So, what happened, happened. The show is finally over. Let’s make a list of any mysteries or plot threads, big or small, that were never answered. Feel free to add to the list, and speculate/fanwank your own explanations.
The statue. Who built it? Why did it only have four toes?
The numbers. Why were Jacob’s numbers used for The Swan’s computer? Why were they broadcast by a crazy scientist? Why did they end up being Hurley’s lottery numbers?
What’s the deal with Walt? Why was he special?
The creepy Aaron prophecy. Why was it so important that he wasn’t raised by another / an Other?
What was the significance of the glass eye? Did we ever find out who it belonged to?
Why did the island heal Locke and Rose? Why did it not heal Ben?
Who was using Jacob’s cabin? Was Ben really talking to Jacob? Why was the ash circle broken, and what does that mean?
Why did the ashes repel the monster? What/who were the ashes of?
The sickness. Why did it infect people like Sayid and Claire? Was it the same sickness that the hatch people were worried about? What causes it?
Why couldn’t women give birth on the island?
What was Widmore’s motivation? What did he want from the island?
Why was Eloise so omniscient? What did she know? What was the lamppost station, and who built it?
Who occupied the island before Jacob’s mother? Who built the cork?
What was the light, and why did it need to be protected?
Why didn’t Jack turn into a monster when he bathed in the magic light water?
What was the monster’s motivation? Did he want to leave the island? If so, why couldn’t he? Or did he want to get to the light? Or did he want to destroy it?
Why did people see flashes of their lives in the monster’s smoke?
Why did the monster need Locke’s body? Why couldn’t he use Christian’s?
Who was shooting at the Time Travelling group when they were in the canoe, back when time was “unstuck” on the Island? My theory is that it was Widmore’s men, and the woman in the canoe was that Zoe person.
In the same episode, who stole the Zodiac raft? Again, I’m guessing Widmore’s people.
I don’t think there is an answer, or the answer has been given as good as it can be given: The light is the source of all goodness. The island is where the light comes from. Circular…but that’s as good as it gets.
How about "Why would a writer plant an overabundance of remarkably intriguing yet enigmatic story elements without shedding light on their nature or significance?"
The island healed everybody. It stopped healing Ben because he started breaking Jacob’s rules.
There was no sickness. Sayid was infected by the MIB when he came back to life, but Claire and the Crazy French Lady were just crazy from the isolation/constant Other attacks.
We were never told the magic light water turned the MIB into the Smoke Monster. More than likely dying in the cave is what turned him into the Smoke Monster (we saw his body in the cave during “The End”).
The MIB needed to convince Ben/Richard to take him to Jacob. Real Locke had already been anointed leader at that point, so he had access to Jacob. Christian did not.
There were multiple bodies near the light, but I don’t believe any of them were MIB. They were likely just random people they tried to get to the light. They weren’t “special” like Desmond.
MIB’s corporeal body washed out of the cave and was taken by Jacob to be laid to rest in the cave next to Crazy Mom.
The one that bugs me the most because it loomed so large over so much of the story (pretty much all of seasons 2 and 3) is what was the Others’ motivation. Why did they act the way they did? Dress up in funny costumes? Hide themselves? Kidnap people? Lock them in cages? Try to “break” Jack? Etc.
They kinda sorta seem to have been looking for Jacob’s candidates, except that the people they chose to kidnap were not the candidates, and when they had chances to kidnap the candidates, they didn’t.
Second to that is Walt, largely because it was so completely dropped and forgotten.
Actually, I don’t think it’s clear (although it doesn’t rise to the level of “mystery”) what the relationship is between MIB and Smokey. Is Smokey a physical manifestation of MIBs soul? Or was Smokey released by MIBs intrusion into the pool, and just uses MIBs body the way he used Locke’s?
I think that’s a great question. I wish that when the MIB was defeated, we’d been able to see the smoke monster also be defeated more explicitly… Haveint it disperse into the air or something.
So what was the deal with Smokey in the first place?
IIRC earlier in the season they suggested that if Smokey got off the island the world-at-large would be in danger (I may be misremembering but I seem to recall that). Then, later, Smokey just seemed to want off. He was not the devil incarnate. Just a not-nice guy who is largely that way for being thwarted from leaving the island. Maybe once off he’d cause trouble here or there but become a destroyer of worlds? Didn’t get that impression.
So, was there a real battle between good and evil going on or just two brothers at odds for a few centuries?
I have a solution to ALL of these mysteries. In fact it’s the only solution that makes me feel like I haven’t just wasted a huge chunk of my life:
The people behind LOST are laughing at us. I’m serious. If I look at LOST as the most massively maintained hoax in all of modern media history, I gain a certain respect for it. Which otherwise is impossible. Internal evidence? All the hints dropped that LOST, itself, is a “long con.”
It’s kind of, Survivor meets Seinfeld meets The Sixth Sense, as conceived by Andy Kauffman. See, that I can get behind; we’ve been punked. Awesome. But, that many plotholes, leading to the lamest ending in TV history? Not so much.
See, I hated the show until I began to sense the spirit of PT Barnum behind it somewhere, along about the third season. Then I developed a grudging respect. And I had to remind myself of that to prevent myself from just turning it off when, at the end of 6 years of the writers masturbating furiously into their word processors, we were treated to the single worst cliche in the history of movie cliches: the fistfight ex machina. You know, when any conflicts or drama that a story has built up are completely thrown out the window, and all such conflicts are ultimately decided by a single fistfight. It’s a cliche that has ruined hundreds of guy movies, and goes at least as far back as the Western does, when morality and character all take a back seat to who can draw the quickest in the final scene. I actually groaned aloud when it was clear that’s where Jack and Locke were going, but then I decided the writers were in on the joke.
Because it’s infinitely easier to come up with mysteries, enigmas, strange happenings, etc. than it is to actually solve them. I mean, think about it: How difficult is it to “invent” a strange island with polar bears where they don’t belong, a strange cavern with a strange stone, glowing water, a mysterious project, a big living chamber behind a hatch, a set-up where someone needs to punch in some certain numbers every so often, characters appearing from the other side of the island, people being shot at from who-knows-who, babies disappearing, a kid living in a computer, whatever else there was (I stopped watching after the first season)? Seriously, ANYONE could through a bunch of mysterious stuff together. The hard part is then to come up with the explanations that satisfyingly answer all the questions and tie everything together.
I said it in the first season, and I think it’s clearly been borne out: The writers had NO CLUE where they were going nor what any of the explanations were, they just had fun piling on the mysterious and odd stuff. They answered some things and tied some things together, because to never give any answers would have put off even the staunchest of fans long before now. But anyone who thinks that the writers ever had answers to most of the questions in this thread is just kidding themselves.
Only partially true, IMHO. I don’t think the writers had a clue for the first 3 or 4 seasons. Once they set an end date, they started writing towards that goal, and hoped they could come up with a resolution that would retroactively explain all the weird stuff they’d thrown in previously. I’d say they were about 80% successful.
Another mystery, or maybe just a hole: what exactly happened when Juliet hit the nuke with a rock? It didn’t spawn an alternate reality, as we now know.
He was doing (as far as he knew) what Jacob wanted: Grabbing the specific Oceanic Survivors that were on that list. What rules was he breaking?
What about the rest of the Crazy French Lady’s party? We saw them go nuts, IIRC. Also, the bit about the Quarrantine sign on the hatch kind of fits in with this.