Flashbacks are Conscious Time Travel by SpLoDGe

Jack, Kate, Sayid, Sawyer and everyone who was in the immediate vicinity of the incident will now be affected by the electromagnetism just like Des was after he turned the failsafe key and will have a similar experience to Des. After Des turned the failsafe key EM escaped, there was a bright white light and the sky turned purple and the same started to happen at the end of series 5.

That means that we are going to discover that those characters are going to have flashes through time like Des. The Losties “past selves” who should be growing up off the island will discover themselves in the future (on the island perhaps) for a brief moment or maybe an hour or a day. As Faraday told Jack when Desmond was flashing backwards and forwards through time, the phenomenon is unpredictable. Maybe it’s the other way round and it is the future Losties on the island who go back in time and can make a difference to their past

When I have theorised in the past people ask me how we are going to be shown all this information and we only have 1 more season, "they're not going to go into all this ALT universes, there’s not enough time," they say. I agree but I think we’ve already seen it, woven into the show. Flashbacks were “Flashes Before our Eyes All Along”.

Our Losties are most likely to have that ability all their lives. They were exposed to the electromagnetism in 1977 and therefore it seems logical to me that they will be affected from that year off island. It could be that it wasn’t until they got to the island that they realised they were having “flashes” and maybe it was just an intuition until then. Some of the Losties will be very young and some not even born. It could be also that Jacob’s touch has influenced them also.

I do believe that many (if not all) of those flashbacks were indeed conscious time travel experiences. They may have been the Losties from the past coming to the future and witnessing a small portion of a possible future or maybe it was them going back and experiencing a part of their past for an instant. Sometimes they may have made a difference sometimes maybe not.

We always thought that these were just the usual TV drama type flashback scenes which show character development but what if they were also conscious time travel? We thought that we were watching those flashbacks independently of what the character was experiencing. Or, at the very least, it was as if the person was recalling the past event that we saw in the flashback because their past was relevant to events on the island. They would often draw upon their past experiences to influence their actions on the island. Remember when Sayid saw the cat outside Mikhail’s house/The Flame? It was as if he was recalling where he recognised the cat from. I believe though that Sayid’s conscious time travelled back in time to the experience. The flashback was the scene in the restaurant (owned by Sami) when he was held captive. What if Sayid had made a difference because of his flashback or flash forward? He could have admitted to Sami's wife, Amira, that he remembered torturing her ! because he had been given a second chance. Maybe he’d had a flash to the future and sees a future where he did not admit to torturing her and he did not like what he saw. It could just be that, having flashed back to that time and experiencing those events again helped him in how he acted with his dealings with Mikhail on the island. Do you remember what Inman said to Sayid after his dealing with Sayid?
Transcript from One Of Them
INMAN: [Arabic, Subtitle: One of these days there will be something you need to know. And now you know how to get it. ]
SAYID: I will never do that again.
Interesting that Inman never needed Sayid’s help to interrogate his commanding officer, Tariq, because he himself spoke Arabic and could have done the deed. If that was the case what was the reason for getting Sayid to interrogate Tariq? To teach Sayid the skill of interrogation for use on the island.

If this is the case with Sayid’s flashback to the restaurant then what of the flashback to his dealings with Nadia? Did he let her go because he saw a future when she died and he didn’t like what he’d become? Alternatively he could have allowed her to die and then he flashed back and decided to change things. In this way I believe that character development and alternative universes have been unfolding before our eyes all along, Flashes Before Our Eyes! So when Jacob says, “They’re coming” and he has touched Sayid and as a result Nadia dies, I propose that Jacob is manipulating Sayid. I don’t know whether Jacob’s motivations are to do what’s best for Sayid, whether he is correcting the changes Sayid has made but I do think he has some hand in it.

Let’s look at Jack. Jack is torn in his decision on whether or not to betray his father after Christian operated on a woman while he was drunk and she died. If he didn’t betray him then perhaps Christian and Jack could have gone to Australia together to meet Clare. Perhaps, in one reality, Christian was actually alive on flight 815 and therefore alive on the island. Jack could have changed his past by going back in a flashback. Perhaps he made the decision to betray his father because he saw a flash-forward to a future where his father was still drinking or worse. Interesting that Jacob should meet Jack at another operation where Christian embarrasses Jack. Could this be the turning point when Jack realizes that his father will always be hard on him and he must stand up to him? This could be why Jack decides to betray his father.

I could go on for each of our characters and I have heard other people commenting on such things. Perhaps Kate is able to be one step ahead of the law because she has flashes to the future. Perhaps it was not until the Losties came to the island that they started to realise what the flashes were or maybe they became much stronger when they were closer to the source of the exotic matter. Don’t you think it strange that Sun was set to leave Jin but at the last minute in the airport she changes her mind? Was this something to do with Jacob’s touch? Perhaps Sun and Clare did go back to 1977 in one reality but the changes they made were not desirable to Jacob or the other side in the war. That is why they were somehow manipulated so that they did not go back to 1977. Perhaps the changes they could have made to the timeline had too many repercussions or changed the timeline so radically it was better to keep them out of the loop.

As I mentioned in my last theory http://theoriesonlost.blogspot.com/2010/01/conscious-time-travel-short-cuts-and.html#more proximity to the electromagnetism matters. There are some people in Lost who have been having these flashbacks or flash forwards who were not at the incident site. I think that everyone was exposed to the island’s special abilities when Desmond turned the failsafe key. I think these people could be less aware of the phenomenum. Let’s look at Clare in Par Avion. Clare is able to recall a TV programme she watched about migrating birds while she was in the hospital with her Mum. This prompts her to look for birds on the island in the hopes of getting a message off the island. It could be that she did just remember that birds migrate but it seems strange that we would watch a flashback of Clare’s past which shows us that she watched a programme about migrating birds and then she is suddenly looking for some on the island. It was as if Clare was conscio! us time travelling while we were watching her flashback.

I believe that we have missed (intentionally left out for the plot twist) a whole load of conversational dialogue which would explain it. Rose on the beach at the very start of series 1 talking to Locke. There may be something we've not seen in the conversation between them or maybe just with a re-watch it will make more sense. Rose knows Locke can now walk and must have been healed by the island because she saw him in a wheel chair in the airport (we discover in a flashback) but how does she know that she is herself recovered if she has not been having "flashes" forwards in time like Des? My bet is that she was exchanging a knowing look because she was saying they both must have shared those "flashes" or visions of the future. I do not believe that the island suddenly healed her but that the island has accessed a different reality. A reality where she is able to go to her doctor earlier for treatment or maybe she has had a glimpse to a future where she sees herself telling ! Bernard of her cancer. After having a vision of the future she decides to go see a doctor. Even Rose’s spontaneous date with Bernard which started their whirlwind romance could be part of the intuition or flashes to the future caused by their exposure to the exotic matter on the island. I think that Jack was the last one to be convinced that the flashes were real and that they should be acted upon. Locke was always trying to get Jack to believe in the island.

When I think about Locke going on a "Walkabout" under the instruction of Abbadon (who at the time of course, Locke thought was just a hospital worker). I can see that Locke might take him up on his advice but wouldn't he be more likely to take that advice if he had seen himself, or rather experienced a flash to a future where he was hunting boar in a jungle? Locke is another one who has definitely had a flash to the future. His dream of the Beechcraft crashing became a reality when he saw it crash while they were flashing physically through time on the island when it was “skipping”.

I'm sure there's many more. I think Lost can be watched like a loop and one will understand so much more second time round, this time with the knowledge that Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Hurley, etc, etc were at the site of the incident and were exposed to EM.

Many of Losties may very well have known that they were having these flashes, but we didn’t see them having an “on screen” discussion about their experience because that would spoil the plot twist for us. I remember discussing on forums how frustrating it was that we didn't see discussions between the Losties about why the island was so weird and WHY they had decided to go off into the jungle again on some other mad adventure!

I think the flashbacks have always been conscious time travel experiences. Some of which may have been the Losties going back and some may have been the Losties coming forward. They are also a combination of altered and unaltered pasts depending on whether the Losties realised that they could have made changes or took any action to change things. Development of character in this way was happening before our eyes, the people were, in a way, changing before our eyes with out us realising that this was happening. Flashes Before Our Eyes all along.