Lost is a timeless story of good vs evil, personal choice vs. slavery, and freedom vs. fate.
As we were told in the beginning by John Locke, ‘two sides, one light, one dark’. The Light Side, as you can probably guess, is the side of Good, Freedom, & personal choice.
On the Light Side we have Jacob. Jacob is the personification of good. His character is based on an archetype that has popped up in every culture and religion since the beginning of time(see Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, New Testament, Star Wars, and so on). He is compassionate. He is omniscient. He is optimistic. He invites you to his Island. He lives on the beach, having nothing to hide. He believes in and practices personal freedom. He believes in evolution, growth, change, and free will. But Jacob wants YOU to WANT to change. He will give you ‘little pushes’ along the way, like the Apollo Candy Bar stuck in the snack machine, and help you get to the point where YOU are ready to change. He does not lie to you or trick you into making the right choice for the wrong reason. He does not give orders, he ASKS. He asks Sawyer if he wants a pen. He asks Sayid for directions. He asks Jack if the extra candy bar is his. He asks Kate if she’ll steal again. He tells Hurley he has a choice. He ‘offers’ Sun & Jin his blessing. Even when faced with certain death, Jacob tells Ben that he has a choice, that he is not a slave, no matter what Fake Locke has told him. This is a man who does not compromise his principles. They are bedrock. We can analyze what has happened and know if he’s involved based on the method and the motive(more of that later). Most importantly though, Jacob wants wholesale change. He wants mankind to change. He is looking for a macro-event. This evolutionary completion is the ‘only ends once’ scenario that Jacob speaks of on the beach. Everything else is just progress, mankind inching closer to mass enlightenment. But there is opposition.
Thus we have the Dark Side. Nemesis is the personification of evil. His character is based on the timeless archetype of the mischievous trickster. He is not omniscient, rather, he relies on the tools and techniques of man. He believes mankind will not change. He is pessimistic. He is fatalistic. He believes the same cycle will repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat....no change whatsoever. He thinks men will continue to crumble in the face of great challenges, due to ambition, greed, guilt, vengeance, and weakness. But he is not passive like Jacob. Nemesis gets involved. Nemesis tests you. Nemesis tempts you. He learns your weakness and exploits it. Should he present you with a test you’ve failed in the past, and you demonstrate a capacity for change, you are a threat to him. He does not want change to happen. This is his argument with Jacob. Nemesis’ only code is that he has no code. He will lie, cheat, steal, kill, and mass-murder. He will haunt you with your dead relatives. He will exploit you emotionally and psychologically. He finds your weakness and applies pressure. If you’re strong, you must be eliminated...Nemesis can’t have agents of change running around, helping man progress. Nemesis applies this same technique to groups of people. If Nemesis should encounter your group, he will find the weakness. He will test everyone in it, kill the strong, and promote the weak. Infiltrate, divide, conquer, exterminate, assimilate the remaining weak people into a group and hand them orders to follow. Nemesis has one goal in mind: change must not happen.
Thus, we now know the methods of the opposing sides. The Light Side hopes that you’ll make the right decision on your own and gives you the space to do so. The Dark Side will not see around and hope you screw up, The Dark Side makes SURE you have every opportunity to fail. He stacks the deck. He baits you. He tricks you. He CHEATS. He will do whatever he can to avoid the ‘only ends once’ mass-evolution of man scenario that Jacob assures him is unavoidable.
The duality of this conflict is represented in every layer of the show and has been embedded from the start. As the following will demonstrate, the writers have not been winging it...we can all exhale. Change vs Fate has been there from day one. Charlie the drug addict writes ‘fate’ on his knuckles
The Dharma Initiative’s stated goal is to change one number in The Valenzetti Equation, an equation that supposedly predicts the end of the world. They attempt a multi-pronged attack in various scientific fields, each of which seeks change in said field. In Room 23, where Karl was being held, they try to change your mind. They recondition Polar Bears to live in the tropic. They experiment with time-travel. They experiment with The Hawthorne effect, hoping that observation will change the outcome. It’s also important to note, that while there was a lot of building about this scary interrogator in the jungle, they do not torture. They just set you free a little bit and you do the talking. They also vote and confer with each other about major decisions. They do not have a dictatorship, they are peaceful...it’s practically a hippie resort. They are science, they are progress, they are change, and they are aligned with The Light Side. They are agents of change. Thus, for Nemesis, they are a threat.
The Others hate change and choice and personal freedom. They believe in fate and following orders without asking questions. Just ask Ms. Hawking, former leader of The Others, and she’ll tell you that everyone is doomed, that the cycle is perpetual. She believes in this so much that she doesn’t attempt to avoid shooting her own son(Faraday in 1977) even though she’s well aware that her actions will directly lead to it eventually happening. She wants Desmond to press the button...again, and again, and again, and again. The Others do not like change and similarly, they do not like visitors. One of their primary objectives is to ‘protect the Island’ by keeping people away and keeping people from leaving. They want to slow progress down to a halt. They want to stop change dead in it’s tracks. The Others are the weaklings of every group who has come to the Island, hand-selected for their inability to question orders and their lack of fortitude. There is no room for personal choice with The Others, you follow the rules, you obey your superior officer, because as Bonnie states in Through The Looking Glass ‘the minute I start questioning orders, this whole thing, everything that we're doing here, falls apart.’ The Others put Nemesis’ methods into practice. They wear beards and trick you. They lie cheat and steal. They have Ethan infiltrate you. They kidnap your child and use him as leverage. They figure out your weakness, like Jack’s feelings for Kate, and they apply pressure. They manipulate you. The methods of Benjamin Linus are the methods of Nemesis. The Others are, and always have been, aligned with The Dark Side.
Ahh but I can hear your thoughts already...if they follow Jacob, how are they on The Dark Side? Simple. They’re not following Jacob and they never were following him. Jacob has nothing to do with The Others. Jacob does not give orders, Jacob let’s you choose. You can even choose the wrong path if you want, but it’s your choice. So why is it so many of The Others think they’re following Jacob? To answer that, I first have to tell you a story about a literal and figurative ‘loophole’
In 1954, John Locke walks up to Richard Alpert and informs him that he’s from the future, that Jacob sent him, and that he is Richard’s leader. Richard’s eyes light up at the mention of Jacob. This is the birth of the loophole. For the first time in the history of the conflict, Nemesis is now able to level the playing field(for the moment, humor me and pretend that Nemesis knows everything that Richard Alpert knows). He has been fighting a losing battle, going to war with a combatant who knows the future and thus can’t be blind-sided or plotted against. How do you win when your opponent knows everything that will happen? Thanks to time-travel, Nemesis now has the same abilities, albeit they are limited. He now can look into the future. He knows when John Locke will be born. This is his first, but not last, fruit from the tree of knowledge. Daniel Faraday time-jumps to 1977 and hands his mother, Eloise Hawking, a journal detailing all of the events of the next 30 years(This is a rather cheap plot device, how does the journal not reset and become empty? It’s just like the compass and we have no choice but to accept it as rational). It details every single aspect of The Dharma Initiative, a foe that The Others dismantle at the seams. Nemesis, like Jacob in his battle with Nemesis, is now one step ahead of The Dharma Initiative. In turn, Nemesis can now prove to his people, his army of weaklings, that he has communication with a divine source. He tells them that in 2004 a man named John Locke will crash onto the Island. He has the flight manifest from Faraday’s journal. He knows everyone on board. He expands his operations. He follows all of the survivors of Oceanic 815 from birth to 2004. He knows their weaknesses. He knows how to tempt them. He knows how to test them. He knows how to manipulate them. Nemesis has found a way to be omniscient, and he uses this phony power to control The Others. They never meet Jacob, they never see Jacob, but they trust that Jacob is real and they’ve learned that Jacob knows everything. Jacob is not to be questioned. As Mikhail says ‘the man who brought us here is a great, wise man’. But it isn’t Jacob. This is why Ben does not heal. This is why Jaocb says ‘what about you?’ to Ben. Ben was never working for Jacob. Jacob doesn’t give orders, Nemesis does.
So how does Nemesis get his orders out to his weak-minded followers? Well we’ve learned that Ben Linus has never met ‘Jacob’, but rather, receives lists(now you know where the lists come from...phony-omniscience and intel gathering) and orders supposedly passed down from Jacob to Richard Alpert. Thus we know that Nemesis has infiltrated the very top of The Others’ power structure. This leaves us with two options. Either Richard Alpert, like the rest of The Others, has been deceived, or he is a willing participant. I have bad news everyone, we’ve been duped, it’s the second option. Richard Alpert is not only working for Nemesis....Richard Alpert IS Nemesis. One of your first thoughts(other than ‘what the @#&$’) is that we’ve seen Nemesis, imitating John Locke, having a conversation with Richard Alpert. How can one Nemesis be two people simultaneously? In order for me to prove Richard Alpert is Nemesis, I must first prove that Nemesis is more than one person. I call them Team Nemesis.
Dante’s ‘Nemesis’ in ‘The Divine Comedy’ is a 3-headed monster, representing the ‘inverted Christian Trinity’, who cannot create life and thus imitates life. It is a trickster. It lies and cheats. Notice this quote from Mikhail to John Locke in Enter 77. Mikhail: Ha! Don't waste your time. For ten years I have tried to defeat that game. But it was programmed by three grand masters. And it cheats’. Three grand masters who cheat. That, my friends, is Team Nemesis, aka The Dark Side, aka the bad guys. Rousseau’s team arrives and is baited into entering the Smoke Monster’s hole. Rousseau does not enter. Later, supposedly due to a sickness which makes them ‘not themselves’, Rousseau is forced to kill all three of them. One of them is the father of the baby growing in her womb. He tries to kill her. He tells her the Smoke Monster is not a threat and is merely ‘a highly sophisticated security system’ for the Island. Three people simultaneously ‘not themselves’ after meeting the Smoke Monster. The sickness? There is none. They are not the same 3 people. They are being imitated, simultaneously. Rousseau knew it wasn’t the father of her child, she could detect a difference...much like John Locke seemed very ‘un-Locke-like’ to all of us during this past season. Nemesis is not one man, Nemesis is Team Nemesis. This is why Radzinsky named the Smoke Monster as Cerberus. Here’s a picture of Cerberus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RomanCerberus.JPG
So now we know that Nemesis can be more than one person, thus Richard Alpert is a candidate for review. There is significant evidence that Alpert is in fact, part of Team Nemesis. For starters, Richard Alpert is ‘as old as the island itself’. Well we know for a fact that only two other characters in Lost can make that claim, them being Jacob & Nemesis. We know they were around when The Black Rock arrived and it’s safe to assume they were around for many years before that. Also, like Jaocb, Richard Alpert does not age. Alpert explains ‘I'm this way because of Jacob.’ We assume of course that Jacob somehow blessed Alpert the gift of eternal life. Yet Alpert does not communicate with Jacob. Alpert get’s blindsided by a Fake Locke. Alpert gives orders and runs an organization that stand in stark contrast to Jacob’s principles. How is it that Alpert got the gift of eternal life and spends every day of it undermining the very man who supposedly gave him this gift???? He doesn’t. The reason Richard Alpert doesn’t age is because he is a Nemesis. He is imitating a person long since dead. Notice in LaFleur that Richard Alpert storms into the Dharma barracks and leaves with a dead body(Paul, Amy’s husband). We’re told that this is to convince his people that there were losses on both sides. This is not the case. Richard Alpert needed Paul’s body. Nemesis needed Pauls’ identity. Nemesis needed to apply pressure to a weak link in the Dharma chain. Sure, there remains the slight possibility that Alpert was just following orders, but combined with the fact he doesn’t age, I think it’s more than likely he is in fact one third of the 3 headed beast, Dante’s ‘Inverted Christian Trinity’...this phrase will prove to be very important, remember it.
Team Nemesis will stop at nothing to make you crack. If they can access your dead father’s body, they will imitate him and lure you into the jungle and over a cliff. If they can access your dead brother, they will lure you into the jungle for you to be slammed against a tree. They use living relatives as well. Juliet’s sister’s health is used to leverage her. Walt is used to control Michael. Aaron. They never stop attacking and they know where to strike. For Dharma, the two weak links are Amy and Young Ben Linus. Team Nemesis knows this, for who has ventured out into the dark territory? Ben literally tells Richard Alpert that he wants out, that he hates everyone...he is a scared defenseless angry little boy and Team Nemesis pounces on him ruthlessly. The appropriate pressure is applied. And how is this done? Using Ben’s dead mother, Emily. I have no idea how Team Nemesis got access to her body in order to imitate it, but this is what happened. This is why Ben says his mother, who died during childbirth, taught him how to read. He was not kidding. His mother has been whispering in his ear and shaping his mind. But it wasn’t her, it was Team Nemesis. Team Nemesis is calling the shots. Team Nemesis ordered the Purge. Team Nemesis and Ben’s dead mother convinced him to kill his father. It was practice. Years later, Ben would be asked to kill his father yet again, when Fake Locke and Team Nemesis order him to execute Jacob. The cycle repeats. Twice, a dead relative gets Ben Linus to kill his father. Twice, a purge is ordered afterward to clean up the mess. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. This is a sign of Team Nemesis. They perpetuate the cycle. They use the same technique again and again. They have perfected their craft.
So where did the body for Richard Alpert come from? Here’s another pattern. Yemi is a dead body from an Island-bound vessel. Christian is a dead body from an Island-bound vessel. Locke is a dead body from an Island-Bound vessel. This is the protocol that Hawking knows to follow(Protocol, as in something to be repeated without change...it’s amazing how these themes are embedded into the show). There have been hints that Richard is somehow connected to The Black Rock. I believe that the original Richard Alpert was a dead body on an island-bound vessel, The Black Rock, and his body was used to torment and manipulate it’s inhabitants.
Anyways, back to Team Nemesis. Perhaps you disagree but at this point I’m rather convinced that Nemesis is a 3-headed foe and that Richard Alpert is one of the three prongs. But what is this Nemesis? Well for starters, it’s The Smoke Monster. We can connect the Smoke Monster directly to Nemesis in many ways. For starters, on the wall in The Smoke Monster’s chamber, we have an image of the god Anubis battling The Smoke Monster:
http://www.forareasonblog.com/2009/04/11/anubis-and-the-smoke-monster-hieroglyphics/
Here we have our 2 sides yet again, Light & Dark. Notice the outstretched hand of Anubis, a peaceful offering. Notice the horns of the smoke monster, the devil, the inverted trinity, on the left, the side of the evil. This is a picture of Jacob and The Smoke Monster. They literally drew us a picture of the two sides. However, let’s be thorough. There are more ways to connect Nemesis to The Smoke Monster.
For starters, Nemesis, imitating Locke, knows where The Smoke Monster is when Ben can’t find it. He leads Ben into it’s inner chamber. The Smoke Monster appears. A dead relative chokes Ben into following orders. Clearly The Smoke Monster is on Team Nemesis. An imitated Yemi(‘you speak to me as if I am your brother) leads Mr. Eko to the Smoke Monster, who then gets smashed into pieces. An imitated Christian leads Jack into the jungle(guess who lives there, sneaking around amongst the trees) away from the beach(guess who lives there, out in the open with nothing to hide). An imitated Emily Linus leads Ben out from the safety of the Dharma barracks, into the dark territory, beyond the sonar fence, where he meets the now very suspect Richard Alpert. A backwards speaking Walt, while under the control of The Others(Dark Side), leads Shannon into the jungle, where she meets her demise. Repeat repeat repeat, over and over. The more the cycle continues, the slower Jacob’s ‘progress’ advances.
Progress, however, has it’s down side. Just when you’ve turned that corner, there’s a catch. When you change, you die. Notice the theme:
-Eko comes to peace with his past, builds a church, lives nobly. He dies.
-Boone has a vision and gets over Shannon. He dies.
-Shannon opens up her heart to Sayid and watches Vincent, becoming unselfish. She dies.
-Roger Linus promises to celebrate Ben’s birthday next year, wants quality time. He dies.
-Charlie kicks his drug habit. He dies.
-Ana Lucia puts the gun down, unwilling to kill again. She dies.
-Michael takes responsibility for his actions. He dies.
-Faraday reconsiders his stance on fate and changing the past. He dies.
-Libby gets over the death of her husband and finds love again. She dies.
-Charlotte is finally home to stay, no more searching and digging. She dies.
-Nikki & Paulo(who gives a shit!)overcome greed, he hid the diamonds to keep her. They die.
-John Locke.....hold that thought for later.
Thus we have a clear golden rule of Lost, and it’s a very big deal. When you confront your ‘issue’ and actually CHANGE, you die. Why is this important? Because Jacob is telling us that mankind will change.
What happens if mankind changes? You guessed it. Mankind goes bye-bye.
‘It only ends once’.
This is why Hawking and The Others are always saying that they are ‘saving the world’, as it stated in the ad that both Mikhail & Kelvin responded to(In case you’re wondering, Radsinsky is a part of the Dark Side. He gives orders. He kills people. He presses the button). That is why some of the people are willing to follow orders. The progress we are progressing towards is extinction.
So our conflict has taken an interesting turn. The Others, those mass-murdering lying-cheating-stealing manipulative bastards, and Team Nemesis, that 3-headed monster from hell who will mimic your dead mother until you’re bleeding from every orifice, are actually fighting against the end of the world.
This is a timeless story that has been told many times throughout the history of man. Plato, Dante, the Qur’an. Evil loses and the world ends.
That is why we’ve been following the journey of our beloved Losties. As they make wholesale changes, they will be the agents of change that bring about the ‘only ends once’ scenario that Jacob accurately predicted. This means they will all face their own issues, overcome them, change, and die. It’s going to be a very painful final season for all of us.
And it’s going to end with a white flash as the world with evil in it comes to an end and the side of the Light wins.
Damon Lindelof: ‘I promise you the series will not end with a black screen’.
No Damon, it won’t, but thanks for doing what you’ve always done, and rubbed our faces in it. It’s going to end with a WHITE screen.
So now we can predict within reason what will be happening to our beloved Losties. They will face their issues and die. But what are their issues?
Jacob has told us. Jacob is guiding them towards this outcome. He gives ‘little pushes’, passively helping them out, strengthening them for their big test, years in advance. Remember it has to be their choice to change and overcome their issues. We can learn what our Losties issues are by evaluating what aspect of them Jacob was trying to help them change. It’s pretty obvious when you watch the scenes.
Sun & Jin have too often put their marriage on the back burner. Jin works a nightmarish job and never sees Sun. Sun stays on the helicopter without Jin on it. Jin tells Locke to convince Sun that he’s dead. What ‘blessing’ does Jacob ‘offer’? Never take your marriage for granted. He is strengthening their commitment muscles for a later decathlon of the soul. He is helping them change. By the way, Sun & Jin, symbolically, will demonstrate their commitment to each other in the ultimate way. They will choose to change together and then they will die together. Sun & Jin are Adam & Eve(Adam & Eve were discovered during House Of The Rising Sun, the first Jin & Sun-centric episode. Watch it and you’ll agree that they are Adam & Eve).
Hurley has always considered himself cursed. He has willed himself into a state of paranoia. Jacob visits him to tell him that he has a personal choice(of course) to come back to the Island or not. But he also suggests that Hurley isn’t cursed, that perhaps he’s blessed. There is no greater way for Hurley to change, to demonstrate that he considers himself blessed, to prove that he is ok with his life...than for Hurley to broadcast the numbers. He will choose to change and he will broadcast the numbers and he will die.
Sawyer’s entire life has been dedicated to finding the man who killed his parents and enacting revenge.
Yes, he did pull the trigger in Australia. Yes, he did kill Cooper on the Island. This is the cycle, the repetition, that needs to be broken. Jacob comforts Sawyer. He tells him he’s sorry about his parents dying. He offers him a pen. He’s trying to help Sawyer let it out and get over it. This scene is the perfect example of the opposing philosophies of Lost. Notice what Sawyer’s Uncle Doug says to Sawyer after Jacob leaves: ‘You gotta move on, boy. They're gone, and there ain't nothing you can do to change that. What's done is done.’ What’s done is done. Fate. You can’t change. This is the opposing force to change perfectly captured. The writers have been doing this from the first episode, re-watch the series, it’s EVERYWHERE. Minus production errors, drunk actors & network issues, they’ve done an incredible job. They knew what they were doing from the start and they have stuck to the rules. You can exhale now :)
Kate has always taken things. She takes lunchboxes, she takes lives, she takes babies. What does Jacob ask her(and as always, he asks)? He asks her to stop stealing. He uses honey instead of vinegar. Instead of punishment he offers salvation. He has planted a seed, and it will sprout roots next season. Kate will choose to change, Kate will return something to it’s rightful owner(Aaron to Claire), and Kate will die. In fact, Claire will kill her. More on that later.
And now, Jack. Our supposed hero. Poor Jack, beaten down by his father Christian over the years. Jacob tells Jack that the Apollo Bar stuck in the vending machine just ‘needed a little push’. Jacob was trying to teach Jack that Christian was just giving him little pushes. Jack’s issue is forgiving his father. Jack will choose to change and will forgive Christian. And he will die.
Here’s the problem: Claire and Christian are both dead. Who will Kate be giving Aaron to? Who will Jack be hugging?
First, let’s prove Claire is dead. By now we know how Smokie operates. One of his favorite tricks is using your dead relatives. And what is Claire’s issue? What defines Claire? I went to Lostpedia just to read about her. It says she is frequently tested with motherhood. That sounds about right doesn’t it? Twice, she almost loses Aaron, once to adoption, and once to Ethan. She protects him, keeps him by her side. She was warned not to let him be ‘raised by an Other’. So who is on the very short list of people she would give Aaron to, who also happens to be on the Island? Christian Shephard, Aaron’s Grandfather, now being imitated as part of Team Nemesis. This is why Aaron was left on the floor of the jungle. Claire changed, she gave up Aaron, and she died. This is why she is just palling around with Christian in the cabin, not worried about Aaron at all, having a tea party and laughing at John Locke for thinking he was being ‘chosen’ by Jacob. She didn’t die in the barracks explosion, she was killed in the jungle. She chose to change and her story came full circle. Claire Littleton is dead.
And now Jack. Typing this right now, fully understanding his character and his journey, it breaks my heart. The writers have really screwed us on this one. I can’t say it’s not brilliant though.
Before I tell you who kills Jack, first I must explain why Jack must die.
Earlier I referenced Dante’s 3-headed monster. The 3 headed monster represents the ‘inverted Christian Trinity’. I read this in a neat little book called Good & Evil In Myth & Legend. Check it out, it covers most of Lost in the first 20 pages. Anyways, think about that phrase.
Inverted Christian Trinity.
Inverted Christian. Three of them. Three inversions.
Right now we’ve established two of Christian’s family are being imitated by Team Nemesis. Two Inverted Christians. Claire & Christian.
Jack is the third. He will be killed. He will be imitated. The Smoke Monster, aka Cerberus, aka The Three Headed Monster, aka Team Nemesis, aka The Dark Side...during Season 6...will be Jack, Claire & Christian(were the cigarettes in his hotel room a clue that he’s Smokie or what? Let alone him setting off the smoke detector).
Jack. His tattoos read ‘he who walks among us but is not one of us’. Those damn writers, they knew it all along. He is going to be imitated. He will be the face of evil in Season 6. Jack will embrace Christian, forgiving him, choosing to change. But it’s the inverted Christian. It’s part of Team Nemesis. He will probably hug his father only to get a knife in the gut. Buy your tissues NOW.
This is the creative device that the writers will be using in Season 6. We will not know who to trust. Kate will be handing Aaron(how does he get back? No clue) back to an inverted Claire aka Team Nemesis. She will choose to change and she will die. Kate has no idea that there’s a clone-monster running around imitating people. Bet your ass it happens.
But here’s how Team Nemesis dies.
Early in the season we are going to be shown a scene from later in the story. In it, John Locke will be killing Jack Shephard. We will all assume that John Locke is the evil inverted imitated Nemesis version of John Locke, and that Jack Shephard is the good ol’ doctor. But since we now know that Jack has to die, to complete the Inverted Christian Trinity, it isn’t Jack.
And Locke is back to being Locke. He will be resurrected for the third time(fell from building, literally rose up after 815 crashed). This has been his destiny.
Resurrected Locke will kill Nemesis Jack. Locke will have changed and become something. Don’t tell him what he can’t do, he just killed the FUCKING DEVIL!
And so we have our two sides, Light vs Dark, Jacob vs Nemesis/Smokie/Cerberus, Dharma vs The Others, Freedom vs Slavery, Change vs Fate, Asking vs Ordering, White Pillars of Smoke in every Locke dream vs. Black Pillars of Smoke, The Beach vs The Dark Territory, Visions/Dreams vs Dead Relatives, Candy Bars vs. Mass-Murder, Omniscience vs. Time-Loopholes, Locke vs Jack, Faith vs Science.
I think it’s an utter work of genius. Just think about it. Christian said ‘TheRed Sox would never win the World Series’. He’s a fatalist. He’s an Other. The Red Sox break the curse, progress, change. Every episode is embedded with the conflict. They’ve extended the argument to every aspect of humanity. Can you time-travel and change the past? Can you overcome your drug addiction? Can you open up your heart? Can you stop torturing people? Yes, you can. You can change. Everyone can change. We can change together and start a new world.
Unfortunately, in order for that to happen, the old one has to die.
And then it all starts over again.
As we were told in the beginning by John Locke, ‘two sides, one light, one dark’. The Light Side, as you can probably guess, is the side of Good, Freedom, & personal choice.
On the Light Side we have Jacob. Jacob is the personification of good. His character is based on an archetype that has popped up in every culture and religion since the beginning of time(see Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, New Testament, Star Wars, and so on). He is compassionate. He is omniscient. He is optimistic. He invites you to his Island. He lives on the beach, having nothing to hide. He believes in and practices personal freedom. He believes in evolution, growth, change, and free will. But Jacob wants YOU to WANT to change. He will give you ‘little pushes’ along the way, like the Apollo Candy Bar stuck in the snack machine, and help you get to the point where YOU are ready to change. He does not lie to you or trick you into making the right choice for the wrong reason. He does not give orders, he ASKS. He asks Sawyer if he wants a pen. He asks Sayid for directions. He asks Jack if the extra candy bar is his. He asks Kate if she’ll steal again. He tells Hurley he has a choice. He ‘offers’ Sun & Jin his blessing. Even when faced with certain death, Jacob tells Ben that he has a choice, that he is not a slave, no matter what Fake Locke has told him. This is a man who does not compromise his principles. They are bedrock. We can analyze what has happened and know if he’s involved based on the method and the motive(more of that later). Most importantly though, Jacob wants wholesale change. He wants mankind to change. He is looking for a macro-event. This evolutionary completion is the ‘only ends once’ scenario that Jacob speaks of on the beach. Everything else is just progress, mankind inching closer to mass enlightenment. But there is opposition.
Thus we have the Dark Side. Nemesis is the personification of evil. His character is based on the timeless archetype of the mischievous trickster. He is not omniscient, rather, he relies on the tools and techniques of man. He believes mankind will not change. He is pessimistic. He is fatalistic. He believes the same cycle will repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat....no change whatsoever. He thinks men will continue to crumble in the face of great challenges, due to ambition, greed, guilt, vengeance, and weakness. But he is not passive like Jacob. Nemesis gets involved. Nemesis tests you. Nemesis tempts you. He learns your weakness and exploits it. Should he present you with a test you’ve failed in the past, and you demonstrate a capacity for change, you are a threat to him. He does not want change to happen. This is his argument with Jacob. Nemesis’ only code is that he has no code. He will lie, cheat, steal, kill, and mass-murder. He will haunt you with your dead relatives. He will exploit you emotionally and psychologically. He finds your weakness and applies pressure. If you’re strong, you must be eliminated...Nemesis can’t have agents of change running around, helping man progress. Nemesis applies this same technique to groups of people. If Nemesis should encounter your group, he will find the weakness. He will test everyone in it, kill the strong, and promote the weak. Infiltrate, divide, conquer, exterminate, assimilate the remaining weak people into a group and hand them orders to follow. Nemesis has one goal in mind: change must not happen.
Thus, we now know the methods of the opposing sides. The Light Side hopes that you’ll make the right decision on your own and gives you the space to do so. The Dark Side will not see around and hope you screw up, The Dark Side makes SURE you have every opportunity to fail. He stacks the deck. He baits you. He tricks you. He CHEATS. He will do whatever he can to avoid the ‘only ends once’ mass-evolution of man scenario that Jacob assures him is unavoidable.
The duality of this conflict is represented in every layer of the show and has been embedded from the start. As the following will demonstrate, the writers have not been winging it...we can all exhale. Change vs Fate has been there from day one. Charlie the drug addict writes ‘fate’ on his knuckles
The Dharma Initiative’s stated goal is to change one number in The Valenzetti Equation, an equation that supposedly predicts the end of the world. They attempt a multi-pronged attack in various scientific fields, each of which seeks change in said field. In Room 23, where Karl was being held, they try to change your mind. They recondition Polar Bears to live in the tropic. They experiment with time-travel. They experiment with The Hawthorne effect, hoping that observation will change the outcome. It’s also important to note, that while there was a lot of building about this scary interrogator in the jungle, they do not torture. They just set you free a little bit and you do the talking. They also vote and confer with each other about major decisions. They do not have a dictatorship, they are peaceful...it’s practically a hippie resort. They are science, they are progress, they are change, and they are aligned with The Light Side. They are agents of change. Thus, for Nemesis, they are a threat.
The Others hate change and choice and personal freedom. They believe in fate and following orders without asking questions. Just ask Ms. Hawking, former leader of The Others, and she’ll tell you that everyone is doomed, that the cycle is perpetual. She believes in this so much that she doesn’t attempt to avoid shooting her own son(Faraday in 1977) even though she’s well aware that her actions will directly lead to it eventually happening. She wants Desmond to press the button...again, and again, and again, and again. The Others do not like change and similarly, they do not like visitors. One of their primary objectives is to ‘protect the Island’ by keeping people away and keeping people from leaving. They want to slow progress down to a halt. They want to stop change dead in it’s tracks. The Others are the weaklings of every group who has come to the Island, hand-selected for their inability to question orders and their lack of fortitude. There is no room for personal choice with The Others, you follow the rules, you obey your superior officer, because as Bonnie states in Through The Looking Glass ‘the minute I start questioning orders, this whole thing, everything that we're doing here, falls apart.’ The Others put Nemesis’ methods into practice. They wear beards and trick you. They lie cheat and steal. They have Ethan infiltrate you. They kidnap your child and use him as leverage. They figure out your weakness, like Jack’s feelings for Kate, and they apply pressure. They manipulate you. The methods of Benjamin Linus are the methods of Nemesis. The Others are, and always have been, aligned with The Dark Side.
Ahh but I can hear your thoughts already...if they follow Jacob, how are they on The Dark Side? Simple. They’re not following Jacob and they never were following him. Jacob has nothing to do with The Others. Jacob does not give orders, Jacob let’s you choose. You can even choose the wrong path if you want, but it’s your choice. So why is it so many of The Others think they’re following Jacob? To answer that, I first have to tell you a story about a literal and figurative ‘loophole’
In 1954, John Locke walks up to Richard Alpert and informs him that he’s from the future, that Jacob sent him, and that he is Richard’s leader. Richard’s eyes light up at the mention of Jacob. This is the birth of the loophole. For the first time in the history of the conflict, Nemesis is now able to level the playing field(for the moment, humor me and pretend that Nemesis knows everything that Richard Alpert knows). He has been fighting a losing battle, going to war with a combatant who knows the future and thus can’t be blind-sided or plotted against. How do you win when your opponent knows everything that will happen? Thanks to time-travel, Nemesis now has the same abilities, albeit they are limited. He now can look into the future. He knows when John Locke will be born. This is his first, but not last, fruit from the tree of knowledge. Daniel Faraday time-jumps to 1977 and hands his mother, Eloise Hawking, a journal detailing all of the events of the next 30 years(This is a rather cheap plot device, how does the journal not reset and become empty? It’s just like the compass and we have no choice but to accept it as rational). It details every single aspect of The Dharma Initiative, a foe that The Others dismantle at the seams. Nemesis, like Jacob in his battle with Nemesis, is now one step ahead of The Dharma Initiative. In turn, Nemesis can now prove to his people, his army of weaklings, that he has communication with a divine source. He tells them that in 2004 a man named John Locke will crash onto the Island. He has the flight manifest from Faraday’s journal. He knows everyone on board. He expands his operations. He follows all of the survivors of Oceanic 815 from birth to 2004. He knows their weaknesses. He knows how to tempt them. He knows how to test them. He knows how to manipulate them. Nemesis has found a way to be omniscient, and he uses this phony power to control The Others. They never meet Jacob, they never see Jacob, but they trust that Jacob is real and they’ve learned that Jacob knows everything. Jacob is not to be questioned. As Mikhail says ‘the man who brought us here is a great, wise man’. But it isn’t Jacob. This is why Ben does not heal. This is why Jaocb says ‘what about you?’ to Ben. Ben was never working for Jacob. Jacob doesn’t give orders, Nemesis does.
So how does Nemesis get his orders out to his weak-minded followers? Well we’ve learned that Ben Linus has never met ‘Jacob’, but rather, receives lists(now you know where the lists come from...phony-omniscience and intel gathering) and orders supposedly passed down from Jacob to Richard Alpert. Thus we know that Nemesis has infiltrated the very top of The Others’ power structure. This leaves us with two options. Either Richard Alpert, like the rest of The Others, has been deceived, or he is a willing participant. I have bad news everyone, we’ve been duped, it’s the second option. Richard Alpert is not only working for Nemesis....Richard Alpert IS Nemesis. One of your first thoughts(other than ‘what the @#&$’) is that we’ve seen Nemesis, imitating John Locke, having a conversation with Richard Alpert. How can one Nemesis be two people simultaneously? In order for me to prove Richard Alpert is Nemesis, I must first prove that Nemesis is more than one person. I call them Team Nemesis.
Dante’s ‘Nemesis’ in ‘The Divine Comedy’ is a 3-headed monster, representing the ‘inverted Christian Trinity’, who cannot create life and thus imitates life. It is a trickster. It lies and cheats. Notice this quote from Mikhail to John Locke in Enter 77. Mikhail: Ha! Don't waste your time. For ten years I have tried to defeat that game. But it was programmed by three grand masters. And it cheats’. Three grand masters who cheat. That, my friends, is Team Nemesis, aka The Dark Side, aka the bad guys. Rousseau’s team arrives and is baited into entering the Smoke Monster’s hole. Rousseau does not enter. Later, supposedly due to a sickness which makes them ‘not themselves’, Rousseau is forced to kill all three of them. One of them is the father of the baby growing in her womb. He tries to kill her. He tells her the Smoke Monster is not a threat and is merely ‘a highly sophisticated security system’ for the Island. Three people simultaneously ‘not themselves’ after meeting the Smoke Monster. The sickness? There is none. They are not the same 3 people. They are being imitated, simultaneously. Rousseau knew it wasn’t the father of her child, she could detect a difference...much like John Locke seemed very ‘un-Locke-like’ to all of us during this past season. Nemesis is not one man, Nemesis is Team Nemesis. This is why Radzinsky named the Smoke Monster as Cerberus. Here’s a picture of Cerberus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RomanCerberus.JPG
So now we know that Nemesis can be more than one person, thus Richard Alpert is a candidate for review. There is significant evidence that Alpert is in fact, part of Team Nemesis. For starters, Richard Alpert is ‘as old as the island itself’. Well we know for a fact that only two other characters in Lost can make that claim, them being Jacob & Nemesis. We know they were around when The Black Rock arrived and it’s safe to assume they were around for many years before that. Also, like Jaocb, Richard Alpert does not age. Alpert explains ‘I'm this way because of Jacob.’ We assume of course that Jacob somehow blessed Alpert the gift of eternal life. Yet Alpert does not communicate with Jacob. Alpert get’s blindsided by a Fake Locke. Alpert gives orders and runs an organization that stand in stark contrast to Jacob’s principles. How is it that Alpert got the gift of eternal life and spends every day of it undermining the very man who supposedly gave him this gift???? He doesn’t. The reason Richard Alpert doesn’t age is because he is a Nemesis. He is imitating a person long since dead. Notice in LaFleur that Richard Alpert storms into the Dharma barracks and leaves with a dead body(Paul, Amy’s husband). We’re told that this is to convince his people that there were losses on both sides. This is not the case. Richard Alpert needed Paul’s body. Nemesis needed Pauls’ identity. Nemesis needed to apply pressure to a weak link in the Dharma chain. Sure, there remains the slight possibility that Alpert was just following orders, but combined with the fact he doesn’t age, I think it’s more than likely he is in fact one third of the 3 headed beast, Dante’s ‘Inverted Christian Trinity’...this phrase will prove to be very important, remember it.
Team Nemesis will stop at nothing to make you crack. If they can access your dead father’s body, they will imitate him and lure you into the jungle and over a cliff. If they can access your dead brother, they will lure you into the jungle for you to be slammed against a tree. They use living relatives as well. Juliet’s sister’s health is used to leverage her. Walt is used to control Michael. Aaron. They never stop attacking and they know where to strike. For Dharma, the two weak links are Amy and Young Ben Linus. Team Nemesis knows this, for who has ventured out into the dark territory? Ben literally tells Richard Alpert that he wants out, that he hates everyone...he is a scared defenseless angry little boy and Team Nemesis pounces on him ruthlessly. The appropriate pressure is applied. And how is this done? Using Ben’s dead mother, Emily. I have no idea how Team Nemesis got access to her body in order to imitate it, but this is what happened. This is why Ben says his mother, who died during childbirth, taught him how to read. He was not kidding. His mother has been whispering in his ear and shaping his mind. But it wasn’t her, it was Team Nemesis. Team Nemesis is calling the shots. Team Nemesis ordered the Purge. Team Nemesis and Ben’s dead mother convinced him to kill his father. It was practice. Years later, Ben would be asked to kill his father yet again, when Fake Locke and Team Nemesis order him to execute Jacob. The cycle repeats. Twice, a dead relative gets Ben Linus to kill his father. Twice, a purge is ordered afterward to clean up the mess. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. This is a sign of Team Nemesis. They perpetuate the cycle. They use the same technique again and again. They have perfected their craft.
So where did the body for Richard Alpert come from? Here’s another pattern. Yemi is a dead body from an Island-bound vessel. Christian is a dead body from an Island-bound vessel. Locke is a dead body from an Island-Bound vessel. This is the protocol that Hawking knows to follow(Protocol, as in something to be repeated without change...it’s amazing how these themes are embedded into the show). There have been hints that Richard is somehow connected to The Black Rock. I believe that the original Richard Alpert was a dead body on an island-bound vessel, The Black Rock, and his body was used to torment and manipulate it’s inhabitants.
Anyways, back to Team Nemesis. Perhaps you disagree but at this point I’m rather convinced that Nemesis is a 3-headed foe and that Richard Alpert is one of the three prongs. But what is this Nemesis? Well for starters, it’s The Smoke Monster. We can connect the Smoke Monster directly to Nemesis in many ways. For starters, on the wall in The Smoke Monster’s chamber, we have an image of the god Anubis battling The Smoke Monster:
http://www.forareasonblog.com/2009/04/11/anubis-and-the-smoke-monster-hieroglyphics/
Here we have our 2 sides yet again, Light & Dark. Notice the outstretched hand of Anubis, a peaceful offering. Notice the horns of the smoke monster, the devil, the inverted trinity, on the left, the side of the evil. This is a picture of Jacob and The Smoke Monster. They literally drew us a picture of the two sides. However, let’s be thorough. There are more ways to connect Nemesis to The Smoke Monster.
For starters, Nemesis, imitating Locke, knows where The Smoke Monster is when Ben can’t find it. He leads Ben into it’s inner chamber. The Smoke Monster appears. A dead relative chokes Ben into following orders. Clearly The Smoke Monster is on Team Nemesis. An imitated Yemi(‘you speak to me as if I am your brother) leads Mr. Eko to the Smoke Monster, who then gets smashed into pieces. An imitated Christian leads Jack into the jungle(guess who lives there, sneaking around amongst the trees) away from the beach(guess who lives there, out in the open with nothing to hide). An imitated Emily Linus leads Ben out from the safety of the Dharma barracks, into the dark territory, beyond the sonar fence, where he meets the now very suspect Richard Alpert. A backwards speaking Walt, while under the control of The Others(Dark Side), leads Shannon into the jungle, where she meets her demise. Repeat repeat repeat, over and over. The more the cycle continues, the slower Jacob’s ‘progress’ advances.
Progress, however, has it’s down side. Just when you’ve turned that corner, there’s a catch. When you change, you die. Notice the theme:
-Eko comes to peace with his past, builds a church, lives nobly. He dies.
-Boone has a vision and gets over Shannon. He dies.
-Shannon opens up her heart to Sayid and watches Vincent, becoming unselfish. She dies.
-Roger Linus promises to celebrate Ben’s birthday next year, wants quality time. He dies.
-Charlie kicks his drug habit. He dies.
-Ana Lucia puts the gun down, unwilling to kill again. She dies.
-Michael takes responsibility for his actions. He dies.
-Faraday reconsiders his stance on fate and changing the past. He dies.
-Libby gets over the death of her husband and finds love again. She dies.
-Charlotte is finally home to stay, no more searching and digging. She dies.
-Nikki & Paulo(who gives a shit!)overcome greed, he hid the diamonds to keep her. They die.
-John Locke.....hold that thought for later.
Thus we have a clear golden rule of Lost, and it’s a very big deal. When you confront your ‘issue’ and actually CHANGE, you die. Why is this important? Because Jacob is telling us that mankind will change.
What happens if mankind changes? You guessed it. Mankind goes bye-bye.
‘It only ends once’.
This is why Hawking and The Others are always saying that they are ‘saving the world’, as it stated in the ad that both Mikhail & Kelvin responded to(In case you’re wondering, Radsinsky is a part of the Dark Side. He gives orders. He kills people. He presses the button). That is why some of the people are willing to follow orders. The progress we are progressing towards is extinction.
So our conflict has taken an interesting turn. The Others, those mass-murdering lying-cheating-stealing manipulative bastards, and Team Nemesis, that 3-headed monster from hell who will mimic your dead mother until you’re bleeding from every orifice, are actually fighting against the end of the world.
This is a timeless story that has been told many times throughout the history of man. Plato, Dante, the Qur’an. Evil loses and the world ends.
That is why we’ve been following the journey of our beloved Losties. As they make wholesale changes, they will be the agents of change that bring about the ‘only ends once’ scenario that Jacob accurately predicted. This means they will all face their own issues, overcome them, change, and die. It’s going to be a very painful final season for all of us.
And it’s going to end with a white flash as the world with evil in it comes to an end and the side of the Light wins.
Damon Lindelof: ‘I promise you the series will not end with a black screen’.
No Damon, it won’t, but thanks for doing what you’ve always done, and rubbed our faces in it. It’s going to end with a WHITE screen.
So now we can predict within reason what will be happening to our beloved Losties. They will face their issues and die. But what are their issues?
Jacob has told us. Jacob is guiding them towards this outcome. He gives ‘little pushes’, passively helping them out, strengthening them for their big test, years in advance. Remember it has to be their choice to change and overcome their issues. We can learn what our Losties issues are by evaluating what aspect of them Jacob was trying to help them change. It’s pretty obvious when you watch the scenes.
Sun & Jin have too often put their marriage on the back burner. Jin works a nightmarish job and never sees Sun. Sun stays on the helicopter without Jin on it. Jin tells Locke to convince Sun that he’s dead. What ‘blessing’ does Jacob ‘offer’? Never take your marriage for granted. He is strengthening their commitment muscles for a later decathlon of the soul. He is helping them change. By the way, Sun & Jin, symbolically, will demonstrate their commitment to each other in the ultimate way. They will choose to change together and then they will die together. Sun & Jin are Adam & Eve(Adam & Eve were discovered during House Of The Rising Sun, the first Jin & Sun-centric episode. Watch it and you’ll agree that they are Adam & Eve).
Hurley has always considered himself cursed. He has willed himself into a state of paranoia. Jacob visits him to tell him that he has a personal choice(of course) to come back to the Island or not. But he also suggests that Hurley isn’t cursed, that perhaps he’s blessed. There is no greater way for Hurley to change, to demonstrate that he considers himself blessed, to prove that he is ok with his life...than for Hurley to broadcast the numbers. He will choose to change and he will broadcast the numbers and he will die.
Sawyer’s entire life has been dedicated to finding the man who killed his parents and enacting revenge.
Yes, he did pull the trigger in Australia. Yes, he did kill Cooper on the Island. This is the cycle, the repetition, that needs to be broken. Jacob comforts Sawyer. He tells him he’s sorry about his parents dying. He offers him a pen. He’s trying to help Sawyer let it out and get over it. This scene is the perfect example of the opposing philosophies of Lost. Notice what Sawyer’s Uncle Doug says to Sawyer after Jacob leaves: ‘You gotta move on, boy. They're gone, and there ain't nothing you can do to change that. What's done is done.’ What’s done is done. Fate. You can’t change. This is the opposing force to change perfectly captured. The writers have been doing this from the first episode, re-watch the series, it’s EVERYWHERE. Minus production errors, drunk actors & network issues, they’ve done an incredible job. They knew what they were doing from the start and they have stuck to the rules. You can exhale now :)
Kate has always taken things. She takes lunchboxes, she takes lives, she takes babies. What does Jacob ask her(and as always, he asks)? He asks her to stop stealing. He uses honey instead of vinegar. Instead of punishment he offers salvation. He has planted a seed, and it will sprout roots next season. Kate will choose to change, Kate will return something to it’s rightful owner(Aaron to Claire), and Kate will die. In fact, Claire will kill her. More on that later.
And now, Jack. Our supposed hero. Poor Jack, beaten down by his father Christian over the years. Jacob tells Jack that the Apollo Bar stuck in the vending machine just ‘needed a little push’. Jacob was trying to teach Jack that Christian was just giving him little pushes. Jack’s issue is forgiving his father. Jack will choose to change and will forgive Christian. And he will die.
Here’s the problem: Claire and Christian are both dead. Who will Kate be giving Aaron to? Who will Jack be hugging?
First, let’s prove Claire is dead. By now we know how Smokie operates. One of his favorite tricks is using your dead relatives. And what is Claire’s issue? What defines Claire? I went to Lostpedia just to read about her. It says she is frequently tested with motherhood. That sounds about right doesn’t it? Twice, she almost loses Aaron, once to adoption, and once to Ethan. She protects him, keeps him by her side. She was warned not to let him be ‘raised by an Other’. So who is on the very short list of people she would give Aaron to, who also happens to be on the Island? Christian Shephard, Aaron’s Grandfather, now being imitated as part of Team Nemesis. This is why Aaron was left on the floor of the jungle. Claire changed, she gave up Aaron, and she died. This is why she is just palling around with Christian in the cabin, not worried about Aaron at all, having a tea party and laughing at John Locke for thinking he was being ‘chosen’ by Jacob. She didn’t die in the barracks explosion, she was killed in the jungle. She chose to change and her story came full circle. Claire Littleton is dead.
And now Jack. Typing this right now, fully understanding his character and his journey, it breaks my heart. The writers have really screwed us on this one. I can’t say it’s not brilliant though.
Before I tell you who kills Jack, first I must explain why Jack must die.
Earlier I referenced Dante’s 3-headed monster. The 3 headed monster represents the ‘inverted Christian Trinity’. I read this in a neat little book called Good & Evil In Myth & Legend. Check it out, it covers most of Lost in the first 20 pages. Anyways, think about that phrase.
Inverted Christian Trinity.
Inverted Christian. Three of them. Three inversions.
Right now we’ve established two of Christian’s family are being imitated by Team Nemesis. Two Inverted Christians. Claire & Christian.
Jack is the third. He will be killed. He will be imitated. The Smoke Monster, aka Cerberus, aka The Three Headed Monster, aka Team Nemesis, aka The Dark Side...during Season 6...will be Jack, Claire & Christian(were the cigarettes in his hotel room a clue that he’s Smokie or what? Let alone him setting off the smoke detector).
Jack. His tattoos read ‘he who walks among us but is not one of us’. Those damn writers, they knew it all along. He is going to be imitated. He will be the face of evil in Season 6. Jack will embrace Christian, forgiving him, choosing to change. But it’s the inverted Christian. It’s part of Team Nemesis. He will probably hug his father only to get a knife in the gut. Buy your tissues NOW.
This is the creative device that the writers will be using in Season 6. We will not know who to trust. Kate will be handing Aaron(how does he get back? No clue) back to an inverted Claire aka Team Nemesis. She will choose to change and she will die. Kate has no idea that there’s a clone-monster running around imitating people. Bet your ass it happens.
But here’s how Team Nemesis dies.
Early in the season we are going to be shown a scene from later in the story. In it, John Locke will be killing Jack Shephard. We will all assume that John Locke is the evil inverted imitated Nemesis version of John Locke, and that Jack Shephard is the good ol’ doctor. But since we now know that Jack has to die, to complete the Inverted Christian Trinity, it isn’t Jack.
And Locke is back to being Locke. He will be resurrected for the third time(fell from building, literally rose up after 815 crashed). This has been his destiny.
Resurrected Locke will kill Nemesis Jack. Locke will have changed and become something. Don’t tell him what he can’t do, he just killed the FUCKING DEVIL!
And so we have our two sides, Light vs Dark, Jacob vs Nemesis/Smokie/Cerberus, Dharma vs The Others, Freedom vs Slavery, Change vs Fate, Asking vs Ordering, White Pillars of Smoke in every Locke dream vs. Black Pillars of Smoke, The Beach vs The Dark Territory, Visions/Dreams vs Dead Relatives, Candy Bars vs. Mass-Murder, Omniscience vs. Time-Loopholes, Locke vs Jack, Faith vs Science.
I think it’s an utter work of genius. Just think about it. Christian said ‘TheRed Sox would never win the World Series’. He’s a fatalist. He’s an Other. The Red Sox break the curse, progress, change. Every episode is embedded with the conflict. They’ve extended the argument to every aspect of humanity. Can you time-travel and change the past? Can you overcome your drug addiction? Can you open up your heart? Can you stop torturing people? Yes, you can. You can change. Everyone can change. We can change together and start a new world.
Unfortunately, in order for that to happen, the old one has to die.
And then it all starts over again.
