"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Three Questions from Lost Season 6 Premiere: Linkage of Two Realities, Dead Bodies Inhabited, Who/What Survived the H-Blast?

As the powerhouse Season Six premiere of Lost starts settling in a bit, I see at least three crucial questions emerging from what the new split has brought us.   Here they are, with my answers, as of now:

1.  Is there any linkage or leakage between the Los Angeles reality, in which 815 never crashed, and the reality of our survivors back on island - survivors now not only of a plane crash, but an H-Bomb explosion?   As I mentioned in my review of the premiere, Juliet's last moments, and what Miles told Sawyer about Juliet what wanted to tell Sawyer, are key.   She seems to have been in touch with that world in which 815 never crashed, just before her death.   Other possible evidence of linkage:  Desmond the time traveler on the LAX plane.   If there's a character that could move between two alternate realities, it would be Desmond, who can move through time.   And Jack did have an expression, when we first see him on the plane, of possible deja vu - though that's the least clear, as far as evidence.  But I'd say Juliet and Desmond are pretty impressive.

2.  Has there been a history of either Jacob or the Nemesis taking over bodies of the dead before, just as the Nemesis took over Locke's?   I'd say almost certainly yes, and that Christian Shephard on the island was likely Jacob in his body.    Christian's body in a coffin was brought to the island on a plane in the same way as Locke's.   I also think this makes it more likely that Claire is alive - it wasn't Christian's ghost that led her away, it was Jacob in Christian's body.

3.  What happened to everyone else on the island after the H-Bomb went off?   This is in some ways that most significant question - though #1, about linkage, is pretty important, too.  One answer would be presumably everyone on the island died - because how could they live underwater?   But ... why then did Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Miles, Jin, (Juliet and Sayid at first) survive the blast?   Why did the island itself?  What happened with Sun and Richard and Lapidus?  It's also not 100% clear - at least, not to me - about whether Jack, Kate, Hurley, etc are in the same time as Sun, Richard, etc - Jacob talks to Hurley after Jacob's dead, but Jacob may have the ability to time travel and who knows what else.  For that matter (call this Question 3a), I'm not even sure whether Jack, Kate, etc on the island are in 2007 (where Sun and Richard are) or 2004 (the time of the alternate reality LAX).  In any case, all of this suggests that something about the island and/or something about the people and/or who knows what else enabled some, all, many, just the people we saw, survive the blast.  Which means ... all bets are off regarding who survived and who did not.

You gotta hand it to Lost.  No matter how much is explained, all bets are forever off...


8-min podcast analysis of Lost Season 6 Premiere

See also: Lost Season 6 Double Premiere

More Lost - see : The Richard-Locke Compass Time Travel Loop ...

and Lost Returns in 5 Dimensions and 5.3: The Loops, The Bomb ... 5.4: A Saving Skip Back in Time ... 5.5 Two Time Loops and Mind Benders ... 5.6 A Lot of Questions ... 5.7 Bentham and Ben ... 5.8 True Love Ways ... 5.9 Two Times and a Baby ... 5.10 The Impossible Cannot Happen ... 5.11 Clockwork Perfect Time Travel ... 5.12: Ben v. Charles, and Locke' Slave ... 5.13: Lost Meets Star Wars and the Sixth Sense ... The Problem with Baby Aaron and the Return of the Oceanic Six ... 5.14: Eloise, Daniel, and Obsession Trumping Paradox ... 5.15: Moral Compasses in Motion ... Lost Season 5 Finale: Jacob and Locke





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11 comments:

Lyoness in NYC said...

Remember -- Jack had met Desmond while both were running in some sort of arena months before Desmond went missing in his boat. The question then becomes did Desmond do his world tour? Since the island seems to be under water in the no-crash reality, he wouldn't have wrecked there.

The h-bomb explosion seems to have not happened in the other reality, the one where they're still on the island.

-Jean K.

Paul Levinson said...

I've been thinking about the H-Bomb not going off on the island (for the reality with Jack et al still on the island), Jean - it's an intriguing possibility.

But - what then caused Jack et al to travel 30 years forward in time on the island? Surely the white flash was not just a coincidence with the bomb going off?

Rob said...

I believe Jack and the island group are in the same time period as Richard and Ben. Keep in mind at the end of the episode that Richard saw the flare that was sent out from the temple, warning of Jacob's death.

It's possible that the H Bomb never did go off and the flash was just the final time shift that brought them back to reunite with everyone.

Unknown said...

I think Jack remembers Desmond from the night when he was jogging in the stadium since that happened pre-flight.

Desmond DID go on his world tour and finished it since there was no island to shipwreck on.

The h-bomb survivor timeline IS the same time as Sun, Lapidus, etc... for the reason stated above (ie: they saw the signal flare).

So look for a teary reunion between Sun and Jin (FINALLY).

I DO think that the alternate Locke is possessed by Jacob's Nemesis, that's why his body HAD to be brought back to the island.

For that same reason, I think Christian was possessed by Jacob.

I think Jacob actually possesses Sayid now that he's come back to life. They made the comment before emersing Sayid that the spring wasn't it's usual clear colour, WE know that it was because Jacob had just been killed. When Sayid was placed into the spring, he HAD to die in order for Jacob to possess him.

I'm interested to find out whether they'll explain the subtle differences in the new timeline or whether they expect the audience to just believe that a hydrogen bomb blowing up in the pacific 30 years prior will effect the future in some way.

That's all I've got so far.

Al

dawn said...

I still believe the only way off the Island is to die, then you go into the other reality world. Juliet told Sawyer coffee and we'll go dutch like she knew she'd see him there. I think Jacob is in Sayid and I would like to know what is home to Smokey

TheLooper said...

Back to Christian a sec. How do we know Christian wasn't the black smoke man all along? Remember his back and forth scene with Locke before Locke stopped the time shifting of the island in 1977? Now from my perspective Jacob was more than willing to reveal himself to all of the Losties as himself, OFF THE ISLAND. If he's doing that, why hide out as dead people?

It seems the Nemesis or MIB needs to disguise himself more so than Jacob, plus he wanted Locke to do that in an effort to leave the island and bring them all back again. Further more, how do we know Jacob actually wanted Locke to move the island in the first place at the end of season 4? Maybe all of this was a setup by MIB to overthrow Jacob? Jacob could obviously leave the island, but the MIB guy couldn't...or so we think. MIB wants to leave and believes he can, so now Jacob is having to act because MIB has his own agenda he means to unveal? Still think Sayid is Jacob now, but we'll see there too...

With the flare going up, I do believe Jack and company are on the same 2007 island as the others...unless it was just coincidence? However I don't think that is the case. 3 realities? Talk about driving someone nuts!

Juliet and Desmond are definitely interesting cases and it will be cool to see where those go from here.

But I do believe the bomb triggered another time shift and presumably sent Jack and company back forward to 2007..maybe. But then why have a divergent reality where no crash happens at all and the island is sunk? Tune in next week!:)

Unknown said...

You are right TheLooper it makes more sense that the Nemesis was the one possessing Christian. Also before Jacob died, Locke (possessed by MIB) said something to the effect that he had gone through a lot to find the loophole.

Alex B said...

Desmond only did the boat race to win back Penny...in the alternate reality Penny was never born as Charles (not being exiled til the early 90's) would have died in the H-bomb blast that sank the island. Desmond would have also never been in the monastery.

Two things I *think* I noticed about Desmond talking to Jack -

1. He didn't call him Brother
2. He didn't recognise him

The first is because, if he never went to the monastery, then he'd have never picked up the habit of calling people 'brother'. The second is because he was never training for the race so Jack never met him at the stadium that night.

Of course, I might be completely wrong!

Alex B said...

Another thought -

Smokey has only inhabited 3 bodies (that we need consider) - Christian, Yemi, and Locke. All three arrived on the island already dead. Is it possible that Jacob's enemy can only use the bodies of those who are dead on their arrival at the island?

Also worth considering - why did Jacob's enemy/smokey/UnLocke/whatever you want to call him, get so angry with Eko, more so than with anyone else? Did he think that somehow Eko could have been a suitable vessel for him only to be frustrated by Eko's refusal to ask for forgiveness?

I think we can take the following as a certainty though - Locke, Jacob's enemy and Smokey are one and the same.

stephencoley said...

And finally, after our delayed UK airing, I can read your comments about Lost (it's a nightmare trying to avoid spoilers for 3 days!!!).

I'm liking the Jacob is now Sayid theory, but this does throw up an interesting question. Sayid dies shortly after Jacob himself is killed. Yet Jacob seems to know that Sayid will in fact die. He also seemed to know who would be with Sayid when he did die, as he put all of this information in a hand written note, hidden in a wooden Ankh (symbol of eternal life), that he gave to Hurley off Island in 2007. Simple question really... How did Jacob do this?

Also... I think it's a pretty safe assumption that Christian Shepherd was Smokey. It was Christian that told Locke that he would have to die. Why would Jacob say this? But my question for this is, why is Christian no longer Smokey? Is it simply because possessing Locke was the only way to kill Jacob?

Nick! said...

This is what I get for posting comments before reading through - Looper says here a lot of what I just posted in your older post!

Have to reiterate that it looks clear to me that Jacob never impersonated Christian, and in fact the indirect manipulation of the living by the dead throughout the show runs really opposite to Jacob's MO.

I'm starting to think that Jacob and the Other represent Chaos and Order - because I start to think this about EVERYTHING - so as hard as the show tries to convince us that things are framed in a Judeo-Christian sense of good and evil, it's hard for me to see it that way.

My current working theory on why the Lostees that were present at the H-Bomb explosion are now in the unchanged timeline, in the present, is that they were out-of-time, and a side-effect of the blast/energy pocket interaction was that that got "fixed". If the weird energy on the island was what caused the time-jumps in the first place, it's not too big a stretch to say that the H-Bomb going off alongside it might trigger one last time-jump, at the same time as it created a splinter reality.

As the show has been so rigid about it's stance on causality, maybe the idea is that when you go back in time and do something that would stop you being able to go back in time, reality chucks you back to the last point on the timeline where you made sense?

So if you went back in time and killed your grandparents, at the same time as creating a timeline without you, where your grandparents are dead, the conscious "you" that went back in time to do it gets temporally shunted back to their original time, before their time-jumping adventure started.

RE: The alternate reality - There might be another possibility. What if an alternate timeline really does get created every time anyone makes a decision, but the reason we're seeing this other one is simply narratively because it's tied into the story we've been watching all along?

And the fact that our Lostees have experienced time-travel, and were out-of-time when they created the events that caused this other timeline, is why there might be seepage or links between the two - that the existence of alternate realities isn't what's exceptional here, but the links between them.

(More than anything else, that last bit was just a fun little thought experiment, rather than an actual theory, by the way!)

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