Okay, so any comprehensive theory of LOST will need to answer a few very tough questions, such as:
- What is the monster, and why does it kill some but not others?
- Is the monster related to the various “visions” around the island?
- Where (and when) is the island? (answered...kinda)
- What is so important about the all-pervasive numbers?
- How is Desmond “predicting” things? (answered...kinda)
- What happened when he turned the fail-safe key? (answered...kinda)
- Who/what is Jacob?
- What about the four-toed statue?
- How did Locke’s father end up on the island? (answered - mouthpiece for Jacob)
- What about Naomi’s appearance, and her statement that 815 had been found with “no survivors”? (answered)
- What was the hatch actually built on top of?
- Why couldn’t Desmond escape, but Michael and Walt could? (answered)
- Why has Ben’s friend Richard not aged in 30 years?
- How did the Black Rock end up on a mountain?
- What is the deal with Jack’s Flash-forwards? (answered)
- What is Dharma Initiative really doing? (answered, mostly)
- Where did the Others’ “Hostiles” come from?
I have a few theories that may or may not answer a number of these questions.
Manifold Island
I believe that the island is present in some sort of a 4-space manifold. Think of it this way: when people thought the world was flat, they thought that if you kept sailing in a certain direction, you’d “fall off” the world. Similarly, those on the island believe that if they keep sailing in one direction, they’ll eventually be able to leave. BUT, since the world is curved, we know that if you keep sailing, you come out the other side; to those on the mainland, it would have appear that those sailing had simply circled back, rather than continuing in a straight line. Likewise, Desmond tries to sail away from the island, but merely keeps returning, because the space around the island is all curved back onto itself.
To further explain this – imagine a map of the region where the island is. Nothing but empty ocean, from what we can see. Imagine, then, that the island is on the surface of a small globe that is attached at a single point to the map (so it's like a ball sitting on top of a piece of paper). The surface of the globe is 2-d, the map is 2-d, and so the 2-d inhabitants of the island and the world experience everything on the island and on the main map in 2 dimensions. However, the difficulty is that they encounter lots of weird topological problems when traveling near this area, like not being able to leave the island except by heading directly at a specific spot (the bridge point), and not being able to easily find the island from the mainland; there is only a thin bridge of reality connecting the “bubbled off” portion of space containing the island to the rest of the earth. It is this connection that Ben points Michael and Walt to (Compass bearing 325), and so that is how some are able to leave the island, but not all.
As to what may have caused this, consider the strange “power source” of the island that was somehow contained or controlled by the mechanisms in the hatch (“The Swan” station). This force may be maintaining the 4-dimensional “bubbling off” of the island and its surrounding ocean, or it may simply be the mechanism by which people have found it in the first place – the black rock’s compasses certainly would have been altered by it, and flight 815 seems to have been literally yanked to it during the “system failure” crisis caused by Desmond.
Time Travel and Premonitions
Now, any physicist will tell you that certain forces can affect space and time simultaneously. If the electromagnetic force is strong enough to literally fold a section of 3-d space into the 4th dimension, it might also be strong enough to, in certain conditions, bend time as well. Think about it – Desmond seems to be living his life through a second time, but is only able to remember patches, in the same way one might recognize landmarks when driving around a block for a second time. How or why this is happening specifically to him might have something to do with the fail-safe key and his presence during not just 1 but 2 cases of “system failure.” Likewise, it might account, in same fashion, for the fact that Naomi thinks that 815 was found with no survivors, and for Jack’s “flash-forward,” and possibly even for the fact that Ben’s friend Richard (the one who helped him “purge” the Dharma initiative, effectively turning the “hostiles” into the “others”) doesn’t seem to age. This, however, leads to an even greater theory of timestreams and timetravel.
Timestreams (complexity ensures)
Every person on the island seems to be there by some major coincidence. Particularly, Desmond seems to have literally “relived” particular points in his past. However, when he tries to change things, time “course corrects” itself (remember the woman in the Jewelry store: “If you don’t do these things, every single one of us is dead”). Thus, the arguable explanation seems to be that the space-time warping properties of the island were focused and somehow unleashed upon Desmond at the moment turned the fail-safe key during the “system failure,” and has caused him to experience some sort of cyclic time, resulting in his premonitions and “interactive flashbacks.”
This also raises an interesting question in light of Jack’s “Flash-forward” at the end of season 3. Though the cause and ultimate effect remain unknown, it may have something to do with the fact that Naomi comes from a potentially alternate timestream/reality in which flight 815 is found with no survivors. Remember that their rescue would have been a result of Naomi’s radio, which only worked because Charlie sacrificed himself to shut-down the jamming signal.
HOWEVER, remember that Charlie, by all rights, should have died way before he sacrificed himself to that cause, because he was only saved by Desmond’s intervention. Desmond chose to alter the future by saving Charlie, and thus, even though Charlie did eventually die, he did so after accomplishing something that he should not have lived to accomplish. So where/when did Naomi come from, and what would have happened had Charlie died before he chose to shut down the jamming signal? Would someone else have done it? Would it have remained unaccomplished?
Also, consider the fact that nobody from flight 815 would even
be on the island if it weren’t for Desmond causing the first of the two known “system failures,” and thus, if Desmond is the cause of some sort of deviation from the “original” timestream of reality, all of the passengers are caught up in it. But this is complicated further when we realize that the second “system failure” wouldn’t have occurred
without the flight 815 passengers having been on the island in the first place, which was the incident that may have caused Desmond’s cyclical timestream. So, perhaps Naomi is from the “real” timestream, in which flight 815 simply crashed and killed all aboard, and now the surviving versions of them are all caught in a complex system of cycles in time as a result of Desmond’s ability to interfere with the future, which is a result of the fail-safe key turning, which arose because of Locke, an 815 passenger who shouldn’t have survived but somehow did. So the BIG QUESTION that arises from all of the cyclic timestream conversation is this: what is/was
supposed to happen? What is “actual” and what is caused by interference? It would seem that to some degree, Desmond is a crucial part of all of this.
Timestream protection
The monster and Jacob are one and the same. The Island’s “security system” and “Cerberus” are other names for it. It can apparently shapeshift, and can access thoughts and memories of others – this is how it appears as various hallucinatory visions to various survivors, and how it knows who to kill and who not to kill (it seems to spare those that show less fear towards it). It seems to be linked to the Dharma initiative’s Cerberus Project, but it somehow went awry/escaped. Being that it is the Island’s security, I would put forth that it might be from the future.
Given that the space-time warping properties of the island are capable of sending Desmond into a cyclical time loop, it seems feasible that an organization (perhaps a future Dharma Initiative) or entity from the future sent it back to ensure that the timestream was not disrupted, especially if the island is somehow integral to events in the future. Thus, “Jacob” appeared to Locke as both Jacob and as Walt in order to ensure that John could put an end to Jack and Naomi’s rescue plot, avoiding potential timestream/causality catastrophe (as seen in the flash-forwards).
Alternately, and more simply, it might be a high-technology experiment gone awry, as stated before. Perhaps it is some sort of ultra-advanced dharma-esque technology or a strange harnessing of the island’s uncanny powers and properties. In this capacity, it might be a much more mundane and literal “security system” gone rogue or such.
Who is Jacob? (An alternate explanation)
One theory I read was intriguing; Jacob is Jack, from the future, trying to set things right by ensuring that there is no rescue from the island. Based on his Flash-forward and their content, this seems possible (though not particularly likely), assuming that Jack found some way back to the island both physically and temporally. Perhaps the seeming “instability” of Locke’s encounter with him is a result of the fragility of such a meeting of past and future. Also, Ben has been working with Jacob; making lists of people, healing cancers, etc. - this could be related to both future technologies and/or knowledge of what will happen.
Yet another explanation of the island’s location and powers
It has also been put forth that perhaps the island is Atlantis. Based on the legend of Atlantis (which speaks of advanced technologies and a strange power source), the electromagnetic disruption seems to come to mind, and even the Monster might find a place in the theory. Additionally, this would completely explain the four-toed statue, but raises the question of the circumstances of the island’s sudden “return” to the surface.
My LOST Theories (LOTS of spoilers)
Re: My LOST Theories (LOTS of spoilers)
