Oh, and not to clutter up this thread, but has anyone posited that there may actually be two smoke creatures?
To what end? Why would two smoke creatures resolve things any better than one does?
My prediction for the finale: upon leaving the island and returning to the US, it is revealed that Dr. Pierre Chang creates P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, leaving viewers asking, “What the F.?”
No no no, I explained this in the last topic. The writers are apparently following “Back to the Future 2” time travel rules. The splits once the bomb went off (apparently). That means that everything that happened pre-bomb is exactly the same. The Losties that are in 1977 in both timelines are from the original timeline. So even though the alt timeline people never go back in time, there was still a Sawyer and gang romping around in Dharmaville.
Not sure. We have been attributing good or evil motives to the creature. MIB smoke uses this form to read his candidates to see whose memories are strongest or most traumatic to better manipulate them. Jacob has powers that are at least equal to his, and I just wonder if he is the same type of entity, and can also take this form.
Would he use this ability, or would he consider it cheating? Don’t know.
Sorry, I have put myself in “talk less, listen more” mode for a while. Sometime this stuff just leaks out.
How the hell does this show keep getting more interesting as it goes along? Even if this thing goes no where this was probably the greatest mystery ride I’ve ever been on.
Next is Hugo’s episode according to the titles. After that who knows!
I can’t wait to see Desmond show everyone else what they are missing.
Win.
Have you NOT been watching the show in the last couple of … ever?
But I’d give you half my bowl of Dharma Cocoa Krispies to say that to the writers. Whole new bowlful if you convince them.
Yeah, like the buddy cops! That’s why I can’t wait for the spin-off:
*-- Scene 4 – Late Afternoon – Outside Hurley’s Club –
Sawyer: What, you’ve never run an errand on the clock before, Mr. Miyagi?
Miles: No, I happen to take care of my personal business after work. When the taxpayers aren’t paying me to protect them.
Sawyer: Oh, give me a break, Hiro. You’ve never stopped and bought yourself a cup of coffee?
Miles: I bring a thermos.
Sawyer: Hey, Hurley Bear! What do you hear on the street these days?
Hurley Bear: Dig this. A little bird tells me there’s gonna be a big coke deal. So they say.
Sawyer: Okay, Poppin’ Fresh – who would this little bird be?
Hurley Bear: Look man. I lay it out for y’all to play it out.
Miles: All right. What does that mean?
Sawyer: Don’t worry about it, Mako. *
Yeah, from this episode it seems like–as others were alluding to upthread–it’s sort of a Matrix.
I think they also may have honestly believed early on that it would all be explainable without the supernatural. They simply didn’t have things planned out in that much detail. For all we knew after watching the pilot, the “tree-crushing monster” (as we used to call it) could have been a machine.
I know some people are sticklers for not wanting to see or hear anything about the show that didn’t explicitly appear on-screen, so I’m putting this in a spoiler box, but IMO it’s not a big deal: the producers have said that
Jacob cannot shape-shift like the MiB can.
It’s too bad all the ATL stuff seems to be taking place in LA. How are we ever going to see that the WTC is still standing if they never go to NYC? Oh wait, wrong JJ Abrams show.
So, the Frozen Donkey Wheel, that’s a Rambaldi device, right?
A few posters seem to be a bit confused over how the two timelines relate. Here’s my take.
The Bomb changed the past, creating the ATL. In the ATL there was no Incident, so no Hatch, so no Button, so no Defcon Penguin, so no O815 crash. This means that, in the ATL, absolutely nothing in the first five seasons happened at all.
This means there were no Losties, so Sayid never shot young Ben, he wasn’t Otherized, and there were no ‘LaFleur’, Miles, and Juliet affecting his life for three years. He and his father left the Island for reasons that haven’t been explained, but which have nothing to do with anything the Losties ever did. It also means he didn’t Purge, wasn’t the Other’s leader, and never knocked the Donkey Wheel off track. Thus there were no Timeslips, so Faraday never went back in time, so his mother, Eloise Hawking, never shot him before he was born, and doesn’t have his notebook.
Of course this also means that Jack was never on the Island to throw the bomb down the drill hole in the first place, so the ATL couldn’t have happened.
This is the paradox–typical of fictional (the only kind) time-travel scenarios.
But we still have an Island timeline! Our heroes were apparently thrown forward to their present-day (2007), and for them all the events of the past five seasons happened. This includes their altering of the timeline in 1977.
This is where I switch from observation to theory.
The Island timeline still exists because the paradox has to be resolved. Somehow, someone (Desmond, I’m guessing) will have to prevent the Bomb from going off to avoid the Paradox. The ATL is a doomed-from-the-start, temporary sideline that is already crumbling and bleeding through to the ‘real’, Island timeline. It only exists between the ‘time’ that the Bomb detonated and the ‘time’ that its detonation will be prevented.
Hope this helps.
At the beginning of the season, my theory was that since Jacob would still exist in the ATL, once the timelines merged he would corporeal again.
However, that doesn’t appear to be the case with all the candidate stuff.
What you say is possible, but I don’t think it has been conclusively shown to be true. It’s possible that the ATL timeline includes everything we’ve seen prior to the bomb detonation, if that was the event that created the split timeline. In this case, there’s a paradox in the ATL timeline, because you have the losties in 1977, but not in 2004/7 to go back to 1977.
In the scenario you describe, as far as I can tell there is no paradox; there are just two separate timelines. In the main timeline, the plane crashes in 2004, and you can follow the individual timelines of each character without contradiction. In the alternate timeline you describe, the plane never crashes, nobody appears in the 50s or 70s, nobody sets off the bomb in 1977.
I agree with you, but in the ATL, Ben and his father had to have left the island before the bomb went off, which means the timelines diverged before the bomb went off.
Why did Ben and his dad have to leave before the bomb went off? Whose to say that the detonation sent it straight to the bottom of the sea? The bomb could have set off a series of events that let the island sink over a period of time, long enough for the Dharma people to evacuate off the island.
Hold on a sec–why are we assuming that 1977 was the point of departure for the alternate time-line. We KNOW it wasn’t. Two very obvious changes happened as a result…maybe 3.
Follow the logic:
[ol]
[li]End of season 4, Ben pushes the Donkey Wheel. (Who built the Donkey Wheel? How did Ben learn about it?)[/li][li]The Losties (including Locke!) go bounce around backwards in time.[/li][li]Locke tells Richard (circa 1950) to look Locke up as a kid.[/li][li]Daniel also helps Eloise stop Jughead from leaking/blowing up…in 1950-ish (‘bury it’). Big change–without them, the Army either blows up Jughead or Jughead leaks and poisons the island. [/li][li]Richard looks in on Locke a few times in his childhood (including one important interaction with him)[/li][li]Locke pushes the Donkey Wheel and gets transported to Tunisia, 2004-ish. The rest of the Losties are stuck in 1977. [/li][li]The O6 return to the island and end up in 1977(how? why?)[/li][li]They blow up the bomb and presumably make the island sink soon after.[/li][li]Therefore there’s no broadcast tower (who built it? The army or the Dharmites?). Therefore the Aussie Guy and Hurley’s nuthouse buddy never heard the broadcast of The Numbers. (Big change–without The Numbers, the Aussie guy, Hurley’s nuthouse buddy and Hurley’s lives would all be substantially changed) [/li][li]Oceanic 815 never crashes because there’s no button for Desmond to forget to push.[/li][li]So no Losties travelled back in time. So Richard never visited L’il Locke. So Locke’s history changes from about 1960-forward. [/li][/ol]
Yeah, I get the paradox issue. But the point is that the moment of departure is much, MUCH earlier than 1977.
1950’s then. Eventually Jughead is set off, and for whatever reason, the island sinks.
…except there was a swingset on the underwater island.
-Joe
I guess another question then is how did the Losties blow up the bomb in 1977 when it exploded or leaked (killing everyone) in 1952? There shouldn’t have been a bomb in 1977 as the ATL started in 1952-ish.
Huh? In the ATL, assuming the above speculation is correct, there never was a bomb detonation in 1977. It happened in 1950’s and that was it.
…which still doesn’t explain the swingset.
-Joe