Things we've learned from this season:
There are two realities.
One is very happy, the other our heroes are on the Island.
The Island reality may be the result of Jacob's interference.
The two realities have a very vague sort of relationship to each other.
Jacob has been observing our heroes for quite some time.
The Man in Black is recruiting some of our heroes for his battle against Jacob.
FROM ALL OF THIS, WHAT CAN WE DETERMINE?
FIRST, THE UNIVERSES
First and foremost, I reject the idea that the universes are split by the detonation of the H-Bomb, as we're lead to believe. Instead, I believe that it is the murder of Jacob that splits the realities. Jacob and his rival, I believe, are timeless, so when you kill him, it changes EVERYTHING THAT HAS COME BEFORE. This removes Jacob from the reality, and as a result it removes the impact he's had on everyone's lives. This ultimately leads to a world where our heroes aren't pulled to the Island-instead, they're allowed to live their lives and be happy. However, what is the cost of that happiness? The Island has sunk to the bottom of the ocean. As Watch With Kristin has enforced, however, the Island HAS to exist, for some reason we can't yet realize. The MIB has created a reality where our heroes are blissfully unaware of the Island. At some point, the survivors will realize this, and have to make a choice: Leave this perfect world and save the Island, or continue to live happily ever after and be without The Island-whatever that entails.
The question, however, is how do they come to this realization? How do the universes connect?
The question, however, is how do they come to this realization? How do the universes connect?
We know that when our heroes see each other, they're reminded of something, but can't quite place it. Where have we seen this before?
Between "The Constant" and "Flashes Before Your Eyes", we're introduced to Desmond's powers. Desmond, simply put, has the power to see alternate realities. Alternate realities in which Charlie dies. Why Charlie? Good question, but that's not important right now.
Desmond has been missing this season, outside of a mysterious appearance on the plane-However, as we know, the Island is not yet done with him. The rules, as we've heard, do not apply to Mr. Hume. He's going to prove crucial to this season in the second half as the one who can remember everything that has happened in both timelines. He will be the one who approaches the survivors to remind them of what has come before-he will act as their constant. He is going to be crucial to the series' endgame. I expect his appearance to coincide with that of Faraday (still scheduled to appear this season), who will explain to all of us why this makes sense.
SECOND, THE SERIES' ENDGAME
As we all can be aware, the series is moving toward a final act where the forces of Good (Jacob) do battle with the forces of Evil (MIB). This battle, I suspect, will begin to take place on both planes, yet ultimately it will conclude on the Island. As an initial roster, we appear to have:
Team Jacob: Hurley, Richard
Team MIB: Claire, Sawyer
The rest of our main characters (Ben, Jack, Kate, Miles, Jin, Sun, Sayid, Ilana, Lapidus) have yet to declare allegiance. But we can probably assume that Sayid (infection) is headed towards MIB. Ilana appears to have an allegiance to Jacob. Ben-MIB.
The most important soul, however, will be that of Jack. The series has always been about Jack's rise and fall, in both his "normal" life and life on the Island. Here now, however, is going to be his redemptive final act. He will realize his ultimate destiny as Jacob's chosen one. He will be the one in the alternate dimension to realize WE HAVE TO GO BACK. And he will be the one to bring the realities together, save the Island, and become the new Jacob.
The most important soul, however, will be that of Jack. The series has always been about Jack's rise and fall, in both his "normal" life and life on the Island. Here now, however, is going to be his redemptive final act. He will realize his ultimate destiny as Jacob's chosen one. He will be the one in the alternate dimension to realize WE HAVE TO GO BACK. And he will be the one to bring the realities together, save the Island, and become the new Jacob.
Of course, if they decide to go full Jesus allegory, bring John Locke back from the dead, and have him be the savior, then all bets are off.
I was having this discussion the other night and I also reject the idea that the point of divergence is the H-Bomb. I'll have to think on your thesis for a while, but I'm willing to say that right now I don't know what the point of divergence is, but the only really we think it is the point of divergence is that it was Faraday and Jack's plan and after the bomb went off we started to see these flashes. We are assuming. And we all know what happens when you assume, especially in Lost.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that Desmond is key. It's possible that Desmond is the person coming to the island that Jacob was talking about. Whether 108 - Wallace, has anything to do with the person coming to the island I'm not sure. It could have just been an instruction to Hurley to get him to move the wheel so that Jack would see how it works. But 108 is a pretty significant number in the Lost mythology to just waste on a nobody. Is it possible that Desmond is Desmond Wallace and not Desmond Hume? I know it's a stretch, but Desmond is Scottish right? And we know next to nothing about his parents and childhood. Perhaps Hume was a name he later took? This is probably way off, but I have to think 108 corresponds to someone bigger than a throwaway character.
Indeed. And when Jacob said "Somebody is coming," I have to believe that somebody is someone we know. The list is pretty short-Desmond or Widmore.
ReplyDeleteI like the theory alot, but I'm not quite ready to ditch Jughead as the divergent point in the universes. Two reasons:
ReplyDelete1) They made the point of showing us the Dharma barracks on the sunken version of the Island during the opening scene of LA X. The statue alone would have been enough to let the audience know that we were looking at our Island underwater, so I don't think the barracks were there just to serve that purpose. This would mean that the Island must have sunk at some point after Dharma came to the island. The most likely point is the detonation of Jughead in 1977.
2) We haven't seen any difference in our ALT world which could only have been brought about by a pre-1977 divergence point. Our strongest contender to this point is Locke's apparently improved relationship with Anthony Cooper, which has led some to believe that Anthony Cooper is a much different person and not (i.e. never was) the original Sawyer in our ALT world. Thus(so the argument goes), if this were true, then our divergence point must have been pre-1977 since Anthony Cooper conned Sawyer's parents before 1977, etc.
I don't think that we can necessarily conclude, however, that Locke's improved relationship with his father means that Anthony Cooper never conned Sawyer's parents. There are a number of post-1977 ways that Locke might end up having an improved relationship with Cooper. So anyhow, until I see something which definitively shouts "pre-1977 change" (e.g. Sawyer's parents are alive in the ALT), then I'll stick with the status quo and assume that Jughead was still our divergence point.
With that being said, I don't doubt that the writers can (and most probably will) pull one on us and prove that assumption wrong. I'm just saying that until that point, I think it's easier (for me anyhow) to conceptualize 1977 as the divergent point. In the end, though, I expect that the how/when/why of the ALT-divergence really won't be that important, and I think everything you said concerning the purpose of the ALT and the absence of Jacob's influence remain quite insightful regardless of when our universes split.
Question. Couldn't we go back to 1954 as a divergence point if Jughead worked? Jughead works and the plane never lands which means that all of the series of events that lead to Locke and the gang time jumping are altered so the trip back to 1954 either never happens or is drastically different. Under the butterfly effect theory things could start changing from back in 1954. The problem I have with thinking of Jughead as the cause of the ATL is that I can't wrap my mind around it.
ReplyDeleteJack and the gang detonate the nuclear bomb which leads to no crash of Flight 815. But if Flight 815 doesn't crash, the Losties aren't there to go back in time and detonate the bomb which causes them not to crash. Perhaps I'm not conceptualizing this correctly, but thinking about it just puts my brain in a loop. Some explanation of this would be helpful.
You have to remember there are two versions of our characters: Original and Alternate.
ReplyDeleteThe problem you are encountering is most definitely a problem in a single universe system and the reason that we have WHH timetraveling (also called non-paradox or internally-consistent timetravel). When we are only dealing with one universe, then yes, you can't make any changes to the past because those changes would (in theory) butterfly outward and eventually cause you not to travel back at all (see the Grandfather Paradox as your most popular example). Thus, we must conclude that the past is set in stone and "whatever happened, happened"--meaning a timetraveler cannot change anything because his actions are already recorded in history. Using LOST as an example, this is why Jack's plan to stop Oceanic 815 from crashing (within the Original universe) cannot work, because if it did work, then Jack & Co. would never have been able to timetravel back in the first place (and so on, in the loop you mentioned).
This problem, however, is not encountered when we deal with Alternate universes.
(Note, alternate universes were always a possibility last season, but I really didn't think the writers would head that way, and so I vigorously argued for WHH and a single universe system--as it turns out, both sides were correct, since the Original universe remained WHH, but an Alternate universe was also created).
When you have an ALT-universe, you imagine that a change does occur (in our case, we imagine that the bomb doesn't work in the Original universe but it does work in the Alternate one). Both universes share the EXACT same past prior to the divergence point (Jughead's detonation in 1977), and it is only afterward that chaos theory (butterfly effect) takes effect. Thus, we would only expect differences post-1977 and onward.
But what about the loop problem? We don't run into this problem because our pre-1977 history (complete with our timetraveling LOSTies) is a part of our ALT-universe's history. In other words, we have two versions of our characters within the history of our ALT. For example, ALT-Jack is born around 1965 and lives his ALT life, while Original-Jack was still in 1977 Dharmaville to drop Jughead. We do not need to account for Original-Jack's presence in ALT-1977 through timetravel because he doesn't come from the ALT-universe to begin with (again, remember that it's only in a single-universe system where we need to answer all questions from within the same universe). When you deal with multiple universes, our answer can come from a different universe--thus, so long as Original-Jack was able to timetravel back to 1977 in the Original universe (which we know he did), there is no problem with having him there in the ALT-1977. As such, there's no problem that ALT-Jack never timetravels back to drop Jughead, because Original-Jack was already there to do it. And this is true for all our timetraveling characters--so, for example, Original-Locke was still in 1954 in the history of the ALT to do everything we saw last season, and so there are no changes dating back to 1954.
I hope I didn't lose you, as it's kind of hard to explain in writing. As a short hand, just remember this, the pre-divergence histories of both universes (Original and ALT) are EXACTLY the same, and so differences only radiate forward in time. Now, I can't promise that this is what is happening in LOST, but this is how (at least from what I've read) multi-universe systems work.