LOST EXPLAINED - THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

to understand the events of lost we must first understand what the light beneath the island is and why everyone was fighting over it in across the sea mother tells her two boys that the electromagnetic light at the heart of the island is the source of life death and rebirth and that a part of this light exists within every human being in the world in other words this light is the elemental force responsible for existence as we know it an ancient mystic like mother might call this light inside people a soul whereas a 21st century scientist like daniel faraday might call this like consciousness either way it is the essence of who we are it is our memories our emotions and our collective experiences we all came from it and we will all return to it in death when we die the light inside of us aka our consciousness returns to the source the flash sideways in season six of lost is the visual representation of this process it is a subjective dream state where the characters can slowly let go of their mortality before rejoining with the source accompanied by their soulmates who bonded with them in life time has no meaning in this construct of consciousness which makes sense because it exists inside the light and the light is made up of electromagnetic photons and photons do not experience time this is why everyone arrives in the flash sideways at the same time even if they died at different points in their lives boone died in 2004 jack died in 2007. kate died many years later presumably from old age yet they all wake up inside this construct at the same time everything that happened in their lives before this both on and off the island were real this is also the reason for why the church fills with light at the end of the series as they prepare to move on because the collective consciousness of our losties is being absorbed back into the force that gave them life to begin with the reason why it was so important to protect the light was because if the light goes out on the island then everyone's in a light goes out too aka we would all simply cease to exist and the threat isn't just existential it is literal too eloise hawking explains that there are pockets of electromagnetic energy all around the world mostly beneath the ocean that are connected to and flow out from the light beneath the island the island often moves between these points in space-time there are other geological areas on land that also have pockets so if the light is endangered plundered or extinguished at its source then the light would be affected in those pockets too we see the beginning of this process happen when the source is essentially turned off in the series finale after desmond uncorks it the island starts to break up and fall apart it starts to sink this would happen to all of the other pockets around the world land masses breaking up and sinking and seabeds quaking causing untold destruction and devastation across the planet global catastrophe protecting the island was of the utmost importance the electromagnetic energy beneath the island emits heavy levels of radiation get too close to it and you risk being blasted by a heavy dose but if you actually enter the pocket of light itself then you you will suffer a fate far worse than death if the light inside of us is our consciousness which returns to the source in death what happens to that consciousness inside someone if they entered the source directly like the man in black did their physical body dies but their consciousness does not the light within you is uncoupled from your body and spat out locked out exiled for all time and the light that was once within you becomes darkness that is what the smoke monster is pure disembodied consciousness roaming the landscape many viewers often conflate jacob and the island as one in the same however they are two distinct entities for all of his powers jacob is still a man the island is alive as in the island has a life and will of its own the source of light beneath the island's land mass which mother called the heart of the island is sentient the easiest way to explain the light is that it is where all life and time flows out from it is the eternal battery that powers existence and it powers the sentience of human beings this light has many properties which can be harnessed and manipulated the island acts as a cork holding this limitless energy in place if the island were to be destroyed the energy would destabilize and be destroyed also this would lead to the end of existence as we know it the reason why jacob explains the cork analogy to richard alpert in the way that he does is for simplification purposes the man in black aka the smoke monster is powered by the source he is forever tethered to it the only way he can escape the island is to kill its protectors and turn it off however this would effectively destroy the world jacob cannot explain all of this to a man like richard who has a very archaic way of understanding the world richard is a believer a man of faith not a man of science so jacob explains the situation in a way that a man of faith might comprehend i.e the island is all that stands between life and death the cork is keeping chaos and evil at bay time heals all wounds when channeled through water it exerts healing properties because it can reverse your injuries to a prior state in time before you have those injuries underground chambers channel the light through water streams into the temple while other natural river streams flowed all over the island creating a circulatory system damon and carlton confirm this much in an audio commentary for across the sea and imply that the island is indeed alive the light can also heal ailments and illnesses once again regressing your body to a prior state the same goes for locks legs but it heals selectively as we learned with ben's cancer now ben didn't get sick because the island didn't like him he needed to get sick in order to set in motion a chain of events it also resets memories to a prior state it erased young ben's memory of being shot and healed in the temple waters and it healed daniel faraday's fractured mind you do not need to go into the temple waters for these long-term ailments to heal close proximity to the source is enough only fatal wounds need to be healed in the temple waters by all accounts the island's emissary a guardian of the light is preordained to do so by the source it is the island itself that is choosing who will become its protector and influencing events to ensure the right person takes over at the right time whoever protects the island becomes a lightning rod of sorts with the ability to channel the powers of the source like an electrical current they can control the voltage and thus they can act on behalf of the source and carry out its will protectors appear to make these decisions based off a deep intuition and understanding but these powers and the lineage of protectors had to start somewhere [Music] one of the key debates at the core of season six episode across the sea is about the character of mother and whether or not she was a smoke monster in the audio commentary for the episode showrunners damon lindelof and carlton hughes discuss the following damon says it is worth mentioning the idea that mother is the smoke monster at this point in the game carlton responds that is interesting damon continues she has laid waste to the entire village and what an interesting theory that is because one of the questions that keeps arising is if jacob's smoke monster was his brother then who was the smoke monster before him or was the smoke monster actually created in this episode does good always need evil and that is an excellent question to be asking the first indication comes in the form of her sudden appearances first to claudia by the stream then again to the man in black in the wheel chamber notice how she managed to come down that ladder without making a sound and in the short time it takes to do this single one shot if you look closely she has appeared several feet behind the ladder as well as if she has teleported there this is incredibly subtle detail intended to leave room for ambiguity in order to ignite debate but really look closely at mother's positioning in this scene consider the physics of where she is stood from the ladder and zero indication of her having used it could it simply be a mistake in the geography of how the scene was blocked or is it intentional by design this is only the beginning of these clues to mother's true identity she knocks out a much younger stronger man with her bare hands by sheer force of course this is totally plausible for a human woman to do to a human man and not proof of smoke detection however what comes next is more definitive mother somehow manages to single-handedly destroy the wheel chamber and bury it under the earth could a middle-aged woman do this on her own it is possible but not very plausible what comes next is even more suspicious the man in black discovers that she has decimated his entire village not only has she burned the whole place to the ground but she slaughtered every living person in it men women and children this is surely not the work of a single human being this whole scene is extremely reminiscent of the aftermath following the smoke monsters attack on the others at the temple in an earlier episode called sundown look at the man in black wandering through the burning embers of his former home now look as we survey the carnage at the temple these scenes are mirrors of one another and another clue as to what was responsible for the village destruction in across the sea the final piece of evidence comes in the form of mother's warning to jacob she tells him that going down into the cave of light would be a fake worse than death the conversation goes like this just promise me no matter what you do you won't ever go down there would i die it'd be worse than dying jacob much worse [Music] so what could be worse than dying maybe being deprived of your mortal body and humanity a person who enters the heart of the island on the living plane will have their consciousness uncoupled from their body and that consciousness aka that person's soul will be exiled from the source for all time put simply to enter the light in the cave is to be banished to have no chance of finding rebirth within the the source like every other human soul mortal human beings don't understand that death is to some extent a gift and to live forever is a curse it means your soul can never be at rest you can never let go you can never move on you aren't the only one who's lost something my friend the devil betrayed me he took my body my humanity so how would mother know this how would she know that going into the cave and the aperture of the source would be a fake worse than death because mother did it herself a long long time ago she became the first smoke monster her consciousness was exiled from her body and this is how the original lineage of protectors were created being a smoke monster and the protector was one and the same thing for her the best way to view mother is as someone who demonstrates both the qualities of light and darkness she shows love and compassion to her sons it is clear that she cares for them as a mother would but she is also deeply manipulative and shows violent aggression towards claudia and her people and most likely to anyone who comes to the island uninvited mother is neither all good nor all bad being a smoke monster doesn't make you inherently good or evil it all depends on how corruptable the nature of the person is the consciousness of the person ultimately informs the nature of the black smoke also notice how the clothes she is wearing consist of both light and dark colours light above but darkness beneath she passes on these light and dark qualities to her sons her dim world view on humanity ends up becoming the man in black's world view while her faith in the light and the importance of the island takes deep root in jacob's burgeoning philosophy each man is informed by different aspects of their mother as are we all across the sea is almost like a parable about the sins of the parents a key theme that echoes throughout the entire series we can assume that mother hail from one of the early civilizations on the island and we can further assume that she was the first protector of the light the island allowed her to find its heart as it needed a catalyst to begin a very long and involved series of events that would sustain its own existence and the existence of all things mother was drawn to the cave perhaps out of curiosity something that went beyond her understanding and without anyone to warn her about the dangers of entering the light she went down into the cave and followed the warmest brightest light that she had ever seen or felt much like a moth to a flame back then pre-cork the light would have been blowing out through a crack in the earth and she would have waded her way through the shallow stream of water directly to the edge of this hole in the world as she entered the open aperture of the source she was instantly consumed her consciousness was uncoupled from her body and expelled from the cave her body now an empty vessel was no doubt transported to the same location we see the man in black and jack being moved to further downstream this translocation of bodies is very similar to what happened with loch desmond and mr echo following the implosion of the hatch their bodies were teleported out of the energy pocket mother's original body would have eventually decomposed and returned to the earth or perhaps she was buried by her people this however does raise an interesting point because it means that mother leaves behind a body twice on the island once when she was mortal long before we ever meet her and then once again many centuries later but we know that this also happens to the man in black his original body is found outside of the cave downstream by his brother jacob yet centuries later we also see that fate lock leaves behind a body too after he is depowered and killed had the man in black been appearing in his original form throughout the last season of lost then we would have seen him leave behind his body for a second time on the island furthermore we cannot be totally sure that the way mother presents herself to people in across the sea is indeed what she originally looked like she could very well be appearing as someone else who died on the island perhaps mother looked more like this when she went into the cave regardless smoke monsters when killed in any corporeal form will leave behind a body it would have taken mother a long time to come to terms with what she had become on the one hand she had been given the gift of eternal life on the other hand she had been cursed to live forever without humanity or mortality we can only assume how this impacted her people and how they viewed her perhaps this is where her withering view of humanity actually came from her own people having been deprived of form in this way would also have awakened the connection to the source within her she would have gained an understanding of its importance and allowed herself to be guided by it she would have developed this deep communion with the island as a result of her transformation and over time gained relevant knowledge most importantly of all she would develop an inherent understanding that if the light goes out here it will go out everywhere the earth time and existence itself must be protected from the ills of mankind unlike jacob she did not want people to come to the island she was not the force bringing others to its shores hence why she tells claudia that everyone comes to this place by accident it is not her will it is the island's will so the mother smoke monster genuinely became an ancient security system for the island her mission became to protect the source from those that was seeking to plunder the light and she could do that protecting physically by using her powers to crush anyone she deemed unworthy during her tenure she would have witnessed much conflict and violence as different tribes waged war over who got to occupy this island territory history repeated itself so much that mother became tired of dealing with people and grew weary of protecting the light her only hope of escaping her role was to die but she could not die without someone to replace her she didn't trust people enough to simply hand over the reins to anyone as she saw mankind as inherently corrupt she needed someone pure someone special someone she could influence when a pregnant claudia arrived mother had finally found her candidate a baby she could raise as her own that she could keep pure and teach from a young age the ways of the island only rather than one child she got two buy one get one free so she raised jacob as a son and she raised the boy in black as a replacement it is implied that she favours the boy in black because he demonstrated special abilities from an early age a natural communion with the island which made mother believe that the island wanted him i love you in in different ways mother's hope was that she could pass on the power of protectorship without the smoke monster curse she believed that the boy in black was predestined to protect the light but she got it wrong very wrong because the island needed both a protector and a smoke monster for many more centuries to come in fact it was vital that both roles exist so the source split mother's role in half between the two boys jacob became the protector and the man in black became the smoke monster a very literal metaphor for children taking on the different aspects of their parents it's why jacob and the man in black were made to be twins a symbolic representation of two halves of the same person protector smoke monster but there is some bleed over between these deinterlaced parts of mother's power we see that the source still speaks to the man in black even in his post-smoke monster form guiding him on his path to causality in the future it's why he knows where and when to go to give the compass back to a time travelling john locke this must be quite the out of body experience something like that your timing was impeccable john how did you know when to be here the island told me how do you know all this how do you know it will work i'm special mother this is the same instinctive understanding and intuition that jacob has about what needs to happen next that inner voice speaking to them igniting thoughts and driving emotions but i know this explanation still raises questions for people so let's address them head on the first question is this if mother was a smoke monster how could she possibly pass on her power to someone else when we know that the man in black cannot do the same thing to answer this we have to note the distinct factors that make the mother smoke monster different from the man in black smoke monster the most obvious difference is that mother was both smoke monster and she was a protector this gives her powers that the man in black does not have because a protector has a controlling influence over the source's properties and vice versa she was always able to pass on her protector power to the right party the man in black was never ordained in this way still this leads us to another valid question if she is the smoke monster how can she be killed without the need to turn off the island and depower her this is where the previous chapter might help in finally untangling the mythology here a smoke monster protector was never supposed to be invincible or unkillable what do we know which was the one thing that didn't exist back when mother was around a key difference between her time and the man in black's time [Music] there was no cork installed at the source when mother was killed during her reign the aperture of light in the cave was fully open and the light flowed out freely without obstruction after the man in black became smoky the egyptians came and caused the ancient incident this caused jacob to oversee the plugging of the leak but by damming the flow of the light from the power source it rendered the man in black indestructible let's discuss how mother specifically functioned because her existence was pre-cork the light powered her like an eternal battery not too dissimilar from the man in black but unlike him she was a complete battery with both a negative and a positive charge the positive is the light the negative is the dark and she could pass on the positive charge to jacob without imbuing him with the negative in order to die which is what mother ultimately wanted after untold centuries of service she had to pass on this positive charge to someone to keep the circuit live only then would the source allow her to die you have to switch out an old component for a new one always and once jacob's inner light was activated mother was relieved of her responsibilities and rendered completely mortal once again therefore she could die in the exact same way we see jacob killed later on [Music] a guardian of the source is someone who has a deeper connection to the light in some way like hurley and walt they are unconsciously tuned into the electromagnetic frequency of the source which allows them access to certain abilities that a protector would have powers manifest in various forms from talking to ghosts to astral projection when a person becomes an island protector they gain a deep awareness of the light within themselves and can even control and manipulate its electromagnetic properties they can also activate the light within other people through touch which can either stop aging in its tracks or literally draw people back towards the source like metal to a giant magnet this power is what mother passed on to jacob it wasn't the drinking of the wine that imbued jacob with these abilities it was her touch during the ceremony she activated him just as he would go on to activate the light in others it is a transfer of power through body and mind through consciousness mother wanted to pass on her guardianship without the smoke monster curse this passing of the torch rendered her both powerless and mortal as a result she was relieved even grateful to finally die but something happened after her death that was beyond her control jacob's grief led him to avenge her death by throwing the man in black into the water his body was carried along by the stream and directly into the aperture of the source itself creating yet another smoke monster a smoke monster who wanted nothing more than to leave the island but since smoke monsters are bound to the light and guardians like jacob can harness and control the properties connected to the light the man in black essentially becomes a prisoner of his own brother unable to escape jacob could engineer rules that the man in black was bound to follow since the man in black is really nothing more than disembodied consciousness without a living vessel to carry his essence he is relegated to stealing the guises of dead people or dead animals because the light that was once in a dead body has already returned to the source therefore the man in black's exiled consciousness can replicate those vessels because they are effectively empty devoid of occupants the man in black has now become bound to the light in a totally different way from the rest of us the source essentially powers him like an eternal battery that will never run out of juice he can no longer return to the source in death where rebirth awaits and has essentially become the sum total of his old memories and emotions as he scans more and more people in his smoke monster form throughout the centuries he gradually absorbs their memories and becomes an embodiment of the past itself the most powerful driving force within him remains the desire to escape this prison and his jailer jacob's personal growth and guilt most likely took centuries to come to terms with he initially tried to bring people to the island to help him prove his brother wrong about human nature and the island's purpose in the grand scheme of existence but this only ever ended in death carnage and corruption often with a helping hand from the man in black they come fight they destroy they corrupt it always ends the same it only ends once anything that happens before that it's just progress as a conduit for the source jacob was often guided by it knowledge would come to him like an intuition or instinct leading him to make decisions based around these ethereal instructions he always knew where to be and what needed to be done whether that was instructing the others to build a runway that would not be used for another three years or knowing where and when to be to activate candidates jacob understood that he was part of something much bigger than himself and his game with the man in black he was helping the source to avoid a catastrophic series of events in the future weaving a tapestry across time and ensuring that destiny happens on schedule meanwhile the man in black uses his various powers to make his own plans for the future let's discuss the powers of the smoke monster in more detail scanning memories the smoke monster is raw disembodied consciousness created and eternally powered by the source in this form the man in black can read the light in other people i.e it can scan their consciousness and it can absorb their memories and experiences into itself just as the source absorbs people's consciousness in death the smoke monster learns about the outside world through people that come to the island slowly growing more and more aware of life outside of the island bubble this fuels his desire to escape even further over time and the acquiring of so many other people's memories the smoke monster becomes an almost literal embodiment of the island's past whereas jacob was the man in charge of reckoning with the island's future scanning itself isn't subtle a series of bright blinding flashes shutter out of the black cloud like a camera and this is what lock saw when the monster first came across him in season 1 episode walkabout what did you see i saw a very bright light it was beautiful that is not what i saw the light was blinding and this is why he tells echo that he saw a beautiful bright light echo however saw past the flashes and into the darkness of the cloud itself if the smoke monster is disembodied consciousness perhaps the flashes of light are physical representations of what happens in the mind of a psychic when they read or scan a person such as when walt intuits are feeling it comes as a flash or when desmond sees a glimpse of the future it comes as a flash or when miles hears the memories of the dead it comes as a flash becoming the dead the smoke monster roamed the landscape of the island searching for new bodies in which to inhabit as previously established the smoke monster can only take on the form of someone who has died or something that has died because the life within them has since returned to the source this means that their body is now an empty vessel miles says of naomi's body that's not naomi that's just meat the smoke monster can only sustain a human form for indefinite periods of time if the body of that person is present on the island somewhere as we see with christian shepherd mr echo's brother yemi daniel russo's daughter alex russo and man of faith john locke the smoke monster scans the body in the same way that miles straw reads the memories of a dead person based on their remains being present the smoke monster can superficially appear as people who were never even on the island at all and certainly don't have bodies there examples of this include richard alpert's lost love isabella the warlord of mecca and the altar boy from mr echo's past possibly even hurley's imaginary friend dave and ben's mother emily linus these apparitions are based solely on someone's memory of that person which means the smoke monster won't have isabella's actual memories only richard albert's subjective remembrance of her if smokey wants to convincingly become someone who is dead he needs the body present in order to scan and absorb their memories in order to know everything that they did this is why it was so essential for him to have john locke's body back because a lot had happened between when he first scanned lock in season one and by the time lock's dead body was returned to the island in season five let's pause to discuss the actual copying process some people get confused over whether or not the smoke monster takes over a dead body or simply replicates it it is confirmed in season five's reveal of real lock's body that the monster photocopies the physical appearance it does not physically reanimate them after oceanic 815 crashes on the island the smoke monster finds christian shepherd's coffin scans him then photocopies christian in an attempt to lead jack shepard off a cliff edge he will later use christian as his primary appearance in the long con against john locke as for why and where christian's body went we know there is a complex network of caves and tunnels beneath the island built by the ancient civilization the smoke monster uses this underground network to get around the island as we see him explode out of the ground and go down holes or emerge from underground chambers he likely took christian's body underground to keep him hidden so he could convincingly become him he pulls the same trick with yemi's body in order to sell the lie that someone dead has returned to life in some way later on when he becomes fake lock the real body of john is already hidden away inside a coffin in the plane's cargo hold when turning into lock christian alex or yemi there is a transformation from ethereal smoke aka the man in black's disembodied consciousness into a physical form and it is a corporeal state in these forms he has the ability to sense touch and feel the world around him as if he were alive again when he scans locke's mind and replicates him he remembers everything that locke remembered including the thoughts that went through the man's head as he died teleportation we see him doing this on numerous occasions moving through space at the flash of a light beneath the temple he appears to bend to show him his own past then goes back underground seconds later fake alex is standing on the other side of the room teleportation is demonstrated once again at the statue as bram and his crew open fire upon fake lock he hides behind a pillar then vanishes seconds later the smug monster is creeping in from the opposite side of the chamber this teleportation power explains how he appeared on the freighter in the form of fake christian to michael michael was a candidate and his time was finally up it is possible that michael's demise via bomb blast in a confined space is what gives the man in black the idea of setting up the same killing box for the other candidates but let's hit the pause button here for a moment fans have raised questions as to the smoke monster's appearance in this scene firstly they think the freighter is outside of the island's range because it doesn't travel through time with everything else secondly critics often cite a discrepancy between fake christians manifestation on the freighter and an alleged rule about the man in black not being able to travel over water these are both misconceptions when ben pushes the wheel everything within the island bubble moves through physical space this includes the main landmass hydra island the looking glass station richard alpert and the others and the freighter wreckage offshore all of this moves together to another location in dimensional space however our losties don't move through space with richard alpert and the freighter wreckage they move through time and only predestined time travelers move with that flash i.e faraday's group on the zodiac raft and gin floating on debris in the water they all travel with the light flash because they belong in the past this is the reason why sawyer and juliet no longer see the smoke on the horizon the other misconception is that the smoke monster cannot move over water in season six fake lock makes this claim to sawyer he is also seen taking boats and acting as if he were really not much more than a man with benign intentions he is lulling everyone around him into a false sense of security to make them think that the smoke monster has limitations that it cannot function around water and will be just as slow as everyone else to move between islands but we know that this isn't true because we have seen evidence to the contrary we know that smoky can absolutely teleport between points within the snow globe around the island we have seen that he can appear in different guises almost at the same time we know that he lies in order to achieve his own ends and that he is trying to drive these candidates into a confined space with a bomb teleporting across water is how he moves between the main island and hydra island in season five when sun and frank show up at the abandoned dharma barracks fake christian appears he now knows that the ajura fight has landed on the other island and instructs sun and frank to wait for john locke the smoke monster teleports across to hydra island and finds lock's body in order to scan update and replicate telekinesis another power of the smoke monster is the ability to move mata with his mind considering the smoke monster is literally mined over mata essentially a giant free roaming cloud of electromagnetic consciousness this power makes the most sense of all telekinesis or psychokinesis is defined as influencing a material system without physical interaction the smoke monster can manipulate elementary particles around him in the same way a magnet can move metal objects within a certain proximity of its charge this is a similar though more advanced power that someone like walt demonstrates when drawing in and releasing electromagnetic energy around him it is also a microcosm of what the light beneath the island can do to metals and alloys and this is how smokey turns jacob's cabin into a fun house in season three episode the man behind the curtain he throws around furniture and rattles the walls he starts a fire then puts it out he pushes ben against the wall then manifests briefly before disappearing again the smoke monster is not omnipotent he has weakness and limitations the biggest factor that impedes him in his goals is the source itself he is tethered to it like a junkyard dog leashed by a chain to a large tree he is restricted to the energy bubble that surrounds the island and its body of water as long as the protector keeps the light on he can never leave there is an ancient dagger that dogan gives to saheed he claims that it can kill the smoke monster we have seen this dagger before it is the same blade that stabbed mother in the back in across the sea and the same blade that the man in black gives to richard alpert when he manipulates him into trying to kill jacob the man in black assumes that because he killed the former island protector with it it should be able to kill the current island protector this dagger is eventually passed on to dogen by jacob over a century later along with a story about how it killed mother in across the sea it is a mythical object but it has no special properties or powers dogan knows that saheed will not be able to kill the smoke monster with it he has simply found another way to send sahih to his death he even says if the man in black speaks it is already too late this is another statement that implies the man in black claims people simply by talking to and manipulating them as we see the dagger does nothing just like bullets and other mortal weapons used against him unlike mother the man in black is all smoke monster he is not nor ever was a protector which means he cannot be made mortal by simply passing on his power to someone else he can only be killed by turning the sauce off and depowering him the smoke monster's powers become limited after jacob dies it is useful to view jacob and the man in black as if they two parts of the same battery the positive charge has died which means the negative charge is now limited in what it can power this is why the smoke monster can no longer change appearance from lock to another dead person on the island other limitations include the sonar fence that creates a bubble around the dharma barracks of which the smoke monster cannot penetrate these pylons produce high-intensity sound waves that create an invisible barrier it can cause death or disorientation to a person crossing it but it also blocks the smoke monster and repels it the pylons are the equivalent of a copper wire mesh that blocks incoming electromagnetic frequencies and wavelengths finally this brings us to the ash circles that are used to keep smoky out of the cavern and the temple for a time this ash-like substance is most likely a diamagnetic compound possibly formed from a naturally occurring mineral on the island which has been grinded down to create an ashy powder essentially this dimagnetic compound repels the electromagnetic field of the smoke monster creating a barrier like the sonar fence but in a more primitive way the best real world example to reference is called bismuth which is an element on the periodic table that can be mined from nature and turned into powder bismuth is known to repel magnetic fields do the pictures of it remind you of anything after dogan is killed lennon says he was the only thing keeping it out as with all mythological dialogue in lost we have to extrapolate the meaning of the statement dogan wasn't literally keeping the smoke monster out of the temple simply by being alive lennon means that dogan was the only mystic left on the island after jacob died and was their last best chance of keeping the candidates alive now they will have to protect themselves the smoke monster got inside the temple because saheed most likely disturbed the ash circle on his way back inside we shall discuss the man in black's ability to claim or infect people later on when we explore the sickness the man in black's powers are what allow him to engage in a high-stakes chess match with one of the most powerful human beings on the planet one makes a move then the other makes a move and their centuries-long conflict becomes more complex as greater numbers of people become embroiled in this battle for the fate of the island and indeed existence itself but events really reached critical mass when the egyptians arrived on the island's shores the ongoing debate at the core of the lost mythology is did the egyptian period come before or after across the sea we do not know exactly when across the sea takes place in time but judging from the tools and clothing and use of latin it is estimated to be around 2000 years ago many people assume that this means it must be taking place after the egyptian settlement has come and gone from the island however the egyptian era lasted for almost 30 centuries in the real world and it overlapped with the roman era there was literally a specific period in egypt's history known as roman egypt in which the romans created a province there roman province egypt still worshipped egyptian gods and built statues to glorify these gods following the roman invasion of egypt in 30 bc the use of hieroglyphics did begin to slowly die out with the last known writing of them occurring in the 5th century a.d the point is these two cultures existed alongside one another at the same time and continue to do so for almost seven centuries it makes sense that egyptians came to the island in order to escape roman rule and to keep their culture alive the island was a place in which they could restore their civilization and rebuild the egyptian empire in a new land so the matter of which civilization came first in chronological history really has no bearing on the island's own history across the sea is taking place during the roman egyptian period claudia's people came first we know this in part because of what is emitted in across the sea if the writers wanted us to know that this episode was taking place after the egyptians had already come and gone on the island then they would have shown us something related to that period the temple the statue the lighthouse the tunnels the hieroglyphs something anything but they don't the island is intentionally depicted as being sparsely populated with no structures or civilizations in sight the caves are where mother resides because no other structures have been built yet even the man in black's village is built from scratch in a clearing claudia's people are not inhabiting pre-made structures here and it is never suggested that there are other people on the island other than claudius group from the shipwreck when mother meets claudia in the beginning of the episode the implication is that mother has been alone here for some time after all if there were egyptians still living somewhere on the island and having lots of children of their own then surely mother would have simply taken a baby from that community by now she wouldn't be so enthralled by claudia's arrival and her pregnancy this is clearly the first person mother has come across on the island in some time the cenet game washing ashore several years later as discovered by the boy in black was a way to further highlight this idea of concurrent cultures that we are currently in a period when both romans and egyptians were navigating the oceans at the same time and that egyptians were close by remember the island moves it is incredibly likely that the island is somewhere in the mediterranean at this point in time perhaps not too far away from the coast of tunisia mother takes credit for giving the boy the game in order to convince him that there is nowhere else beyond the island because she is grooming him to become her replacement further points of evidence that across the sea predates the egyptian period on the island are more obvious the stone cork and the completed donkey wheel chamber both feature hieroglyphic symbols suggesting these were constructed and installed by the egyptian settlers we see the man in black building an early version of the wheel but he is prevented from completing the work by mother she buries the chamber many years later the man in black will influence the egyptians to complete his work how do we know this because there are hieroglyphs in the finnish donkey wheeled chamber which tell us that egyptians finished construction on the wheel we also know that the man in black is transformed into the smoke monster by being sucked into the open aperture of the source if the stone cork was already in place down there then he would not have transformed at all he simply would have died slowly from the radiation exposure like the body's desmond comes across here is a screenshot of the cave before the cork is installed look at how beautifully bright the light is now here is a screenshot of the cave 2000 years later with the cork blocking the light its brightness has vastly diminished because it has been plugged up let's look a little more closely at the cork four lines of ancient script can be glimpsed on the top the upper two lines are egyptian hieroglyphs while the bottom two are cuneiform script the translations are as follows line 1 embraced that which the balance hath weighed let a path be made for the osiris in the great valley and let the osiris have light to guide him on his way now osiris was the ancient egyptian god of the dead and the underworld he was the god of the resurrection into eternal life and stood in judgment of the deceased does that sound like anyone we know the smoke monster was seen by egyptians as a separate entity from the actual form of the man in black his appearances as dead people would not have been understood as the smoke monster replicating the deceased loved ones but literally him resurrecting them hence why the egyptians worshiped the man in black in his smoke form to them he was osiris which also explains why he is depicted alongside anubis on the chamber wall beneath the temple anubis was a close ally of osiris he was the egyptian god of mummification and the afterlife as well as the patron god of lost souls great valley is clearly a reference to an afterlife much akin to the flash sideways we know that the source is where all life flows out from so perhaps the egyptians considered this hole in the cave to be the literal gateway to the afterlife their very own great valley line two on the cork he half reconciled the two fighters horus and set the guardians of life again this suggests that the egyptians have projected their own mythology onto the conflict between the two brothers of jacob and the man in black their struggle resembled that of the egyptians ancient osiris myth which is considered the most important egyptian myth set was a god who usurped and killed his own brother osiris this led to another conflict with his other brother horus both set and horus battle for control of the throne and kingship this suggests that the man in black and jacob are the two fighters mentioned on the cork and that the egyptians were split between these two guardians of life one of whom was a real guardian of life and the other who was a god of death line three translates as break the immovable yoke that we may sleep the yoke was a type of harness created for chariot horses in other words it was an unbreakable link between two beings to break this link would mean that the egyptians could finally sleep sleep is another way of saying death the final line reads is that silence may rain and we may sleep the silence most likely means an end to the conflict between jacob and the man in black and that the dead can finally be at rest it is only at the end of the series that we see the silence aka an era of peace come to the island because the immovable yoke has finally been broken the egyptian prayer finally delivered fans have noted that these bottom two lines on the stone cork are inscribed in cuneiform script which was also used throughout the egyptian period and right up to the common era another example that demonstrates the chronology of events is jacob's tapestry in the statue it depicts the story of the egyptian civilization that existed on the island a pair of wings are outstretched from an encircled eye of horus the god that the egyptians perhaps believed jacob to represent the eye is a symbol of protection royal power and good health the image also depicts 17 long arms emanating like rays out from the eye pointing towards and touching his followers as if choosing or selecting them to come with him to the island we know that jacob's touch is considered a gift the other symbols and imagery on the tapestry appear to depict jacob's utopian vision of what a harmonious island looked like before the man in black corrupted it the egyptians use jugs to fill the water from the spring and play music and dance and celebrate life they harvest crops and build a home they live in peace until the day comes in which they had to leave behind the island the tapestry ends with the representation of the departure moving away from the island either to escape it or from being banished notice the missing piece in the corner it was ripped off by jacob and used as an effective visual message to alana at the cabin the original tapestry would have looked something like this as we see jacob has a very clear affinity for this egyptian culture as demonstrated by the tapestry and the use of an anchor as his own personal crest dogan automatically knows the message inside of it is legitimate and let us not forget jacob's choice to reside inside the statue itself why would he have any affinity for a culture that died out long before he was ever there there would be no reason for him to cling to these symbols and this history if he never had any interaction with it in the commentary for across the sea showrunners damon lindelof and carlton hughes actually confirmed this historical chronology damon lindelof says if i were to have a theory that that apparatus we see in the finale with the stone sticking in the middle of the pool that sort of blocking the light maybe that apparatus wasn't created until after this event carlton q's response i think that's an incredibly likely deduction damon we have established that the egyptians created and placed the cork in the cave they also built the water runoff system which appears to channel light infused water from the source directly into several tunnels these tunnels no doubt connect to the temple spring several miles away which is also adorned in hieroglyphs both above and below plus we see egyptian engravings depicting the smoke monster being summoned from beneath the temple now let's connect all of these dots to deduce the probable events that unfolded during the egyptian period they came to the island seeking a new world away from the dying civilization under roman rule perhaps jacob hoped that they would demonstrate the good of mankind by living harmoniously on the island surely this might prove to the man in black that he had been wrong and that the island was worth protecting however jacob did not want to get involved perhaps he didn't quite know how to especially considering he had no social skills or any real understanding of human nature and this left the egyptians open to external manipulations the egyptians lived on the island for a very long time as evidenced by the infrastructure they built there the statue of tauret no doubt took many years to construct tauric was the ancient egyptian patron of childbirth and the protector of women and children this was likely erected as a monument to the island's healing properties and its power to give life wounds ailments and illnesses could heal whereas elsewhere they would certainly be fatal procreation thrived amongst the settlers and new life was born regularly their settlement was based in what russo referred to as the dark territory it is here they built the early infrastructure that would later become the temple we can deduce that the purpose of this particular structure was to worship the smoke monster judging from the hieroglyphs in the chamber beneath the outer wall the man in black made this place his home before jacob's healing spring was ever created smokey wanted to stay close to the newcomers on the island at this point it is almost certain that he wasn't killing indiscriminately he thought these people could still be of use to him especially seeing as jacob was refusing to engage or interfere the man in black wanted to use the egyptians in the same way he had used claudia's people as a means to an end the egyptians worshiped the man in black in his smoke monster form possibly mistaking him for the ancient egyptian god osiris because of his ability to seemingly manifest and resurrect the dead his human identity as the man in black would have been viewed as a separate entity altogether they summoned the black smoke for guidance instruction and judgment he was both a source of knowledge to them and potentially a weapon an extensive network of tunnels were constructed around the worshipping chamber and ran beneath the island itself these underground structures included an outpost summoning chamber in a clearing that we will later come to know as the dharma barracks perhaps the tunnels were initially built as a little underworld for the smoke monster to inhabit or perhaps the egyptians has started digging up the earth in search of something else entirely we know that the smoke monster still uses these underground tunnels to get around right up until contemporary times this is why he explodes out from beneath the ground through vents and uproots trees let's pause to talk about the summoning chamber outpost people often wonder how it exactly works in regards to its functionality we can assume that the water draining down the sinkhole activates an ancient counterweight system a counterweight that connects to the smoke monsters chamber beneath the temple think of how the flush leaver works on a toilet draining the system of water to flush out a pipeline to a lower level this counterweight shift alerts smokey to the call maybe water fills up his space and forces him out from his den and he leaves the temple grounds to see what's up meanwhile the counterweight eventually moves back into position pushing the muddy water and the plug lock back up through the hole to seal it up again we will circle back to this chamber's purpose later the temple grounds became the egyptian settlers primary domain it is unclear if they built the outer wall to be a strategic stronghold or simply to conceal their place of worship or possibly both the focal point of this fenced in area was the smoke monsters chamber from which the man in black no doubt disseminated his instructions to his followers one of the orders we can be certain that he gave to them was to seek out the light beneath the island he wanted to finish the work that he had started with claudia's people the man in black then directed him to finish his work building the wheel chamber it has often been asked if the donkey wheel chamber we see the man in black constructing in across the sea is the same chamber that resides beneath the orchid site in the future there were many wells that claudius people appear to have dug during their time on the island the man in black explains to jacob that there are very smart men among us men who are curious about how things work together we have discovered places all over this island where metal behaves strangely when we find one of these sites we dig and this time we found something we even see the remnants of a well that failed to reach an electromagnetic pocket and was abandoned in which desmond is pushed into centuries later if we really look at the well in across the sea and compare it to orcad site they are clearly different locations one is in an open wooded area while the other is deep in the jungle mother buried the first sight under the earth effectively destroying all of the work down there the second site was created many years later long after the statue of tawaret had been built after finding soyuz rope in the ground a group of egyptians excavated the ground to see where the rope led them they built a well in which they could descend into the earth then forge a tunnel towards the light and this is how we know beyond any doubt that the man in black have the egyptians in the palm of his hand because the wheel system they construct is identical to that of his design in across the sea it was surely the man in black's hope that he might still be able to escape the island in this way if he turned the wheel it would transport him off the island he would be free however instead this was the moment that he finally realized there was genuinely no escape from the island at least not for him the wheel was turned and something moved but it wasn't him and the consequences of this very first turning of the wheel is what potentially caused the ancient incident on the island the wheel channeled a large surge of energy from the light when the island moved location in this completely unnatural way it may have destabilized the core of the source itself jacob would have then been forced into action we know that only the island protector could find the heart of the island which means jacob would have led a group of the egyptians to the cave the light had been diminished and the source was now at a very real risk of burning out but this is also what made it possible for human beings to enter the cave without suffering the same fate as jacob's brother the only way to keep the light on was to plug up the hole and create a coolant system with the water we do see that caulking the source to stop it from burning out was not without consequences people could still be irradiated by the close proximity to the light in exchange for helping jacob to plug this leak in the sacrifices it would require the egyptians were granted permission to build the water runoff system that would channel the island's healing properties directly into their sacred grounds thereby creating a spring this would of course taken some time to construct the levels of radiation from this incident would have eventually cost the lives of many of the workers down there as a result of this bargain with jacob they walled off the smoke monsters worshiping chamber beneath and built over it hence why there was no clear way to access the chamber for ben in season 5 episode dead is dead it is also why the others were seemingly unaware of the existence of this chamber because it had long since been buried the healing spring became the new focal point of these sacred grounds and this might have caused a split between the egyptian settlers those that still aligned with the man in black and those that now sided with jacob which brings us back to the summoning chamber outpost that we see ben using in season 4 and season 5. the existence of this place might very well have been the result of the egyptians splitting between their two gods horus and set and so there became two warring egyptian factions on the island jacob was the giver of life the man in black was the gatekeeper of death those that aligned with the man in black needed a new home from where they could summon him in lost history is always repeating itself so perhaps what was taking places thousands of years ago was not too dissimilar to what we see playing out in the modern era between different warring factions i would be remiss to not mention the other iconography at the temple the interiors around both the temple spring and the smoke monster chamber are clearly egyptian in design as evidenced by hieroglyphics and architecture however many other aspects of the structure built above and around these ancient chambers appear to have different cultural influences the architecture of the main temple building itself actually resembles that of the ancient mayan temples with hints of the old hindu temples from the vedic period based on glimpses of external iconography the temple was clearly occupied by many different cultures and civilizations over the years as there are both buddhist and hindu influences present these cultures appear to have built upon the egyptian's initial structures adding to the architecture over time but the healing pool is what everything appears to have built around with the smoke monsters chamber long since forgotten which means the others were just many in a long line of groups to occupy this territory and treat it as a sacred place jacob brought these groups to the island across centuries and many of them made these grounds their home because of the spring and the outer walls fortification it is unknown how the egyptian civilization ended on the island but jacob's tapestry suggests that the many of the egyptians left the island in boats of their own accord possibly to escape escalating conflict with the man in black and tribal in fighting or possibly out of banishment i like to believe that jacob actually bonded with some of the egyptians that followed him and this is what reinforced his belief about the good within people and also enriched his life to the point where he adopted the cultural attitudes and symbols so maybe he was sending away his friends so they would not suffer any more losses at the hands of war and his brother's growing malevolence we know that those who remained on the island were eventually wiped out either by the man in black or general human conflict jacob confirms as much to richard in avatarno before you brought my ship there were others yes many what happened to them they're all dead all that remains of these people by the time oceanic 815 crashes are some ancient ruins and old relics from a time that has long since passed into memory and myth and yet the series of conflicts and events from this ancient period on the island directly inform everything that happens in the future and it has all been by design as a boy the man in black was in tune with the source he could see and speak to the dead the island communicated with him and told him things the island aka the source guided him to build the donkey wheel in the first place the donkey wheel that would be instrumental in creating and sustaining the world saving time loop two thousand years in the future you cannot change the past any more than you can prevent the future at least up until the year 2007. the outcomes of your life and choices are predetermined and part of a large tapestry weaved across time the reason for all the time travel is directly related to the source the prime mover which is the eternal battery that powers our existence there are two types of time travel in lost the first is physical travel in which people physically move through time the second is mind travel in which consciousness moves through time between past present and future versions of its human vessel let's start with physical travel when benjamin linus pushes the frozen donkey wheel in 2004 it begins a causal time loop that consists of various events taking place in the past caused by time travellers from the present who in turn end up shaping the events of the future this endless loop must take place or else the world will end the compass that richard gives to time travelling lock in 2007 that lock then gives back to richard in the 1950s is a perfect symbol for this causal loop the compass has no origin point it just goes around and around this loop forever other examples of the loop include young ben is shot by syed in 1977. the boy grows up to become the leader of the others and goes on to manipulate side into becoming an assassin for him kate and sawyer helped to save young ben in 1977 by giving him to richard which is how ben loses his innocence and becomes another as an adult ben will later kidnap kate and sawyer in 2004 and put them in cages this leads to the couple's romance and partnership jack carries out daniel faraday's jughead plan and drops the nuke into the dig site which ultimately ensures the hatch will be built this leads to the crashing of his plane 30 years later juliet was always pulled into the hole and detonated the bomb which negates the build-up of leaking energy and stops the world from ending in 1977. however the fallout from the electromagnetism is what ultimately causes the pregnancy issue on the island this is what ultimately brings juliet to the island in 2001 in the first place it's a causal time loop and many of the characters are in karmic ways the causes of their own suffering let's look at events from the linear point of view of the island at some point during or post the egyptian period time travelers from the future suddenly appear by what will become the orchid station site they have come from 2 000 years in the future and as we know this event cannot be unwritten because whatever happened happened so the island aka the source has to ensure that time flows towards creating a future where these people will come back to this moment in time to create a foundational causal event when john locke climbs down into the well just as a time flash occurs sawyer holds onto the rope from above he takes the rope through the time flash with him the group find themselves in the ancient past with the rope now stuck in the ground this is what will prompt ancient island inhabitants to dig there in the first place to find out where the rope leads thereby creating the existence of the first well this well will become significant to dharma and our losties many centuries later this is the same place that the man in black will later instruct and influence the egyptian inhabitants to build a donkey wheel chamber which in turn becomes the catalyst to begin the time loop in 2004 when benjamin linus turns that very same wheel so much is predicated on this one-time jump that we see take place in season 5 episode this place is death the source begins constructing the road to the time loop from this point forward to make sure this group of people come back to this point in time no matter what in order to begin the causal chain of events our time travelers also appear in various other places in history too in a non-linear order creating causal ripple effects through their actions and interactions jacob understands what is happening because the source flows through him and he therefore knows things as a result sensing the future when to wait when to act and what needs to be done it is how he knew to instruct the others to build the runway on hydra island in 2004 because it will be used in 2007 for ajira 316 to return a protector knows what needs to be done just as when jack became the protector he just knew that uncaulking the source would allow him to kill the man in black the source speaks and acts through the protector they become an emissary of the light the island guides all things to ensure that the world continues to turn even the man in black's plot to kill jacob is all part of this cycle a necessary part of keeping destiny on schedule let's move on to the second type of time travel in lost mind travel human consciousness travelling through time is mainly demonstrated through the character of desmond hume and it is here that the time travel becomes more complex however the law remains the same whatever happened happened it is all in service of causality desmond has been guided by both charles widmore and eloise hawking in his life both of whom were aware of the importance of desmond needing to go to the island because of daniel faraday's journal entry but the forces behind desmond's ultimate destiny run much deeper than this the source 2 has intervened directly in desmond's life to ensure the future unfolds as needed desmond turning the fail-safe key is what made it possible for him to have flashes of the future because of his intense electromagnetic exposure to the source's energy pocket and those flashes were the source's way of guiding desmond along a very certain path and toward specific outcomes the flashes start the way they do to help desmond understand how to navigate the visions and to shape events towards the start of the time loop i.e getting ben to push the wheel in 2004. let's run through the visions desmond sees a flash of john locke giving a speech and tells hurley hurley tells charlie that he thinks desmond can see the future charlie then witnesses desmond make some eerie predictions with lightning then drowning this causes charlie to interrogate desmond this is how charlie discovers his own destiny is to die this revelation and several other brushes with near-death predictions prepares charlie mentally and emotionally to sacrifice himself for the island desmond's visions lead him to find and save naomi her survival leads to a plan to contact the freighter desmond's visions lead him to tell charlie what he needs to do down in the looking glass station and sir charlie is finally ready to give up his life he swims down to the looking glass and unjams the signal a mission only he could have accomplished since the passcode was programmed by a musician this moment was fated to take place it is why charlie could not have died at any other point in the timeline all of this leads to the freighter's arrival and a justifiable reason for ben to turn that wheel which begins the time loop if desmond had not received these flashes of charlie's death and intervened then the causal chain of events would not have led to finding naomi or the looking glass or unjamming the signal or the freighter's arrival and there would be no motivation to turn the wheel at all ergo no time loop and that would have created a cataclysmic paradox because our losties would not travel back in time to prevent the incident from destroying the world in 1977 and this is why the flashes for desmond stop after charlie's death because the source has achieved what it needed to through him when desmond finally leaves the island and crosses the source's time dilation barrier the electromagnetic exposure he absorbed in the swan which sent his consciousness back to the past the first time in flashes before your eyes scrambles his mind it is technically 1996 desmond in the past who is having flashes of his own future on the freighter rather than the desmond of 2004 going back to the past a question that often comes up is whether or not desmond can change the past when faraday tells him that he is uniquely special and that the rules don't apply to him he means that desmond is resistant to electromagnetism which becomes important for the endgame but this also means that desmond is uniquely placed within the timeline to remember things in a non-linear capacity because desmond's consciousness is unstuck in time he can move between different points in his life back and forth learning information he could never have otherwise known that feeds into the causal chain the 2016 sci-fi film arrival deals with a similar premise involving mind travel the amy adams character is able to solve a present-day dilemma because she's able to remember the future when the problem is already solved there is even a phone call seen somewhat reminiscent of the constant faraday knows that because desmond's consciousness can travel through time he could theoretically use desmond in the past to send messages to the future when faraday knocks on the swan door in the past and desmond comes out with the gun to confront him this is something that always happened des always came out to find faraday rambling about finding eloise hawking but as the time flash hits and faraday vanishes desmond's consciousness from this interaction immediately travels forward in time to the future occurring to present day desmond is simply a memory meanwhile the desmond in the past will not recall this meeting with faraday for another several years however there is a school of thought within the lost fanbase that believes the past could indeed be altered but even with these alterations to the timeline the outcome would always be the same therefore this is what eloise hawking meant when she talked about course correction but the very idea of course correction is seemingly at odds with the rule of whatever happened happened because if you change one single thing even the tiniest of things it changes everything this is the nature of causality now let's say desmond did change things in season 3 episode flashes before your eyes the very fact his future self was awake in his past self's body would mean he would be changing things just by behaving in a different way to how he behaved the first time around this would have huge ripple effects interacting with charlie in the street would create new causal pathways because this allegedly never happened before roping in his friend to talk about time travel down the pub would also trigger a chain reaction of changes since both men would have been doing other things on this day and creating other causal chains arguing with eloise about destiny on a city bench is another significant alteration because desmond and eloise should apparently be elsewhere right now all of these things add up to create more and more ripples in the stream of time yet somehow eloise knows that the man with the red shoes is going to die if this conversation is not supposed to be happening and desmond is changing the past then how would eloise know what is about to happen to this very specific man in this very specific moment eloise has been waiting for future desmond's arrival and was prepared for the fact they would have this very conversation on this very bench in this very place where they could observe this tragic event happen she had foreseen it there is no original timeline a in which desmond never did any of this in fact we know what desmond experiences with eloise in 1996 is what always happened because when the two meet again at the lamp post in season 5 episode 316 he references their original meeting i'm sorry to have to tell you this desmond but the island isn't done with you yet this woman cost me four years of my life four years i'll never get back because you told me that i was supposed to go to that island that it was my bloody purpose which means their london bench conversation always happened desmond's unstuck consciousness from 2004 interacted with eloise in 1996. he simply didn't remember the conversation until after he turned the fail-safe key before that key was turned desmond would only recall being belittled by charles widmore and thrown out drowning his sorrows down the pub looking for an engagement ring but getting cold feet then breaking up with penny by the thames he would not remember the eloise part of it because his 2004 consciousness is fully awake and in control in that scene it is absolutely worth noting how desmond gets struck in the head by the cricket bat an event he recalled happening to someone else this comes at the end of his mind travelling adventure and this whack to the head no doubt gave him a bad concussion afterwards one which likely resulted in 1996 desmond having a hazy and confused remembrance of this whole day everything 2004 desmond says and does is what always happened it's just that 1996 desmond didn't remember it until he wakes up in the jungle after detonating the energy pocket in the hatch eight years after the fact this is why the episode establishes that 1996 desmond was already having doubts about himself and his relationship with penny before ever meeting eloise and this is why 1996 desmond isn't suddenly confused as to why he and penny are no longer together nothing changed from the original timeline this always happened the only time that string theory or the concept of multiverse is possibly existing is ever demonstrated within the show was with the flash sideways but as we discovered the sideways had nothing to do with the pass being changed in 1977 or with alternate timelines created by our characters in fact the sideways was beyond time itself connecting the detonation of jughead with the sideways was a red herring daniel faraday claimed that the only hope they could possibly have of being able to change the pass was by detonating that hydrogen bomb and this did nothing but play into and ensure the timeline that already existed if a nuclear bomb couldn't remotely change the flow of the river then desmond stood no chance you can't change the songs that are on the record only the order in which you listen to them that is what we see desmond doing remembering the songs in a non-linear order whatever happened happened looking closer at the events of desmond's life does nothing but reinforce the notion that destiny determines the outcomes of our lives whether we like it or not an entire decade of desmond's life unfolds with the specific purpose of preparing him mentally and physically for pushing the button yes i was scared about the wedding so i had a few pains too many maybe i i raised my eyes and i asked am i doing the right thing and that's the last thing i remember and when i woke up i was lying on my back in the street i don't know how i got there and there was this man standing over me ruth and he reached out his hand and he said to me can i help you brother and the first thing i noticed was the rope tied around his waist and i looked at him and i knew i knew i was supposed to go with him i was supposed to leave everything that mattered behind sacrificed all of it for a greater calling this intangible feeling that desmond describes coming from within himself this pull towards a higher calling it comes from the source and this is a perfect distillation of how characters are guided by something from within that they cannot explain an impulse we cannot quite put our finger on our need to turn left instead of right this feeling drove desmond towards brother campbell and becoming a monk he took a vow of silence and through his time at the monastery he learns to embrace solitude so was this higher calling really about being a monk or was it about guiding him towards something else altogether his relationship with penny goes on to define his life but once this relationship blooms to a point of commitment desmond gets cold feet again and does what he does best he runs away this time to join the army which teaches him discipline regimented routine obedience and an ability to perform tasks over and over when his consciousness is scrambled 1996 desmond begins having visions of his future aboard the freighter in 2004. as a result of these events desmond seeks out his constant and the broken-hearted penny is reminded of her love for this man when he shows up on her doorstep this moment between him stops her from being able to completely move on from what they had after all he promised to call her in eight years who could forget a promise like that desmond would go on to be incarcerated in a military prison some years later for reasons never fully revealed we can assume that it had something to do with desertion considering widmore called him a coward and we know desmond runs away from his problems being in prison would have seen desmond living in a confined cell day in and day out with nothing and no one but himself for company these three different chapters of his life were all in service of preparing him for his future in the hatch the solitude of the monastery the discipline of the army the confinement of a prison cell we know he goes on to cross paths with libby another person destined for the island who gifts desmond her late husband's boat this boat is what takes him to the island where he spends the next three years putting his experience and disciplines to the test all of which would lead him to turning that key and exposing him to a full blast of electromagnetic energy thereby unsticking his consciousness from his body so he could perpetuate this cycle this exposure is also what makes it possible for desmond to uncork the source another three years later because his consciousness is unstuck in time and therefore he is not limited to nor anchored within his physical body being exposed to the full force of the source's energy does not uncouple his consciousness as it did with the man in black centuries ago desmond's experiences in the hatch and all the years leading up to his time pushing the button has protected him from suffering such a fate desmond's life was by design so he could achieve these very acts so he could save the world again and again to make sure that the record continues to turn perhaps the best and most involved case study surrounding the mechanics of time travel and time loops in lost are the stories of charles widmore and eloise hawking young charles is brought to the island sometime during the 1950s by presumably richard alpert he is a devout believer in the island willing to maim and kill on command he meets john locke who claims to be from the future charles falls in love with fellow other eloise she becomes the leader of the others and wages a cold war against dharma charles gets eloise pregnant and they prepare to parent a child together young dharma defector named benjamin linus pops up on charles's radar after he is healed in their sacred temple waters charles is uncertain of this boy from the start meanwhile more people claiming to be from the future show up including jack shepherd and daniel faraday eloise kills daniel only to realise that he was her son from the future and the same man she spoke to as a young woman in 1954. she decides to assist jack in setting off jughead to neutralize the electromagnetic leak caused by the incident thereby preventing the hatch from ever needing to be built however they do not realize that this is what always happened and the bomb ultimately ensures that the hatch is built the losties vanish in a flash of light after detonation as far as charles eloise and richard are concerned the losties were all vaporized either way they learned their first lesson about time the past and future cannot be changed we are never made privy to all of the contents in faraday's journal but we can be certain of several things it is filled with information on the nature of time travel first and foremost it features detailed research on the dharma initiative it is also filled with very specific instructions on how to operate the pipelines at the tempest station which widmore will later use against dharma but more importantly the journal contains information about desmond hume including a chronicle of his meeting with daniel at oxford in 1996 it also depicts many details of the future life to be lived by charles and eloise's unborn son they learn about desmond hume and future events that have yet to take place and come to understand that unless the future plays out as written with team sawyer and team jack travelling back in time then the incident will never be averted and the world will end in 1977. if not from the incident then certainly from a time paradox this mission to maintain the timeline becomes all-consuming to eloise in particular eloise and widmore separate after the fallout from the incident causes the pregnancy problem she leaves the island to plan for the future of her son while widmor stays behind without eloise's influence widmore allows his worst instincts to take over he becomes somewhat of a tyrant he authorizes the purge of dharma and presides over an island genocide following this massacre ben engineers a way to overthrow widmore for breaking the laws of their community it is implied that the others have strict rules about leaving the island and having relationships with mainlanders we will explore the rules of the others and the rules of an island protector in a future video widmore is banished for leaving the island regularly and having a relationship with a woman from the outside world and getting her pregnant with his daughter penny after his exile widmore amassed a small fortune and used his money for various enterprises around the globe he controlled the flow of knowledge regarding the island on the outside world keeping it hidden and secret from those that might try to seek it out he never got over ben's betrayal or his ultimate banishment feeling cheated out of his leadership widmore spends vast resources in trying to find the island again and taking back his leadership of the others meanwhile eloise raises their son to fulfill his destiny of becoming a physicist she controls as much of his life and choices as she can all in service of leading him to his death on the island at her own hands widmore could not forget about his responsibilities to the time loop either he and eloise establish an unhappy collaboration in shaping the future in order to fulfill the past it was no coincidence that penny met desmond at the monastery the monastery shared a connection to the church that eloise acquired from dharma and operated out of los angeles we know this church is the lamp post which is secretly used to track the location of where the island is going to be we know that there is a connection between the lamppost and desmond's monastery because of a photo on brother campbell's desk eloise is a close friend of the institution as is charles widmore and penny was there to run an errand for her father widmore already knew who desmond was and where he needed to go his subsequent treatment of desmond was based almost entirely on putting the man on a path to the island no doubt widmore resented desmond primarily because he knew that the man could do nothing but go on to break his daughter's heart desmond's destiny was on the island and in the hatch the relationship is brought to an end with help from eloise who interacts with desmond's unstuck consciousness with help and guidance from the island it is never confirmed in canon but the only way eloise could have this very specific interaction with desmond and to know the fate of the man with red shoes is if she is also being guided or instructed by the source in some way is it possible that ever since the incidents fall out over the island in 1977 that she has been having flashes of the future just like desmond did is that what made her leave the island and charles in the first place we can only speculate but this remains a likely possibility you knew that was going to happen didn't you meanwhile widmore orders his man on the ground matthew aberdeen to watch over another predestined island traveller john locke a man that widmore met as a young man sir abedin helps to put john on his path to the island by suggesting the walkabout an idea john will take up several years later when the timing is right thanks to jack and the time travelers from 1977 the crashing of oceanic 8 15 is another event widmore nose is destined to occur which gives him more than enough time to set up the fake plane wreckage with a full manifest of dead passengers deep in the sundra trench widmore gathers together other predestined time travelers for the freighter trip including his son daniel miles storm and charlotte lewis making sure the right people are in place both widmore and eloise are puppeteering events to ensure that the timeline is fulfilled to avert a paradox they both know that no matter what they do eloise is always destined to murder their son and tragically this will help save the world you can't fight fate after the freighter departs with a team dedicated to removing benjamin linus from power at any cost the island disappears and the oceanic six return home charles keeps a watchful eye over them and continues his war with ben who employs saeed to kill members of the widmore organization some time before locke's arrival charles finds himself visited by jacob who sets him back on a righteous path he tells him to help loch and the oceanic six find their way back to the island more importantly jacob tells him to bring back desmond and explains the plan involving removing the corp to depower the man in black this is why in season 5 we see mercenaries running around with tranquilizer attempting to get the oceanic six back to the island they are on widmore's payroll however ben linus keeps beating him to the punch in their little chess game over who will get to return to the island first by the time charles and eloise reunite after desmond is shot and put in hospital by a vengeful ben it becomes clear that the journal has finally run its course now that the oceanic six have gone back to the island and hit the time window eloise's destiny has been met and fulfilled and as she says to penny for the first time in a long time she doesn't know what is going to happen charles widmore however has one last job to do before he fulfills his destiny bringing back desmond to the island widmore was driven by ego and ambition most of his life but he also had an awareness of future events and the need to fulfill the timeline in order to save the world yes he was a ruthless man who stepped on people to get the outcomes he believed were necessary and he was ultimately blinded by his vendetta against the man who betrayed and usurped him which is ultimately his downfall but he managed to start batting for the good guys just in the nick of time thanks to a visit from jacob before his death he manages to redeem his blood-soaked legacy by helping the island defeat an enemy far worse than he ever was but there is also something else going on at the heart of this time loop it provides an opportunity for the man in black to exploit the chain of events for his own gain the cavern is an interesting microcosm of activity within the show major plot points revolve around it let's clarify what was happening and more importantly why it was happening the cabin was built by horus goodspeed in either the late 70s or early 80s after the purge wiped out the dharma initiative jacob and richard began using the cabin as a drop point for messages perhaps jacob would leave written instructions there or perhaps the two men would meet for more involved conversations by this point jacob had long since gone into hiding from the man in black the cavern became known as a place that jacob occupied from time to time when ben became leader of the others richard might have told him this perhaps he told ben that when the day comes for him to meet jacob it would be at the cabin we see that the cabin was surrounded by ashes to keep the smoke monster out this was no doubt put in place by dogen and lennon who were part of the same protective group within a group as alana and bram it was their role to protect jacob however that ash circle was broken at some point pre-2004 we do not know by who but it was most likely intentionally broken by jacob himself in order to guide events towards the time loop he allowed the man in black inside some time before the cabin was built the man in black had been watching benjamin linus perhaps ever since the boy first came to the island after the purge the man in black would have seen how willing ben was to betray his own people and kill his leaders this put ben right at the forefront of anti-candidates as in potential jacob killers when locke demanded that ben take him to jacob ben had to take him somewhere to save face so he took him to the only place he was aware of jacob ever having been the smoke monster scanned john locke when he first arrived on the island not only was he a candidate he was a very special candidate with a deep connection to the source itself he had been on the island in the past creating his own legend among the others priming himself for leadership decades in the future unfortunately locke was also easily manipulated and amenable for coercion and the smoke monster was watching the two men make a pilgrimage to the cavern ben puts on a show of pretending to be special lock rumbles his game the man in black uses his telekinesis to turn over the cabin and begin his long gestating ruse he speaks to lock and only lock help me he says this sows the seeds of discontent between the two men remember the man in black needed to become a special candidate that would gain him access to jacob's whereabouts and he needed a motivated anti-candidate to carry out jacob's assassination for that he would need locke killed and then broken the man in black almost gets what he wants straight away as ben shoots lock if lock had died in that dharma pit the man in black might very well have assumed the man's guise straight away in order to become the leader of the others however locke survives because he cannot be killed on the island until he has fulfilled his time loop destiny the man in black must engineer a more elaborate way for these two men to end up where he needs them he has to get more involved and give direct orders lock can only die after the wheel has been turned and once he is off the island at the same time the island also needs to make sure events line up the way that they are supposed to lock attempts to return to the cabin for further instruction several days after his first visit but the cabin is now moving through time and space because lop cannot be told to move the island until the pieces on the board are in the right place i.e the oceanic six are off the island because they don't travel back in time with everyone else until much later once everyone is in place the island gives lock the dream about horus goodspeed and guides him back to the cabin the man in black has been waiting he poses as fake christian and pretends to speak on the behalf of jacob once again he is using the cabin to engineer loch's demise and ben's murderous motivation he tells locke to move the island because he knows or at least senses that john locke cannon will be killed once he is off the island however two things happen that the man in black did not plan for one ben pushes the wheel not lock two most of the candidates the man in black needs to kill so he can escape the island have already left the oceanic six he needs them back so the man in black waits for lock to return to the donkey wheel chamber which exists within its own time pocket in the present day he tells lock directly that he must bring everyone back who left including ben then he confirms to lock that he has to sacrifice himself this reaffirms the message the man in black of 2007 has perpetuated back through time this exchange between lock and fake christian in the wheel chamber is actually occurring in 2007 separately from where soyuz group has ended up in the ancient past during the flash in the well locke was pulled into the donkey wheel chambers time pocket ajira 3 16 has already returned to the island fake christian already knows that locke will die and that ben will return with the body and candidates he knows that eloise hawking will give the oceanic six instructions on how to find their way back to the island this moment occurs in the timeline right around the point that fate locked left ben with son in the abandoned dharma barracks to run an off-screen errand that we never see nor that is ever followed up on the reason why we never see that errand is because we already know what it was fake lock transforms into fake christian and waits in the wheel chamber for the real lock to appear this is why fake christian knows exactly what he needs to say to lock because it has already all happened the cavern is the trigger point for the man in black's long con there are a few bumps in the road and things do not go according to his plan while the island starts to move the cabin until the time is right for the time loop to begin but everything that happens is all predestined to take place in the way that it does the man in black is a major component in why the time loop takes place even if he doesn't fully understand his role in it all he wants is to become lock and manipulate ben so he can kill jacob and wipe out the candidates but it all starts with the cavern as previously established a protector is the human conduit for the source they are imbued with certain abilities in order to serve the island effectively unlike the human rules of the others the rules of protector maintains are unbreakable laws they are enforced by the will of the source itself at least until the next person takes over the role and becomes the new guardian however a protector does not have absolute power we see jacob tell richard that he is limited in what he can and cannot do for instance he cannot resurrect the dead because the light inside that person has returned to the source only the source can choose who comes back but jacob can manipulate the light within a person if they are still living let's go back to across the sea back when mother was making the rules she tells the brothers that she has made it so that they can never hurt each other yet lo and behold we see the boys fight without anything stopping them so what does mother really mean by hurt she means that she has made it so that jacob and the man in black cannot kill one another can't kill me jacob just made it that way you can't don't worry brother i'm not going to kill you this rule exists because the brothers were both candidates for the role of protector therefore they could not be killed until their purpose had been served essentially a candidate cannot die without the island's permission think of michael dawson he tries to kill himself several times but the island does not allow him to succeed even other people try to do it for him and fail that's because michael is a candidate and being a candidate isn't simply about being in contention for the role of guardian it is also about serving a specific purpose in the grand tapestry of time we shall explore the nature of the candidates in greater detail in the next chapter the important point to take away from this discussion is that jacob and the man in black are candidates protected by the source until they have fulfilled their respective destinies fans often question the enforceability of these rules and how unbreakable they truly are after all we do see them supposedly broken in across the sea and jacob does inadvertently kill his own brother firstly i would like to play a deleted scene from the show where are we going your friends are on the other island we're going over there and once we find them you're going to shoot them claire what why why would i do that so that we can leave the island so that you can go home and be aaron's mother isn't that what you want i don't understand why why can't we just leave because of jacob's precious candidates he touched them i can't leave the island while they're alive those are the rules can't just break the rules do you think if i could break the rules i would still be here now this scene was deleted for a reason and therefore cannot be considered officially canon anymore but it most certainly helps to illustrate the thought process behind the rules in the writers room they are not simply part of a voluntary game between players they are enforced by the source and cannot be broken as a result in the same way we cannot break the laws of physics in the real world so how did jacob technically kill his brother if mother's rules made that impossible it is actually very simple mother's rule stopped applying the moment jacob took over the role and she was killed a new protector means new rules and as with any new management coming in to take over things it usually signifies a new way of doing business too the only reason why jacob's rules outlived him after his death is because no one had filled his vacant position until the penultimate episode most of jacob's rules revolve around preventing the man in black from harming him and his chosen people or from leaving the island but how does creating rules work how can jacob physically stop the man in black from leaving to understand this we have to circle back to the notions explored in chapter one about how the source is the prime mover of everything we see happening on the show we know that the man in black is tethered to the light at the heart of the island it is the eternal battery that powers him he cannot escape without extinguishing it we also know that jacob is an extension of the source's will he is the transformer through which the power flows this gives him a degree of control over what the smoke monster can and cannot do and this is how he wields a controlling influence over the man in black in the same way he can exert influence over the candidates he has touched activating their inner light and drawing it back to the source like metal to a magnet the rest of jacob's specific rules are ultimately bound to fulfilling the causal time loop we see take place in season 5. hence why key characters cannot die until they have completed their role in destined to take place events and why certain people cannot find nor leave the island until the time is right it is not simply that jacob clicks his fingers and a new rule exists the source has to be able to enforce it jacob demonstrates an awareness of the time travel when he tells fake lock with his dying breath coming [Music] he is referring to the candidates returning to the present day from the past as if he could feel their final time flash coming his awareness of the time travel shenanigans is evidence further when he later tells hurley chin knows tell him to take you to the hole in the wall where he was with the french team through that opening you can get into the temple jin's encounter with the french team took place seemingly without jacob physically present to witness any of it which means jacob has been aware of the time loop and the time travelers for a very long time many of his specific rules are inextricably tied to the outcomes of this time loop as are a majority of the decisions he makes throughout the latter half of the 20th century the source was moving our characters through time and because jacob is deeply connected to this power he helps to weave these threads towards the future so his version of the rules are rooted in determinism which basically means that all events including human agency are ultimately determined by causes external to an individual's will that external cause is the source so the rules that a protector creates and maintains must be based upon what the source dictates that it can or cannot control this isn't mysticism this is causal determinism okay so what we're gonna go back and kill hitler don't be absurd no rules rules that can't be broken and so it goes the rules govern the reality of the island and determine the trajectory of characters if you still have work to do or a purpose to serve then the island will ensure that you live long enough to complete that work rules are made up by the various communities on the island with varying degrees of enforceability but a protector's rules go beyond this they are inextricably tied to the nature of time and fate and they determine who lives who dies who can leave the island and who must stay [Music] jacob claims that he always selects candidates based on the fact that they are flawed people who are alone and lost in their lives it's because they remind him of his own existence and experiences he is after all a flawed lost and lonely man himself however what he neglects to mention is how the will of a protector and the will of the island are almost impossible to separate the island guided jacob to select the candidates this is heavily implied in season six when we see how the mirrors in the lighthouse work jacob makes his choices on instinct and intuition but that instinct is still guided by the source itself after all our losty's time travelling into the past already predetermines that jacob will select them in the future he has no objective choice in this yet he still sees their selection as candidates as being his own decision this is because he cannot or does not distinguish between his own intuition and the island's will up until 1867 jacob was bringing people to the island to try and form a society that would prove that human beings were inherently good and that the island was worth protecting that this place had a grander purpose but the man in black remained unconvinced and grew more and more angry with his situation his anger turned to malevolence the more and more memories that he scanned only added to his rage not only was he absorbing negative emotions and memories he was also seeing what the world beyond his prison looked and felt like a reminder of what he could never have this fueled him in plotting his brother's death it was only after richard alpert washes up and a real attempt is made on his life that jacob realizes three important things the first is that the man in black is serious about trying to kill him their animosity has now moved to the next level the second important realization jacob has is that one day the man in black will eventually succeed in finding a loophole the third realization is that jacob needs to stop bringing people to the island simply to create a peaceful civilization that will live harmoniously together it is clear that he will never be able to convince his brother of the island's importance nor will he ever be able to save his brother's soul jacob's inability to stop or destroy the smoke monster comes from his own deep sense of guilt over his actions in creating it so jacob starts actively looking for replacements and more importantly engineering the man in black's demise thus begins jacob's candidate search and also his increasing awareness of the future the time loop and his own role within it let's look at the lighthouse a structure built by the egyptians we can assume that it was originally built simply to act as a normal lighthouse guiding in ships sort of like an ancient looking glass station jacob later appropriates this lighthouse tower for his own purposes or he may have even instructed the egyptians to build it specifically for helping him bring people to the island how and why it was originally built doesn't matter what matters is how it was eventually used almost 2 000 years later the stone structure and hieroglyphs imply that this structure is fairly ancient the central bowl was perhaps originally used for lighting fires that would guide in ships however the mirrors and compass dial which is operated by a system of gears and pulleys appears to be 19th century in its origin this would align closely with the arrival of richard alpert in 1867 and jacobs launched to find a replacement the compass dial might even have been constructed by jacob shortly after the events of avaturno it appears that he was building an alidade also known as a turning board this is a device that allows a person to cite a distant object and use the line of sight to perform a task think of this system as a really really long telescope only instead of sighting distant ships the mirrors help to sight people in distant lands remember the light beneath the island can channel and refract time itself the lighthouse mirrors channel and refract this very same light so that the source can show jacob where he needs to look the mirrors provide windows into the lives of people who are predestined to come to its shores the mirrors are a targeting system that help jacob to project or teleport himself off the island to go through the looking glass and activate his candidates he was essentially travelling on a beam of light hence how he could travel all over the world without limitation or the apparent need for transportation he visits hurley in los angeles and within several days he is back on the island in the four-toed statue awaiting the arrival of the man in black we know he didn't take a plane and there is no way he could have sailed back to the island in that time on his first time operating the newly installed compass dial jacob used the pulleys to revolve it around until the mirror reflected something other than its physical environment in the tower jacob would have seen his first candidate reflected in the mirror as shown to him by the island this reflection corresponded to a specific degree on the compass dial and said jacob would associate this first candidate with the degree number they aligned with on the dial for example maybe the first candidate he ever saw in the mirror and watched was a person named wallace who could be seen at degree 108. therefore his name would be associated with 108. this is why candidate names and numbers do not appear in a consecutive order their number assignments are based on when they appeared in the mirror and where they correspond to on the dial jacob would watch a candidate learn about who they were then write their name down on the dial next to the degree they aligned with he came to understand that these were people the island needed people who had destinies to fulfill whether they would become jacob's ultimate replacement or not the very nature of the lighthouse strongly implies that the island was literally guiding jacob in who he would watch and who he would select for candidacy as for the cave of candidate names a case could be made for one of two possibilities the first is that the cave was really the man in black's outpost as a location it suits his modus operandi pretty well it is incredibly hard to access subterranean underground very dark almost the opposite of the lighthouse which is a high tower easily accessible and open and the very definition of light could it be that the man in black was also keeping score of the candidates essentially copying jacob's homework to keep track of all the people he needed to target and keep an eye on it is entirely plausible however the other possibility is that jacob duplicated his list of names inside the cave specifically so that the man in black would find them after all there is a ladder descending down to the opening which the smoke monster would not need we know that jacob was sowing the seeds of the man in black's destruction for many decades he tells kate that it's just a line of chalk in a cave the job is yours if you want it kate which implies that crossing off names from the wall doesn't stop someone from being a candidate it's only if they die and their light returns to the source that they cease to be in contention for the job kate's name being in the cave but crossed off made the man in black underestimate her importance and we know she is the one who ultimately delivers the kill shot jacob also held back on activating both hurley and saeed until very late in the game too which caused him to stay below the man in black's radar for a long time and we know that saeed is the only reason that the rest of the candidates survive to the end game and that hurley is the one the island ultimately needed to take over the role the lighthouse only ever showed jacob who the island needed at a specific time in other words back in the early 20th century when jacob was finding his candidates the degrees on the dial were not all actively showing reflections yet degree 23 jack's number had yet to appear notice how the only images we see depicted in the mirrors by the time jack and hurley use the lighthouse in season six are of active candidate locations while the other notches of long dead candidates show nothing at all which means the mirrors only reflect relevant active candidates at the time any which way we slice it jacob's selection of his 2004 candidates was entirely predetermined this is due to the time travel loop and this is where our understanding of jacob's decision-making gets more complicated because we are talking about determinism from the point of view of someone who can sense that predetermined future jacob recognises the importance of the time travellers when he becomes aware of them let's say that jacob first senses the presence of time travelers way back when soil left a rope in the ground during the egyptian period on the island this knowledge of these strangers from another time might have come to jacob without full context yet he only finally understands their purpose in the larger tapestry of time once they appear to him in the lighthouse mirrors for example sawyer appears throughout the history of the island more specifically he will appear in 1974 and start to live out a life with the dharma initiative on the island jacob will observe this between 1974 and 1975 sawyer appears as a child in the lighthouse mirror which corresponds to degree number 15. jacob makes note of this then uses the mirror to visit soyroth island as a child during the lowest point in the boy's life he touches and activates young james as a candidate and finally understands the purpose of james ford in the grander scheme knowledge doesn't come to a protector fully formed think of it like this jacob is piecing together a very large puzzle over a fairly long period of time he receives different non-consecutive pieces at different points in order to create an overall picture of the future the lighthouse mirrors and the corresponding numbers and his candidates are those puzzle pieces the best way to understand how this internal process works is to look at how a newly anointed jack intuits what needs to happen next in the series finale somehow he instinctively knows that by taking fate lock to the heart of the island it will allow him to kill the man in black once and for all he doesn't know exactly how yet but it will all become clear when the time comes a protector holds a puzzle piece in their hand but they only understand the full picture once that piece slots into place this is why jacob is selective in what he says and what he does sometimes he needs to directly guide people on their paths other times he gives them a nudge but most times he lets the island's influence over the world do its thing and gives people the space to find their own destinies in their own time because that is how it is supposed to be jack is here because he has to do something he can't be told what that is he's got to find it himself [Music] sometimes you can just hop in the back of someone's cab and tell them what they're supposed to do other times you have to let them look out at the ocean for a while you said you'd protect the island and that's what i'm doing you're committing suicide not this is the way it has to happen this is what i'm supposed to do you're not supposed to die the island needs you really [Music] we need you [Music] mr echo was killed off in lost for reasons beyond the writer's control his original arc was mapped out for several seasons but when the actor playing echo wanted to leave the show for personal reasons the writers had to pass off elements of his storyline to new series regulars desmond and ben as his character arc now stands within the show mr ekko's death can be explained within the canon in fairly simple terms the man in black has spent years searching for the right vessel to carry him and the right anti-candidate i.e someone he could become and someone else he could prime to kill jacob john locke and benjamin linus were certainly on his radar but mr echo was a fascinating study he comes across echo in the jungle in season 2 episode the 23rd psalm and scans him the man in black instantly sees that this former warlord turned man of faith ticked all of the necessary boxes not only did echo have a connection to the nigerian plane on the island and the body stashed within it but his blood soaked passed an overwhelming guilt over the death of his brother yemi provided plenty of ammunition for future manipulations plus ekko's spiritual desire for redemption was also strong if his deceased brother's body was brought here then perhaps the island has grander plans for echo tunde either way he is one to watch the man in black tables his encounter with echo highly interested in the man's potential use to him furthermore jacob had yet to make mr echo a candidate at this point in time much like hurley and saheed echo was only a potential remember it wasn't until after the oceanic six left the island that hurley and saheed would be anointed by jacob's touch the same might have also been true for the island's resident priest in the grand scheme echo's purpose on the island was far greater than he has ever given credit for his role was to save the world when no one else would had he not taken over pushing the button from john locke in the hatch the pocket of electromagnetism beneath the swan station would almost certainly have built up to critical mass and destroyed the world this is why he is given the dream about the hatch in season two the island needs him to pick up where jon has left off between finding the pearl station and desmond's return the timer would have counted all the way down after serving this very specific purpose ekko is tested further by the man in black to see how amenable for coercion he will be using yemi as his guys the man in black asks echo to confess his sins to lay bear his guilt and to seek penance had echo done this it would have no doubt made him a perfect pawn in the plot to kill jacob fake yemi could have manipulated him into striking out at this false god idol on the island we can only imagine how ekko might have reacted to the existence of a jacob however ekko proved to be too strong-willed he rejected the man in black's manipulation and sought no forgiveness he only did what he needed to in order to survive his harsh violent life this rejection of guilt and weakness made him much more of a threat the man in black had to weigh the risk what if jacob had bigger plans for echo what if ekko was going to be made a candidate what if echo became the next protector forget john locke or jack shepard being in charge ekko would have been an immovable object to the smoke monster's unstoppable force so the man in black made a judgment call a literal judgment call mr echo will be better off dead and this leads to the priest's demise in his final moments ekko tells john locke that he saw the devil he then says you're next lock interprets this wrongly he tells it to the group as if ekko said they will all be next but echo specifically meant john as we see later on this turns out to be true after a life of violence and spiritual conflict mr echo finally dies in the arms of another man of faith and we get our very first glimpse of the flash sideways as a young echo reunites with his brother yemi this also explains why we don't see ekko in the flash sideways with everyone else in season six he has already moved on with the most important person from his life the source is calling him home mr echo may not have been one of the chosen candidates but that does not mean he was not important the island doesn't just speak to a protector it speaks to many people in various different ways wake up john you all right what are dreams they are defined as a succession of images ideas emotions and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep at the neurological core dreams are simply electrical impulses in our brains the human brain consists of billions of neurons and these electrical impulses are sent from neuron to neuron which enables messages to be transmitted in your mind as previously established the source is what powers human consciousness so therefore it is what generates these electrical impulses and this is how it communicates to people subconsciously whilst they sleep we see multiple characters in the show have dreams hallucinations and visions we will go through all of the significant dreams in lost and the various meanings but first i would like to address a common divisive misconception up front some fans believe that the man in black was responsible for giving the dreams on the show and this is primarily because of john locke's stream in season 4 episode cabin fever the nature of the information imparted from horus goodspeed to john locke during this stream suggests such a connection because dream horus tells lot that jacob has been waiting for him for a long time and that by finding horus's body and therefore the cabin lock will find jacob so this dream is assumed to be a key part of the man in black's long con however every single power that the man in black has is eventually revealed and confirmed in season six we previously discussed the nature of the smoke monster's powers in great detail in chapter 10. at no point is it ever suggested or demonstrated that the man in black have the power to manipulate people's dreams those that subscribe to this theory argue that locke needs to believe that he is going to see jacob and that jacob lives in the cabin the problem with this notion is locke already believes that the cavern is occupied by jacob because of the visit he had with ben in season 3 episode the man behind the curtain he does not need a dream for this information to be confirmed what he needs is the location of the cabin which has been moving around the island chapter 7 explains how and why the cabin is moving if you would like more details on this plot point the only purpose that the horus goodspeed dream serves is to help john locke to relocate the cabin the island was moving the cabin so lock would not find it until the timing was right once all the pieces were in the correct place the island speaks to lock through the good speed dream in order to trigger the next chain of events just as it did in season 1 with the nigerian plane and season 2 with the pearl station if the man in black is indeed behind the cavern fever dream then why does horus goodspeed say to go and see jacob at the cabin but then the man in black whilst posing as fake christian contradicts this information he says that he is merely speaking on jacob's behalf why didn't the man in black literally just say he was jacob in order to carry on the masquerade established in the dream why would he contradict his own lie like this or complicate his long con why is this inconsistency within the same episode even there at all it is there because the information from the cavern fever dream and the information coming from the man in black's own mouth are from two entirely different sources it's just that both sources are looking for the same outcome for different reasons the island wanted and needed john locke to believe that fake christian was an advocate for jacob authorised to speak on the man's behalf because this meeting in the cabin is absolutely crucial it is what ultimately leads to the frozen donkey wheel being turned the wheel that creates the world saving time loop the man in black's loophole plan was integral to this all taking place as was locked believing that the man in black was speaking on behalf of jacob the whole plot to kill jacob was 100 necessary to perpetuating the time loop even though the man in black did not realize that he was a key player in the island's master plan a causal chain of events designed to preserve existence as we know it there are no coincidences or accidents in lost the island is the prime mover throughout the whole show we know that human consciousness is forged within the source and that the light has the ability to manipulate both the conscious and subconscious human mind now let's look back at the other dreams on the show the majority of them only make sense in context coming from the island not the man in black a lot of these dreams were premonition-like often serving practical purposes in getting characters where they needed to be john locke's stream in season 1 episode deus ex machina features mr echo's drug plane crashing and a flash of boone's encroaching death the logic behind this particular dream has already been thoroughly explored in chapter four of this series which discusses the nature of the island and its powers to quickly recap it lockstream was specifically designed to show lock the way to the plane which was a nexus point for activity on the island and to lead boone to his untimely death this event would lead lock back to the hatch to inadvertently save desmond's life and therefore the world this is why the island communicates a secret piece of boone's childhood to lock the dream apparition of boon recites that teresa falls up the stairs teresa falls down the stairs this nugget of knowledge is what helps to convince boone that locke is a man worth following even into potential danger the island then ensures that boone will be the one to climb into the plane by taking away lock's ability to walk properly notice how after boone is sacrificed and the aforementioned chain of events have been set in motion lock suddenly has no problem walking mr echo's dream of his brother yemi in the hatch is also in service of the island at this point in season two john locke is more than ready to stop pushing the button which we all know would have been a catastrophic error the island needs to buy some time until desmond returns and has the courage to turn the fail-safe key echo's whole purpose on the island is to step up to this moment in order to save the world until the key can be turned if our resident priest had not been given this dream about the hatch then there would have been no one to save the world echo's dream was the start of this particular causal chain if the man in black was trying to manipulate echo here what was his goal because he certainly doesn't care if the light goes out and the island is destroyed he doesn't even believe that the light is important in any way yet the yemi in echoes dream says the work being done in this place is important echo it is more important than anything and it is in danger you must help john he has lost his way you must make him take you to the question mark that hardly sounds like something old smokey would say ben indicates that he used to have dreams that guided him in his decision-making process this suggests that the island was also influencing his actions in the same way it does with locke perhaps it was through dreams that ben was told about the summoning chamber and how to call the monster other dreams include the drug-induced visions that both boon and lock experience as a result of a hallucinogenic paste this paste appears to be an alchemy of island plant life boone's hallucination helps to divorce him from the emotional obsession with shannon and to refocus on helping lock with the hatch this vision cements his loyalty to the resident man of faith and ensures that boone will be willing to go above and beyond to help him out lock's own vision quest is a dream that helps him get back on track following his total rejection of fate at the end of season 2. this dream uses his guilt over boone's death to guide him through some of the events to come the construct of this dream is an airport the dream boom aka the island's voice tells locke that charlie and claire will be okay but only for a while this could be read as a hint towards charlie's incoming death later in the season and even perhaps claire's turn towards darkness in the future we see syed jin and sun trapped in a queue which is a reference to their present dilemma on desmond's boat but can also be seen in retrospect as a reference to the fact they will all die together in the same place at the same time there is even a hint towards hurley taking charge as a leader someday while dream boone indicates that desmond remains determined to run away from his own destiny other references to current events unfurling in season 3 include jack kate and sawyer's hostage crisis on hydra island under the thumb of benjamin linus a greater irony to this part of the dream is this will not be the last time that jack and kate are at an airport with ben ultimately the island directs locked to save mr echo's life because the priest has a couple more things left to do before he can die firstly the man must be allowed to make peace with his past but secondly he must provide lock with the next link in the causal chain of events which leads lock to the dharma barracks and to the submarine and most importantly to ben this vision quest reaffirms lock's faith in the island and gives him a willingness to follow its every instruction something that will be very important later on let's look at claire littleton's rather prescient dream of an evil lock and the missing baby looking back knowing what we know this nightmare was almost certainly a window into her own future the dream was for warning her that she was going to one day be faced with an empty crib that she would have blood on her hands and that she was going to feel the pull between the light and dark within herself a darkness that would ultimately be represented and embodied by john locke the reason why claire's baby should not have been raised by another was less about the effect that it would have on aaron and more about the impact it would have on claire as we come to see losing aaron sends her down a dark rabbit hole of isolation and depression in which she ultimately becomes unhinged and violent and amenable to coercion by the man in black her dream way back in the first season foreshadows much of this trajectory charlie pace also experiences dreams that are ultimately premonitions he has recurring nightmares of trying to save baby aaron one of the dreams even features claire begging him to save the baby lo and behold charlie finds himself in the water literally trying to rescue aaron we know that not too long from this moment in charlie's life he will drown in the water whilst trying to save both claire and aaron by getting them off of the island mr echo eventually helps charlie to interpret these dreams as having a religious significance but we know that there is more to them than simply a sense of charlie's catholic guilt take notice of the white bird that flies out at charlie flapping its wings to freedom on the one hand this bird is symbolic of his own transformation from a drug addict to being clean and sober on the other hand it might be a premonition of something else an act of love and hope that he will find himself bonding over with claire in the near future of course charlie's dreams like everyone else's are ultimately a mix of the island's messaging and his own subconscious hence why there is so much religious iconography present plus incorporations of his own family members and passion for music charlie might view his own guilt and personal suffering through the lens of catholicism the island tends to play into people's own personal belief systems in order to communicate more effectively with them we see this with both lock and mr echo and even hugo reyes hurley has a dream based around food and the burdens that come with leadership perhaps is equivalent to an anxiety dream this is entirely based around him taking responsibility for the group in some way it is the first time he has to really become a leader in something and to make a decision for the good of everyone within his community we know this will come into play much later in the series since hurley is being groomed to become the protector of the island in the end it is his destiny this dream and his situation involving the food supply in the hatch is the beginning of that psychological journey we also know that the source extends its reach beyond the snow globe of the island there are several characters who experience dreams in the everyday world that influence their behaviours and choices kate dreams of claire who warns her never to bring aaron back this sows the first seed of guilt in kate's mind about leaving behind claire a seed that will flower into full-blown motivation to go back for her friend michael dawson has guilt-ridden hallucinations and nightmares like this too only he dreams of libby this fuels both a suicidal impulse and the drive to atone for his actions meanwhile his son walt talks about dreams that he still has about the island the one he tells us about is in fact a premonition of the smoke monster becoming john locke but walt uses the word dreams as in plural which means he has been dreaming about seeing lock on the island more than once possibly in different contexts walt unconsciously communes with the island receiving both visions and instructions to the boy these might merely be dreams or strange feelings but to other people these events are as real as walt actually being physically present with them shannon experiences a similar apparition late one night perhaps after walt has been tranquilized by the others and put to sleep in room 23 the fine line between dreams visions and apparitions can become very blurred and lost but the point of all these events is this the source communicates both its will and intention to people for warning and preparing them of the future or guiding them towards their destiny the dreams are there to incite emotions and thoughts that lead to specific actions dreams in lost are simply a means to an end one of the most common unanswered questions from the show is about walt and why he was so special walt wasn't just special because of his abilities he was special because he was going to someday be the man in charge of the island as previously discussed a piece of the island's electromagnetic light i.e the source exists within every human being powering consciousness and existence as we know it some people have a greater connection awareness of that light within themselves than most and can tap into that reservoir of power in various ways walt was one of these people but we also met other characters who demonstrated that psychic abilities were absolutely real hurley could see and speak with the dead which means part of him was so in tune with the source that he could unconsciously access what existed beyond the flash sideways to speak with those who had already rejoined with it remember time does not exist within the source any of the dead can be summoned by the island to help in the real world elsewhere miles also demonstrated psychic sensitivity his power was on a read-only setting but he could access the memories of the dead if a body or remains were present the light in a person has gone out but an echo of their consciousness remains because it still exists within the source these psychic powers develop at different points in life for different reasons but all of the powers are connected to the source the show alludes to multiple people spread around the planet who have some kind of deep communion with the light that exists within them remember isaac the faith healer who tried to cure rose's cancer in australia he claimed to be above a place of great energy perhaps magnetic or geological he claims to be able to harness that energy and give it to others clearly he is referring to the source which runs deep beneath the island and across the earth flowing out from the island and into the world some people like walt john locke desmond hume hugo reyes miles storm dogan jacob the man in black and even off island characters like achara and richard malkin can harness this connection to the light within themselves and use it intentionally or accidentally the source ultimately guides everything and everyone to complete the grand tapestry of time that is our existence waltz walt's inner light shines bright it is so bright that he is like a walking magnet he could attract different kinds of energy towards him much like jacob could draw people to the island but walt does this unconsciously astral projection is demonstrated in the show on more than one occasion walt demonstrates a similar ability but with less control miss clue asks michael if walt ever appeared in a place he wasn't supposed to be she implies that michael might have seen walt even though he was on the other side of the world in season two shannon sees walt on several occasions in the jungle in one of the lost missing pieces mobisodes which was a series of short web episodes released online to fill in mythological gaps we are shown ben and juliet arguing on hydra island outside of room 23. this is where walt is being kept and presumably tested juliet claims that both tom friendly and beatrice clue are afraid to go in she asks ben why they took walt at all and ben replies that it was on jacob's request whatever walt was doing in room 23 it was drawing in a lot of energy towards him this helped him to project himself across to the main island to get help only he doesn't know how to control his powers yet it is also possible that he does this unconsciously during his sleep or through his dreams in season three lock sees a vision of an older walt giving him instructions once again this is an astral projection walt is back in the real world possibly asleep at home and he is projecting to the island to talk to locke the person he was closest to there walt's psychic abilities were erratic and untrained but he had been communicating with the island for some time through his sleep and unconscious the island summoned him to put lock back on his path towards the time loop most importantly walt could sense future events coming once again like jacob in season one walt warns john locke not to open the hatch walt senses the future that this action will lead to i.e his father michael dawson murdering two innocent women down there opening the hatch leads to his father's ruin whether he saw a flash of this or simply intuits it this feeling drove him to want to get off the island with his father on the raft because walt was so young and inexperienced he was unable to control or understand these gifts as he gets older with the right mentor he could learn to harness the light within himself to be more like a dogan and eventually a successor to jacob after hurley retires from the position as protector there is little doubt that walt will take over the job from him this is heavily implied in the series epilogue called the new man in charge walt will return to the island to help his father michael move on into the light he will learn to use his powers under hurley and ben's tutelage then when older and once ready he will take the reins of the island and usher in the next era of peace that is his purpose that is his destiny but what of the other psychics in the show we see those who appear to have genuine abilities and we also see people who are obvious frauds such as the fake psychic that hurley's father takes him to see however there are ambiguous portrayals none more so than claire littleton's psychic in season one there are some fans who believe that richard malkin was a conman other fans believed that his gifts were totally real the cheryl is wanted to keep the nature of malcon relatively ambiguous by presenting us with two possibilities one possibility is rooted in the cynicism of the real world while the other is rooted in the fantasy of a world beyond our understanding however the supporting evidence within the show does ultimately lean more towards one explanation over the other let us begin by deconstructing the theory that richard malkin was indeed telling mr echo the truth that he is a fraud who cons people for a living by pretending to be a psychic we can apply this very logic to the way we analyze season one episode raised by another richard malkin presents to his customers as a psychic according to what he told mr echo he gathers intelligence on his customers then exploits it somehow but we know claire comes to the psychic of her own accord a drop in visit arranged through her friend some people have suggested that claire's friend rachel must have been involved in the scam in some way but nothing in the scene or the friend's behavior suggests this in fact the very idea that player's girlfriend is involved in what becomes the most needlessly elaborate con is implausible in the extreme there is no way that malcolm could have anticipated that claire littleton was coming to see him and therefore no way he could do advanced research so there is no way he could know that she recently found out she was pregnant a very capable cold reader could pick up on this fact if a woman was showing early signs of pregnancy but flair isn't at this point if it's simply a guess then it's one of the most lucky guesses in kong game history because it is the first thing malcon observes malkin claims to see something that supposedly unnerves him during this reading and ultimately turns claire away he even gives her the money back if he is conning claire here what exactly is the point in doing this is he hoping that claire will be intrigued enough by his rejection that she will return for another reading because until her life goes pear-shaped much later on she had absolutely no interest in coming back to find anything more but let's continue playing out the logic behind this all being a scam a little bit further when claire does eventually return for another reading following the breakup of her relationship she tells him how she plans to give up the baby for adoption it appears that con man malcolm is in luck because her revelation surely now gives him the absolutely perfect opportunity to capitalise on this i.e influencing her to sell her baby to a specifically chosen couple so he can make a profit after all his mark is willing claire is ripe for being taken advantage of but malcolm does the complete opposite he tells her that she herself must raise the baby in fact he insists on clear raising her own child so aggressively that he actually freaks her out and scares her off he then continues to harass claire with late night phone calls for months on end which could very well have seen claire call the cops on him and he is still insisting in fact begging that claire must keep this child ask yourself where is the logic in this scam why not simply introduce the idea of letting him find the right couple for her baby to be safe with he is doing nothing but driving claire away further after claire is struck by another moment of intervention from the island during the adoption signing she returns to malcolm to hear him out however the con man has now done a complete 180 degree turn now he recommends that players give the baby up for adoption if he simply wanted to make some money by brokering a deal between claire and an adoptive couple then why did he spend so long sabotaging that very plan by telling his mark to do the total opposite of what he wanted her to ultimately do it makes no sense player almost signed away the baby to someone else while malcon fumbled through this sloppy nonsensical scam his actions in these flashbacks are totally illogical if we are to truly believe he is a fraud if an expert like sawyer have heard about the plan for this long con he would have most definitely slapped malcolm across the face for thinking up something so silly whatever's happening boy what bloody hell do you think you're doing it ginger you're getting one too flair was right when she realized that there was no couple waiting in la to adopt aaron the series established that psychic abilities were absolutely real we meet people with supernatural gifts throughout the show people that harness an unconscious connection with the light and who demonstrate a degree of psychic sensitivity malkin's abilities are perhaps more closely aligned to those that we see walt demonstrate in an early form think of the scene when walt warns john locke about the hatch after they make a brief connection it is almost the exact same mirror scene of what takes place between claire and malcon physical touch is an important recurring motif in lost when it comes to the supernatural the source uses those with psychic sensitivity to help shepherd people and events along a certain path what we have referred to previously as the tapestry of time did malcolm know the specifics of claire's future in its totality no but he would have felt the potency of this intuition and the intensity of the source even though he couldn't fully articulate the feeling it will guide his actions over the next few months in order to get claire to where she needed to be the only reason malcon told mr echo that he was a fraud was to get rid of the man he knows that echo a priest of all people would never accept the truth about psychic gifts and precognition furthermore malkin did not want to become a media spectacle with his family being investigated by the church who knows how that would impact their lives malkin says that miracle that happened to his daughter was not a miracle at all and that he is a fraudulent psychic being punished by his wife with this tall tale except we know that his daughter genuinely did die and come back to life not only do we hear the incredibly unsettling evidence of it from the coroner's own tape recording and haunted reaction but it is further proved by charlotte malcolm herself she comes back from the dead with a message for echo from yemi that is because she went to the flash sideways and experienced a glimpse of the other side much like we see desmond experienced in season six when he is zapped by the electromagnetic blast so if this miracle did legitimately happen to his daughter and we know that psychic gifts are real in the lost universe then why can't richard malkin's powers be genuine remember always measure a statement made by an unreliable character against what we see them do and we see richard malkin directly lead claire to the island based on his deep intuition the context of this scene in the season two episode question mark must also be measured against the on island narrative the show wants us to question malcolm's authenticity without confirming whether or not we should dismiss him altogether the reason this scene with echo exists is to mirror the themes of season two the question season two wants us to ask is what is real and what is fraudulent the pearl station makes lock question everything he thought he believed about the button making him doubt his own faith in a higher meaning and purpose to his life however this same revelation actually reaffirms echo's own faith and serves to make him a true believer both men read the same text completely differently the pearl's orientation video creates doubt in lock in the same way malcolm creates doubt in echo and by extension us as an audience we are offered up a real-world cynical explanation behind an ambiguous mystery that might otherwise have more fantastical underpinnings is the button in the hatch really saving the world is malcolm really a psychic at the end of season 2 we finally learn that the button is saving the world it wants us to understand that even the most seemingly fantastical explanations are indeed absolutely possible so what exactly happened to malcolm during claire's first reading he explains that he saw something that scared him in the second reading he probes further into this feeling for reasons that malcolm cannot fully articulate he senses that claire's baby will be in grave danger without her in its life the source is guiding him in the same way it later guides desmond with the flashes of charlie's various deaths in the same way and guides lock through dreams that lead him to where he needs to go next in the same way it guides hurley through the ghosts of those that have died over the course of the next few months malcolm receives very specific information that he needs to impart to claire we do not know in what form this information comes to him but it could quite possibly be through dreams regardless of how it happens he now knows that claire must board a very specific fight on a very specific day this is why he is so adamant about 8 15. if there was a couple in los angeles the fight could have been at any point that day or week it certainly wouldn't have needed to be that particular fight malcolm doesn't know why this is so essential he just feels that it is absolutely imperative this is because he is being guided by the island by the time claire comes back to him ready and willing to listen he knows the only way to get her on that plane is to change tact and embrace the adoption narrative playing into claire's ambivalence about the baby he already has the ticket ready for her and sir claire finally agrees following malcon's instructions to the letter the island influences whatever it can wherever it has to in order to channel events towards their predestined path claire's path was to go to the island so she could participate in the grand tapestry of time and ultimately raise her son in the future once the world had been saved perhaps as a karmic reward or through a twist of fate richard malkin is given a second chance with his own child after she is returned from death charlotte malkin's resurrection validates the existence of the supernatural and her father's work in helping people get to where they need to be and we know there are grander forces at work in shaping our reality and guiding the chain of events we see play out in lost arthur c clarke once wrote that magic is just science that we don't understand yet the numbers are the science that explain the magic ever since season one the numbers have been a fascinating construct of lost they appear in multiple places across the show in both background detail and in the prop related foreground most notably they appear on the hatch and are used as the code for the computer that saves the world but they are really introduced as a notable element in hurley's first flashback story he uses the numbers he heard from a fellow institution patient to play and win the lottery which changes the course of his life more importantly it leads him to the island just like many others before him so what exactly are the numbers what do they mean and why do they appear everywhere the numbers are ultimately a symbol for predestination they were used by a mathematician enzo valenzetti in the 1960s in a mathematical equation this valenze equation aimed to predict the end of humanity and the numbers formed its numerical constants what valenzetti had really discovered was a key to understanding fate itself the numbers are proof that there is a quote-unquote god in the machine or a design to existence all of the events of lost occur as the result of a time loop that must be fulfilled by our main characters or else risk the end of the world the island has to ensure that these characters go back in time to cause the events in the past to happen such as the incident because this causality cannot be unwritten it also means that everything that happens on and off the island throughout history must go towards fulfilling this destiny so all of the weird coincidences in which people crossed paths all of the strange events and life-altering trajectories that happened to our castaways throughout their lives all of it was in service of getting them aboard oceanic 8 15 to have them crash on the island and traveling back in time the numbers therefore are simply the equation that identifies this formula to fate they pop up everywhere to remind us that everything happens for a reason the source flows out to the world and leaves behind a kind of numerical signature everywhere it goes think of the numbers like the source code in the matrix a recurring numerical pattern that helps to prove that reality is a construct to some extent that there is an architect a prime mover the numbers are also embodied by jacob's surviving candidates in season six it was by design that candidates 4 8 15 16 23 and 42 would be the last remaining agents of change in the endgame the formula does allow for variables sometimes such as kate who saved flock a bullet in the end in summary the numbers are a mathematical peak behind the curtain at how the source aka fate works in terms of mathematical calculation it is simply science being used to explain faith so is there such a thing as free will in lost or is everything predetermined the show asks this question throughout its run and wants us to ask this question but it does eventually give us an answer the answer is that free will is only a matter of perception no character ever had a choice in coming to the island or travelling back in time because everything happening in their lives is a result of the source course correcting people's paths to avert the end of the world or a time paradox everybody in the series was in some way involved in this causal time loop i.e either they were candidates like jack and lok who were directly instrumental in the history and ultimate fate of the island or they were tangentially part of the general chain of events that led to certain outcomes everyone on the oceanic plain and everyone who ever set foot upon that island are all part of the island's grand tapestry of time you can't have effect without cause and much of the cause has already taken place in the past and cannot be unchanged example when the others from 1954 kill off the remaining oceanic survivors on the beach with flaming arrows it means that those nameless background survivors had to be on the plane in 2004 in order to go back in time and die daniel faraday's tragic arc is the best example of being a cog in a larger machine faraday doesn't get to be the hero of the story or have any grand destiny beyond being murdered by his own mother but he does plant the extremely important idea in jack's mind about detonating jughead and jack executes that plan after daniel dies then juliet completes it some people have a grand destiny to fulfill jack gets to save the world while other people like charlie for instance are simply destined to die in order to move the chain of events forward these are sacrifices that the island demands in order maintain the timeline and its own existence survival and the survival of the entire world everyone plays both big and small parts in this grand design even the most anonymous background survivor had a part to play and people like us in the normal world beyond the island's boundaries every person every moment every minor or major decision it all creates the next moment in an ongoing chain this is the nature of causality therefore everyone was important in some way regardless of whether or not they were candidates if the argument is between free will versus determinism then lost clearly comes down on the side of determinism some events are simply meant to happen no matter how hard we fight against them free will exists from a character's perspective and their linear perception of time as they travel through their life and make choices for themselves but the god in the machine aka the source aka the island remains the prime mover in this tapestry of time being weaved together if you step off the path it will make sure to reroute you back to the path another way this is what eloise hawking means by course correction because we all have a destination and a destiny the numbers are the numerical code behind destiny itself the god in the machine [Music] the only reason we call the others the others is because of danielle russo in reality the others are really richard alpert's group some of whom are chosen by jacob and some of whom are selected personally by alpert himself richard alpert was the very first other to be recruited by jacob in 1867. it was his idea for jacob to get more involved so richard forms the original group of others with a mission to help jacob protect the island from both internal and external enemies jacob goes into hiding and begins weaving a thread towards the future and destroying the smoke monster he created over the years richard's group receive instructions from jacob on certain tasks that need to be fulfilled or people that need to be recruited the others develop their own code of ethics that include among other things conflict resolution in other words not killing one another stranger in a strange land first explores this notion when juliet is punished for killing dany who was one of their own further rules appear to include not leaving the island without permission or unless absolutely essential no unauthorized contact with the outside world to protect the location of the island learning latin the ancient language for internal communications particularly when under duress a willingness to self-sacrifice if under threat of capture or interrogation by perceived enemies of the island protecting the temple and sacred places from outsiders following the direct instructions of jacob to the letter as handed down by richard alpert and taking in all lost children who come to the island all of these rules can be stretched or even broken as we see on various occasions they are human rules unlike the rules of a protector which are unbreakable laws that are enforced by the power of the source as more conflict comes to the island and with jacob in hiding from further attempts on his life it becomes clear that the others need to have a more proactive leader to make day-to-day decisions the selection process is overseen by richard both he and jacob know that whoever leads the others is always predestined to do so now tommy john which of these things belong to you did you keep no no john which of these things belong to you already the test that richard conducts is very similar to the process carried out by buddhist monks when they search for the reincarnation of the dalai lama the monks present objects that the dalai lama used in his past life in order to ascertain if the child they are speaking with is in fact his holiness reborn so the objects that richard presents to young lock are the objects that old lock will possess in the future first of all there is the compass which represents the time travel then there is the vial of sand which represents the island itself and finally there is the book of laws which represents the laws of the island society as established by jacob and richard in other words it is the symbol of leadership the baseball glove the comic book and the knife are simply there for misdirection purposes an ordinary child might be distracted and drawn to those items on instinct richard alpert is conducting this test for two very specific reasons the first is to see if the bald man that walked into his camp several years previous was indeed telling the truth the man who called himself john locke made wild claims about being the leader of the others in the future and that he was sent back through time by jacob remember locke tells richard all right what year is it right now it's 1954. all right may 30th 1956 two years from now that's the day i'm born tustin california and if you don't believe me i suggest you come and visit me and sir richard is just that this newborn baby is now on richard's radar he keeps watch over the development of young john for the next few years as he stated to time travelling lock the recruitment process for an island leader tends to start at an early age we can presume that this is because the island knows who it wants leaders are preordained so therefore a child would demonstrate some indication of being wanted by the island of being special this is also why richard takes an interest in benjamin linus because young ben claims to have seen the ghost of his mother on the island psychic children are of great interest to the others as we see with walt in 2004 but first richard alpert needs to make sure that the man who claimed to be the future leader of the others is indeed this very same little boy that sits before him the second reason for this test is to see if the little boy demonstrates being special in some way does he demonstrate a communion with the island does he have an awareness of his own predestination in some form one early indicator that the boy does have some psychic sensitivity can be seen in the picture he has drawn it is an eerily prescient image of his own future of his fate being inextricably linked to the smoke monster the test proceeds and young lock chooses two items correctly the compass and the vial of sand but then he chooses an old knife over the book of laws for richard this casts doubt upon whether or not the boy is really the child version of the john locke he encountered in 1954 and even if it is the same person it then calls into question whether or not locke is special at all hence richard's disappointment and frustration however young lock choosing wrongly was just a sign that he simply wasn't ready to come to the island yet not for many more decades when lochtes arrive on the island as an older man he finally demonstrates signs of being special after being paralyzed for four years he can now walk again news of this miraculous healing travels to the others and gains richard's attention once again he knows that ben's time as leader is over hence why the island allowed cancer to form on ben's spine the time travelling lock of 1954 was right it is his destiny to take over the position as leader of the others his self-fulfilling prophecy is now undeniable so richard helps lock prove his worthiness to the others and demonstrate his commitment to the island essentially by helping the man of faith cheat the process richard now believes enough in the myth of john locke that he will not question lok's specialness again even to the detriment of his own instincts and people meanwhile the real john locke had to go through hell in his life before reaching the island and finding his faith there the very same faith that would lead him back to richard and back to the compass and ultimately his own death jacob used the recruitment of the others and their leaders as a vetting process for the candidacy of island protector the earliest leaders that we know of are eloise hawking and charles widmore eloise might have taken on the role in the 1960s with widmore taking over in the late 1970s he was usurped and replaced by benjamin linus in the late 1980s then john locke took over briefly in 2004 before being substituted by the man in black in 2007. ben claims that someone who joins the others must demonstrate a symbol of commitment to the island for him it was killing his own father of which he gets locked to fail in replicating in an attempt to prove locke is not as committed to the cause as ben was but richard already knew that locke was predestined to be the leader so he helps lock out this show of commitment to the island could manifest in many different ways for general recruits for juliet it was leaving behind her loved ones and never having contact with them again dogan tells saheed a similar story of giving up his life and family to come to the island for all intents and purposes the leader of the others is the second most powerful individual within the hierarchy on the island after jacob there can only be one leader at any given time their duties include ensuring the safety and security of their people protecting the island against threats from the outside world recruiting new members who meet a certain moral or spiritual standard those that are likely to become true believers who would be willing to fight and die for the island most importantly a leader must carry out the orders of jacob without question however this process is corrupted over time by human weakness the well of leadership is poisoned under charles widmore's tyrannical reign then soured further under benjamin linus who uses the island to push his own agenda and finally the leadership chain is broken entirely by the man in black himself we can assume that the man in black did everything he could to upset the balance of the others over the years since they were jacob's acolytes his interference manipulations and attacks no doubt played a heavy hand in the slow corruption of the other's ultimate purpose when charles widmore's reign over the others resulted in nothing short of an island genocide jacob began to form a group within a group let's try not to call them other others instead let's refer to them as the temple group jacob could most likely see that richard's group was sliding into darkness so he personally selected and recruited people like dogen lennon alana and brown to form a splinter faction he told these people about the man in black how to fight him and the importance of candidates he installed many of them at the temple where they were instructed to remain over the years until the time came for them to play their part as we see in season six like richard dogen worked directly for jacob and fell outside of the normal leadership hierarchy those in the know about the man in black are most likely to be the most trusted longest-serving members of the inner circle former leaders like benjamin linus and charles widmore were never told about the man in black beyond the ghost stories and legends because jacob did not allow him to know they were both deeply corrupt men the scales within him were most certainly tilting towards the darkness so therefore they were not privy to many details of jacob's past or his future plans because they could not be trusted which is also why jacob never met with them he did not approve of their respective leaderships or actions but he had already vowed not to interfere understanding that the island chooses who it chooses for a reason when ben takes over as leader he decides to move the others out from the jungle and into the dharma barracks he channels their energies into curing the pregnancy issues on the island which is something that has great personal resonance to him since his mother died giving birth to him meanwhile jacob's splinter faction remains outside of ben's sphere of influence answering directly to jacob and by extension richard so this clear split between the others begins one group embraces the science and comfort of the modern age while the other group retains the mysticism and mythology of the island's past we do see that ben has a cursory knowledge of the smoke monster of which he most likely discovered for himself and it is within the dharma barracks where he would have discovered the ruin of the old summoning chamber if he took the time to translate the hieroglyphic markings on the door and walls they might just have told a story about how this smoke monster could be called upon like an attack dog from beneath the temple this instilled a sense of power in ben and a misguided belief that he had control over the smoke monster all of which were important stepping stones towards the future and the time loop a key outpost for the others in the real world includes a front company called mittalos bioscience this company was most likely established by richard alpert in the 1960s as a way for recruiting people from the outside world such as we see with juliet burke this company is where the large wealth of the others most likely comes from and allows them to fund various projects both on and off island ben has people placed in strategic industries around the world to provide research support and intelligence especially counter-intelligence against whitmore who had become dead set of finding the island again this also explains how the others learned so much about the oceanic 815 survivors external agents gathered the data and reported it back to mikhail in the flame station to disseminate ben also begins recruiting people who are less than suitable for island residents such as those with military and mercenary backgrounds many of whom make up the clandestine teams that move around the island abducting any desirable new arrivals and carrying out tactical operations in order to muddy the waters and retain more influence and control ben begins making lists and writing instructions of his own many of the others never quite know where a list might be coming from could be ben could be jacob only richard and a few key personnel will ever know meanwhile when encountering any new island arrivals ben makes sure that all they ever might see of the others are robinson crusoe-like savages living wild almost like an ironic critique of his temple-based counterparts whom he has very little power over this rift within the others hierarchy rears its head on more than one occasion whether it is juliet trying to stage a coup by asking jack to kill ben during surgery or ben appealing to mikhail's loyalist sensibilities to stay on his side but ben's influence only reaches so far some of the traditions of the others clearly come from jacob's instruction their ritual of burning the dead and sending the remains out to sea is clearly a result of jacob not wanting his people to leave behind bodies on the island he knows that the man in black could infiltrate his group if this were to happen and cause untold chaos the test we see dogan put syhed through in season six is the only method of detecting a smoke monster apparition that is available to those in the know many of the others don't realize that their traditions and practices stem from places like this the others are always a reflection of whoever holds the reins on their leadership if the leader is violent and vengeful then the others will be violent and vengeful too if the leader is compassionate and forgiving then the others will be compassionate and forgiving too under charles widmore they went to war with dahmer and slaughtered them all under ben linus they were deceptive and manipulative the others will no doubt undergo another change under the leadership of hugo reyes who will be both an island protector and the leader of its people finally bringing the two roles together and bringing a balance to the island after centuries of turmoil he is the leader that the others have been waiting for the storm has passed the others can now finally join with hurley from being one of them to being one of us dahmer stands for department of heuristics and research on material applications the initiative was a scientific research project founded by a wealthy entrepreneur named alvar and run by karen and gerald degroot out of the university of michigan in ann arbor the show implies that dharma's existence may have been funded specifically to seek out and colonize the island in order to harness its fabled powers whoever alvar hanso really was he appeared to possess knowledge of the island's existence all we know for sure is that his connection to the island stretches all the way back to the black rock a ship that was captained by his ancestor magnus hanso the first wave of dharma personnel constructed the lamp post station in los angeles in order to find the island using geographical hot spots of electromagnetism as the guide the lamp post harnessed the pocket of energy beneath the church itself to help trace its connection back to the source remember all of these pockets around the world are connected this is how dharma found where the island was going to be they maintained a large presence on the island in the 1970s right through to the 1980s the initiative's purpose was one of scientific discovery a way to make the world a better place external sources from the show such as the lost experience suggest that their mission was to change the outcome of the valencia equation i.e the numbers which was a sequence allegedly predicting the end of humanity but it is clear from the way the group functions within the show that the goals were far more varied and complex than this in reality dharma was an uneasy mix of scientists doctors teachers security forces workmen and families that formed something akin to a hippie commune each department had its own hierarchy and specific function departments included meteorology psychology parapsychology zoology electromagnetism and the utopian social project which were the aim of seeking peace and prosperity for the whole world it is worth noting that dharma was most likely established sometime during the late 1960s at the height of the counterculture movement and the cold war it was a time when everyone feared nuclear annihilation the barracks video states that the mission of the initiative on the island was to study its unique properties for the betterment of mankind and advancement of world peace the degrees no doubt made the decisions on who got to go to the island but on the island itself the man in charge was horus goodspeed the leader of the utopian social project in which establishing and managing a colony of families and creating a harmonious commune was the primary objective if they could create a peaceful utopia on the island perhaps they could replicate the formula elsewhere in the world but we know how that turned out dharma wasn't alone on the island as previously established richard's group aka the others aka the hostiles had been occupying this land for a very long time and they did not take kindly to intruders perhaps this was an understandable reaction considering the prior experiency with the united states military in the 1950s the others objected to dharma's plundering of the land in the name of science while dahmer objected to the native sense of proprietary ownership over this unclaimed territory to dharma the properties of the island should benefit all of mankind not just a select few it is implied that the higher ranks of dharma looked upon the natives as not much more than a backwards cult worshipping some imaginary island deity they saw them as savages regardless of their conflicts of interest an uneasy truce is broken between the two factions this appears to be led by richard alpert presumably under the instructions of jacob the truce came down to simple playground rules you stay on your side and we will stay on our side dharma can have its commune and certain sectors of the island to inhabit just as long as they don't cross the line into the hostile sacred places such as the temple nor should they interfere with the electromagnetic hotspots and rivers that connect to the hostile sacred spring waters however we know that dharma did have plans to take over the temple and build a new station there or at least investigate further possibly to extract samples from the spring waters for experimental purposes dharma's intention to do this is clearly evidenced on ben's map the word temple has been scrawled on the paper above a dharma logo this plan might have been the final straw that triggered the purge but we will get to that towards the end of this video sometime around the brokering of the truce dharma erects a giant sonar fence around their residential barracks presumably to secure their location from both the others and encounters with the smoke monster of which there must have been fatalities over the years one of the houses in the barracks is constructed adjacent to an old ruined from the egyptian period most likely to further study its origins and purpose although it is made clear that dharma are not aware of the more complex network of tunnels beneath their feet constructed during the same egyptian period slowly but surely over time dharma begins to expand its reach beyond the compound fence they build research stations for various purposes the stations are as follows the hydra a zoological research station located several miles off the coast on a smaller island it includes an underwater aquarium section presumably where the shark from season two episode adrift was branded plus a number of animal cages above ground where several polar bears were kept the polar bears were being trained in how to retrieve fish biscuits through a complicated reward system we can assume that this was related to their potential use down in the frozen donkey wheel chamber more on this later hydra also hid a special room on site that was used to interrogate hostiles then wipe the short-term memories using mk-ultra-style brainwashing techniques and drugs it is possible that characters we know who have memory discrepancy issues in the show such as danielle russo or even claire littleton were taken to this place although claire's amnesia in season one was more likely a result of all the drugs ethan had been lacing her drinking water with what that's really sour is it um the tempest this was a station designed to study deadly gases and other chemicals possibly to see how the island might affect controlled chemical reactions the station could produce store and distribute toxic gas and it is this gas that was used against dharma in the purge we can assume the others took control of the facility with help from inside manbin and opened the gas lines into the barracks the arrow station was largely empty by the time we see it in season two according to pierre chang's introduction to the station the recording of which is interrupted in season five's opening scene the arrow's primary purpose was the development of defensive strategies against the hostiles by the time the tail section survivors find it it has been cleared out we can assume it was home to a large armory of weapons and intelligence on the locations of the hostiles one of the remaining boxes found inside contained a glass eye this is no doubt mikhail's glass eye which helps to prove that he was indeed telling the truth about being initially recruited by dharma no doubt he was brought to the island to be part of this security force waging war against the natives only to switch sides several years into his term the flame was a communications station perhaps an upgraded version of the old radio tower which was no doubt one of darma's first structures on the island the flame was a central hub for surveillance intelligence gathering and task dispensing across the island it was initially run by stuart radzinski a paranoid but driven science officer then later occupied by mikhail the staff was a medical station which no doubt functioned as an emergency medical facility for initiative personnel that were injured outside the barracks and could not reach the other side of the island this became a key outpost for the others who would use the staff as a primary operating room for expectant mothers in their quest to solve the pregnancy crisis the looking glass was eventually established as an underwater station used as a beacon to help guide in submarines and vessels approaching the island this station was needed because only a very specific corridor through the electromagnetic bubble around the island could be used in order to reach its shore safely ben later used the station to jam transmissions off of the island in 2004. a question that is often asked about this station is in regards to the cable saeed found on the beach allegedly the power cable to the looking glass people asked why the losties didn't simply cut that wire firstly the cable would have been designed to withstand blunt force and wear and tear secondly and more importantly the looking glass no doubt had a backup generator just like other stations cutting the wire would guarantee nothing the orchid station is a greenhouse on the surface most likely designed to fool the hostiles into thinking that it was simply an innocuous facility interested in botanical research only however the greenhouse disguised an underground station beneath this laboratory was built adjacent to a pocket of electromagnetic energy the aim of the orchid was to study this exotic matter and experiment in manipulating time accessing and studying the light beneath the island was dharma's primary objective mother's warning about human beings always wanting more of the light still rings true centuries later the orchid was established on this site as a result of dahmer investigating what lied beneath the well a well that had only been dug as a result of time travelling sawyer bringing the rope with him through a time jump flash which he only could have done thanks to the orchid station's existence in the future we know that dharma was aware of the donkey wheel chamber as seen in season 5 episode because you left while dr pierre chang insists they do not dig any further from this side they clearly have plans to someday access the wheel once their experiments in the orchid reached a plateau we can deduce this because of the polar bears which were being trained in how to operate complex mechanisms and systems it also tracks that the bears would be able to withstand the freezing cold temperatures of the wheel chamber too the first test in preparation for doing this came when chang's team placed a bear inside the exotic mata chamber this is why we see a polar bear in the tunisian desert in 2004 and it is found by none other than former dharma child charlotte lewis who has been actively seeking out her birthplace further proof that all of these events were all by design part of a tapestry of time threaded by the source with help from jacob across decades even centuries the swan this is the dharma station we are all the most familiar with and it requires the deepest dive it was originally intended as a laboratory where scientists could work to understand the unique electromagnetic fluctuations beneath that sector however stuart razenski's drilling unleashed the energy causing the incident that almost destroyed the world thanks to jack and juliet carrying out daniel faraday's plan the hydrogen bomb jughead was detonated causing an implosion that temporarily plugged the leak long enough for the area to be filled in with concrete and the swan hatch to be built however the energy continued to build up beneath the site which is what prompted the need to discharge the build-up every 108 minutes the swan site went from being a research station to something more akin to an electromagnetic reactor every time the energy builds it is channeled through something installed behind that concrete wall something that is able to discharge the build-up at the push of a button the lost video game via domus showed us what could possibly have been on the other side of the concrete with this picture this section of the swan was indicated on the blast door map but was not seen in the show itself so therefore it is not entirely canon however the principle remains the same it is a giant reactor that absorbs the build-up for as long as it can until the button diffuses the charge a failed safe switch was installed beneath the swan which was a turnkey that essentially detonates the reactor and blows up the energy pocket however the fail-safe worked only in theory no one knew what turning the key would do to the station nor to the person who turned the key when desmond goes down into the crawl space to activate it at the end of season 2 he does so knowing full well that this could be a suicide mission and this is why the key was not turned by anyone else beforehand another common question asked by audiences in regards to the button is why were people needed for it at all why couldn't the process be automated the answer is that human error can be monitored double checked and corrected because there is always supposed to be a two-man team entering the numbers at all times this system proved reliable and effective however automated error aka letting the computer automatically enter the numbers by its very definition would not necessitate the need for constant human supervision all it would take is the computer software to blip momentarily or lose power and the world would end if the hatch were built today it would probably use an automated system as well as human supervision to make sure the time horizons were met and any blips could be quickly identified and corrected but back in the late 1970s and early 1980s computers were not as reliable as they are today and dharma was wiped out before the system could be upgraded in the 1990s former soldier kelvin inman was one of the last official occupants of the hatch having worked directly with its architect stuart razenski for some years kelvin was in iraq during 1991 as we see him supervising saeed with interrogations which means he must have come to the island just after the war possibly in 1992 now the specific date of the dharma purge has frequently been contested amongst fans either it happened in the late 1980s or the early 1990s either way it calls into question who exactly recruited kelvin if he was recruited by the dharma initiative it would need to have been before the purge and therefore mean the purge definitely didn't take place until 1992. however it is possible that he was recruited by the others who were simply posing as dharma in which case he could have been hired at any point during the mid to late 1990s all we know for sure is that he was partnered with stuart razenski which means either dharma was still functioning on the island in some form by 1992 or at least the others allowed razanski to continue his work in pushing the button because they understood that it was a necessary task kelvin is fully aware of the existence of the others aka the hostiles which helps to support this theory that the team in the swan was exempt from the purge we can assume that razenski felt a large degree of guilt for his actions in 1977 hence why he stationed himself in the hat permanently to continue discharging the build-up as it was his responsibility above anyone else this became like a self-imposed punishment and exile in his cabin fever like boredom he would paint his dharma map on the glass door wall for entertainment and make edits to orientation films to take out the instructions that he didn't agree with such as not using the hatch computer for anything other than pushing the button but imagine being stuck down in the hatch for months or years at a time using the computer to talk to other stations would be one of your only sources of communication with other people razenski no doubt used the computer to talk to other people in spite of dr chang's rule after all what more could someone do down there beyond eat drink talk and paint when michael uses the computer in season two to talk to his son he is really talking to another station the likely culprit at the other end of this intranet conversation is mikhail at the flame his job is to lure michael to the other side of the island on ben's instruction to help the others in their assessment of walt although this is not the only reason to detain michael he is also to be used as bait to fellow survivors jack kate and sawyer when the timing is right however ben is unintentionally caught by danielle russo during this attempted ruse so the others are forced in tasking michael with getting their leader back first the others are ironically given an opportunity to snatch all three of these key names when michael first runs off into the jungle they have jack kate and sawyer all in one place surrounded and now gunned so why don't they take them let's think about the logistics of ben's plan at this point he is still observing and learning about jack trying to ascertain how best to manipulate the doctor into performing the surgery and it isn't until this very moment when it becomes clear what jack truly cares about he gives up his guns to save kate and walks away from michael meanwhile kate's emotional connection to sawyer would have already been demonstrated in the hatch and captured on the cameras so it is after this confrontation that ben realizes how to put the squeeze on jack perhaps another reason they are not taken during the events of the hunting party is because john locke is with them and as we learn later ben doesn't want the fabled john locke anywhere near his people this all brings us nicely to our final dharma station the pearl this station was specifically intended to be a confined space where psychologists could observe dharma personnel and how they react to performing menial ultimately meaning less tasks it was a psychological experiment the occupants of the pearl think they are watching people in the swan carrying out a fake task and make notes accordingly but these notes follow a pneumatic tube to nowhere out of all the stations it is the most innocuous of all however it becomes a key location in the future for various reasons the nexus point on the island for activity seems to be happening above it mr eko's plane charlie's heroin stash boone's accident and death following a response from the tale section discovering the pearl yemi's body echo's death lock's compass the man in black's loophole but it also becomes a very useful live video feed for the others after the purge it would have been possible to monitor kelvin and razenski in the hatch to make sure things were ticking over with the button perhaps the others had their own plans to seize control of the hatch if anything went wrong down there the cigarettes stubbed out on the table indicate that someone had been watching the surveillance feed over time maybe this was tom friendly or danny pickett we later see ben and juliet using the monitors to observe jack shepard in the hatch it is implied that ben came back to study these feeds many times and this is how he gets caught in one of russo's traps because he was on his way back from the pearl now let's complete the timeline of dharma's history on the island following the incident of 1977 dharma tries to limit the damage of the incident and its fallout by quarantining parts of the island any location in close proximity to one of these pockets is turned into a so-called hot zone this is why quarantine signs are stenciled on doors inside some of the stations they are to designate certain sectors as high risk for electromagnetic activity and possible contamination for personnel operating within these hot zones they are required to wear hazmat suits and take regular shots of the vaccine every nine days to counter any effects from radiation leakage this vaccine might have been an upgraded version of the inoculation jab that new recruits to the island were given upon their arrival this medicine in its various forms was developed to counter any side effects of being in close proximity to high levels of electromagnetic radiation this proves to be only a precautionary measure since as it turns out the ultimate ramifications from electromagnetic fallout are mostly limited to pregnant women although such ramifications are certainly grave enough the utopian social project quickly crumbles as a result with many of the families being moved off island the swan is built over the concrete-filled dig site and becomes operational jughead's detonation merely put the apocalypse on pause it is unclear how long passes between the incident and the installation of the button but judging from the build of the computer we can estimate the early 1980s stuart razenski exiles himself into the hatch to monitor the computer and continue studying the properties of the island he is the original button pusher and this is the place where he eventually commits suicide after losing his arm dr pierre chang continues his experiments with time manipulation emboldened by his meeting with time travelers he never sees his son again neither as a child nor as an adult horus goodspeed builds a cabin to get away from the pressures of his job only to never quite make it to retirement the cabin itself appears to be incomplete bereft of creature comforts and the truce that have been brokered with the hostiles comes to a bitter end following dahmer's continued encroachment into hostile territory thus renewing the aggressive kill will be killed conflict from the early days long gone is the diplomacy of eloise hawking's reign the others now reside under charles widmore's wrathful leadership and the inevitability of the purge finally arrives charles widmore uses benjamin linus as a mole to execute his plan by infiltrating the tempest station and gassing the compound while shooting any stragglers as evidenced by gunshot wounds in some of the bodies in the pit however ben is not the only dharma member to trade sides other dharma defectors include ethan goodspeed who would later change his name to ethan wrong a potential sign of the disdain he had for his own heritage and people there may have been other young dharma members who were taken in by the others as well another defector was mikhail bakunan who continued to wear his dharma jumpsuit long after the purge was over like kelvin inman mikhail was a military man consider his lethal combat training and his field surgery experience furthermore his ability to translate various languages could have included latin the coded language of the others now factor in his connection to the arrow station with the glass eye and we can deduce that he was recruited to help defend the initiative against incursions by the hostiles so the story he told syed and kate in season 3 episode enter 77 was partially true another person who could have been a dharma defector is tom friendly he tells sawyer that it only took the bears two hours to figure out the contraption in the cage this indicates that tong worked on hydra island back when the bears were being used in experiments there it would also help to explain his fierce loyalty to benjamin linus therefore we can assume it was ben who recruited people like mikhail tom and ethan along with various other members of the dharma community maybe these people showed a spiritual affinity for the island or sympathy for the natives and together they all defected then alludes to the idea of multiple defectors when talking to locke these are my people the dharma initiative they came here seeking harmony but they couldn't even coexist with the island's original inhabitants and when it became clear that one side had to go one side had to be purged i did what i had to do i was one of the people that was smart enough to make sure that i didn't end up in that ditch this further helps to explain how ben slowly turned the others against charles widmore since he had brought a new group of people with him into the ranks of the others all of whom would be more loyal to ben than to whitmore this is why he could move the natives into the dharma barracks after usurping the former leader we know that a more mystical group remained stationed at the temple led by dogen which could have been on jacob's orders as for the dharma initiative it is unclear what became of its off-island remnants such as the de grutz and alvar hanso we can assume that the purge may have extended to them as well wiping out anyone with a knowledge of the island with the exception of the lamp post the only other mainland dharma facility still functioning since the purge is seen in series epilogue the new man in charge in which two unassuming warehouse workers have been loading pallets onto drones with pre-programmed coordinates and sending them out to the island on automated runs these pallets contained shipments of the dharma vaccine and general food supplies all of which would come in handy to replenish the two-man team in the swan a routine that the others were more than willing to allow continue and this is the last we ever see of the dharma initiative as ben comes to roll up the last outpost and shutter the doors closed on their operation once and for all their dream of world peace long since faded into history and dust much speculation from fans has pointed to the likelihood that the island was moved during the height of the dharma war some think the island was moved several months after the incident by the others before dharma had finished construction on the orchid while other fans think that it dharma finally got one of the polar bears into that chamber to push the wheel years later whichever the scenario the island was almost certainly moved between 1977 and 1988 and this is how ben learned about the process and knew what to do when the timing was right in 2004. we know he visited the exit point in tunisia because he had a hotel room reserved for whenever he might return which means ben definitely used the exotic mata chamber in the orchid to travel off the island in a speedy manner but the specifics of how to turn the wheel must have been communicated to him by someone who did it before of course dharma would have been able to relocate the island eventually because they had the lamp post and this is what triggers the need for a trusted member of the inner circle to take over the church and its hidden facility below we know that eloise will later take control of the lamp post presumably during the 1990s which makes finding the island an eye on impossible task for any unauthorised party only she and a very select few from across the years have ever come close to understanding the nature of how and why the island moves astronomers believe that the universe started as just a single point they call it the singularity a point of infinite density and gravity this gravitational singularity contained all the energy and space-time of the universe then it exploded in what modern science refers to as the big bang the singularity expanded to grow as large as it is right now and it continues to grow in the mythology of lost the source is the focal point of our existence it is not just the beating heart of the island but of all living things it burns bright deep down beneath the crust of the earth so if the source is the origin of all consciousness and the reason for why everything is the way it is that means it can be tied directly to the idea of the singularity and the big bang to the origin of the universe and space-time itself the source wasn't just forged in the fire of creation the source is the fire of creation itself it is perhaps within the inner core of our planet where the source thrives we can only really comprehend this energy from a human being's perception of three-dimensional reality it's why we only see the energy as a bright blinding light but we know that this light is actually operating within a fourth dimensional space a space that we refer to as time itself the electromagnetic energy is what made the formation of all life possible by bringing fourth dimensional consciousness into this three-dimensional space like the beating heart of a living organism or the power center inside a machine the writers originally planned for the source to be located in the heart of a volcano which was alluded to in season three episode the man behind the curtain yes is that what happened to the volcano on this island exactly annie but that was a long time ago okay let's get ourselves an eruption oh cool just add water and voila however after being constricted by the studio's budget limitations they had to change the location to a cave but this piece of trivia tells us a lot the showrunners originally intended the origin of existence itself to lie within a dormant volcano which suggests that they have thought about the very beginnings of the source in terms of the planet's formation we know that the source is not just one single pocket of light in a single location it has connective tentacles of energy that spread out beneath planets crust like veins and arteries connected to a heart as continents and seabeds formed on earth the source's pockets of electromagnetism were buried at various depths hidden beneath the surface by earth or water these geological hot spots can still be found and felt although most of them appear to reside underneath the ocean water might be the crucial element that keeps the light cool we know that the source can overheat and release large bursts of radiation we also know that this energy can burn itself out perhaps because the light is buried beneath earth and water it prevents our world from returning to that uninhabitable volcanic magma planet it started out as there are several locations we know of where these geological hot spots can be found on land the first is based in tunisia what charles woodmore referred to as the exit another location is in the australian outback beneath isaac of uluru's camp in which he harnesses the energy in order to heal the sick and another confirmed location is beneath the lamp post station in los angeles there are surely many more hot spots that we never see the point is the source is connected directly to these places in a subterranean way this energy resides so deep in the earth that we could not realistically reach it simply from digging up the ground the only place this energy can be properly accessed is where it is most concentrated the island presumably the showrunners based the idea of these geological hotspots on the pseudo-scientific idea of a vile vortex these vortices are supposed to be anomalic regions distributed across the earth where disproportionately many strange phenomena occur such as disappearances and miscellaneous types of paranormal activity some claim that the bermuda triangle is one of these alleged areas if you look at the map of these theoretical vial vortices they do resemble the lamp post's depiction of electromagnetic hotspots and it is these very specific hot spots that offer up a variety of possible teleportation points for the island to move to there are two types of ways that the island is known to move between these points the first is a naturally occurring seemingly random jump from one location to another presumably dictated by the island's own will the second way in which the island moves happens when the wheel is turned ergo the island is moved by people rather than itself before we address naturally occurring movement let's look more closely at the wheel and hypothesize what exactly is happening when it gets pushed the man in black describes the system his people are building as channeling water with the light theoretically this system is not too dissimilar to how a water wheel works a water wheel is a machine that converts the energy of flowing water into useful forms of power such wheels are usually constructed from wood or metal with a number of blades or buckets arranged on the outside rim to form the driving car here are some diagrams of the possible systems that the donkey wheel is activating behind that stone wall the wheel is pushed activating the flow of water this flow is presumably being channeled into the wheel chamber from a natural water source as the wheel rotates the water is circulated through the corridor of light creating a circulatory effect but this is working in direct opposition to the natural flow of water around the island look at the river stream that organically feeds into the cave of light this is before there ever was a cork and before there ever was a wheel the stream flowed down the throat of the cave and directly into the open aperture of the source then presumably flowed back out again at another location on the island the flow of this stream into the light is like a bloodstream pumping its way into an artery like a naturally occurring circulatory system it appears that the water stabilized the core of the source and therefore our existence both in fourth dimensional and three-dimensional spaces this balance was disrupted following the ancient incident and this created the need for the metaphorical heart surgery the donkey wheel synthesizes this process by channeling water into a pocket of light and refracting it back and it is doing so completely unnaturally this is a violation of the laws of nature you cannot re-route the bloodstream of the island without consequences to its heart so the island reacts with what is described best as a space-time spasm to protect the fourth-dimensional gateway in the cave the island moves to another geological hotspot in space-time as the main body teleports it ejects the intruder responsible for causing this violation as if they were a foreign object or an infection after all there is a reason that the others believe that someone who pushes that wheel must then be banished think about why that rule exists because using the wheel is viewed as an offence to the island and its natural state of being the creation of the chamber is historically viewed as an offence a shameful chapter in the island's history and just like the smoke monsters summoning chamber being walled off beneath the temple grounds so too was the donkey wheel chamber buried this is why before dharma arrived on the island the well was filled in at the time this was probably the only known access point to reach the wheel chamber the others buried this place intentionally so why was the wheel chamber frozen when ben used it there are several possibilities for the ice build-up including more science-heavy explanations such as changing magnetic fields that cause temperature shifts however this channel takes the view that if the water system behind the wall isn't used for a long period of time it begins to cool gradually this increasingly cold and stagnate water will refrigerate the chamber we know that the wheel had not been used presumably since the dharma days which explains why the chamber had grown so chilly and this is why ben has to device the wheel he struggles to push the spokes because its central rotation mechanism is still frozen and it needs to revolve in order to open up the old water runoff ben has to break the ice literally as the old runoff activates it channels the water into the energy pocket as discussed now let's discuss how and why the island moves of its own accord it is entirely possible that the island didn't always automatically move from place to place if the island's original location was somewhere in the mediterranean that would have made it accessible to many cultures that eventually made it their home imagine that the island is located right smack in the middle of the mediterranean sea this would have made it discoverable by both the egyptians and the romans as well as other cultures that predate them such as explorers from ancient mesopotamia now known as iraq this being the original location of the island also means that its nearest geological hotspot beyond its own bubble was none other than tunisia a neighbouring energy pocket within close proximity to the source think of it like a bridge whenever the source needed to transport someone or something off its shores they were transported through the same fourth dimensional corridor this channel posits the theory that the island only started moving from place to place after the wheel was first turned by the egyptians and following the ancient incident the island started shifting in space at seemingly random intervals as a defense mechanism this was a direct consequence of violating the natural flow of energy around the island the question that needs to be asked now is this if the island is always moving location why isn't there a more obvious shift for the people on the island after all the island sometimes moves from one side of the planet to the other so surely there would be the equivalent of a vivid jump cut from day to night every once in a while well this is where daniel faraday's payload test from season 4 episode the economist comes into play we know that the island is surrounded by a magnetic field a bubble or as desmond calls it a giant snow globe it's the same energy field that makes the frozen donkey wheel maintain its own little pocket of time within this bubble time can either move slower or faster than the rest of the world or it can even stand totally still as long as you are within this bubble the rules of linear time do not apply when the island shifts from one location to another the people on the island cannot see beyond this bubble of time for example it could be night time in the south pacific but still daylight within the island bubble as it teleports from somewhere in the mediterranean after it moves the island will slowly sync up with its surrounding environment no one within the bubble will notice the change or sense of inertia basically there is a lag the snow globe needs to adjust to its new location and catch up with real world time the only disorientating change that island inhabitants might experience with this shift is a sudden drastic change in weather patterns once the lag catches up with the environment this lag is demonstrated on several occasions throughout the show it is why frank lapidas can take off from the island at dusk fly for a few minutes then land on the freighter in the middle of the day it is why the kahanas doctor can wash up on the shores of the island before he is killed outside of the bubble and it is why daniel's payload rockets are out of sync with one another for the majority of season four the kahana freighter is fairly close to the edge of this electromagnetic bubble therefore it will have smaller time discrepancies with these lags sometimes by minutes sometimes by hours sometimes by at least half a day to 24 hours so it follows that the further away you get from the island snow globe the less that time will cohere and sync up precisely in general relativity differences in gravity between locations can cause time to flow at different rates this idea is demonstrated in the film interstellar example the astronauts land on a water planet and are there for no more than an hour or two only to see many years pass back on earth of course the difference between time on the island and time in the real world is not so vast there seem to be smaller variations depending on where the island is and how long it has been since it moved unlike interstellar once you leave this field of gravity you catch up to real world time even if you lose or gain days in between the oceanic six are rescued by penny's boat the searcher and we have mostly been following their internal clock of how many days have passed between the crash on september 22nd and now according to lost pedia the date of their rescue by penny is approximately december 31 2004 but the oceanic six spend another week aboard that boat getting their cover story straight and syncing up the timeline with what the world knows their cover story might also have included plugging up some time discrepancies admittedly these conversations are never seen nor referenced so this remains pure speculation but we know that time on the island moves very differently to that of time on the outside world due to the electromagnetic bubble and time dilation this must impact the internal clocks of people who live on the island after they leave it would be like the worst jet lag in history think about it this way the very fact that the island was jumping into different time zones around the world would mean that our losty's internal body clocks were going to be wrong in terms of what time of day it really was there is no practical way that the way their measurement of the days and their sense of time was the same as ours this might help to explain how tom friendly could leave the island during a short window of time in season three between the events of stranger in a strange land and par avion it is during this window in which he returns to america and recruits michael dawson who appears to have been back home for some time now however according to the on island timeline tom is gone for no longer than five days while michael has only been back home for a week your perception of how long your friends have been gone it's not necessarily how long they've actually been going what does that mean this is a mistake charlotte's right this is complicated stuff the further away people get from the island bubble and its time dilation anomaly the more that linear earth time starts to run normally for them again meanwhile time continues to unfold at different rates back on the island sometimes more slowly such as after the island has been moved or it moves faster as it races to catch up to its new location's time so tom friendly taking the submarine to visit the mainland in this short window of island time suddenly becomes more plausible as does the state of michael's life we can only speculate as to how often the island independently moves during the course of the show we can assume that it teleports itself when there is a spike or blip in the light beneath the landmass in season 1 the island almost certainly moves after desmond resets the button and the plane crashes not only was the plane off course but the survivors were now in a totally different geographic location after season two's fail safe detonation the island no doubt moves again the swan's energy pocket is destroyed prompting the island to jump location this giant burst of electromagnetic energy and the island teleporting across the planet to a new hotspot gets captured by penelope widmore's team at a tracking station presumably somewhere in antarctica the two portuguese men stationed there a monitoring for anomalies in the magnetic fields of the earth the north pole is perfectly positioned to monitor the earth's magnetic field for unusual electrical behavior or disturbances in the ionosphere what these men are doing is not too dissimilar to what dharma did with the lamp post station in los angeles it is totally reasonable to assume that this location in the north pole if it is indeed the north pole is another geological pocket connected to the source the island does not move naturally again until after ben turns the wheel in 2004. we know this because both penelope and her father charles managed to roughly locate the island soon after the fail-safe event once ben pushes the wheel the island physically jumps to a new location where it presumably stays until 2007. meanwhile the predestined time travelers such as john locke shift backwards through time to fulfill their respective destinies in the past richard alpert and the others remain in the present and await the return of john locke we can assume that they live in a state of readiness until that day comes the others are nothing if not patient the homecoming of john locke happens to coincide precisely with the next natural movement of the island which eloise hawking precisely calculated at the lamp post as ajira 316 hits the edge of the electromagnetic bubble the source rips jack kate syed and hurley out of their seats and transports them back to where they belong in the past but what do we see happen to the ajira flight and the other passengers the plane is sucked into the gravitational pull of the island and into the snow globe hence why ajira goes from flying through the middle of the evening sky into a bright sunny day inside this bubble either ajira has arrived in yesterday or they have jumped forward to tomorrow once again this is proof that time inside the island bubble is flowing at a completely different rate to the external world the island has teleported to the western pacific from an unknown previous location wherever that previous place was it was almost certainly daylight there by the time frank and sun are traveling from hydra over to the main island the bubble is catching up with the surrounding environment of its new geographical hotspot because this time dilation is always shifting it is hard to know when exactly we are in terms of real world time the measurements for time that people have within this snow globe will always be somewhat relative these time anomalies are perhaps the side effects of the fourth dimensional core at the heart of the island and indeed at the core of our entire planet and existence the island seems to move through space-time in order to protect itself when threatened and so that predestined travellers may find its shores and their predetermined destinies when the timing is right and we know that eventually time catches up to everyone and everything there are several types of sickness that we see demonstrated in lost each one differs from the other let's untangle their differences in order to understand what is happening in each instance russo's infection the first time we hear of there being a sickness is when russo tells saheed of an infection overtaking her team in 1988 after two months of them being there she claims that one by one each of her friends fell victim to it russo's account of what happened 16 years prior has long since been muddied in her memories upon arriving on the island danielle was subjected to a very sudden series of traumatic incidents that occur within 24 hours her close friend nadine is murdered and her mutilated corpse is dropped to top of the group she sees an impossible sight in the smoke monster as it pulls montand away into the jungle and rips off his arm then the korean stranger they rescued disappears before her very eyes and this all takes place on day one two months later danielle has come to believe that members of her team are afflicted with a contagious and incurable sickness it is unclear exactly how she views the symptoms of this sickness but she feels completely justified in outright executing anybody she deems to be symptomatic jyn returns just in time to see that danielle's lover robert is next in danielle's crosshairs she is ready and willing to shoot him robert talks her down only to try and get her before she can get him after danielle pulls the trigger and kills her lover she turns the gun on jin and attempts to kill him too accusing him of being sick because he suddenly vanished in this moment young russo is convinced that her team's infection originated from interaction with the smoke monster yet 16 years later she tells saeed that the others were the carriers of this sickness in other words the mysterious strangers who live on the island could it be that russo believes the monster and its manifestations and the actual others are all one and the same before we get into that let's first address what exactly being infected by the man in black really means it is not a literal infection in which the man in black can turn good people evil if that were true he would have no need to manipulate anyone in order to orchestrate his loophole he could simply just infect islanders on mass to make them do his bidding like zombies the infection is not metaphysical it is metaphorical he manipulates people just as we saw with benjamin linus in season five why do you want me to kill jacob john because despite your loyal service to this island you got cancer you had to watch your own daughter gunned down right in front of you and your reward for those sacrifices you were banished and you did all this in the name of a man you've never even met so the question is ben why the hell wouldn't you want to kill jacob [Music] lennon attempts to roughly translate dogan's japanese he says the closest term for what is happening to saheed is an infection but really there is no easy english translation for what dogan is describing dogan says that there is a scale inside every man with good on one side and evil on the other the good is clearly represented by the light while the evil is clearly represented by the darkness jacob can activate the light in people whereas the man in black can dim the light but what does this really mean lost takes great pains to show us that people exist within a gray area there is no such thing as ultimate good or ultimate bad the white and black good and evil symbolism is nothing more than metaphor the show wanted to smash the binary nature of good and evil by showing that someone supposedly good like jacob or jack shepard could lash out in anger and vengeance just as the man in black or benjamin linus could show compassion grief or regret for their actions mother and the man in black agree that people are corrupt and bad yet jacob actively tries to prove otherwise to prove that bad people can be good and that morality is on a sliding scale and not simply binary he brings people to the island who are morally ambiguous and flawed people and sometimes outright murderers yet he still finds the good in them or wants to see them find redemption for their mistakes by being part of something greater than themselves just as it happened to him so jacob is all about the grey area any single one of us can slip into the darkness on that scale it happens to sawyer it happens to juliet it happens to charlie it happens to kate it happens to saheed and it doesn't take a smoke monster to claim them for this to happen the infection is simply his way of getting people to believe a lie about themselves or the people and world around them he talks them into doing things they might not have done otherwise he manipulates them into committing evil acts he knows exactly what they want because he is always reading them and he exploits their weaknesses and seduces them into darkness the infection in saheed was growing long before his body was lowered into the temple waters his true descent into darkness began after shannon was shot in front of him and finally metastasized after nadia was killed it is here and not in the temple that his emptiness grew it led him to shooting a child and this made him vulnerable to coercion and manipulation dogan is wrong when he states that there is no cure to the smoke monster's infection we see both syhed and claire come back from the darkness that consumes them saheed makes the ultimate sacrifice for his friends and claire chooses to let go of her anger and return home to her son which means that this infection is not mystical in nature at all the scale within us is always sliding between light and dark it has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the choices we make so what happened in the two months between russo's arrival on the island and her team's untimely demise and why would robert try to kill his pregnant girlfriend there are definitely signs that both robert and russo were suffering from island fever by the point we see this final confrontation the last we saw of them they were going down into the hole to retrieve montand however we know his body is still down there years later which means they never pulled out the real montand nadine and montand weren't candidates but the rest of the team were the man in black is ready to kill those who aren't protected by the rules but he is also always searching for potential jacob killers and anti-candidates those that can be manipulated corrupted and turned we hear montan's voice beckoning him down even though he is almost certainly dead did the team go down there and bring out a fake montand did the man in black play the team off against each other by making them suspicious and paranoid of who was real and who was infected rousseau literally accuses robert of not being robert then accuses jyn of suffering from this very same infection because he disappeared previously in the same way smoke monster apparitions appear and disappear in a blink robert could have been driven to pull the trigger on his pregnant girlfriend especially after she had gunned down the other members maybe he didn't think she was danielle any more either we can only really speculate on what happened during those two months of the french team being on the island between the temple incident and the beach massacre if smokey's claiming is a literal infection then why does it take two months for robert and the other team members to turn on russo when we see syed seemingly turn to darkness within one meeting and conversation with fate lock in season six and how can both saeed and claire come back from being claimed simply by making moral choices to do the right thing the man in black played the french team off against one another that's what he does manipulate people into killing one another using apparitions to lead people into murdering on his behalf and he does it through playing on their weakness their fears their guilt their hate so why does present-day daniel russo associate the others with the smoke monster infection jyn was a mysterious stranger in their midst to danielle he became one of the others which might explain why she would later associate them with being carriers of this alleged sickness this is why she accuses ben of infecting her in her warped mind she has become unable to distinguish between an actual other on the island like ben a time traveller like gin a smoke monster manifestation like montand or her own lover robert to her they are all infected and therefore they are all threats this leads us on to another less comfortable possibility that danielle was the one who had really been infected either through the man in black's manifestations and manipulations or simply because she suffered a psychological breakdown following the traumatic events of those first two months on the island there is some evidence that points to her having murdered her friends in cold blood labouring under the delusion that they were not really themselves anymore robert saw what she had become capable of and understood that it was going to be him or her in the end hence their standoff both parties looked dehydrated and exhausted ready to kill one another based on fear and paranoia how they got to this moment will always be open to fan speculation but the one thing we can be sure of is that it is undoubtedly the handiwork of the man in black he successfully played the team off against each other doing what he has always done best deceive coerce exploit corrupt and kill as we see later danielle russo has a completely skewered memory and understanding of what the sickness actually was in season two when she suspects that baby aaron is infected she tells claire in a non-too subtle way that she will need to kill her own child this indicates a clear and present psychosis in russo she never properly processed her own trauma her inaccurate diagnosis of aaron is even more frightening when it turns out that he only had a fever that passes naturally anyway what this proves to us however is that russo is more than willing to kill an innocent person just because she believes they might be infected even if it is just a baby this is exactly how she justified the murders of her own friends 16 years ago and it is a reminder that the smoke monster infecting people is not necessarily to be taken literally like syhed says in season 1 episode solitary danielle russo has been alone on this island for far too long she is an unreliable narrator of her own story and a deeply tragic figure the sickness that claimed her team was not an actual infectious contagion of the body it was a sickness of the mind an infection of the soul a dimming of the light inside good people the dharma vaccine was seen on at least two occasions it was shown to be a translucent yellow liquid inside a vial labelled with a familiar serial number the vaccine appeared to be administered in most cases via a jet injector we saw both desmond and kelvin injecting themselves this way it appeared that the vaccine was originally manufactured by the dharma initiative although the kit found on the pallet drop appeared to suggest they were continuing to manufacture the vaccine off island and would send it along on pallet drops so what exactly was it supposed to counter against the vaccine was most likely anti-radiation sickness medication that dharma workers were required to use following the incident at the swan site in 1977 which caused electromagnetic fallout over the island we know for a fact that this fallout affected women in pregnancy post 1977 an ironic unintended side effect of juliet's detonation of jughead the first few deaths of on island mothers to be must have been incredibly demoralizing to the dharma initiative community this surely led him to developing the vaccine in an attempt to counter the effects of this electromagnetic radiation so it follows that the two-man team in the hatch were required to take regular shots of this medicine because they were directly adjacent to a pocket of electromagnetism 24 hours a day the vaccine was the only precautionary measure available to dharma at the time then later it became the only line of defense available to the others perhaps this is the reason they continued to allow the pallet drops to take place in order to stockpile the medicine however by all accounts the vaccine was ultimately ineffective in preventing women dying during their second trimesters this was a problem that was only eventually fixed albeit unintentionally by desmond in 2004. when he turns the fail-safe key it detonates the pocket of energy responsible for causing these pregnancy issues that have affected the island since 1977 this is also the reason why we see ethan injecting claire with the very same vaccine during her abduction it remains the closest medicine that the others have to helping pregnant women bring their babies to term on the island both russo and claire conceived their babies off island and were already in the late stages upon their arrival which is why they could give birth without suffering the same consequences some people believe that the vaccine was simply a placebo but if that were true we would not see a physician like ethan using it to treat claire who would have been incredibly valuable to the others in their attempts to solve the pregnancy crisis for further illustration on this point take a look at the dharma vaccine in this picture and consider everything just mentioned now let's compare it to a real world medicine known as methotrexate it is a chemotherapy agent and immune system suppressant used to treat cancer autoimmune diseases and ectopic pregnancies and forms a translucent yellow liquid you can decide for yourselves if there is any correlation time displacement this is completely unrelated to the soul sickness that russo mentions or to the electromagnetic fallout that the vaccine was intended to counter this sickness is purely related to how people travel to and from the island there is a time dilation barrier that surrounds the island like a bubble or a snow globe and there is only a very specific corridor through this bubble that people can travel through safely without suffering consequences or side effects for the average person traveling through the bubble can cause electrical and instrumentation failure and confusion and disorientation for people who have been exposed to either radiation or electromagnetism at some point in their lives it can unstick their consciousness in time this is known as temporal displacement and it can be fatal as we see happen with george minkowski a person's consciousness cannot fluctuate between two points in time without the brain eventually suffering from a cerebral hemorrhage for desmond and minkowski their minds are travelling between past and present seemingly at random but ultimately by design for people like charlotte and faraday they are physically moving between points in time but their brains similarly cannot function normally while in a state of temporal displacement the common symptoms that we see include double vision headaches and nosebleeds those that are afflicted from this condition might also exhibit memory loss and confusion as their consciousness flows back and forth along the river of time which we see happen to daniel faraday's former girlfriend and test subject teresa even daniel himself subjected himself to radiation exposure that caused him to suffer memory loss hence why he didn't recall meeting desmond in 1996 or other aspects of his past until the island began to heal him the worst symptom is the inability to distinguish between past present and future minkowski eventually succumbs to this as his brain essentially shuts down unable to exist in more than one place and time and we see it again with charlotte as her mind eventually follows her body in being unstuck in time since she has been exposed to the island's electromagnetic properties the longest out of the time travelling group this temporal displacement of the body can be cured simply by fixing the cause of it which is unsticking the donkey wheel the only known cure for temporal displacement of the mind seems to be finding a constant that allows the person to differentiate between time periods for desmond it was the love of his life penny the cause for both of these forms of temporal displacements are directly linked to the light beneath the island as discussed previously the light is made up of electromagnetism and it is the source of all human consciousness within the source time has no meaning which means your consciousness is free to flow like a river both upstream and downstream simultaneously taps into this when he crosses the time dilation barrier and we see him tap into it again when he glimpses the flash sideways in season six all of the mind travel and time travel is by design in order to keep the flow of time and existence intact so there is a distinct difference between each of these afflictions to summarize the scale of humanity and morality that exists within a person can always slide into darkness and dim their inner light off island this happens every day through negative life experiences and traumas and the sickness grows within a person's heart leading them to do terrible things on ireland this process can be expedited with help from the man in black who plays on people's sense of guilt their vulnerabilities and the paranoid fears he makes them believe in a lie about themselves or the people and world around them this is the sickness that destroys russo and her team elsewhere the light beneath the island emits high levels of radiation which requires a chemotherapy agent to be administered once that radiation is released at the swan site especially to those worst affected by the fallout such as pregnant women finally time displacement causes physical symptoms and eventually death when a person or their consciousness becomes unstuck from the linear flow of time the only place our minds can survive this displacement is after death and within the source itself where the light welcomes us home and all forms of sickness have no dominion there wait it's cool i think i know what these things are oh yeah what the hell are they you know that the whispers on the island are the ghosts of people who have died there but are unable to move on they cannot return to the source for rebirth until they have made peace with their actions in life michael is a perfect example of a ghost who cannot move on into the light until he makes things right with his son walt michael attempted to redeem himself for the murders of anna and libby by sacrificing his life to save others with the bomb on the freighter but he never got to resolve the relationship that was most important to him by earning his son's forgiveness in the series epilogue the new man in charge we see hurley and ben bringing walt back to the island with the strong implication he is going to help his father move on this inability to let go can manifest in one of two ways the first way is that you die and wake up in the sideways where you must remember your life and accept your death in order to move on some people such as ben are not ready to do that just yet he is still reckoning with his actions from the living world he does not become a whisper on the island because everyone he needs to make peace with had already died before him often at his own hands people such as his father roger linus his adopted daughter alex russo her real mother danielle russo and even his successor john locke and old enemy charles widmore all had died before him the only way he could make peace with his actions was through the flash sideways meanwhile the whisper ghosts on the island still have the opportunity to find closure in their post-death state such as michael and that closure might take any number of forms the light inside people rejoins with the source in death the source beckons us all home to it eventually wherever in the world we die and for whatever reason we die but some people simply aren't ready to let go of life or the guilt either they aren't done with the world or the world isn't done with them so the light that exists within them aka their consciousness clings to the physical plane in our everyday world off island these ghosts exist they try to communicate with us only we cannot hear them unless we have psychic sensitivity like hurley or miles on the island however their voices are amplified due to the close proximity to the source therefore anyone can hear them speak these ghosts watch everts unfold on the island across time as if they were lost within a dream that they cannot wake up from they are drawn to those in conflict or those who are solitary and alone the whispers often tend to stir whenever death draws near we hear them before shannon is killed you could argue that they are primary reason that she is shot which once again is a death that sets in motion a chain of events and reactions they whirl around lock as he prepares to kill himself just before walt appears to prevent him from going through with it we hear them stir when the battle begins between the others and kimi's mercenaries resulting in several fatalities they speak before michael dies on the freighter foreshadowing what he is about to become sometimes they accompany the arrival or appearance of the smoke monster who has become death incarnate the only reason we see michael and understand him in season six is because we are seeing him from hurley's point of view michael demonstrates an understanding of what is happening and appears to be guided by the island himself when you become a whisper the island calls upon you as and when needed no whisper remains behind without serving a purpose in the grand tapestry of time you can find detailed transcripts of the whispers online although there are many alternate translations out there most of the whispers are without any relevant context they are often a mix of random gibberish and fragmented observations on what is happening on screen but there is one very telling audible line it was the first real clue that the whispers were the voices of the dead and it came as early as season 1 in the episode outlaws the last words of the man sawyer shot and killed in sydney aka frank duckett echo out in the jungle as sawyer hunts down the ball the whisper clearly says it'll come back around this could either be the voice of sawyer's victim or it could simply be one of the ghosts repeating the phrase however there are other types of ghosts in lost that do not fall into the same category as the whisper ghosts the island can summon the ghost of any dead person to appear no matter where or how they died in order to guide nudge or push the living in a certain direction the best example of this is richard alpert's isabella communicating through hurley the island has called upon her to return from the source in order to put richard back on the path he needs to be on using hurley as the spiritual translator between life and death note isabella's words to richard we are already together this line is absolutely key to understanding where these non-whisper ghosts are coming from in the flash sideways once you have remembered your death and let go of the physical world you move on into the light as a collective conscious in which we are all linked together but time does not exist there isabella can die in 1867 and richard can die in 2057 but they will both meet in the flash sideways and rejoin with the source at the same time therefore isabella is being summoned back to the real world as a ghost from this ethereal state beyond the flash sideways where she is already with richard hence her words to him this is also true of charlie when he appears to hurly at santa rosa to help guide his friend back to the island this is happening after the flash sideways from charlie's point of view he has remembered his life his time on the island his love for claire and aaron and his ultimate sacrifice and death he finds his soulmates again then moves on into the light to rejoin with the source but the island is summoning his consciousness from this metaphysical state to help guide a key person back in the physical reality the source is trying to ensure it continues to flow out to the world and to maintain its own existence and certain people such as hurley are key players in making that happen this is also why jack sees his father in the hospital this scene has been the subject of much discussion among the fanbase is this the real christian shepherd is jack hallucinating or is it the smoke monster through deduction we can find the answer the smoke monster cannot leave the island so we know it is not the man in black posing as christian the smoke detector going off is more of an easter egg for the audience a small hint that the christian we have been seeing on the island is indeed the smoke monster but in this moment jack is really seeing his father for the briefest glimpse because jack is predestined to become an island protector and this momentary appearance is enough to set jack on his path back towards the island it is what triggers his emotional unravelling this is where his road to redefinition begins the previous chapter explored the smoke monster in depth had he died in a normal way the man in black might well have become a whisper on the island but because he went into the light he became the ultimate whisper the ultimate ghost not only can he appear as his former self but he can also pose as others that have died so this muddies the water in some of the appearances of ghosts on the island we know isabella appeared as both a smoke monster manifestation to richard on the black rock and then later as the real isabella when communicating through hurley the key to understanding which apparition is smoke monster and which apparition is ghost can be this simple trick if a non-psychic or non-special character can see the apparition then it is probably the smoke monster if only a special person like hurley can see it then it's probably a legitimate ghost there is one exception to this rule jacob's ghost is eventually seen by all of the candidates as the time draws near for one of them to step up to the role the question of whether emily linus appearing to a young ben makes her a ghost or a manifestation of the smoke monster will depend entirely on whether or not you think ben was special when he was a child regardless a person lives they play their part in the grand tapestry of time they die in service of whatever their destiny may have been they go to the flash sideways to remember this life and find their soulmates they move on into the light together to rejoin with the source that gave them life in the first place the source calls upon him when needed to make sure this cycle is perpetuated across time those that are not ready to go on this journey stay behind to whisper to the living until their time comes to be released and find the peace they need in the light with the rest of us [Music] dead is dead or so we are told but we also know that death is not the end and that the dead can and do come back in the world of lost john locke's resurrection may have been an elaborate deception but he was not the only person we saw come back to life saeed is another significant character to be resurrected from death and this is why dogan puts him through a series of tests the light from the source is being channelled into the spring which heals even the most fatal of wounds but to their knowledge it cannot bring the dead back to life when saheed wakes up healed and like nothing happened this alerts dogen and lennon to the possibility that he may not be himself anymore so dogan tests saheed he blows ash over him to check how the body reacts he uses an electro-convulsive device to deliver a series of shocks to the system these tests are a way of checking to see if saheed is a manifestation of the smoke monster who is repelled by both emf wavelengths and an unknown ash compound the hot poker to the stomach is the last test to see if his skin sizzles and scars this all proves that sai heed is not a smoke monster or a ghost however the living dead remains the domain of the smoke monster and saheed is already susceptible to the darkness within himself his resurrection is not unusual however dead is dead apparently but we have seen several characters revived from death on the show most notably charlie in season one in mr echo's flashback in season 2 charlotte malkin returns to life after drowning despite being pronounced dead by a doctor she meets echo at the airport with a message from his deceased brother yemi which means she has clearly been to the flash sideways lock is also seemingly revived from death by jacob's touch following his fatal fall michael lives on as a ghost on the island along with the other undead whispers indeed dead is definitely not dead in lost the island cannot let saheed die yet because he is the one to save the remaining candidates from the bomb blast on the submarine if he died at the temple then they will die later but death is not something to be seen as frivolous on lost or that struggles of our characters and the conflicts of their lives are meaningless simply because there is an afterlife in which they can all be together again it's like jack tells desmond in the series finale there are no shortcuts no do-overs what happened happened trust me i know all of this matters shall we one of the most common misconceptions about loss that has been perpetuated since the show ended in 2010 is that the characters were dead the whole time this misconception has been debunked ad nauseum by both the showrunners commentators and fans i won't spend too much time going over this familiar ground but just for the record everything we see happening in the flash sideways takes place somewhere between the point of death and the afterlife it is not an alternate timeline nor is it set in the living world everything happening outside of the sideways universe is the real living world in which actions have consequences and the stakes are incredibly real the flash sideways exists within the source aka the light beneath the island that runs across the earth and powers our whole existence think of the island like a power station that generates energy for an entire city if the power station blows up or is shut down entirely the city will fall into darkness but if this particular power station dies the city's darkness will last forever in season six episode across the sea mother explains that a piece of the sauce's light exists inside every human being this light can be seen as either a person's soul or their consciousness it is our memories our emotions our experiences it makes us who we are when we die our light returns to the source for quote-unquote rebirth what rebirth means is never made entirely clear what we know is that before our light rejoins with the source we must first let go of the life we knew and come to terms with our own death the flash sideways is a construct within the source itself a way to help the human mind ease into a new form of existence perhaps one that is pure consciousness without form think of the sideways universe as being almost like a virtual simulation populated entirely by the consciousness of every being that ever existed it will look different to people who died in different eras it's always a subjective reflection of the world that each person remembers or finds the most familiar what we are seeing in season six is the losties very own specific corner of this reality that they create for themselves in order to find each other in death much like a lost and found section in an airport where people are reunited with their missing items and lost baggage before they leave through the exit before walking out that exit a person needs to understand what is inside their respective baggage every character has something that they need to accept experience or reckon with before they can move on into the light let's run through a character example to demonstrate this jack shepard's entire life led him towards saving the island and the world in 2007. his destiny was to become a protector vanquish the man in black and restart the source simply put he fulfilled his purpose in life however there were loose ends from his life that went unfulfilled he never got to reconcile with his father whom was the chief antagonist throughout most of his life and he never got to be a father himself or at least to become the kind of father he always wished he could have had don't choose jack don't decide you don't want to be a hero you don't want to try and save everyone because when you fail you just don't have what it takes so the flash sideways provides him with this opportunity to know what it is like to have a child to raise him and to love him and to get it right you know when i was your age my father didn't want to see me fail either he used to say to me that he said that i didn't have what it takes i spent my whole life carrying that around with me i don't ever want you to feel that way i will always love you no matter what you do in my eyes you can never fail as for who david shepard really was we can only speculate there are as i see it only two possible explanations for his existence in the sideways option one david is a construct from jack's subconscious he looks and behaves just as jack did when he was that age the boy is a direct reflection of his younger self created in order to help jack be the good father he never got to be in real life this way jack can give his younger self the love support warmth and wisdom that christian shepherd never did when he was growing up it's a way of reaching a catharsis that he could not achieve in life hence why david is encouraged and supported in his musical pursuits with piano playing something that it is implied that jack might have done had he not been driven into the family business [Music] option two a popular fan theory is that david shepard is in fact jack's real son by way of kate before they return to the island in 2007 jack and kate spend the night together and make love it is then that kate becomes pregnant she returns to the island and events play out as seen it isn't until after she leaves the island and jack that she will realize she is with child jack's child this theory would mean that david shepard is as real as anyone in the sideways and is getting to know the father he never had this option does raise questions however why would david have no interactions with kate his alleged mother and why would he not be in the church at the end these are valid questions the only one which can be answered is why david is not in the church there are many characters of great importance to the lives of our losties who are not there locke moves on without the love of his life helen by his side hurley's parents are absent from the church as is charlie's brother liam and jack's mother the reason for why certain family members or loved ones are absent from the church is because moving on is not about family or friends it is about something deeper more spiritual no one rejoins with the source alone you move into the light with your soulmates by soulmates i don't necessarily mean it in the romantic sense of the word this transcends the relationships of the everyday world we live in the amount of time you spend with someone or how well you knew them becomes immaterial what matters is how you are connected beyond the physical soulmates in the sideways sense simply means the people you were bound together with by fate and destiny in the living world take jack as the lead example the light within him was bound to the people he met on the island not just through their experiences there together but because they were all connected by the island and its grand tapestry of time their fates were entwined regardless of flesh and blood language nationality gender ethnicity or religion there was never a point in their lives where they weren't going to meet each other and have these experiences in spiritual philosophy soul mates transcend the concept of family and friends and even total strangers soul mates are considered to be people with whom you may have lived many lifetimes together with in different states of being regardless of your relationships to one another this is the implication for our losties some of them have shared experiences in life of course just as some went on to have shared experiences beyond anything we ever see in the show but just because someone like shannon had no real world living connection to someone like penny doesn't mean they are not connected by the same people the same love and more importantly the same light each of their light creates one piece of a collective whole but we see that the sideways is populated by many different souls all of whom are on their own journeys some of whom we recognize from their connections to the island and some of whom are merely strangers passing through the same dream and occasionally interacting they too will come to terms with their own deaths and move on into the light with their own soulmates we get a sense of this with ben linus he sits outside the church not ready to move on in part because he has not reconciled with his actions on the living plane but also because the group inside the church and not his soulmates in which his life was most deeply entwined with ben must help his people remember and seek their forgiveness before rejoining with the source he begins this process by apologizing to john locke and seeking forgiveness of which he is granted after this ben will no doubt seek the forgiveness of alex and her mother danielle helping them to remember their lives after all it isn't just love and joy that helps people to remember their lives it is also pain loss grief and regret the emotions that we felt the most strongly during life once ben has made peace with himself and those he wronged in the sideways he will be able to move on with them a question that is quite often asked about the rules of the sideways universe is what happens to the people who appear to die in it after all we see villains such as martin kimi his right-hand man omar and even mikhail get killed what does this mean within the context of the afterlife well cast your minds back to dogan's scale of balance within people a metaphorical concept that represents the idea of morality within human beings take martin kimi as an example of that scale his inner light turned to darkness during his life the balance within him slid too far in the wrong direction he did not make contrition for his bad deeds nor did he ever attempt to redeem his actions in life so in the sideways universe someone like kimi is still reckoning with that darkness inside of himself he is in denial about his own death in the same way as everyone else but his own soulmate or mates are not nearly as clear to him as they might be to our lusties he cannot remember who he was or what he did without finding those connections and making peace with the memories of his life regardless death does not function the same way in the sideways as it does in reality in fact death has no dominion in the sideways at all so that means there are two possibilities of what happens to people like kimi after they have been killed the first is that they die and then reset like a video game character reliving the exact same sequence of events in the sideways as they have before like groundhog day they are stuck in a never-ending loop from which they cannot escape almost like a karmic punishment for all the wrong they did this would very much be in keeping with the notions of what hell would be like the second possibility is that they wake up again in a different scenario and will be given different choices after he is shot kimi will wake up in the sideways again but experience different people and places from his life like syed he could be offered the chance to find the connections to his humanity once again and to make amends for any wrong he caused perhaps with the help of someone from his past before his light had turned to darkness it is these final choices in the sideways that will determine if they are ready to return to the light or not as we see with anna lucia some people are simply not quite ready to do that just yet and certainly not ready to sit alongside our losties something is holding them back or they have yet to reconnect with the right person and remember some move on beforehand such as mr echo and his brother yemi who do not need anyone else meanwhile others will move on after the church group has departed such as anna lucia i use the terms before and after in a completely relative senses of the words time doesn't matter within the sideways any more than it does when you are inside a dream circling back to this idea of death in the sideways and the potential notion of hell nothing captures this more clearly than when we look at someone like john locke's father anthony cooper this is the closest we ever see to a clear version of what hell would be like he is in a catatonic state akin to locked in syndrome where he is aware of his environment but unable to interact with it what could be an interpretation as to why he is like this is it possible that cooper remembered all of the awful things he did to people throughout his life and is it possible that his actions proved to be too much for him to take therefore trapping him inside himself in this state anthony cooper cannot seek forgiveness or find any soulmates if indeed he ever had any it might even be the case that a person without soulmates cannot move on if you lived a life without any love or connection then you will forever be stuck in this purgatory state therefore people like cooper indeed trapped in hell whether or not he will ever be able to escape this prison of the soul is unclear like kimi we can only hypothesize what happens to the seemingly irredeemable if cooper quote-unquote dies within this locked-in state he could potentially reawaken again in the same sideways loop or in a completely different scenario this is left entirely open to speculation the sideways is incredibly symbolic and not always literal what makes it so fascinating is that it opens itself up to varied interpretations depending on your point of view and that s ultimately what the flash sideways boils down to point of view reflections in a mirror of one's self-image remembrances of a life from inside a dream from self-actualization to collective catharsis but each person has to find their own way to the church first because the way they experience the sideways is entirely subjective therefore their path towards enlightenment will be deeply personal and we only ever see the sideways from the perspective of our losties and their specific perceptions of themselves and one another a good example of this subjectivity is in how aaron is portrayed his rebirth occurs in the sideways and this helps claire charlie and kate to remember who they really are his presence is a galvanizing moment for all three souls this also holds true for jack since his memories of the island sync up directly to when aaron was just a newborn baby there as it will for several other characters in the church when jack walks into the room we are seeing the people within it through his eyes as viewers we should not be limited by the illusion that the rules of reality still apply in this place after all aaron lived a full life of his own growing up and growing old kate would have presumably died an old woman yet we see her as she was on the island and that is true for him all to aaron he might perceive being in that church as a grown man surrounded by his own soulmates in a dream state the dreamer experiences it subjectively not objectively the film inception explores a similar notion with the perception of reality just like the cipher that is david shepard the sideways presents this dream reality to its occupants in a way that will best help him to let go and move on for jack it is seeing his soulmates as he remembered them on the island an alternative perspective in the church could see an adult aaron standing alongside the second generation of losties including jion clementine little charlie and walt finally we need to talk about why the island is underwater at the beginning of season six there are three explanations none of which need contradict the other the first is that you can see the island being sunk in very literal terms the sideways created an alternate reality in which our characters lives were not influenced by the island allowing them to live a second life free from external influences such as jacob without their parts being course corrected by the source the second explanation is that since the characters are now inside of the source the island has no purpose there it is only needed in the living world the island is an axis mundi of sorts i.e a place on earth connected to a celestial plane in the third explanation and one that still connects with the previous two the island being at the bottom of the ocean is largely symbolic in the sideways no one remembers their true lives or the deaths until they are ready to move on and they don't remember the island or their experiences on it either so the island remains hidden deep beneath the vast ocean of the collective unconscious waiting to be rediscovered waiting to be remembered to summarise the flash sideways is a large collective dream made up of memories emotions symbols and subconscious truths experienced in life by all people but each person experiences it subjectively it is in this purgatory state that they learn to let go of the life they knew and their own personal baggage they find that constants from the living world then all move on together to rejoin the source and become one with it again the ultimate message of lost is a simple idea that we all connected by time and fate through light and darkness and in life and in death [Music] lost was a game-changing show that sucked in audiences from all around the world we were dazzled by its creative invention intrigued by its many mysteries and enthralled by its character drama it created a zeitgeist that did not really exist at the time and came about during a very specific window in history where social media was first emerging and fan engagement was evolving many shows have attempted to replicate the success of lost and failed it was lightning in a bottle the show has gone on to carve out an iconic place within pop culture and continues to stoke conversation and debate lost still rewards repeat viewings to this day and has stood the test of time but what did it all mean beyond the mystery beyond the drama what was the show trying to express through its story and why did we find it so fascinating and divisive let's go find out [Music] two sides one is light it was dark lost tackled many themes and ideas throughout its run but none more so than the nature of people and morality the show wanted to explore the nature of good and the nature of evil and ask questions about how we measure human behavior against such ideas the show presents two binary representations of so-called good and so-called evil jacob and the man in black the others proclaim jacob's brilliance and benevolence while condemning the man in black as evil incarnate but is any of this accurate does lost really want us to subscribe to these concepts or does it want us to question them viewers have projected their own readings onto what the light beneath the island represents and what the smoke monster cloud represents the light surely must represent all the good in the world and the dark cloud surely must represent all the bad but the light beneath the island is neither good nor bad it is an elemental force in the universe that gives and sustains life it is the bestower of light and life to the totality of the cosmos to assume that this light represents all the good in human beings is to sign away our sense of responsibility in our actions to a supernatural force similarly to assume that the smoke monster represents evil incarnate as dogan once put it is to assume that people are evil for reasons beyond their control that an individual's morality is dependent on a higher power but the portrayals of characters within the narrative and the overall themes of the show suggest that everyone has the capacity for both good and bad and that it comes down to a combination of choice and opportunity something that the island gives to everyone who comes to its shores meanwhile in the real nonfiction world good and evil have been useful constructs to help human beings understand the true nature of themselves and other people it helps us to comprehend and measure human behavior on a grander scale good and evil are part of an ancient human mythology dating back to the dawn of theology and storytelling if someone does good it is because a benevolent god was behind it if someone does bad it's because an insidious devil influenced the outcome whether you believe in creation mythologies like this or not human beings are actually far more complicated than something as binary as white hats and black hats can anyone ever truly be 100 good is that level of moral and ethical purity something within the grasp of the human condition the closest we see to a human character exhibiting this kind of purity is hugo reyes but even he has his demons both psychological and physical he struggles with an eating disorder which stems from his depression and guilt over a tragic accident he also suffers with imposter syndrome and mental illness these afflictions don't make him any less worthy of being seen as good but they do reflect that he has his own inner darkness to contend with hurley is not perfect benjamin linus could be seen as one of the darkest human characters in the show he is a pathological liar and ready and willing to use manipulation and violence to get his way he participates in the purge of his own people overseeing a legitimate island genocide he goes on to exert control over the others through any means at his disposal he literally traps juliet on the island and makes her a prisoner he kills john locke for no reason other than his own bitter jealousy in the hopes that with lot gone he might be able to restore his own leadership back on the island with the exception of the man in black ben is the show's arch villain of course ben is full of his own pain and trauma from the past he was raised by an abusive neglectful father and is made to feel incredible guilt for what happened to his mother in childbirth all of this was beyond his control as a result he searches for belonging and acceptance perhaps more importantly he searches for a father figure who will both love him and approve of him jacob becomes this figure when ben lashes out at jacob it is tantamount to a child striking out at an absent parental figure so there are psychological and emotional reasons as to why ben does what he does however rather than punishing himself like hugo or seeking therapy or love and comfort in his community ben channels his own pain into striking out at those around him he wants to dominate and control everyone and everything until he has the family he feels he deserves ben is a very human kind of evil rather than elemental malevolence ben's badness was born out of circumstance trauma ego and poor choices what is important to remember here is that he was still redeemable in the lost universe you can return from the darkness if you really want to it is perhaps no coincidence that the showrunners made hurley and ben into leader and lieutenant respectively at the end of the series together they could create a more nuanced balance between the light and the dark within themselves and each other a coming of age for hugo reyes and an ongoing act of contrition for benjamin linus what this pairing and these two respective character arcs demonstrate is just how malleable the nature of good and evil truly is what is evil anyway is anyone ever 100 evil perhaps to ask this question is more controversial than asking if anyone can ever really be 100 good the belief in the existence of evil can ironically bring comfort to some if absolute evil exists then satu must absolute good it is proof of the divine perhaps and this feeds into certain belief systems essentially the very concept of evil itself can be as complicated or as simplistic as we want it to be remember damon lindelof's excerpt from the across the sea commentary he asks this very question in regards to the man in black was the man in black truly evil to begin with or did his corruption and darkness grow over time carlton interjects and says not yet it took time lost and its creators are implying that the past and our negative experiences within it creates the monsters after all the smoke monster is an almost literal embodiment of the island's past and the memories of the dead human beings can use evil as a way of explaining away horrific acts and behaviours if someone is quote unquote evil then we do not need to try and understand why they do the things they do they are simply part of some unknowable malevolent darkness that we cannot ever hope to comprehend or solve much like how some lost fans view the smoke monster it is evil incarnate and that's that but is this really what the narrative of lost wants to teach us let's explore the complexities of evil within the show discounting situations involving self-defense murder is generally considered to be an evil act but in fiction murder is only an evil act if the person being killed is deemed to be a good person how many movies and tv shows have you seen in which good guys kill the bad guys and there is no question of their morality in doing so white hats are allowed to kill black hats in almost any context and this is not seen as evil or even bad so what happens when someone morally ambiguous murders someone else morally ambiguous what then when syed kills dogan you can either buy into the idea that the man in black has infected him with some undefined essence of evil or you can simply look at saeed in his character journey to understand why he made this choice syed had developed an intense emotionally driven hatred of the others after the death of shannon in season two which brought out his worst impulses as a man the need to avenge this loss coloured his judgment in every interaction with the others going forward killing another in this case dogan in return for the resurrection of the woman he loved was not such a hard decision to make dogan had literally tried to kill saeed as earlier and fully expected saeed to die attacking the man in black on a suicide mission and the man in black had already demonstrated that he could conjure the dead he manipulates saeed using the same tricks he used on the ancient egyptians making them believe he was really summoning the dead what syed does in the temple is in keeping with his character he is not suddenly turned evil we also know that saeed has become more amenable for coercion in the last few years because he suffered another tragic loss this time in a hit-and-run accident which then readily appropriates to manipulate syed into becoming an off-the-books assassin remember ben was not the leader of the others anymore and no longer had access to the same resources he once did but he wants to wreak a bloody revenge on his old rival charles widmore but he needs someone capable of doing the dirty work all he shows saeed is a photo of a man named bakir driving a car then he feeds saeed a vague story about how this man was there that day in los angeles we know bakir was one of whidmore's spies he was most likely assigned to watch saeed hence why he was middle eastern so he could understand any arabic conversations taking place every member of the oceanic 6 no doubt had a widmore spy watching them and tracking their movements probably from the moment they got back that means back here goes wherever saeed goes so he probably was indeed in los angeles that day but why would widmor order this to happen he doesn't attack or try to kill any other member of the oceanic six or their families there is nothing to be achieved tactically from doing this it is simply an awful accident ben knows bakir works for widmore and he uses saeed to execute him to send a message ben continues using him for other high-profile assassinations in widmore's organisation until ben is done and cuts him loose saeed realises far too late that ben was using him the whole time to kill these people and he can never be 100 sure if bakir or widmore were genuinely responsible for his wife's tragic death or not this feeds into saeed's motivations of wanting to kill ben as a young boy because it would wipe the slate clean for all the murders that he carried out for older ben in the future a way of taking back all the bloodshed he was capable of shooting a child long before the man in black ever got his hooks into him this was an evil act one of many committed by the iraqi torturer yet can anyone honestly look at this character and call him evil or irredeemable how is saeed wrongly killing dogan and lenin any different from him wrongly killing charles widmore's people both are motivated by a sense of love and loss and an inability to let go of the past the only difference is the person who is ultimately pulling his strings we will circle back to syed in the meaning of his character in the overall narrative of the series towards the end because more than any other character syed represents the overall message being conveyed to us by the writers about the nature of good and evil let's dig deeper into this theme of killing and morality and lost more than any other tv show the murders of main or recurring characters are almost always presented ambiguously none more so than when john locke kills naomi dorit with a knife to the back without ever having met or interacted with her they are complete strangers yes she was untrustworthy and clearly deceiving the group about her intentions but was she a bad person did she deserve to die then why do you stay with jack because it was the right thing to do block he's a murderer it's just all about karma jim you know karma you make bad choices bad things happen to you but you make good choices and then good hey hey hey hey you got one yeah here pull it in wow look at that you see now that's karma we must be the good guys huh in my experience the people go out of their way to tell you that the good guys are the bad guys rose and bernard clearly view what lop did to naomi as an evil act and therefore condemn his actions going forward yet literally hours prior to naomi's death bernard blew the hell out of the others alongside former gangster jinn and former iraqi torturer saeed bernard is directly responsible for at least several deaths of people he never met before why is this acceptable to both himself and rose is the only reason they view locke's actions as outright murder was because there was no clear provocation by naomi or is it because they see the others as bad guys and therefore a preemptive strike is justified why is one murder wrong but the murder of several people justified as we got to learn more about the others their initial appearance as some kind of malevolent force for evil was soon disabused by the reality of their community as demonstrated by people like juliet burke and richard alpert even tom friendly for all of his violence and threats demonstrated empathy compassion and kindness ethan ron's actions in season one felt very much like those of a bad guy charlie even describes him as such declare but we are later given context to ethan's actions he was trying to ensure safe delivery of claire's baby even if he was willing to do that at the expense of claire's life this makes sense because we see that he was all too used to losing mothers in childbirth anyway so was ethan evil did he deserve to be executed the question worth asking here is does context matter your perception of someone you see as being a bad person can change quite radically once you know more about their past and how they became who they are and why they do the things they do charlie pulled the trigger on ethan after he was already beaten and captured the man was no longer an immediate threat and yet charlie is not held accountable by the group for this act no one accuses him of being a cold-blooded murderer who is too dangerous to be around least of all rose and bernard who happily interact with charlie following this event the show is trying to express that normal people can commit evil acts but that doesn't make them evil people it also demonstrates that the way we view one evil act versus another evil act can be totally different depending on who the perpetrator is versus who the victim is in bernard's case he was justified in blowing up the others because he had the moral support of his community aka the oceanic 815 group but also because the survivors all felt under threat from what they perceived to be an aggressive antagonistic force they viewed this as self-defense even though the women in the camp would have potentially ended up living a safer more harmonious existence with the others on the opposite side of the island like cindy and the kids hurley is also guilty of killing someone on the beach once again it comes in service of saving other lives and is arguably being done in self-defense so even the purest heart can commit the darkest act imaginable where do we draw the line between an act of heroism and an act of violence because john locke's murder of naomi is viewed by many people from that very same group of survivors to be a murderous act that calls into question both lok's sanity and his moral code this is partially due to the fact they do not have the same information that locke does when he explains how he came by this information it does not convince everyone while we are on the subject it is never made clear if walt explicitly told locke to kill naomi or if he merely told jon that he must stop the freighter people from finding the island or else people will die this would not be the first time that walt has warned someone in this way they know who they say they are well they're pretending you want me to put you in the room again pretending pretending what we can assume that locke interpreted walt's warning in his own way exactly as he did with mr echo's final words in season 3 episode the cost of living what did he say john he said we're next lock frequently misinterprets the signs and messages that the island sends him even the man in black's instructions get misinterpreted he tells locke to move the island but locke lets ben do it which the man in black clearly did not want to have happen and does not attempt to hide his annoyance about this when they meet again in the donkey wheel chamber you asked me how to save the island i told you you had to move it i said that you had to move it john but ben said he knew how to do it he told me that i had to stay here and lead his people and since when did listening to him get you anywhere worth a damn so locke frequently acts on behalf of a mysterious supernatural force in the show often without question the island told him to do it which is the same thing as someone saying that god told him to do it does this make lock a dangerous zealot in the eyes of his own people simply because he is taking his instructions from a mystical source we know this is the reason why people like jack look upon lock as dangerously insane lock is motivated exclusively by faith so when he acts upon his faith to kill he is not acting on rational thought even though we as the audience know that locke is right about many of his assertions within the show locke was right about the freighter and naomi's deception but she did not deserve to die while some might vociferously argue that locke is more friend than foe to the survivors this remains an interesting moral conundrum and one that is not easily resolved in viewers minds was locked right to do what he did if not why not only you can answer that for yourselves what's interesting about lost is that tribal violence is often portrayed intentionally or unintentionally as fair game when acts of violence are perpetrated between two opposing groups as we see between the oceanic 815 survivors and the others is it acceptable simply because it comes down to tribal warfare our body counts justified in a war between two sides does that somehow make the actions of our protagonists suddenly justifiable example how many dharma security men just doing the job are killed by our losties in the season five finale the incident sawyer presumably worked with many of these men for three years did they deserve to die for doing the job of protecting dharma sites and workers do we hold jack and his group accountable for murder in this situation after all they are the invading force the aggressors it is worth thinking about the point of all these examples and discussions is that lost muddies the water on the subject of good guys versus bad guys the more we get to know people the more we understand them motives matter after blood has been shared or a wrong has been inflicted does the character show remorse do they seek salvation do they change their ways people who come to the island can either embrace the metaphorical light in a shot at redemption or continue the descent into darkness and self-destruction this is all part of the thematic dna at the core of the series are these people redeemable i'm sorry that i killed jacob i am and i do not expect you to forgive me because i can never forgive myself and what do you want just let me leave where will you go to la why because he's the only one that'll have me [Music] the answer is yes redemption is there for those who seek it and forgiveness will be waiting for those who need it if someone as bad as ben can get a second chance then any of us can speaking of muddying the waters some viewers often question the significance of ben being healed by the temple waters as a child in 1977. did this somehow infect the boy and turn him into what he became what did richard mean when he said if i take him he's not ever going to be the same again what do you mean by that what i mean is that he'll forget this ever happened and that his innocence will be gone he will always be one of us the spring has always been a place of healing to the others the light infused waters are being channeled in from the heart of the island which helps the water to run clear ben was healed in the spring successfully as a boy the reason why richard proclaims that benjamin linus will always be one of them after this is because only jacob's chosen people are allowed to use the spring it is a sacred place to their people this event is in effect benjamin linus being baptized he is officially becoming another therefore this signals the end of his innocence because to be one of jacob's people comes with heavy burdens and requires sacrifice the water didn't make ben evil as some often mistakenly claim a decade later we even see ben sparing danielle russo's life then fighting for baby alex's right to live the only reason people think the spring turns people evil is because of what happens to saeed in season six the others react to the temple spring waters no longer being clear with surprise this is not how the water usually looks it probably usually looks more like the heart of the island glowing with light with the waters running clear jacob's death has broken the circuit and limited the flow of light from the source the island is for lack of a better word sick without a protector in place its immune system is vulnerable to a metaphorical infection by the smoke monster it is the man in black's chance to destroy the light which means the waters are no longer guaranteed to cure those who go in them the risks associated with using the spring that lennon mentions are that saeed might not survive the process and simply drown which is what happens but when saeed returns from the dead everyone is surprised including dogan lennon and the others this is because this has never happened before dogan instinctively attributes this event to the man in black's influence because he is aware of the man in black's connection with apparitions of the dead however saeed was brought back for one reason and one reason only listen carefully there's a well on the main island half mile south from the camp we just left desmond's inside loch wants him dead which means you're going to need him do you understand me why are you telling me this because it's going to be you check [Music] it is time to go back to the beginning where the mythology of the show and my video series started jacob and the man in black exemplify the mythological conceit of good and evil but as previously discussed we also know that neither man is the total embodiment of this philosophical dichotomy white clothing does not make jacob a towering pillar of moral rectitude while dark clothing does not make the man in black evil incarnate white hats and black hats are just symbols jacob chose his candidates because they were like him flawed alone angry confused guilty they made mistakes just as jacob did you were all flawed i chose you because you were like me you were all alone you were all looking for something that you couldn't find out there i chose you because you needed this place as much as it needed you we also know that jacob wasn't above manipulating people into thinking they were making free choices when he really knew that they had no choice at all while he was a slave to the source just like anyone else in the series we still have to judge him on the decisions he makes regardless of whatever fate had in store for him like we would with any other character people still have to be accountable for their actions i would argue that jacob spent the last century of his life trying to actively redeem himself for millennia of failure he was even willing to sacrifice himself to correct his mistake that mistake was creating the smoke monster and his willingness to be sacrificed was a noble selfless act i view jacob's overall actions to be altruistic in nature which leaves room to forgive his flaws for centuries jacob had hope that his brother's soul could be saved after all he was responsible for what had happened to the man in black he could not bring himself to condemn his brother to a fate that was worse than death to be trapped in this endless purgatory jacob wanted to bring his brother back from the darkness this is an emotional motivation that critics of jacob often neglect to consider jacob loved his brother and he was plagued by guilt over what happened between him for over 2000 years i mean wouldn't you be jacob's ongoing perhaps naive hope was that the people who came to the island would demonstrate to his brother's lost soul that mankind is redeemable and that mankind is ultimately good that they all served a purpose in the grand scheme of existence that the island itself was a force for good and therefore vital to protect jacob didn't bring people to the island to suffer and die or to callously risk their lives for the sake of a meaningless game with the man in black this is the most cynical pessimistic reading of jacob's character and a total misinterpretation of the show's overall themes this view is exactly how the man in black viewed what jacob was doing however it is not how we as an audience are supposed to view things jacob understood all too well that the stakes of this so-called game were very real after losing the only two people he had ever known on the same day jacob and by extension the source brought people to the island to build a new eden of sorts to make a place better to live in than anywhere else on earth to form a community that was worth being part of full of people who cared for one another and work towards a greater good all of this was in service of trying to convince the man in black that the light within people and the light beneath the island was worth fighting for an argument that the entire series puts its full narrative weight behind in convincing us the audience to believe in two to reject this is to reject the whole thematic intention behind the narrative so jacob was not a benevolent god he was an imperfect man bestowed with great power and long life he was a good but flawed human being in search of his own redemption his biggest flaw was his naivety to believe that the man in black's soul could ever be saved so where does this leave our representative of the darkness we know that the man in black was never convinced by his brother's argument he was a cynic about mankind before he was ever transformed but he was also a reasonable man rejecting the unfair terms imposed upon him by his conniving surrogate mother as a human man he was as much of a victim of bad parenting as any of our main characters were no reasonable person could look at the events of across the sea and say there goes a bad guy perhaps his greatest flaw was his lack of reverence for the light beneath the island he was a man of science and did not believe the light to be anything more than energy that could be manipulated for the purposes of harnessing its power much like a stuart radzinski after his transformation the man in black became adrift from both his body and his own humanity furthermore he could scan human beings and absorb their subjective experiences of the past however rather than embrace the inherent light within people like his brother encourages him to do he instead absorbs all of the negative emotions and memories from them because that is all he ever saw in people he couldn't see the good anymore only the bad and he poisoned his own soul by sucking up the very darkest worst parts of the human psyche over time he learned how to exploit people's psychology and emotions as a result of this accumulation of knowledge becoming highly skilled and intelligent manipulation became second nature the man in black eventually saw all people who came to the island as obstacles to his own freedom and as he grew in anger and malevolence his path to redemption withered the man in black had almost two millennia to try and make amends for all the bloodshed chaos and corruption he caused but he never sought any such salvation or forgiveness because he believed the wrongs committed against him centuries prior had earned him a get out of jail free card when it came to morality his victimhood became a justification for inflicting suffering upon others in the same way ben's traumatic childhood led to similar abuses this is a warning to us all about what the past can do to affect our present day beliefs and behaviors how twisted and bitter we can become when we are wronged and how that can help us justify the most horrific acts of retribution and entitlement while we can understand the man in black's motivations for doing what he does we cannot condone them because once he sets off down the path of total apathy and nihilism he is suddenly able to justify mass murder and he never looks back he let his soul be consumed by the darkness and he long since stopped caring about the consequences of his actions or other people he seeks no redemption for all of his immoral and wicked acts committed over thousands of years and no doubt affecting thousands of lives this is the closest to true evil that we ever see and lost and yet it can be a struggle to completely write him off as such because we understand his past and so we turn back to saeed one of the most morally grey characters in the whole show a man who showed fierce loyalty and compassion to the people around him but was also capable of incredible acts of violence and revenge dogan claimed the scale within saeed was tipping too far towards a supernatural form of darkness almost like a type of possession the man in black is given credit for resurrecting saeed but this is never really proven definitively it is left very ambiguous after all if the man in black had the power to raise the dead in this way even if only under certain conditions why wouldn't he spend decades building an army of zombie-like followers in the end we see why saeed was brought back not to serve the man in black but to save his friends from certain death he makes a choice to sacrifice himself on the sub even after being written off by dogan as irredeemable or unsavable in spite of all the superstition and manipulation syed can still choose to do the right thing for himself and the people he loves because his past does not have to define who he is today he does not have to let himself be consumed by his own darkness any longer the island offers redemption to those who are willing to make a different choice and to break the cycles and patterns of the past syed certainly committed objectively evil acts throughout his life including torturing and murdering innocent people but as an audience we know his motivations and trigger points were incredibly complex and we came to understand his darkness because we understood his past no supernatural force makes someone good or evil this binary concept is deeply rooted in mythology systems of belief superstition and subjective perceptions of human behavior all evidence in the show points towards the theme that people are inherently flawed but can be redeemed no matter who they are or how far down the dark end of the street they have gone everything they do ultimately comes down to choice in the end hurley the character that best represents good in the lost universe tells us exactly what he thinks about good and evil and what may i ask have i done to deserve your trust i think you're a good guy saeed i know a lot of people have told you that you're not maybe you've heard it so many times you started believing it but you can't let other people tell you what you are dude you have to decide that for yourself i'm sorry you clearly don't know anything about me i know a lot about you dude this is the voice of the writers speaking through hurley we can call a person bad or evil but is that all they are can we find it in ourselves to forgive the wrongs they have committed can we forgive ourselves can we seek and find that together lost is about characters coming to terms with who they are and either they better themselves and move on from their past towards redemption or they don't and therefore become doomed to repeat the same mistakes and commit the same sins perhaps the purest form of good in this story is shown to be that of forgiveness sacrifice and letting go of your own darkness to embrace the light metaphorically speaking of course after all we are all part of the same energy the same matter the same consciousness and we all come from the same place lost comes down heavily on the side of determinism and fate whether we like it or not the time loop is the embodiment of this idea that the past cannot be altered and therefore the future is set in stone but does that render the choices our characters make within that time looper nerd do they have any choice at all or are they merely chess pieces this is a complex philosophical question one that we are going to attempt to answer free choice comes down to a matter of perception after all lost wasn't just about the nature of fate it was about subjective point of view every episode would show us the unique perspective of a different character not just showing us their backstory but also how they viewed the people and places around them whilst on the island and how their past affected their present-day decision-making and psychological behaviors as previously discussed with desmond he could not have survived three years in the hatch pushing the button every 108 minutes if it were not for a prior decade's worth of events and conditioning to prepare him for such a task but fate does not preclude that our characters have no free will to make their own choices it's just that fate already knows what choices they will make remember time has no meaning within the source inside the light everything is already passed it has already happened every choice has been made every life has been lived and every death has occurred therefore the island can see the tapestry of time in its totality it knows which threads need to intersect how they need to intersect and when and where they need to intersect it is the prime mover that ties all threads together as a result of this the island cannot de-interlace its own influence from how these threads weave together it is both creating and sustaining its own existence simultaneously and the existence of all things like a giant feedback loop which is why the compass is a perfect representation of this paradoxical conceit in lost all life on earth is part of this tapestry every single living thing is connected by it and we all contribute to this constantly flowing stream of causality in which every choice no matter how big or small leads to a consequence every action taken has a reaction and every cause produces an effect and this is happening every second of every day in every life all around the world example jack's emotionally motivated decision to turn in his alcoholic father for medical malpractice ultimately leads to sawyer shooting the wrong man people's lives become so entwined with one another that it becomes impossible to separate the outcome of one life from another you as an individual human being have no doubt affected countless numbers of other people's lives just from being in the world and interacting with it simply by existing every day you affect other lives whether you realize this or not that's why jacob's tapestry is such a good metaphor all of these threads weave together over time crossing one another's paths and creating a grander pattern that we as individual threads cannot see human beings have a subjective point of view we see life on the ground through a perception of linear time in that sense our characters are absolutely making choices of their own volition day in and day out every second of their lives they just don't know it's part of this larger tapestry or that choice a will lead him to outcome b and therefore they must still reckon with those choices on a personal level regardless of whether or not they were destined to make them michael still decided to pull the trigger and kill two innocent women that is something he has to reckon with on a psychological and spiritual level as a conduit for the source jacob understands that whatever choice a character makes in any given situation it will be the choice they were supposed to make at that time unlike the island he doesn't always know what someone will choose to do only that the choice they make is what they were ultimately supposed to do and this is what jack is wrestling with at the lighthouse it is why he gets angry and smashes the mirrors and why he looks out across the sea to contemplate on the meaning of his own existence and life choices because he is trying to reconcile this very issue he is probably thinking to himself did i ever have a choice in anything i ever did did i ever have any control do any of my actions and choices matter but we see that jack does eventually reconcile these truths with who he is and wants to be he does not jettison meaning and purpose in his actions simply because he knows that the island has a plan for him destiny is not a get out of jail free card for morality or personal responsibility it doesn't matter if every choice jack makes was meant to be because he must still decide for himself what he does next and by choosing what to do or even what not to do he takes complete ownership over his choices and responsibility for his mistakes in the end he finally understands that these big and small choices he has spent a lifetime making for himself have all been part of something bigger they have all led him purposefully to this moment to fulfill his ultimate destiny saving the island and saving the world perhaps he is thinking to himself john locke was right everything happened for a reason there was meaning in every good and bad event that ever happened to him everything he did mattered but this comes at the end of a very long chain of events the island began a process of causality dating back thousands of years with endless waves of cause and effect flowing down the river of time as if the source had fired a starting pistol at the dawn of time and the echo from that shot had continued to ring out across millennia like gathering thunder [Music] which means that every single event in even the most mundane of lives throughout all of human history was the result of this one shot your life my life everyone's life it all contributes to the epic causal chain and you don't have to be a candidate touched by jacob to factor into any of this the island has plans for us all we are all part of its tapestry unlace one thread and the whole design unravels let's take the real henry gale and use him as a demonstration of this idea he was a man we never got to meet and seemingly had very little impact on the overall mythology of the series yet he was crucial to everything the real henry gail attempts to fire balloon around the world in search of adventure but the balloon gets sucked into the bubble of the island and crashes in a tree henry survives for a period of time long enough to write a note to someone called jennifer and then he is murdered by the others most likely during ben's reign and possibly on his orders henry gail's life led him to this crash his death initially seems like a sad and meaningless end to what appeared to be a very interesting life yet his death served the tapestry of time because benjamin linus the leader of the others would later use henry gail's identity as an alias and base his cover story around henry's life after being caught by danielle russo his capture leads to a series of causal events the first is an introduction to several key characters who will feature prominently in ben's future jack shepherd john locke and syed jarrah all free men will have large impacts on his life both on and off island and vice versa as they argue over how to deal with henry and debate his true identity it leads to a deepening of the conflict between jack and lok a deepening hatred of the others from saeed and ultimately the corruption of a good man and the death of two innocent women the ripples from henry gale's balloon crash reach further still michael dawson's actions lead him and his son to find rescue but the guilt over killing these two women will eventually lead him on a u-turn back to the island to sacrifice himself which in turn will save the lives of the oceanic six because had michael not been below decks freezing that bomb then it is unlikely that frank lapidus would have taken off from the ship in time everyone would have perished and none of them would have made it off the island the oceanic sick survive to make it home primarily due to michael's actions and his sacrifice but they are eventually pulled back to the island in part due to john locke's death but also thanks to the interference of benjamin linus the man who originally masqueraded as henry gail and whom they have all come to deal with in some way and so the oceanic six return and fulfill their destinies in the past of 1977. then vanquish the man in black and save the world in 2007. and yet none of this would have been made possible had the real henry gail not crashed his balloon on the island and been killed this chain of events would have never unfolded without henry gale's existence in the world although this chain does not begin nor end with henry even the most minor character or seemingly insignificant person contributed to the cause and effect that is destiny a businessman gets hit by a bus in a terrible accident an unforeseen terminal illness strikes down a mother a cold-blooded murder-suicide takes place at home seemingly random deaths of seemingly random people yet all have a lasting impact that set off the next chain of events this is why the pass could not be altered adjust one person's trajectory even in a minor way and henry gail never crashes on the island in his balloon which means the causal chain is broken the tapestry is undone no amount of course correction could patch over the damage everyone is connected to the source and everyone plays a part this is a complex series of threads woven together throughout all of human history and every thread serves a purpose this is why determinism is an inescapable rule of the lost universe but also like jacob says it only ends once anything that happens before that it's just progress but here is the thing about fate versus free will does it matter if our choices are predetermined if we don't know that they're already predetermined does it take away our sense of free will does it take away our sense of responsibility over our own choices actions and inactions let's say that we definitely live in a predetermined world does that take away your internal sense of agency over what you decide to do today or what you plan to do tomorrow does that render the choices you make each day any less meaningful to you are you any less responsible for your actions in your own mind determinism does not and cannot undermine your first person experience of time what is free will anyway how much of what you say and do is ever truly your own choice how many of our behaviors are influenced and programmed by factors beyond our control think about the process of events that led to you sitting down and pressing play on this video think about what happened to bring you to this moment perhaps you have this video recommended to you by an algorithm based on other videos you watched those selections you made previously were presumably based on pre-existing hobbies and general interests that you have those interests were formed by your experiences in the past possibly dating as far back to your childhood those formative years were likely guided and influenced by the people around you both in positive and negative ways moments of elation joy and wonder that ignited your passions and moments of horror and hardship that impacted and traumatized you in various ways this is where the ideas about yourself and your identity first began to form and this is what underwrites every decision you ever make going forward through your life whether all of this was predetermined or not in your mind you made a conscious choice to be here to watch this to engage you can take ownership of that choice this is the way we have learned to live and to understand our own subjective realities the consciousness of human beings is bound by linear time we cannot see what lies within that electromagnetic light we don't know how things will end for us until we get there and we can never know if there is indeed someone or something behind the curtain but what if the man of science had turned out to be right in the end and not the man of faith that would potentially mean that all of the misery our losties went through was entirely random and all of their choices were simply determined by genetic behavioral and environmental factors which means everyone who suffered and died did so for no grand purpose because there is no grand plan no greater good no deeper meaning just free choice in a world of coincidence and happenstance the man in black's final words to jack in the end seem to mirror this outlook he proclaims that jack was about to die for nothing that the world was all chaos and entropy that nothing mattered at all and there was no meaning or reason to the suffering the man in black had an extreme nihilistic view of existence and not one that the show supported jack's role as a man of science however took a more balanced view on life and is reflective of those in the world who place logic and reason above emotion and belief this secular view of the universe and existence can still remain life affirming because it embraces the idea that time is limited and life is short and that there is no god or fate to fall back on this is it this is all there is so use it wisely and be the best that you can be with the time that you have there is no meaning beyond the struggle itself therefore we must make our own meaning many people subscribe to this and while this is a totally valid and logical world view this was not the final thesis of the show because faith is ultimately rewarded yes good people suffer and sometimes die horrible deaths while bad people prosper sometimes it is unjust and unfair other times the good guys win and the bad guys are punished but in the world of theology and faith and more importantly in the world of lost there is purpose and meaning to all suffering and pain every life and subsequent death has meaning the island is a place where actual miracles happen and the definitive afterlife exists in which all suffering ends and you can find your soulmates damon lindelof and carlton hughes and their entire writing team decided that meaning doesn't come from individual choice in a random universe at least not in lost they decided that the meaning comes from being part of something much bigger than themselves that human action goes beyond individual choice they ultimately sided with lock's philosophy of the world and jack's character arc from man of science to man of faith is the evidence for this i know this bothers some fans particularly those who take a more atheistic or agnostic view on life however while the show does indeed validate john locke's man of faith position it also doesn't want us to be exactly like locke for all of his triumphs and confirmations he remains a cautionary tale his blind faith led him down a path where he was easily manipulated and misled and it led to his ultimate ruin his character arc as tragic as it was served a grander narrative and thematic purpose lost wants us to ask questions of our faith it wants us to question our authority figures every time lock went to someone for supposed answers he only came away with more questions and as we peeled back the layers of this system of belief and its hierarchy it became clear that no one really knew much at all they all operated on notions of faith and mythology but others often seemed like indoctrinated and radicalized members of a cult at least that is how the dharma initiative viewed them the others speak about jacob a man they have never actually met with incredible reverence yet the majority of them only know about him through myth and legend like an ancient prophet the writers are clearly drawing a parallel between the others and organized religion of course they have some justifications for embracing this mythology they have seen the power of the island demonstrated to them its healing properties the power of the awesome force beneath the ground they have also been conditioned by a sense of community and belonging by that community's rules and its secrets but more importantly they have been conditioned by a sense of duty and responsibility who are you people we're the good guys michael the others believe that they are here to protect the island that they have been chosen because they are good people they assume that jacob himself has chosen them to be there even though they may have really been selected by richard or whoever the group's leader is at the time as a result they labor under a delusion that they are better than any outsiders who come to the island apparently uninvited in other words they believe they are quote unquote the chosen people even jacob himself was a cautionary tale a fallible deity for all of his powers and mythological significance he was ultimately riddled with his own shortcomings and insecurities and ultimately he was a slave to a higher power like everyone else how much were any of these events really his choice wasn't he also a disciple a follower he trusted his intuition which originated from elsewhere for his whole life jacob was guided by the source through all the smoke and the mirrors perhaps this is why the ending of the series proved so divisive in certain quarters for some fans they didn't get enough concrete answers why couldn't ben pull out that figurative dusty old book and start at the beginning meanwhile other fans simply rejected the show's embracement of spirituality and emotion seemingly over science and psychology but i have always viewed the overall mythology of lost as attempting to reconcile both faith and science together for every mystical supernatural occurrence there is a scientific or science fiction-based interpretation underlining the magic i believe my thesis on the show has clearly demonstrated this so i don't believe that lost completely invalidates the man of science argument at all as in real life the science within the show simply hasn't found a way to fully explain the mysteries of the universe yet for now we will just have to settle for explaining the mysteries of lost picture a box you know something about boxes don't you john what if i told you that somewhere on this island there's a very large box and whatever you imagined whatever you wanted to be in it when you opened that box there it would be what would you say about that john [Music] the first time we hear the mention of the magic box is in season three episode the man from tallahassee benjamin linus vaguely describes it to a skeptical john locke as being a box that can manifest certain things into reality it's a form of mind over matter the literal implication of his statement is that a person could theoretically manifest their innermost desires and want simply by thinking of it but this box could also mean that your subconscious could unintentionally manifest your fears and weaknesses too if this idea sounds familiar it's because it most likely was inspired from michael crichton's novel sphere which saw a team of scientists discover a giant sphere beneath the ocean in a spaceship that allowed him to manifest their inner desires and fears it follows that the lost writers room might try to riff on this idea a little bit because they coined the term crichton island in the early development of the show in other words they used the works of the author as an inspiration for some of their sci-fi concepts the show developed far beyond these initial influences but the magic box is very much a tip of the hat to where much of this mythology originated the end of the episode sees a deeply perturbed john locke come face to face with his estranged father ben teases the idea that locke brought anthony cooper to the island somehow by simply willing him to be there even if it was unconsciously so it seems like the magic box might very well be a real thing or so we are briefly led to believe but ben and locke have this exchange later on in season 3 episode the brig why do you think you brought him here oh oh oh the magic box okay ben how about you show me the magic box is a metaphor john i can't show you anything until you can show me that you're ready and willing to be one of us so what is the magic box is it real or is it metaphor consider the power dynamics in the scene in which ben first brings up this tantalizing mystery ben is threatened by locke's specialness especially his communion with the island lock can walk again because the island healed him but ben is in a wheelchair because the island did not pay him the same courtesy and ben's people can see that this is why he didn't get his cancer treated on the mainland having a tumor on his spine is a sign to the others that the island no longer wants him to be leader after all people get better on the island they don't get sick unless it's for a reason like jack's appendix rupture in season four the surgery from which allows him to survive the stab wound from the man in black long enough to return to the cave and recall the source in the end everything happens for a reason but i digress if ben traveled off island for surgery that would have created several issues the first is that it would leave a power vacuum that john locke might end up filling in his absence this is a suspicion that proves to be correct as it turns out the other issue is that ben wants to show his people that he is the right leader for the job and that the island still wants him in power and he harbours this belief not purely out of hubris but because of a very specific sign do you believe in god jack do you two days after i found out i had a fatal tumor on my spine a spinal surgeon fell out of the sky and if that's not proof of god i don't know what is to ben if he can get jack to perform the surgery successfully then it might prove to his people that this was all part of the island's plan for him to get well and remain in power however the truth is his time as leader is over and his cancer was part of the chain of causality that would lead him to resenting john locke pushing the frozen wheel and killing jacob yet ben desperately wants to cling to power who is he if not the king of the island so he needs to find a way to either undermine or eradicate john locke this is why as henry gail ben toys with lock's ego and vulnerabilities in the hatch it's why he makes the man question his faith in the button and the island it's why he wants locke kept far away from his people so by extension the magic box becomes a way to mislead lock a way of saying i have secret knowledge and you don't i understand this place and you don't bend is implying that anthony cooper somehow magically appeared on the island via the magic box that somehow locked brought him there unconsciously however the reality of what happened soon becomes clear once cooper explains things to sawyer i'm driving down i-10 through tallahassee when bam somebody slams in the back of my car i go right into the divider at 70 miles an hour the next thing i know the paramedics are strapping me to a gurney stuffing me in the back of an ambulance and one of them actually smiles at me as he pops the iv in my arm and then nothing just black and the next thing i know i wake up in a dark room tied up gagging my mouth and when the door opens i'm looking up at the same man i threw out a window john locke my dead son in other words anthony cooper was extracted from the mainland on ben's orders he was ran off the road and whisked away by a clandestine team of others this team was no doubt part of the same group that left the island on the submarine with tom friendly whilst tom was recruiting michael dawson in new york for the kahana freighter operation another team was down south in tallahassee florida kidnapping anthony cooper it is highly likely that tom escorted an incapacitated koopa back on the submarine to the barracks this was the last voyage of the sub before lock blew it up less than 24 hours later we know ben wanted the sub to be destroyed it allowed him to renege on his deal with jack shepard without being seen as doing so but this is not the first time that ben used other events to spin lies and form new narratives ben was clearly sensing that his time in power was at a critical juncture especially with disharmony in the ranks among his people juliet was looking to lead a coup data against him no doubt a result of his indirect murder of her lover goodwin and with charles widmore rearing up his head again and john locke waiting in the wings ben was besieged on all sides so he needed to keep his people on a short leash hence why he capitalized on the swan's failed safe detonation and used it as a cover to stop all communications to and from the island via the looking glass station this was almost certainly in anticipation of widmore's arrival but it was also a cover story he fed to his people to keep them contained and in the dark with the submarine destroyed and communications allegedly down he could maintain a slippery grip on power so what does this mean for the origin of the magic box as metaphor why would ben even bring such a concept up if it were not a real tangible thing and does this metaphor apply to anything we actually see on the island well ben was operating within the show with a knowledge based on myth half-truths old traditions and rituals hence why he misunderstood the true nature of the smoke monster sometimes he was following what he had been told through dreams other times he was basing his long-held notions on what dharma had established through their research the rest of his ideas were directly influenced by the practices and beliefs of the others his magic box metaphor was mostly designed to make locke feel less informed and in control to use what little knowledge he had of the island and its secrets to undermine the resident man of faith ultimately as we find out ben knew very little about how the island really worked or what his own role was in the grand scheme of things he hated the fact that lok had such an intuitive connection to the island and vice versa ben's metaphor was really the only way he could describe his limited understanding of a place that showed him impossible sights and what remarkable sights he did see emily linus his dead mother seemingly resurrected before his eyes an ageless man who had been around longer than any other human being on earth an entity that resembles smoke and roams the jungle killing anyone it judges to be unworthy of being there an even more mysterious island deity capable of healing the sick and issuing specific commands from upon highlight god himself indeed the magic box was his only way of making sense out of this crazy place thematically speaking the magic box represents the nature of the island's power to show you who you are it can reflect the struggles and regrets from your own past or it can amplify your feelings about who you are now more importantly it can offer you redemption the opportunity to follow a grander destiny that not only gives you a second chance to make the right choices this time but to also give meaning to all of the wrong ones you made before all of your suffering and all of those struggles now have purpose john locke comes to understand this when he and sawyer have the following exchange in season 5 episode the little prince would you turn this around then you want to go back there why would i want to do that you could tell yourself to do things different save yourself a world of pain no i needed that baby get to where i am now on a meta textual level the magic box was a nudge and a wink thrust the audience that that that blank page is a magic box you look at stories you think well what are stories but mystery boxes there's a fundamental question in tv the first act is called the teaser it's literally the teaser it's the big question so you're drawn into it then of course there's another question and it goes on firstly this style of mystery box storytelling has its downsides and it's critics but perhaps the writers were tipping their hat more towards the online community that had sprung up around the show between season one and season three a community that would speculate and theorise on everything from the nature of the black smoke to translations of hieroglyphic symbols solving and working out lost had become its own phenomenon just as social media was emerging as a new way to interact with others on a large scale we were creating and imagining our own meanings to what we were seeing on screen even now years later here i am still doing the very same thing that i started way back in 2005. obviously we have more information now and better context to understand the answers but enough ambiguity was left within the show for us to continue talking about it so why does this matter when it comes to exploring the meaning of the magic box because the show is also about perception and how our characters see the island and how they see themselves in the context of both the past traumas and the present day dilemmas it's why the show begins with an eye opening then ends with an eye closing and why so many episodes used an eye opening as a recurring visual motif because we are seeing things from the point of view of a particular character which means their perception of what was happening on the island might be very different to the perspectives of other characters sometimes a horse is just a horse but it's what our characters make of that horse that becomes important just like how mr echo and john locke both looked into the eye of the smoke monster and saw totally different things again this is a reflection of the audience as well when kate looks at this horse she sees the horse that helped her escape police custody just like some of the audience will see it no matter how impossible or unlikely that might be however a more eagle-eyed viewer might look at this very same horse and see something more sinister they might see the smoke monster and manipulation maybe it is the man in black observing one of the candidates then again perhaps this horse is nothing more than a black horse which happens to look like the one kate remembers a reminder of her past that triggers certain emotions and actions within her that will lead to other actions we know there are horses on the island this one may have simply escaped its stable and now lives wild there is a strong element of fate in play the island is influencing character decisions to lead him to certain outcomes but the idea that it is literally the same horse remains in the eye of the beholder some questions can't be answered to any certainty while other questions don't need to be answered at all it's just a bore in this sense the magic box means so much more than just another one of ben's lies it is the showrunners way of communicating to us their audience that the show itself is the real magic box in which we bring our own perceptions and interpretations to the narrative we craft our theories about what is happening and imagine our own versions of the narrative whether they be accurate or not we fill in the blanks and create new meanings and ideas whether originally intended or not the only thing that comes close to being a quote-unquote real magic box is the flash sideways within the source where the rules of reality time and the living plane no longer apply it's a place where whatever you imagined or whatever you wanted to be inside of it will be there the child you never had the friend that you weren't going to leave behind again the second chance at happiness together that you always deserved the career that would make you into a better man the old love you were able to let go of in order to embrace the next the worst choice you made that you got to make over again and get right this time the forgiveness that you needed from the people you hurt the most the love you lost and found again the favor you got to return to the mentor who once believed in you and the faith you had that was finally rewarded the flash sideways works as a literal version of the magic box for each person within it in season 1 the hatch was the magic box and our theories have no limits as to what might lie within it every new season presented us with new magic boxes that gave us a chance to theorize about and participate in the show itself like no television show had ever really done before it and like nothing has ever been able to replicate since many of the boxes were opened and we got to see what was inside some of us loved what we found while others found only disappointment that's the thing with magic boxers once you open them up the mystery is over and the magic is gone which is why we should embrace lost for all of its perceived flaws and foibles because it still gives us something to talk about years later the magic box never needs to be closed as long as we keep talking about some of the mysteries that lie within so we know what the story means to us as fans even if we don't always agree on the hows and whys and we know what the story meant to the characters even if they didn't always understand their purpose in the grander scheme of existence but what lessons can we take away from lost as a narrative what can we derive from its universal themes and what do the character journeys and struggles reflect about our own lives we know that even after ajira 316 has left the island that there will be no easy answers as to what happens next in the lives of our surviving characters just because these people left the island doesn't mean everything will instantly work out for them going home because life goes on our struggles continue in different forms the fight between the light and the dark within ourselves never ends until it all ends it only ends once anything that happens before that it's just progress life itself is about struggle we have to try and find the meaning in our own actions by taking responsibility for the choices we make and learning to let go of the past mistakes and traumas that shaped us so we can be our best selves in the present and going into the future and who knows maybe you might find your soulmates along the way [Music] sometimes a friend can turn into a foe [Music] and other times an enemy can become an ally [Music] you will lose people you care about along the way it is inevitable but with every passing day there comes new opportunities and new love [Music] every other moment is another chance to do something differently to make a different choice to move forward instead of back you can't change the past but you can own it and learn from it lost taught us that moving on is a long and involved process of letting go [Music] but it also taught us that people who find themselves lost in their lives can always be found [Music] whether it be through your work community friendship or the very act of love itself [Music] most of these things can be found in the everyday world but for the characters of lost they found them on the island they found purpose they found emotional catharsis and self-actualization they found redemption they found love they found each other and the lucky ones who live beyond the finale got to take that back to the world with them they leave us better more complete people than when they first arrived and these characters live on not just in the outside world but within the source too because time has no meaning then it is eternal just like a great story as long as we carry it with us it will never truly die thank you for watching stay lost we're gonna need to watch that again you

Channel: LOST EXPLAINED

Views: 12,049

Rating: 4.8830409 out of 5

Keywords: Lost explained, lost mysteries explained, lost mythology explained, lost answers, lost tv show explained, explain lost, lost, lost tv show, lost ending, lost ending explained, lost real ending, what did the ending of lost mean, lost real ending explained, lost smoke monster, lost smoke monster explained, ending explained, lost meaning, lost tv show meaning, lost true meaning, damon lindelof, carlton cuse, darlton, jj abrams, lost tv show theory, Lost mysteries answered

Id: YaDeJCT4ejY

Length: 329min 50sec (19790 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Choekaas]

/u/NormanCroucher Curious, is this just a playlist of the other videos? I've seen all the "LOST EXPLAINED"-videos on your channel, or are there changes in your explanations and theories?

[u/darkflamewolf]

Interesting, I'll check this one out on my next shift. :)

[u/finnishtour]

Best Lost Explanation video ever done! Go watch it! And this is done by our fellow lost redditor.

[u/NormanCroucher]

Thank you for the share! :)

[u/doctor_munchies]

Clicked the video saw 5 1/2 hours and just started laughing