The final LOST questions thread.

Cafe Society
1

Huh–I followed a link to the season 3 questions thread. It’s pretty sad how many of them remain unanswered (these are the questions from Season 3. I didn’t understand/remember a few of them). My comments are in red:

  1. Why did the plane lose radio contact? Answered-Desmond didn’t push the button
  2. What is the big monster?Not answered (the question is “What”, not “Who”. “A big smoke monster” isn’t an answer.
  3. What is powering all the electronic equipment on the island?Not Answered (it’s not The Hydra base
  4. Who are/were Adam and Eve? Not answered
  5. What’s the deal with the black and white rocks that were found with Adam and Eve?Not answered
  6. What exactly was the nature of Locke’s paralysis?Answered, but missed the other question: how/why did “The Island” heal him?
  7. Why wasn’t Jack’s Dad in the coffin?Not answered
  8. How did the 48 people (initially) survive the plane crash? Was it just luck?Not answered
  9. Did Locke actually see the monster? And if he did, why is he still alive?Not answered
  10. What cured Locke and Rose (and possibly Jin)?Not answered (“The Island” doesn’t count as an answer).
  11. Who are the “Others”, and is there more than one group of “Others”? Answered
  12. Why did Danielle kill the other members of her team (or at least Robert)?Answered
  13. Why did Sayid say that Nadia was dead?Answered
  14. What was the scientific mission of Danielle’s team and why did they need rifles?Not answered
  15. Was Claire’s psychic legitimate, and if so, what did he see in his vision?Not answered
  16. How do the Others decide who to take?Not answered…maybe. Do they only take “Candidates” and “Kids”? If so, when Jack/Sawyer/Kate were captured, why didn’t they also take the other candidates?
  17. What is the significance of Claire’s baby?Not answered
  18. How did Hugo get the nickname “Hurley”?Not answered
  19. In what way is Hurley known as a warrior?Not answered
  20. What is the nature of Walt’s “special abilities”?Not answered
  21. What is the significance of the song “La Mer”?Not answered
  22. What is the nature of the islands unusual magnetic properties?Not answered–not really needed though. We know what the properties do. Who cares about technobabble about what they ARE?
  23. Who sealed the hach and why?Not answered (It happened AFTER the Dharmassacre–why did whatshisname come up with the cock-and-bull story about the virus?
  24. Why was Jin hand-delivering watches for Sun’s dad?Answered
  25. What do the numbers mean? ANSWERED (said the original thread). Not answered said me…although the “They represent the candidates” comes close.
  26. Is Hurley (still) cursed? (said the original thread).Not answered–I mean, he’s NOT still cursed–we’ve seen that. But we never found out why he was.
  27. Who set up the original transmission? ANSWERED (said the original thread). Not answered said me…the “original” transmission was The Numbers and we still don’t know if that was set up by Dharma or The Army or Daniel or who.
  28. Who sent Kate the letter about her mom?I don’t even remember this one.
  29. What is the significance of the black smoke? ? It’s the Smoke Monster. We knew that by S3, didn’t we?
  30. Why did the Others want with Walt? Not answered
  31. What became of Alex? Is that her with the Others? Answered (sob)
  32. How did The Black Rock (the ship) get so far inland? About to be answered
  33. What were the keys that Brendon took, and why did he take them? ? Don’t remember
  34. How did Martin loose his arm? ? Don’t remember…Martin?
  35. Did Walt try and communicate with Shannon and if so, how? The backwards speaking ghost of Waaaaalt? Not answered.
  36. What did Desmond inject himself with? Not answered–and the second half “What was Claire injected with. Why?” is also unanswered.
  37. Were Michael, Kate and Locke all in accidents with the same car, and if so, why?Answered. The answer is “No”. :wink:
  38. Why haven’t they sent a replacement?Who? For what? For Desmond?
  39. How did the Nigerian drug smuggling plane get on the island? Kinda answered.
  40. Why are there blast doors on the corridors leading to the geodesic dome? Answered (to keep the magnetism in) but why was the “Quarantine” sign on the door?
  41. Why aren’t people supposed to use the computers for communication?Kinda answered. In the hatch, it’s to isolate them from the guys watching them.
  42. What exactly was the "incident?"Answered. as well as it’s going to be.
  43. Why was the “Orientation” film cut up and pieces of it put in seperate places?Not answered.
  44. Why was Sayid on the television in the army recruiting station?Not answered.
  45. Whose glass eye was in the second Dharma station and why did they leave it there? Not answered.
  46. What is the cause of the whispering? Not answered.
  47. Why did the blast doors close? Kinda answered.
  48. Was the real Henry Gale traveling with anyone, and if not, who burried him? Not answered.
  49. Why did Alex help Claire escape? Answered.
  50. What is the significance of the foot? Getting there answered.
  51. Why did the Others release Walt after going to such trouble to get him? Not answered.
  52. Why couldn’t Desmond sail away and why wouldn’t Michael be able to return without the proper coordinates for rescue? Answered.
  53. Was Libby working for the Dharma Project/the Others? Answered.
  54. What was the “room” that the Others threatened Walt with? Not answered.
  55. Why do the Others want Kate, Sawyer and Jack?Kinda answered. (Candidates and kids?)

That’s not a great track record…now some of that stuff isn’t critical any more, but that’s a lot of stuff left hanging that they’ve just distracted us on. And we only have about 8 hours of screen time left.

2

#35 is the guy who arrived with Rousseau. They showed him losing his arm.

#55 I imagine was that sensory overload room where Alex’s boyfriend was.

Actually I don’t find the number of unanswered questions too bad. A number of them are variations on the overall question of the nature of the island, which I imagine won’t be answered until the end of the series. Several of the other ones are pretty minor; I won’t mind if we never find out where Hugo’s nickname comes from, or where the stations are getting power.

3

#30. I don’t think they are talking about the black smoke as in the smoke monster. Remember back in Season 2-ish when Danielle told them that the Others were coming and they could see a column of black smoke rising from across the island somewhere? I think that’s what this is referring to.

4

However, other than giving it context, I’m not sure we will learn the nature of “what the island is”, so to speak.

I might be wrong, but I think it might be left open to interpretation.

5

I agree (if I understand you correctly), and in fact I hope you’re right. Say the final explanation is that aliens made the island (which I quite doubt :)). I don’t know if it would be useful to have more detailed explanation of the individual island properties after that. I’m fine with a general “the island does all these weird things because of ______”.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the final shot of the series is some kind of reveal, in which case they can’t really do any kind of detailed explanation of whatever the reveal is.

6

Exactly.

I actually have suggested that not only are the current flash sideways the epilogue to the show, but that one of them will stay behind to be the new Jacob and that it is that character that ultimately “undid” everything, giving the others the new life they have in the flash sideways.

Just a wild guess, though.

7

  1. Who are/were Adam and Eve? Not answered YET, but addressed already this season.

  2. What’s the deal with the black and white rocks that were found with Adam and Eve? Not answered YET but we’ve already seen black and white rocks this season that were clearly significant.

  3. How did the 48 people (initially) survive the plane crash? Was it just luck? If nobody survived the plane crash, there wouldn’t be a show.

  4. Did Locke actually see the monster? And if he did, why is he still alive? Yes, and he isn’t. Why it let him live as long as it did has already been answered.

  5. How do the Others decide who to take? It’s pretty clear in hindsight that they made lists of potential candidates, submitted them to Ben, and Ben then gave them to Richard, who gave them to Jacob, and he passed back lists of the ones that he was already tracking.

  6. How did Hugo get the nickname “Hurley”? This is an outstanding question? Maybe he didn’t like being called Hugo.

  7. In what way is Hurley known as a warrior? What?

  8. What do the numbers mean? Answered in the various ancillary materials (Alternate Reality Game, I believe). They are the significant variables of the Valenzetti Equation that supposedly predicts doomsday. The DHARMA initiative was founded to attempt to alter these numbers to postpone or prevent said doomsday. They clearly have a shared significance beyond this, however, as evidenced by the coincidental appearance in Hurley’s lottery numbers, the candidate numbers, etc. I’m not sure how much more “explanation” is needed, though. Even if you discount the ARG, just saying they are the settings on Jacob’s magic mirror related to the remaining candidates at this pivotal point is explanation enough, in my opinion.

  9. Why did the Others want with Walt? He was on the list, but has been eliminated as a potential candidate, which explains why they let him go.

  10. How did Martin lose his arm? Smokey yanked it off.

  11. Why haven’t they sent a replacement? Because the DHARMA Initiative was canned, I believe, after their entire Island operation was gassed to death.

  12. How did the Nigerian drug smuggling plane get on the island? The Island was moving through time and space and happened to appear in its path. Jack saw the plane crash while he was time-shifting.

  13. Why was the “Orientation” film cut up and pieces of it put in seperate places? Because Radzinsky, as the sole DHARMA veteran on the island, was an obsessive lunatic by the time he killed himself.

  14. Whose glass eye was in the second Dharma station and why did they leave it there? Well, odds are good that it was Mikhail’s, considering he was the only one-eyed character to appear on the show. Why WOULD they take it with them?

  15. Was the real Henry Gale traveling with anyone, and if not, who burried him? No. Ben buried him (or had someone do it). How else would he even have known of his existence? I don’t think this needed any more spelling out than it got.

  16. Why did the Others release Walt after going to such trouble to get him? Because he wasn’t a candidate, as evidenced by the fact that his name is crossed off.

  17. What was the “room” that the Others threatened Walt with? Presumably, it was the room where Alex’s boyfriend was later shown being brainwashed in.

8

My unanswered question,

What was the significance of the Spanish language comic book that Hurley was reading on the plane, Walt was interested in on the island and Michael threw into the fire? As I recall, the few panels we got to see did feature a polar bear and some suggestion about the possible nature of the island.
More and more I think the producers and writers only had a vague idea where the story was heading.
And I hate to say it but I have a bad feeling the conclusion is going to be far less that satisfactory.

9

Uh, I think they have stated as much now. They had a few distinct ideas(time travel, I think) but most was made up a few years ago when they established how long they had left.

I think the comic is not relevant much at all.

10

I thought this was Miles’ dad, Martin Candle? Didn’t he lose his arm in the “incident?”