I HIGHLY recommend not reading this if you’re not caught up with Lost. I STRONGLY believe that Lost is a show where the experience is BEST when untainted by knowledge of future episodes, etc. DON’T BE TEMPTED BY THE DEVIL!!! ;p

This has seriously gotta be one of the best episodes of Lost I have ever seen. Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof wrote this ep—as always, their eps are the BEST. Every second of this episode was well worth it, and each moment was seeped with information and content. I take notes when I watch Lost (yesyesyes it’s the geekiest thing ever, but it’s because I can only remember stuff if I write stuff down—I don’t ever really look back at the notes I take), and I could barely keep up with note-taking the night this aired.

Questions popped up verryyy often during the episode, and we even spent an hour and half afterwards discussing/researching the possibilities of what the HELL is going on! So, let’s get down to business…

TIME TRAVELING

Clearly, this season is centered around the concept of how time is different on the island than outside of the island. Of course, we never had any realization of this since we (via Lostie perspective) had no contact with the outside world. The only few outside world references we got were teases from the Others.

SOME INSTANCES OF OUTSIDE WORLD CONTACT:
(prior to us knowing that time travel existed in this show)

Keeping in mind that Flight 815 crashed on Sept 22, 2004…

1. Ben showing Jack a clip of the Red Sox winning the World Series
   • Showed video to Jack on Day 68-69 on the island
   • To the Losties, the date should be around November 28-29, 2004, so we thought about two months had passed since the plane crash, about one month after the Red Sox win the World Series.
   • How much time had passed in real-world time since the World Series?
2. In Juliet’s flashback, where Ben shows her video footage of her sister, Rachel, being cancer-less with her child at the playground
   • Ben showed her this clip the day the plane crashed on the island
   • Richard first zooms in on the date on the newspaper, a “Live” feed, and then shows Rachel, Juliet’s sister with her son.
   • We’re not sure how long Juliet has been on the island?
   • Is it possible that Richard has traveled back to that SPECIFIC time in order to recreate that scene? Could it be possible that he just picked up a fake newspaper with the plane crash date to “prove” that it was a Live video?
   • Does this mean that Juliet does NOT know the time differentiation that exists on/off the island? It seems like it by her reaction in the Season 4 episodes.
3. The times the Losties interacted with the Freighties:
   • The time difference when the Freighties initially left freighter to rescue the Losties – How long did it take them? (in real time? in island time?)
   • The time difference that occurs when Faraday asks Regina on the freighter to send a payload to the beacon he set up. According to Regina, the payload arrived at the target within 20 seconds. It finally arrives to the beacon a while later, and the time difference between the two timers was a 31mins and 20sec difference.

Calendar from the freighter. Do the colors mean anything? How much of a time difference is there at this point from the outside world and the island?

METHODOLOGY:
Simplistically speaking, it seems like one has to be exposed to a high level of electromagnetism recently, which has to be triggered off by a “zap” of electromagnetism, sending one’s conscience to the past, (is it always the past? What about Desmond’s ability to see Charlie’s future?) while one’s body is still intact in the present time (aka “future,” relative to the past-self).

After the triggering zap of electromagnetism (the second high exposure), they float in and out of time, affected by other types of random triggers (light? water?). Or is it that after the triggering zap, the time jumping occurs independent of triggers, and actually happens at some exponential rate, as Daniel Faraday was saying?

EFFECTS:
While in the weird time travel state, the present self apparently has no idea/recollection of present time. While in the past, they think any events that are happening in present time are like dreams.

With all this time jumping, the brain is being overworked and the person would most likely die, unless they find their constant.

CONSTANTS:
This back and forth time jumping is a huge stress to the brain, which eventually can’t handle it anymore. The brain is confused as its disoriented every time a jump happens. In order to make sense of what’s going on, the time traveler HAS to make contact with something or someone that exists in both times that is really significant and crucial to them in both times. This something or someone is their anchor, their “constant.” If they don’t get in contact with their constant in BOTH times (did Faraday say this? or is it simply assumed that as a constant, it must exist as a static reality for both times?), they’re brain would probably explode and just flat out die.

(Thank goodness Desmond(s) got in contact with his constant, cuz that would have been a really anticlimactic death. *Sayid asking* “Do you know the number?” FUMP! *Desmond hits the floor* THE END.)

DOES PRESENT DESMOND REMEMBER EVERYTHING NOW?
With the way this episode ended, the way it was edited, I think he does. I think contacting his constant in both worlds fixed his memory lapse. When he was time jumping, his consciousness would be elsewhere while his body would be dazed out. At the ending scene, Past Desmond is outside of Past Penny’s door, begging her to keep her number, while he time jumps back to Present Desmond (pressuming that as he time jumped, Past Desmond is blankly standing outside of Past Penny’s door). When Present Desmond is talking to Present Penny on the phone, they show a clip of Past Desmond (while Present Desmond’s conversation with Present Penny is going on) of him walking away from Past Penny’s apartment, looking relieved. I think this implies that Present Desmond regained his memory of past events.

Past Desmond walking away from Past Penny’s apartment while Present Desmond is talking with Present Penny on the freighter phone.

CHANGING THE PAST/FUTURE:
Faraday stated that the future cannot be changed.

But can the PAST be changed in order to affect and essentially form the future? Talking with Norvelle about this, it’s kind of like one of those adventure games where you have to travel to the past to set the puzzle a certain way so that you can go back to the present time to get through the puzzle you were stuck at (like Day of the Tentacles!). The future may not be changeable, but perhaps the PAST is O_O, in order to produce a certain outcome in the present time. Which brings into question whether or not the past is being changed or not, since the present time can only exist if the past event occurs.

What made time traveling the second time more successful for Desmond than the first time he went to the past (3×08:Flashes Before Your Eyes)? One of the major differences is that the first time he went back to the past, he had all his memories of everything up to present time, and his body wasn’t physically taken through any time warp. In THIS episode, Desmond only had a memory up to 1996–could this could have been an effect of physically traveling through the space between the island world and real world? Was this space a time warp? tear in the space-time continuum?

We learned from the first time travel that, according to Ms. Hawkings (the creepy lady from the antique store), you can try to change events, but the universe will course-correct itself in order to fix how things should occur. One can change EVENTS, but the OUTCOME will always stay the same. (Which is interesting, because that would mean that FATE is intertwined with how this time travel science works.) Did Desmond’s actions change events of the past, and did the outcome of time at some point in between 1996 and 2004 course-correct itself? Or was all of this supposed to happen as is? Thus the paradox of time traveling: there has to be a FIRST time that Desmond went back to the past to meet Faraday. But if there is a FIRST time, this would imply that at some point, the outcome and future was altered and changed. Did Desmond really change anything at all, or did all of the Past Desmond events happen as they actually did? (Unfortunately, at this point, we can’t ask the former, pre-time traveling Desmond if he ever went to ask 1996 Penny for her phone number, or if he quit the military cuz he was daydreaming x10, etc. The current Present Desmond is already “tainted” by time traveling.)

Also, what about course-correction and Charlie’s death? Desmond had flashes of all the visions of Charlie dying, and despite knowing that Charlie would eventually die, Desmond kept changing the events in order to prevent Charlie’s death. In the end, it was Charlie’s death that saved everyone and got the Freighties to arrive on the island and thus (presumably) get the Oceanic 6 off of the island. Was Desmond SUPPOSED to prevent all of Charlie’s deaths until the one where he had to drown in the underwater station? What if Desmond didn’t prevent Charlie’s other deaths? Who would have gone to the underwater station to turn off the jamming signal? Would the Losties have come in contact with the Freighties, or would they have found the island regardless via course-correction? Is the Freighties’ arrival considered the greater, unchangeable outcome, or something else?

THE LOSTIES + TIME TRAVEL?

Are the Losties all exposed to high level of electromagnetism? Their whole plane was brought down by Desmond not pushing the hatch button, releasing a sufficient surge of electromagnetism. Are they not as sensitive to the triggers as Desmond because Desmond was the one who has experienced a ridiculous amount of exposure? (What happened to Mikowski that made him experience this too?)

That brings in to question ALL the flashbacks (and flashforwards) the Losties have EVER had. Since we know them only from the perspective of when they’ve crashed on the island, we’ve just come to assume that these flashbacks happen just for character development reasons, done by the creators of the show. But what if these flashbacks are actually very short instances of time traveling?

Maybe when one is REALLY exposed to electromagnetism (like high voltage, high exposure), one just passes out like how Desmond and Mikowski would just have a blank expression on their faces, being mentally absent.

Umm.. scariest shit… ever?? NO THANK YOU.

But what about people who are less exposed to electromagnetism? Would they just brush it off as daydreaming? After we see flashbacks of our character, we see them in the present concentrating on whatever task is at hand, in an introvert kind of fashion. How about the hallucinations they get on the island, where they see things there that aren’t supposed to be there? I believe that hallucinations happen because of the black smoke, a form of electromagnetism.

Also, remember how we often see other Losties in other people’s flashbacks, and we think that it’s a huge coincidence? Maybe there is a connection between all of them. Maybe they can all serve as each other’s constants (although maybe not because constants have to be emotionally significant to both the past time and the present time). Some of us tickled the idea that maybe the Flight 815 survivors are the only ones that can time travel because they have constants in their past and future off-island lives.

THE ISLAND & THE FREIGHTIES

It seems like all the Freighties knows about the island. Why? Something that’s even more unnerving is that the way Faraday, Charlotte, etc. speak of the island, it almost sounds like they’ve BEEN there before. Maybe they HAVE been there before. That would explain why they don’t seem surprised to know that the Losties exist on the island, how they’re not really surprised that there’s a weird island in the middle of nowhere, and how they’re all prepared to do their respective tasks on the island.

In part of Faraday’s notebook, there’s a page that mentions the variables of Real Time, Imaginary Time, Space Time, and Imaginary Space.

Daniel Faraday’s Notebook

It sounds like the island is some “imaginary space.” Maybe when things get caught in a time warp, but don’t correctly go through with the time travel, they end up on the island. Maybe the island is like a junkyard for time travel gone wrong, making it a really special place because it doesn’t really exist anywhere, but really DOES exist.

That would explain how Flight 815 was found at the bottom of the ocean: after the plane was struck by the huge surge of electromagnetivity from the hatch, the whole flight was sent into imaginary space, sending it to the island. But in the real world, the consciousness of all the passengers of the flight were sucked out from the bodies, including the person that was flying the plane, sending the plane out of the sky and into the ocean. (Not sure why the pilot’s body would be fake though. Maybe there is a greater organization that tried to do some cover up of the plane crash.)

Maybe that’s why the Oceanic 6 are significant. Since they can’t time warp back to their old bodies, since it’s laying dead at the bottom of the ocean and that it’s also their FATE to go to the island, they have to physically travel from the island to the outside world (via the bearing / degree that will get them off of the island). Maybe to the outside world, the story is that the whole plane was sunk at the bottom of the ocean and for some reason or another, they were able to get out and survive.

What if the island itself is a byproduct of time travel? Like what if in the real world, this island existed on our planet at one point, but was destroyed (by too much electromagnetism, simultaneously disintegrating AND sending the island through time?) and was sent to imaginary space, thus creating the island environment we see now? The island wouldn’t exist in our real world (and thus no one would know where it is located), and there would be no way of physically getting to/from the island, except for following the exact coordinates that Faraday stated.

BENRY & DHARMA

With all this time traveling stuff, what does BEN have to do with all of this? Why is he so protective over the island and being the one in control on the island if it’s merely a place of limbo? Sure, the island is powerful and has its perks, but he must have some kind of greater investment in the island, right? He must have implemented a “radio silence” kind of interaction with the outside world in order to prevent outside people from physically entering the island (so the only way people could enter the island would be via time travel messup?).

He somehow has access to time traveling, clearly. Why would he want to travel on/off the island? (Btw, time traveling would explain why the picture the Freighties have of Ben is one that looks like he’s in the ’70s even though he’s the same age X_x.) Does he work for some greater organization where he actually has some sort of duty?

Benry’s pic that the Freighties showed O_O

Following the idea of the island being a time traveling junkyard, maybe Dharma was created on the island to research the nature of the island as an imaginary space, and how things come and go off of the island via time travel. (Regarding the polar bear experiments: Charlotte found the polar bear in the desert, as if the fossil had been there for ages. Maybe the polar bear was sent through time traveling and ended up on the island as a product of the Dharma Initiative research.)

I’ve heard that the Dharma Initiative, whose purpose is to research the Island, was run by the Hanso Foundation. There is a theory that the numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42) indicate when the world will end, and the Dharma Initiative was to research how we could change the end of the world by tweeking with the numbers. Maybe when people began to realize that although you can change events and you can’t change the outcome due to the universe’s course-correction, the Hanso Foundation realized that the numbers cannot be altered, and thus cut the Dharma Initiative program.

And what about Jacob? What’s up with him? He must be this entity living as some electronmagnetic force (partially via the Black Smoke?).

Anyway, in case you missed my thesis: this was a GREAT episode. Brent pointed out that the first three seasons of this show was all character development with some story development. It seems like now, it will mostly be all about the story and plot and explaining stuff. YES!!

*stretches back with arms behind neck* We’ve got it all figured out; we know exactly what’s going on. ;)

Happy Losting, and thanks for reading my 6 page essay. (Sorry, no cover sheet, bibliography, double-spacing for you, Janelle.) :(

Of course, I HAD to put this pic in. I’ve been completely addicted to this picture ALL week. This is officially the “panic” face we should make from this point on for the rest of our lives.