My prediction, back at the end of last season, was that “they’re coming” referred to the stuck-in-1977 Losties, and that “The Incident” was going to shoot them through time back to the present day. I always thought “They’re coming” referred to them – coming “back to the future”, so to speak.
Thanks for that!
I think you pretty much have it, with the exception of that most of the non essential Dharma people (wives and kids, with the exception of Ben who had been brought to the temple) had already been evacuated by sub.
With regards to the island sinking (not sure why people have a problem with islands sinking - there are plenty of historical examples of islands sinking after volcanic eruptions):
There are rumors of alternate universe Penny and Ben, so I’m guessing the island sank sometime after the explosion, and not directly because of it)
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Btw, I hope they show Juliet’s ex-therapist (Godwin’s wife) at the temple. That’s where she’s assumed to be, and I liked the actress.
Me too. Who else is missing? The Others Judge lady is one. Juliet’s book club lady friend. I think we saw that the Hydra station and Dharmaville/New Otherton were abandoned, so most of the Others should either be at the Temple or by the foot statue.
I see what you’re saying. I’m comfortable with it just being a character trait and not necessarily a plot device, but I guess future episodes will tell which it is.
I think that’s extremely unlikely. Haven’t the creative team people been on record as saying when they started the show they didn’t know the explanations for the weirdness either? They’ve also said again recently that they had to ask ABC to let them set the ending date so they could drive toward a finish instead of vamping and stretching the middle. This isn’t a sitcom that can just be stretched almost infinitely, as long as it’s funny. I think that also implies that they didn’t know exactly where they were going for a season or so, there.
The central question on my mind: how deep and how long ago does the alternate timeline reach? Can they be reconciled? Are they both going on at the same time?
1977 timeline: Juliet blows up the hatch/energy
This either 1) sinks the Island, or it 2) basically does exactly what Desmond’s bomb did: blow the damn, destroying the energy
In scenario 1)
-The French team never lands on the Island.
-Desmond never shipwrecks on the Island. Presumably he completes his race. I don’t think we can say he was an apparition on 815: he says he switched seats, so maybe he just has to switch back for the landing.
-There is no Hatch and no “saving the world.” Or maybe the world is now doomed.
-The numbers broadcast stops in 1977. We’re not sure WHEN the Navy guys that relay the numbers to Hurley hear the broadcast, so Hurley may or may have not heard the numbers in this timeline. If he did hear them, and won the lottery with them, something about the Island being destroyed may have made them lucky instead of cursed.
-Presuming that the destruction of the Island kills Jacob or at least stops his activities, he only touches Sawyer and maybe Kate. Both of them so far seem unchanged from their previous incarnations (his influence on their lives seems to have worked to turn them both down the dark paths they’re still on). He never touches Locke (who recovers on his own???), Sayid (who he touches long after 815), Jack (pre-815), or Hurley (way way post 815)
-Widmore, Eloise Hawking, Richard, Ben etc. may all be dead. Thus, no Faraday & no time experiments. No Penny, and thus no lovesick Desmond. The Ann Arbor Dharma survive.
All of this is consistent with the SIDEWAYS 815 we see in LA X
In scenario 2) though, we have another possible atlernative (getting much much more speculative here)
-The French team still shipwrecks in 1988 and alters the numbers broadcast to the distress call
-The Dharma folks still exist, but now have no hatch to worry about. Desmond may or may not come to the Island
-the purge still happens, and Widmore is still expelled
-the plane never crashes on the Island and the Lostees never arrive (but the Island is NOT sunk, bear with me)
-Widmore never locates the Island again
-Jacob never gets help from the Lostees, and perhaps loses to the MiB somehow without their help
-Buuuuuuuut… no one goes back in time
-Ben is never shot by Sayid, and never becomes an Other
-The Swan is built, the incident occurs, and the Hatch is built
-Widmore purges the Island of Dharma, but is never expelled
-No Penny off island, and thus no Des
-No Des means that nutty Kevin Innman is never relieved. He gives up pushing the button and the Hatch goes off for REALZ, sinking the Island, but much too early to ensnare 815
And NOW all of this is consistent with the SIDEWAYS 815 we see in LA X
I still don’t know where all this is going. Why did the 1977 Lostees jump timelines instead of ending up at the bottom of the ocean?
One more thing to toss in: Richard tells Sun he saw the 1977 Lostees “all die.” When could that have happened? He sure can’t have seen them die from a nuke blast that sunk the entire Island. The best we could say is that he saw them leave to go do something and they never came back. But that doesn’t seem to fit in with what he was saying.
I got the impression that it wasn’t entirely clear if she was still alive. She appeared with the whispers and vanished just as suddenly. She claimed to be carrying a message from Ben, but Ben was still a captive at the time. She wanted Juliet to stop Daniel, but at least if we believe Daniel, doing that would have resulted in the death of everyone on the Island. Why would ANYONE, other than perhaps Blackie, want that?
So, she MAY have been an apparition.
If it turns out that the “split-off timeline where the plane didn’t crash” theory is true, and they are in fact parallel universes, I wonder if Jack and the others will realize this due to Juliet’s “It worked” message from beyond the grave. They really should be able to figure it out, because only three possible things could have resulted from their plan to change the past:
- It doesn’t work, the bomb doesn’t go off, and the Losties are still stuck in 1977.
- It does work, the bomb goes off, and because of that Oceanic 815 never crashes. And because of that the Losties never get sent back in time to set off the bomb. And because of that Oceanic 815 crashes. And we’ve got an unresolvable time-looping paradox AAAIIIEEEEE!!! (I kept waiting for someone to bring up this problem last season, but not even Faraday seemed to think of it.)
- It does work, the bomb goes off, and in order to prevent the aforementioned paradox, the Universe splits into two separate timelines. In one, the plane does not crash. In the other, Jack and the Losties are time-warped back to 2007 by the bomb interacting with Froo Froo Island Magic.
Since their current situation most closely matches possibility 3, and may have been confirmed by Dead Juliet, someone should think of this eventually. (Notice I said should, not will.) And then they’ll be really disappointed, because so what if some alternate Losties got a different life because of what they did? They’re still stuck in the same crappy Island timeline.
On preview I see that Apos has discussed still another, even more complicated possibility. Hmmm . . . did I mention my head hurts?
I can understand why they didn’t show Walt. But I do wonder where Michael is.
Right. Oddly, the unresolvable paradox thing is messed up by the “what happened happened.” Here’s the gist of my input:
For events to play out the way they did so that they led to 815 crashing, the Lostees had to have gone back in time. They played a role in their own Otherton/Dharma history, including Daniel warning the Others about Jughead, saving Horace’s wife-to-be (and her child), Ben getting shot and becoming an Other (and presumably losing his memory of the Lostees), and all sorts of other stuff. However, they have to have BOTH gone back in time and then also FAILED to blow up the proto-Hatch. That’s the only way for things play out properly for Seasons 1-4
If, however, they succeeded in destroying the Hatch, then, yes, they never would have crashed and yes they also never would have come back in time to destroy the Hatch, but the Island still could have been destroyed in a different way.
Look at it a different way: their destruction of the Season 1-4 timelines also destroys the Season 5 timeline. So there is NOT necessarily an unresolvable paradox to them destroying the Hatch.
LA X represents not only them not crashing on the Island, but them not having any role on the Island even FIFTY years in the past (or even earlier, depending on where the flashes took the flashing LOSTEES, though they didn’t really do much outside of the post WW2 era)… which seems to have led to the destruction of the Island. Any number of things could have led to its destruction.
So all that might lead to this: Jacob brought the Lostees to the Island to help him save it/combat the man in black. LA X is the original timeline. In it, we’ve yet to see Jacob do whatever it is he’s going to do to get us to the timeline we know. Of course, the major problem with this idea is that Jacob may be at the bottom of the ocean.
Not on the plane, I bet. Perhaps the same way that Eko, Ana Lucia, Shanon, etc. might not be on the plane (Shanon we know wasn’t, the others we just didn’t see. We didn’t see Claire on the plane, even though she was.)
You know, this “original timeline” thing would be sort of a neat aspect of the show. It would most certainly once and for all answer the question of why THESE people are so important to the Island. It will answer that question directly and non-evasively: by showing us exactly how all these people became entwined in the history of the Island in the first place.
When we meet them in LA X, we are meeting them for the first time, for real, as they originally were, with no special connections between any of them. Those special connections are MADE by how their stories will then play out over the course of the season.
The Island has been underwater since sometime point in the middle of Dharmatime and then sunk, but we know that Island people will have been active on and off the Island and will also be in the LA X timeline. Somehow, the folks from 815 are going to become embroiled in all of that, thus creating their own fates and creating the timeline we know and love.
It didn’t hurt Eko the first time, then did the 2nd time. Does that mean there’s two of them? I don’t know!
Both of my spoilers are clarifications by the producers that I read. Not major stuff, but to be respectful…
The producers have confirmed that the female Sherrif should be viewed as one of the Others who died in the beach attack where Sawyer killed Tom. I think they axed a plotline where she would have played a role.
I am pretty sure I read that a producer said she was at the Temple. Grain of salt, I guess. Either way, the whispers likely were heard because she was an Other. She may never appear again, but I don’t think it is because she is dead.
I’m pretty sure they had an explanation for the weirdness from the beginning:
You’re right, though, for the reason they needed an end date, though, but I don’t think it implies that they didn’t know where they were going, just that they couldn’t come up with new ways to insert stories before finishing the series.
Some more tidbits from the official podcast. No spoilers on exactly what will happen, and some pure jokes, and some “speculation,” but I’ll spoilerize it anyhow.
The next episode is in some ways a third hour of the premiere, in that it will complete the setup for what’s happening this season.
On Sayid:
Even as soon as the next ep, we will get some sense of what the hell happened to him/how he could be back and what the consequences are.
On the LA X timeline:
They vehemently reject it being called an “alternate” timeline. They say it’s real and should be viewed as such. They confirm that Jughead blowing up would have had a LOT more changes than just not having 815 crashing, as Jack expected. And they note that while the original flashbacks explained the choices people made that brought them to the Island, the flash-sideways will explain “why this all matters/what are the stakes of these stories.” (This implies to ME that the LA X stories are a sort of “It’s a Wonderful Life” of LOST)
On LA X Locke’s walkabout and Sun’s English:
They imply that Locke was indeed lying about going on the walkabout, but leave Sun’s English-fluency ambiguous.
On Walt and why he attracts birds that then die:
It’s midichlorians! Or, maybe, Walt emits a high-frequency sound that attracts birds!
Do the numbers correspond to a date?
No.
Will Frogurt have a happy ending?
His run on the show is not done.
But what of Ardzt?!
I think he was just trying to say it in English, since he was asked in English, plus he seems to now exclusively speak in English.
I think that this is on point. They knew the main mysteries, but some of the plotlines (even stuff that we may find crucial) were tacked on to keep the story from playing out.
I think these mysteries might not have as full a resolution as others.
I also think that some main points might change or be dumped due to real world considerations (Walt aging, Libby’s actress getting fired, producers getting bored, etc.)
I don’t necessarily have a problem with the island sinking, but if it was a sudden sinking or involving anything seismic, I would expect the barracks and such not to have still been as intact as they were shown. As I said in another thread, the underwater cgi scene made it look as if the valley holding the barracks had been slowly filled by damming a river.
Sayid was resurrected? That’s ridiculous. Who ever heard of a middle eastern man getting resurrected?
Not a single character has left the airport entirely.
History will prevail and I bet they still end up on a plane together crashed on the island.
FATE.
Choice of the lesser of two evils will prevail and I bet they still end up on a plane together crashed on the island.
FREE WILL.
