WARNING: Really really long post here, that will probably make your brain bleed.
I'm going to spout off here on some theories regarding the "big picture" in Lost. This is probably more of a wish list for how I'd like a few of the major mysteries to be resolved, more than a prediction of how they will be resolved. This involves spoilers up through 5x03 ("Jughead"). I don't know any spoilers beyond that, and I'm also not relying on any comments that the creators have made over the years. Some of what I'm writing here is an expansion on comments I already made in this thread with regard to time travel:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=80216&page=8
Most of this has to do with the more exotic consequences of Lost's take on time travel. Specifically, the fact that, in the Lost conception of time travel, at least according to Faraday's explanation, paradoxes are impossible, because there is only one timeline, and it cannot be changed. In other words, Lost time travel operates according the Novikov self-consistency principle. Here is the Wikipedia article on the Novikov self-consistency principle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle
Read through that about two or three times to make sure you understand it. Then read the Wiki article on "predestination paradoxes" (which aren't really paradoxes, but let's ignore that detail):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_paradox
Now perhaps you understand how time travel allegedly works on Lost. To be brief, only self-consistent time loops are possible. This does not mean that you can't interact with the past. You can. You just can't "change" the past. Whatever you did in the past was always part of the timeline, and it will always be part of the timeline.
OK, that's the intro. But here's the really crazy part. And this is the part that I'm not sure the writers are necessarily smart enough to pull off, but I would absolutely love it if they did pull it off: If time travel works like this, then your freedom of action in the past depends on how much information you have. Specifically, the more ignorant you are about what happens in the future, the more you can muck around in the past.
Example:
I see my friend get into an airplane and take off. A minute later, I watch the plane blow up in the sky. Since I have a time machine, I should be able to go back and save my friend's life, right? Well, maybe not, because that would be a paradox, as my friend's death caused me to go back in time to save him. So if he doesn't die, I won't go back in time, etc. etc. And I know that only self-consistent timeloops can occur, so any attempt to go back and save my friend is doomed to fail.
But wait! I don't actually know that my friend is dead. I saw my friend get on the plane, and I saw the plane blow up. But who's to say that, in those seconds after takeoff, a time traveler didn't appear on the plane, grab my friend, and then time travel away with him to safety, just before it blew up? Nothing says that couldn't have happened, so I can do that. I can use the time machine to transport myself onto the plane, grab my friend, and leap away to safety.
In short, I'm exploiting my ignorance as to the fate of my friend. There's nothing I can do to save the plane itself, as I saw it blow up with my own eyes, and I *know* it was destroyed. But I haven't actually seen my friend's dead body, so it's still possible that he's alive. I have knowledge as to the fate of the plane, so I can't save it. But I'm ignorant as to the fate of my friend who was on the plane, so I can still save him. If, on the other hand, I had actually seen the charred remains of my friend, and I was 100% sure that it was him, then I wouldn't be able to save him.
How does this relate to Lost? Some ideas:
Someone (or multiple someones) from the future is manipulating events to make the timeline turn out a certain way, within the constraints imposed by the information that that someone has.
That is, you have someone from the future who knows a few things that happened within the main timeframe of Lost, but not all the details. Those details can be manipulated. Just as, if I had a time machine, I could decide whether or not to save my friend in the past (so long as I didn't already have definitive proof as to whether he was dead), this person from the future is deciding how the various details turn out. The time traveler can do whatever he wants with the past, as long as there are no contradictions between what he does and the information he has about what happened.
These constraints are what various characters are really referring to when they talk about things having to happen a certain way, or "according to the will of the Island" or what have you. What they actually mean is that someone has given them info from the future about certain events, and they know that, no matter what happens, no matter how improbable the chain of events is, those events have to happen one way or another.
Examples of this would include Tom telling Michael that he can't kill himself no matter how hard he tries in "Meet Kevin Johnson" and Ben telling Charles Widmore that he can't kill him in "The Shape of Things to Come". In both cases, the characters have info from the future that indicates that a certain character will remain alive, at least up to a certain point in time that hasn't been reached yet. So, because of the rules against creating paradoxes, it's impossible for those characters to die, no matter what happens.
That "someone" from the future sending info back in time is probably Jacob.
The above point is self-explanatory. Jacob is from the future, and sends info back in time to the Others, to have them manipulate events in order to serve his agenda, whatever that is.
Many of the "deaths" on the show were faked, and the supposedly dead characters are time travelers, not apparitions
Jacob has information indicating that certain Losties died, or at least that they were believed to have died. But he's using the time travel loophole that says "Hey, unless I've actually seen the corpse, who's to say that someone didn't swoop in and rescue them at the last second, and no one ever figured it out, so they're merely believed to be dead.?"
I don't have the episodes on DVD or video or anything, so someone else would have to double check these, but which "deaths" did we actually see a corpse for? We haven't seen dead bodies for Charlie, Michael, Jin, or Claire, have we? In that case, a time traveler could have jumped in just before their supposed deaths, and rescued them. The "apparitions" of Charlie and Claire that have appeared to various characters could actually be them, still alive, traveling in time. OTOH, with characters like Ana Lucia, her body was found in such a state that it's pretty clear that she's really dead, so an appearance by her would have to actually be a hallucination.
The biggest "faked death" was the crash of Flight 815?
Someone from the future had information indicating that Flight 815 crashed, but wanted the passengers to live. So he went back in time, staged the crash, and diverted the real Flight 815 to the Island. This is lifted directly from the Novikov self-consistency principle wiki page:
Jacob is Christian Shephard???
OK, so I said that in cases where there's solid evidence that a character died....as in, you actually see the corpse....we know that the character is really dead. Time travel couldn't save them, because you can't create a paradox.
Except.....we've already seen a case in which we *thought* we saw dead bodies, but they weren't really dead: In "Expose", Nikki and Paulo are bitten by Medusa spiders, which slow the victim's heart rate to create the appearance of death. Do you actually think that was just a one time thing that the writers are never going to revisit? I don't.
I'm thinking that the "death" of Christian Shephard was staged for Jack's benefit. He was bitten by one of the spiders to induce the appearance of death, so that, when Jack is brought in to identify the body, he believes that his father is actually dead. But Christian Shephard (ummm.....could that name get any more messianic if it tried?) is still alive and traveling through time and space, which explains his subsequent appearances.
He could possibly even be Jacob and manipulating events from the future, which is why he shows up in the Cabin with Claire. It also meshes with his appearance to Michael just before the freighter blows up. Christian shows up to save Michael just before Michael would have otherwise died, just like he did for Claire and others.
Christian may have even been one of the Others in 1954 and was at odds with Widmore or something??? (Is he old enough for the math to work?)
A few other random ideas:
I'm thinking that the nuke (jughead) that the US military is testing on the island in 1954 is either:
1) responsible for the Island gaining its time traveling mojo in the first place (remember that Richard in 1954 was surprised when Locke told him that he was from the future, which means that the Others didn't know about the time traveling yet at that point), or
2) radiation leaking from the nuke is what's responsible for women on the Island being unable to carry pregnancies to term and/or for other oddities on the Island, like Rose's cancer being cured.
I just think that the nuke is going to turn out to be really important in some way. It might not even be a real hydrogen bomb. Possibly something much more experimental that the US military was working on, that ended up getting out of control, and is responsible for the Island being such a crazy place. Or else the nuke simply interacted with the pre-existing craziness of the Island in unpredictable ways.
Final idea:
I'm thinking that Widmore made his fortune by using information from the future to make all the right investments, a la the Sports Almanac in BTTF2.
I'm going to spout off here on some theories regarding the "big picture" in Lost. This is probably more of a wish list for how I'd like a few of the major mysteries to be resolved, more than a prediction of how they will be resolved. This involves spoilers up through 5x03 ("Jughead"). I don't know any spoilers beyond that, and I'm also not relying on any comments that the creators have made over the years. Some of what I'm writing here is an expansion on comments I already made in this thread with regard to time travel:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=80216&page=8
Most of this has to do with the more exotic consequences of Lost's take on time travel. Specifically, the fact that, in the Lost conception of time travel, at least according to Faraday's explanation, paradoxes are impossible, because there is only one timeline, and it cannot be changed. In other words, Lost time travel operates according the Novikov self-consistency principle. Here is the Wikipedia article on the Novikov self-consistency principle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle
Read through that about two or three times to make sure you understand it. Then read the Wiki article on "predestination paradoxes" (which aren't really paradoxes, but let's ignore that detail):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_paradox
Now perhaps you understand how time travel allegedly works on Lost. To be brief, only self-consistent time loops are possible. This does not mean that you can't interact with the past. You can. You just can't "change" the past. Whatever you did in the past was always part of the timeline, and it will always be part of the timeline.
OK, that's the intro. But here's the really crazy part. And this is the part that I'm not sure the writers are necessarily smart enough to pull off, but I would absolutely love it if they did pull it off: If time travel works like this, then your freedom of action in the past depends on how much information you have. Specifically, the more ignorant you are about what happens in the future, the more you can muck around in the past.
Example:
I see my friend get into an airplane and take off. A minute later, I watch the plane blow up in the sky. Since I have a time machine, I should be able to go back and save my friend's life, right? Well, maybe not, because that would be a paradox, as my friend's death caused me to go back in time to save him. So if he doesn't die, I won't go back in time, etc. etc. And I know that only self-consistent timeloops can occur, so any attempt to go back and save my friend is doomed to fail.
But wait! I don't actually know that my friend is dead. I saw my friend get on the plane, and I saw the plane blow up. But who's to say that, in those seconds after takeoff, a time traveler didn't appear on the plane, grab my friend, and then time travel away with him to safety, just before it blew up? Nothing says that couldn't have happened, so I can do that. I can use the time machine to transport myself onto the plane, grab my friend, and leap away to safety.
In short, I'm exploiting my ignorance as to the fate of my friend. There's nothing I can do to save the plane itself, as I saw it blow up with my own eyes, and I *know* it was destroyed. But I haven't actually seen my friend's dead body, so it's still possible that he's alive. I have knowledge as to the fate of the plane, so I can't save it. But I'm ignorant as to the fate of my friend who was on the plane, so I can still save him. If, on the other hand, I had actually seen the charred remains of my friend, and I was 100% sure that it was him, then I wouldn't be able to save him.
How does this relate to Lost? Some ideas:
Someone (or multiple someones) from the future is manipulating events to make the timeline turn out a certain way, within the constraints imposed by the information that that someone has.
That is, you have someone from the future who knows a few things that happened within the main timeframe of Lost, but not all the details. Those details can be manipulated. Just as, if I had a time machine, I could decide whether or not to save my friend in the past (so long as I didn't already have definitive proof as to whether he was dead), this person from the future is deciding how the various details turn out. The time traveler can do whatever he wants with the past, as long as there are no contradictions between what he does and the information he has about what happened.
These constraints are what various characters are really referring to when they talk about things having to happen a certain way, or "according to the will of the Island" or what have you. What they actually mean is that someone has given them info from the future about certain events, and they know that, no matter what happens, no matter how improbable the chain of events is, those events have to happen one way or another.
Examples of this would include Tom telling Michael that he can't kill himself no matter how hard he tries in "Meet Kevin Johnson" and Ben telling Charles Widmore that he can't kill him in "The Shape of Things to Come". In both cases, the characters have info from the future that indicates that a certain character will remain alive, at least up to a certain point in time that hasn't been reached yet. So, because of the rules against creating paradoxes, it's impossible for those characters to die, no matter what happens.
That "someone" from the future sending info back in time is probably Jacob.
The above point is self-explanatory. Jacob is from the future, and sends info back in time to the Others, to have them manipulate events in order to serve his agenda, whatever that is.
Many of the "deaths" on the show were faked, and the supposedly dead characters are time travelers, not apparitions
Jacob has information indicating that certain Losties died, or at least that they were believed to have died. But he's using the time travel loophole that says "Hey, unless I've actually seen the corpse, who's to say that someone didn't swoop in and rescue them at the last second, and no one ever figured it out, so they're merely believed to be dead.?"
I don't have the episodes on DVD or video or anything, so someone else would have to double check these, but which "deaths" did we actually see a corpse for? We haven't seen dead bodies for Charlie, Michael, Jin, or Claire, have we? In that case, a time traveler could have jumped in just before their supposed deaths, and rescued them. The "apparitions" of Charlie and Claire that have appeared to various characters could actually be them, still alive, traveling in time. OTOH, with characters like Ana Lucia, her body was found in such a state that it's pretty clear that she's really dead, so an appearance by her would have to actually be a hallucination.
The biggest "faked death" was the crash of Flight 815?
Someone from the future had information indicating that Flight 815 crashed, but wanted the passengers to live. So he went back in time, staged the crash, and diverted the real Flight 815 to the Island. This is lifted directly from the Novikov self-consistency principle wiki page:
Jacob is Christian Shephard???
OK, so I said that in cases where there's solid evidence that a character died....as in, you actually see the corpse....we know that the character is really dead. Time travel couldn't save them, because you can't create a paradox.
Except.....we've already seen a case in which we *thought* we saw dead bodies, but they weren't really dead: In "Expose", Nikki and Paulo are bitten by Medusa spiders, which slow the victim's heart rate to create the appearance of death. Do you actually think that was just a one time thing that the writers are never going to revisit? I don't.
I'm thinking that the "death" of Christian Shephard was staged for Jack's benefit. He was bitten by one of the spiders to induce the appearance of death, so that, when Jack is brought in to identify the body, he believes that his father is actually dead. But Christian Shephard (ummm.....could that name get any more messianic if it tried?) is still alive and traveling through time and space, which explains his subsequent appearances.
He could possibly even be Jacob and manipulating events from the future, which is why he shows up in the Cabin with Claire. It also meshes with his appearance to Michael just before the freighter blows up. Christian shows up to save Michael just before Michael would have otherwise died, just like he did for Claire and others.
Christian may have even been one of the Others in 1954 and was at odds with Widmore or something??? (Is he old enough for the math to work?)
A few other random ideas:
I'm thinking that the nuke (jughead) that the US military is testing on the island in 1954 is either:
1) responsible for the Island gaining its time traveling mojo in the first place (remember that Richard in 1954 was surprised when Locke told him that he was from the future, which means that the Others didn't know about the time traveling yet at that point), or
2) radiation leaking from the nuke is what's responsible for women on the Island being unable to carry pregnancies to term and/or for other oddities on the Island, like Rose's cancer being cured.
I just think that the nuke is going to turn out to be really important in some way. It might not even be a real hydrogen bomb. Possibly something much more experimental that the US military was working on, that ended up getting out of control, and is responsible for the Island being such a crazy place. Or else the nuke simply interacted with the pre-existing craziness of the Island in unpredictable ways.
Final idea:
I'm thinking that Widmore made his fortune by using information from the future to make all the right investments, a la the Sports Almanac in BTTF2.
