So Lost’s sixth season has premiered and we’re starting to get a lot of answers on some of the island’s biggest mysteries. I thought it would be neat to keep a running tally of all the ones that get answered and all the ones that are still lingering.
To save spoiler space, I’ll reply to this post with S6 E1’s revelations.
Answers we’ve gotten in season 6:
What is the Smoke Monster?
The Smoke Monster is another form of the Man in Black/Esau. He can be kept at bay by the grey ash.
What happened after the Incident?
The Losties were transported to the present while also creating another universe where the plane never crashed.
What is the Temple?
The Temple is a literal hidden temple behind the Large Wall where the other Others live.
How do the Others heal people?
There’s a spring with healing waters that heals all wounds.
Did I miss any?
I dunno…Monstre came up with a theory that goes against your answer in this post. I think it’d be cool if he/she was right…
I haven’t seen the premier yet but I am taking a moment to make my usual complaint that the network is managing the online experience like CRAP. “Watch the LOST season premier online now!” scrawled all over the abc.com page…yet nothing but crappy clips and summaries and full episodes only from Seasons 1-5 everywhere I click, and each time I click spawns the same blaring 30 second Microsoft ad. Just make the darn thing available or stop publishing content as if it is available. :mad:
He had three theories. The only one that makes any sense is that an alternate reality was created.
Okay, we’re talking about what “makes sense”…? In LOST? 
I don’t know why that’s the only one that makes sense. If the reset button can be pressed – who’s to say it doesn’t happen AFTER current island events?
Although I do think the show creators have actually said in interviews that these are “flash-sideways” jumps (as opposed to flash forwards or backs), indicating the alternate timeline as the likely answer. Schroedinger, you bastard.
And I did post one more theory in that thread, although it involved the island being the final resting place for the Infinite Improbability Drive. In which case a two-headed guy will jump out any moment and ask for a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. 
Like Desmond popping back and forth until he found his constant?
Well, he wasn’t popping back and forth between alternate parallel timelines. His consciousness was popping back and forth in time itself.
Subscribing, but thinking that this thread is superfluous.
Well, there are some of us who gave up on Lost sometime around season 3 who are still interested in whether the writers did have a game plan all along or whether they were just making it up as they went along.
We don’t want to sift through the actual final season discussion. Judging from the ‘answers’ above, clever as they might be, I’m still going with the latter explanation btw.
OB
I’m going with the latter, too.
I just don’t think they had enough foresight to know that the series was going to be picked up, so they started throwing things in to build drama. I’m talking the Tree Munching Monster, the Smoke, etc. I distinctly remember an interview with the writers during S.1 or 2 where they said that all the mysteries would be rooted in the truth. In other words, no time travel, etc., which has clearly not happened.
I also believe that Walt had a lot more to do with the mystery at first until the actor started growing at an alarming rate that made it impossible to continue along that path. So then they had to divert to something else.
Honestly, I’d have given up on the series a long time ago were I not hopelessly and embarrassingly infatuated with Matthew Fox. Now, like the “Outlander” books which have been drawn out three books (and counting) too long, I’ve grown impatient with the once-compelling story and just want to see how the damn thing ends already.
How about something like this:
The Losties succeeded in changing the timeline. The plane never crashed on the island, and Jack along with everyone else should have disappeared at that moment. The island kept them intact for it’s own reasons as sort of shadows of their former selves, so now there are two sets of each cast member in the same reality.
The “real” Jack never went to the island and lived a normal life. The “shadow” Jack is the one we know from the series and remembers crashing on the island, even though it never happened in the newly created reality. So the scenes from two different Jacks we see are actually happening at the same time in the same reality, and same time-line.
It’s not necessarily very likely that this would be true and it would be weird even for Lost, but there are many possible explanations other than just the ones mentioned.
What ever happened to the abducted kids Zack & Emma?
They are with the others at the Temple
We found that out a few seasons ago.
You mean when they made an appearance on that zoo island? Yeah, but I still wanted to know where they ended up since they seemed to have disappeared since then.
They were taken by the Others and they live at Otherton. They disappearance is easily explained too. As the Others view themselves as the “good guys”, it’s not unusual to think they’d keep the kids out of harm’s way and we only really see the Others when they’re attack the Losties.
Other answers we got:
What is the smoke monster’s motivation?
He wants to go “home”. We don’t know where that is, but it’s somewhere off the island.
Does the smoke monster work for the Others?
No. They are afraid of it, and it is antagonistic to them.
How do you know that?
I thought “home” could be the temple.
I think the dialogue clearly supports that [spoiler]
Esau wants to leave the island.
In his monologue about Locke, Esau describes him as the ‘only one who didn’t want to leave the island’ and that is shortly followed by his answer to Ben’s question of what Esau wants: ‘Ironically I want what Locke didn’t want. I want to go home.’
We’ve also not seen an entity at play off-island that can be reasonably tied to Esau, (compared to Jacob’s gig as a traveling guitar case and candybar distributor) which would support the idea that he could be trapped on the island. [/spoiler]
Unanswered questions:
What is the significance, if any, of Christian’s body not being on the Flashsideways plane?
By what mechanism was the island submerged to the sea floor with sonic towers, houses, playground equipment seemingly intact as if they had been in a valley that was flooded to make a resevoir vs an island sticking up out of the ocean that then gently swallows it.
And, did Desmond disappear too?
Do we need spoiler tags in this thread?