Lost: Season 6 Discussion Thread - Page 146

But really it ultimately was all just done considering OUR perspective rather than the character's.

Nardo RE: Stage 3: I guess... but then we learned in the flash sideways that Ben and his Dad apparently lived on the island with Dharma in purgatory world and then left. And the damn island is later underwater for some reason (complete with a dharma shark no less). Whatever, doesn't matter anyway as its all a place for them to work through their issues before moving on, so in this dreamworld anything's possible- everything's made up and the points don't matter.

Faaark. You're right...was thinking about that damn shark after I posted.

<Shatner>LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</Shatner>


Cheers

The big problem there is that the sunken Island is not known to any of the characters' POV, with the possible but unproven exceptions of Ben, his father, and Dr. Chang. So much for the Sideways being a state-of-mind...

I've always been obsessed with where things are located on the Island. I pretty much discuss it in each season's thread.

Yes. In the second map I posted there's another dock near the barracks.

I like the metaphor. I'm just trying to reconcile why there wasn't a glow at the Swan then.

Pretty reliable in terms of structures presented within the first three season. The Losties gave pretty clear and consistent directions every time they went somewhere (e.g., "If we head north, it'll take us two hours to reach so-and-so").

As it turned out, and as evidenced below, it can also be a bad idea to claim that some things are obvious and made perfectly clear on the show.

There was light when Des turned the failsafe, too. But yeah, it was all concrete'd up.

Hell yeah almost forgot about that! It even lit up the whole sky!

And then uh... ever since the sky turned purple they were apparently cut off communications wise... but that was never followed up on :|

Sweet. Can't wait.


Cheers

I thought this was (ambiguously to be sure) cleared up with the presence of the Dumbbell or whatever the underwater station was called.

I meant during The Incident, when Juliette was basically directly in the electromagnetic pocket.

And I can't wait to read your column!

Which is why I'm happy to see you back!


If you're saying that it can be both narrative closure for the characters as well as giving closure to the audience, then I agree.

Still, I see people's problems is the sideways world didn't seem organic to the narrative. So, I started to think about this, and excuse me i this is a bit of "fanwanking." Also excuse me, if someone already brought up these connections.

I was so fixated in trying to see the "golden light" as "good," that I was overlooking what Mother said, although, I know it has been brought up on this thread. This "golden light" is life, or whatever that spark that is life, and it is connected to the afterlife. It needs protecting because if it goes out here, it goes out everywhere. In other words all life ceases to exist. I guess that is also why it's bad for MIB to leave.

Perhaps the role the Losties played in protecting this "light," including the actual contact to this light by Jack & Desmond, caused this subconscious meeting place (perhaps a reward?). This would make the sideways meeting more organic to the storyline. If this is the case, then I think the writers maybe should have made this a bit more explicit, probably through Christian's exposition.

Also, remember, although timeless, this meeting place is circa 2004 and revolves around the flight of Oceanic 815, the key event that brought this group together and play a part in protecting the light. This is why children like little Charlie aren't around, or Aaron and Sun & Jin's baby are in the state they are in. So, I would imagine this might be some unique thing that happened to these souls before they moved on.

Does any of that make sense? Again, I know it involves "fanwanking."

Oh, yeah, to add to my above theory, Juliet's exposure too, help set up the pocket meet-up.

I, too, can't wait for that column, Jess!

The White light is indicative of the time jumps. There was no yellow glow emanating from the Swan site when Juliette detonated Jughead.

Nope. Christian said it was "a place they all made together to find each other".

Hurley asked Ben to help him out "only for a little while". We have no evidence that Ben was made immortal, so claiming it was "thousands of years" doesn't make much sense based on the information we have been given.

If they are conviced of that because of the wreckage after the final title card, just link them to the article that states ABC put that on there w/o consulting Damon & Carlton.

So if the flash-sideways were just purgatory, then Faraday was wrong and Jughead didn't work (besides moving them to 2007.)

That appears to be the case.

Faraday. What a nutjob. I knew his reappearance and theories in The Variable sounded like BS.

Well, to his credit, he was right in the beginning: "whatever happened happened."

Maybe, he somehow figured out Jughead was present/the cause of the Incident. He went back to the island when he saw Jack & co. arrive. Note he was making sure everything was happening as it should before he explained his plan. Note he also was having a gun around the Others camp. I think he knew his mother was going to shoot him. Perhaps he told the Losties Jughead would change things so that they would do it, thus keeping the past as is (as was?).

I was just making a bad joke. I'll discuss the motherfucking topography right now!


If anything it was his mother who needed him to play his role to make sure everything happened as it should have. She basically manipulated his entire life to ensure that end. An end which resulted in his death. Daniel was wrong and he was always intended to be wrong. He needed to be for the bomb to be set off and everything to happen as it did.

This is typo, right? Jughead was not the cause of The Incident. Radzinky drilling a hole into the electromagnetic pocket is.

And where do you think Daniel got his desire to make sure everything happened?

Just saying maybe, he knew he couldn't change anything, but use that excuse to get the Losties to keep things the way they were. Of course, the simpler version was he was wrong about being able to change.


No, no typo. The sideways world proving to be in the afterlife, and the Losties returning to the remains of the Hatch in 2007 showed Jughead changed nothing and did not create any alt-reality. So, I am assuming the easiest explanation was Daniel's original hypothesis: whatever happened happened. Locke had always interacted with Richard in 1950's (setting up the Legend of John Locke), Sayid always shot Ben and taken by Richard to heal him, and Jughead was always at the Incident. You could even say in the orientation film when Chang pauses when he said . . . an Incident, could have meant the whole Incident, including the crazy time-travelers who were warning him to evacuate the island and disappeared mysteriously after dropping an H-bomb down an electro-magnetic pocket.

I guess the bomb going off or not can be debated. One way, it doesn't go off, Juliet banging and the white light was the final time flash back to 2007, the electro-magnetism alone creates the button-pushing situation, and the hatch requires the concrete Sayid noted to contain the radiation. Or, the bomb did go off, the Losties flash to 2007, the electro-magnetism combined with the blast creates the button-pushing situation, and the hatch requires the concrete Sayid noted to contain the radiation.

Either way, the Incident always happened and Jughead and the Losties were always present. I just think if Jughead was the cause of the incident, it falls into the theme that the Losties are the cause of their own suffering (the reason they crashed).

Live podcast over at /film going on now about Lost. Good stuff…

ETA: over now, s/b available for download in a couple of days. Four passionate and intelligent bloggers discuss the finale/season 6/series as a whole (for 2 hours).

Re: Jedi

Drilling a hole in the pocket caused electromagnetic energy to leak from the site. A leak that needed to be contained (hence the purpose of the hatch being to push that damn button). Jughead's purpose was to negate that energy, but the damage was already done. To me, that's The Incident.

I like your theory that the Losties were the cause of their own demise, but I don't think Jughead went off. Though I guess the producers claim it did since they're telling us the birth problems are related to it.

They were also very obvious in showing that Faraday was unhinged/desperate upon his return to the Island. Waving guns around, doing the thing he promised himself he wouldn't (telling Charlotte exactly what she told him he said to her). "Whatever happened, happened" came from a rational Faraday who was regaining his faculties due to proximity to the Island. "We can change everything" came from frantic Faraday who had lost the woman he loved and spent years away from the Island.

There was a flash of light seen across the Island when Desmond triggered the failsafe, which I assume was not a nuclear blast.

The lack of any time paradoxes, lack of any nuclear fallout and the giant pocket of cement next to the Hatch (a mystery presented way back in season 2!) indicate to me that Jughead never detonated.

Seriously? You want to go that route? You are taking my posts out of context. Those posts were replies to group of people (you included) who were insisting that the timeline was changed as early as the 50s while all the evidence pointed to everything being the same before the incident.

Swanson, there were not two timelines. Never was. There is the one we watched for 6 seasons, and a purgatory type thingy.

Exactly--he claimed things as fact when he didn't know have all the evidence.

I had an idea, and I think it's the greatest idea ever concieved in the history of Lost. How about, in season 5 instead of going the way they did with Time Travel, do an episode very similiar to the Watchmen meets The Constant. Have the losties all displaced in time, off in their own personal worlds, like Desmond was. Have Sawyer be the main character of the episode, displaced in time like Doctor manhattan, struggling to make sense of all the things he's experiencing, all of time hitting him at once. Use this as an opportunity to do some time travelling and exposistion, and ultimately have a huge emotional climax at the end with Sawyer and Juliet connecting in Lafleur mode. Sawyer experiences the future, and experiences the feeling of being in love with Juliet, she manages to be his constant blah blah blah, whatever. Sawyer has his arc/gets over Kate/grows as a person on screen instead of offscreen. Solid concept.

But what you really could have done to make this important would be Sawyer taking a trip into the future. Let him(and the audience) discover and experience the horrors of "letting the light go out". Set up what the stakes are, why it's important the Losties do what they eventually do, and hammer home the point that whatever happened, happened. This way, the audience knows that the end of the world or something similarly awful is at stake, and they know that the odds are favoring destiny, doom and all that stuff.

Once again, my posts were taken out of context. I posted that around I think Happily Ever After when everyone was taking it for granted that the sideways was a different timeline. I was just arguing with a group of people who were insisting that the sideways was different starting in the 50s where my point was that the differences were all post-incident. I don't know what the issue is here. Maybe we should all start going back and digging up each other's old posts.

I understand. You could do that. But you still would not be the only factual theory out there concerning this.

My personal theory (which you can find here) was that Jughead and the eletromagnetic thingy resulted in an entirely new timeline where the Losties were never influenced by Jacob or MiB. Entirely new as in from the beginning of time. A majority of things would be similiar sure, but things would still be different. This was just my guess. And just as valid a guess as all other guesses that didn't result in a purgatory type thingy.

The issue here is that you post as if everything you theorize is fact. It's simply not true.

And you were completely wrong despite insisting that it was obvious and clearly stated on the show - an recurring theme in your posts. The issue is that it's hard to discuss these things with someone that, as Teitr Styrr and others have pointed out, seem to confuse personal opinions with facts. We, the other "group of people", were also wrong in our speculations. But not being so quick to jump to conclusions has turned out to be a valuable lesson when it comes to Lost. Right?

And maybe, just maybe, when it comes to life. That's one to grow on.

THIS is a perfect example of the sort of mystery you can leave unexplained and without a definitive answer, and it's satisfying and fun to discuss.

Contrast that with:
"What happens if we don't?"
"Then this ends badly."

This is possible. It's left very ambiguous, which is fine... but in the end, what's the difference between if the Light "marked" them or didn't? They still ended up in the same place. It's very similar to Jack's ordination of Hurley (and to a lesser extent, Jacob's touch). Jack didn't get any specific instructions on the whole communion thing, and kind of just winged it. Hurley sure looked like he just drank out of a dirty water bottle. But we know he was the protector for some time. So whether it was the ritual (touched by the Light) or just the faith (the Losties connections with one another) that made the magic happen, the end result remains. Faith!

I think Faraday was, as characters on Lost tend to be, very clouded and motivated by Love. It's pretty sad, really, but he ended up convincing himself (wrongly) that he was wrong just to try and save Charlotte. You could see him regretting it even as he warned her as a child.

The problem with this is that according to Lost rules, you can't see a "potential" future, because any potential future has to be the one true one. Whatever happened, happened applies going forward, too, I imagine. That said, I would definitely have liked some more clarification on the stakes of the MiB leaving. Doc Jensen has some good ideas on that front:
ETA: Has the ghost of Brian Blessed weighed in on the finale yet?

Yeah, that was one of the only times I've agreed w/ something Jensen wrote. Makes sense it would happen for the finale.

Must balance disappointment with understanding. Disappointment levels... unhealthy. Transfer excess disappointment to anticipation. Balance restored.

No worries Jesse. Can't wait to read your column whenever it comes out. You'll also get more hits from the site if it posts after the weekend. I imagine the site will be pretty dead the next few days.

Better to have a delayed great product than a rushed substandard one. We'll live

If someone could turn the controversy surrounding the finale into a renewable energy source, we could solve all of the world's problems.

Agreed, Devin. I've written my feelings on the finale in on several other forums, so I'm about "Lost-ed out" at the moment, and I don't want to get too far into it again. Suffice to say, I felt it was a copout. Even the explanation for the "sideways-verse" is kind of a cop-out. Is it just people who go to the island who get this purgatory pit-stop to the afterlife? Because if it's not, I do wonder what the point of showing it actually was.

We just had another thread about this recently, but Battlestar Galactica was made up on the fly; Ronald D. Moore was quite open about this. It attracted a lot of unnecessary flak because of his admission. Yet perhaps the only outright continuity mishap on that show were the star constellations on Kobol. Everything else sort of fits. I think BSG holds up pretty well, because in that show, the characters really do drive the story, so providing character resolutions at the expense of plot in the finale was much more justified.

On BSG, there were never any characters (well, other than Cavil) who "knew all the secrets." Everyone else was pretty much in the same boat. Even Baltar. On Lost, first we had Ben, whom we believed knew everything about the Island. Then we found out he knew pretty much nothing. Then Richard, who knew a bit, but not much. Then Jacob, whom, it turns out in two thousand years, hadn't really learnt that much, either.

So each time, the audience thinks we're finally getting close to the truth, only to have the rug pulled away. MAYBE that was the intention. You could argue that, but I just don't believe it. In the end, it all adds up to less than the sum of its parts. Which is a shame, as the first hour or so of the finale was kind of epic. But to have it all simply fizzle out like that was jaw-droppingly bad television.

I fucking knew Jesse was making it up as he went along!

No worries Jesse. Have a good weekend.

I agree with this.

BTW, there was an interview where the writers said the S6 sideways came after they thought "what if Jughead worked" and all the speculation around this fact. I found really weak they came up with a Purgatory world as a consequence. They also said they couldn't answer yet if it worked or not. I don't get it why they couldn't explicitly said it worked.

@Jesse, enjoy the weekend. It would be great to read it the next week.