman anymore and Horace couldn’t convince him to stay or was not there due to the birth of Ethan off island.
   b. He was fired.

3. Widmore is able to find the island because:
   a. He is the friend Jacob was guiding towards the island and his name is actually Wallace
   b. Desmond is on that sub and his name his family name is actually Wallace.
   c. Locke-Ness has killed Jacob leaving the island unveiled and seen by Widmore
   d. He went to the Lamp Post

4. Locke-Ness is going to the Hydra:
   a. To meet Widmore.
   b. To see the bears
   c. To fetch a pail of water.

I’m getting goofy on little sleep. That’s all for now.

LOST Theories For S6E6 Sundown March 3rd, 2010

Ok, I should have done this seasons ago but to sit and try to condense all that is in LOST’s mythology of misery would make my head explode. I’ve tried and tried to put one of these together since the season premiere this year but just got lazy. So, for the next 10 or 11 weeks, I will TRY to devote Wednesday’s post to a theory about LOST. That theory may or may not be crap and get debunked but I thought this would be fun. Once again, what I think and what you think are probably two different things. Please be aware that there could be spoilers in this post if you have not watched that week’s episode so you’ve been warned.

Anyway, here we have the LOST Theoryies Du Jour for Sundown. I have several thoughts on where this is going.

1. MiB, UnLocke, Flocke, Lockeness, Esau, Nemesis, Not Lock, whatever you call him is a fallen angel, perhaps the devil.
2. The “Alternate” Timeline or Flash Lefts, as I call them, are indeed part of the original timeline and are evidence that the MiB has gotten off the island and taken people with him. That being said, I think if he falls into theory number one then he has fulfilled the wishes of those he gathered as a flock and this “alternate” timeline are those wishes playing out. Unfortunately, there is a price to be paid.
       a. Sayid wanted Nadia alive and so she is but she’s married to his brother.
       b. Hurley is lucky instead of unlucky and can help his friends but something is missing.
       c. Jack has reconciled his Daddy issues by means of his son but something isn’t right about that.
       d. Claire gets to raise her baby off the island but someone will threaten them.
       e. Kate is free off the island but still on the run instead of being acquitted.
       f. Sawyer is no longer at odds over his parents death but something else is wrong.
       g. Charlie is still alive but still an addict and in prison.
3. The Flash Lefts are not reality and are just a metaphysical construct brought on by the MiB (Kind of like the Matrix) and Jack is becoming more aware of this in the Flash Lefts.
4. The end of the Flash Lefts’ alternate timeline will fold back on itself as a course correction which puts the whole, “Whatever Happened, Happened” mantra of Faraday and “It only ends once, everything before that is progress” quote from Jacob into perspective. MiB tries to rewrite history to get off the island but some event at the end of the alternate timeline causes the whole thing to unravel and go back to what we are seeing in the present with the Lighthouse and The Temple and The Cave.
5. Jack’s purpose at the Lighthouse was to actually destroy the mirrors because:
       a. it allows the truth of the Flash Lefts to be revealed.
       b. It unmasks the island from Widmore who can put things right. That means that MiB has been manipulating Ben far longer than we thought.
       c. Desmond can return
       d. It was simply to give Jack a reason to become who he needs to be.
6. Sayid is definitely bad and Claire is headed there. Kate will do what she can to save her.
7. Richard Alpert on the black rock as an Egyptian Slave. Something causes the ship to wreck into the middle of the island and the MiB frees him. He was given long life by the MiB as a wish fulfillment but somehow caused MiB’s non corporeal state when he realizes that he’s on the wrong side and takes the role of PR man for Jacob. “It’s nice to see you out of those chains.” 
8. The reason why Jacob and MiB cannot kill each other directly is because they are the same entity and only through indirect contact can the scale of power be tipped towards one consciousness and eventually it will be revealed ala Tyler Durden.
9. Hurley is the key to everything. The last episode is entitled Everybody Loves Hugo. (Highlight this with your mouse to see it.

More next Wednesday. Hopefully I can go back and cross out or bold theories based on their accuracy as time permits.

The Digital Self

The idea is reminiscent of something out of a Phillip K. Dick or Isaac Asimov story but it is almost a reality. Think of your entire life on a computer. Every memory, every moment uploaded onto a server that is your life, digitized forever. Sound too far fetched?

Consider that we have our lives spread among several different systems. You have photo albums on Google or Photobucket. You have them on your home computer and CDs that you’ve burned. You have public, private, career, and educational information stored in your computer and online in your social networking sites. Your emails, conservations, tweets, texts, everything that makes up you is somewhere in the digital world. What if we were to take existing technologies and somehow aggregate all of that scattered information into one server configured strictly for you? Consider it one large “you” database. Then on another server an application sits and runs a program that creates an avatar of you using all of that stored information in the database as a profile. The application server could then run a series of engines that uses the database as a primer for who you are. In essence you exist as a fully rendered artificial representation of your natural self down to the idiosyncrasies like cracking your knuckles or grinding your teeth.

Think of being able to preserve yourself, digitally? You become sick or start to feel the effects of old age and you can pass on your memories and wisdom onto your virtual self, becoming immortal. Think Jor-El’s presence in the Fortress of Solitude within the world of Superman. Your family could still talk to you through your virtual self. You could continue to learn and experience life beyond the grave. You could become immortal.

Then, take the concept of MMORPGS and you can create a world for those avatars to live in and interact. Facebook 3D. You could play scrabble with your grandchildren or chat with other dead friends. You could get a job and earn money performing certain tasks that a computer program would automatically do. A new species of human existence could eventually come about.

Despite being a fully sentient experience we have the technology in its dismantled parts. How long before we are able to put the pieces together in the right sequence? Considering the amount of computing resources needed to accomplish such a task, it’s almost mind boggling. Ultimately, there would be a host of problems to contend with in order to have an operational virtual self. Look how bad it gets when Gmail or Twitter goes down.

Cost is one thing. Upgrades and maintenance is another. Disaster recovery would be a huge issue. It would be the virtual equivalent to a heart attack or stroke. How could you perform the necessary tasks to reboot or reformat your virtual self if you are dead? You would also have to have the necessary environment for such a system. Cold rooms, ventilation, and power would be essential to maintain yourself, electronically. The technology may be there, but the conceptualization and execution may still be decades away. But let’s imagine a world where it is a reality.

You wear a device similar to one from this article. You wear this thing around your neck. It’s a multi sensory device that records audio, video, still picture, and other sensory stimuli that you experience every day. Additionally, you have an application for your phone, computer, and what not that records transactions such as receipts, texts, calls, and emails and converts them into code. Each night you remove the device that you wear and plug it into a docking station where it downloads and updates the database as well as the application from your transactions updating the database in real time. Your online self learns those experiences like, “Ooh, I just tried a fish taco today and I don’t like them.” or “I just watched the new Harry Potter movie and I can now discuss it with my other virtual friends.”

Or, let’s take the concept into a whole new direction. I don’t have a blackberry or another smart phone so I don’t know if this is already a possibility, but how about the next generation PDA. This time, though, the Personal Digital Assistant is really just that. You take your entire set of habits and input them as rules for the online self. Money Management, Scheduling, etc. I know we do this now, so the concept doesn’t sound new. I already have direct deposit of my paycheck and automatic withdrawal on all but a couple utilities. However, that is still something you need to set up manually. What if your digital self had the logic to make those payments on particular days other than the ones you already have designated? It was a good month for work, let’s up the credit card payment 10%. The holidays are coming, let’s not pay that electric bill until the next pay day before it’s due.

You can let your online self check your scheduling and make appointments for you. Say you just had a dental appointment and you would like to schedule the next one. The digital self knows you just had an appointment because it was schedule in your calendar. It knows you prefer Saturday appointments and it has to be scheduled sixth months or more out. It checks your schedule, contacts the dentist’s office and asks for an appointment to be made at a certain date and then leaves you a message that it has been scheduled and added to your calendar.

Using the digital self database, the digital you can see receipts for the last year and plan ahead based on what you tell it to be looking for in terms of scheduling. The digital self sees that you have gone out for your anniversary to the same restaurant for the last three years. It can then ask you if you would like to make a reservation for the same time this year. Perhaps you’ve gone to two or three different ones over the year. It can give you a choice. Once you give it the go ahead, it makes the reservation, electronically, with the restaurant. It also reminds you at a preset time to get a present for different holidays or birthdays.

Now, a lot of things are contingent on this actually working. First of all, the places your digital self interact with need to be able to communicate with each other, although, a lot of restaurant and stores already have the ability to make online reservations. It’s just a matter of the digital self being able to use the web to do so. Also, I’m not sure how many doctors have the capability but it could be as easy as them having an email address for the receptionist.

Having a tool, regardless of the application, would be a huge time saver to a lot of people. Not to mention, it could do several of these transactions or tasks simultaneously. In the short run, just having apps on your smart phone that talked to each other would be a huge advancement, but of course, there are concerns . If you give a program that much control of your life it could lead to piracy and theft. Rogue applications could be made to go out and strip your identity. Not to mention, it could tweak it or clone it giving the hacker the ability to make your life hell. Also, like before, if the system crashes or goes on the fritz, the information you have stored would be lost. It would be nice if there was a backup hard drive for the table each day or week to be able to hold all your appointments, allowing you to go to a desktop or other type of computer to access that information and maybe print it out.

As much as I would love to see this become a reality, I would rather see the tech sector focus on ways to solver bigger problems in near future. The personal interaction with people we get on a daily basis is what makes us human. Not to mention, giving our lives over to an electronic device is one step closer to the evils described in The Terminator series or The Matrix. Computers making decisions for us instead of at our request is one of the basic premises of all “Evil Computers/Robots” films. Perhaps we are not ready for this type of advancement, but the ability to preserve ourselves after we die may be one step closer to immortality. I’m sure there is a philosophical debate on whether this is a wise thing and it probably questions the existence of a soul. If we exist solely online outside of ourselves it will never be the same as existing in the real world. But think of the possibilities.