LOST Theories - DarkUFO

Ok... this is a very long and involved theory that ties together many seemingly disparate elements of the plot and uses them to explain each other. It may be completely off the mark – these are just ideas I’ve had, rather than my firm beliefs on what’s going on in Lost. But it’s the way things seem piece together for me at the moment. No doubt something will happen in the next episode to change my mind about some of this 

A World without Jacob
What can we deduce about the ALT, with any degree of confidence? Its defining qualities seem to be:
1. It is a world in which Oceanic 815 did not crash BECAUSE
2. It is a world in which the Island has sunk (sometime after Jughead, but probably not because of Jughead) BECAUSE
3. It is a world without Jacob
This last detail is apparent not just from the fact that the Losties lives are different but from how they are different. Jack has not overcome his fear (a lesson Jacob helped him learn). Locke does not believe in miracles, partly because he hasn’t experienced any but also because a mysterious man never came to him in his moment of need to tell him everything would be ok. Jin and Sun are apparently unmarried, because Jacob never gave him his blessing. Kate has a softer side, and is possibly innocent, because Jacob never encouraged her to live a life of crime.
MIB claimed, in The Substitute, that Jacob is the Island’s protector, but that the island doesn’t need protecting. The ALT proves the former and disproves the latter. In this world without Jacob, the Island has sunk.
WAIT! I hear you cry, but why is it important? It’s just a darn Island. And our Losties seem to be better off without it.
But are they? Locke has made the mature decision to accept his disability, but he’s given up on miracles. Kate has discovered the value of selflessness, but she’s still hunted, possibly for a crime she did not commit. And Claire... well Claire is going to raise her baby. But what if he isn’t hers anymore???
Aaron flatlined. Then he came back. Who else did that happen to, just a week before? Sayid. What was the major theme of the on island adventures and revelations, in the same episode as Aaron’s possible near-death experience? The Infection.
IF Aaron is infected, he is the first off-island victim that we know of. Now that the island is destroyed, the infection has spread to the world at large. This is why the island needs to be protected.

What is the nature of the infection?
Infection theory #1: It claims the unburied dead (Sayid, Claire, Mikhail) and eventually causes a specific set of behaviour patterns – the ones we are currently seeing in Claire. Which, if Rousseau was Infected as well, would explain the similarities between them. So what if Rousseau’s team were never Infected? We’ve seen that Claire is paranoid about other people being infected, perhaps the same was true for Rousseau, and her husband tried to shoot her because he knew she was irredeemably corrupt/insane.
This would mean that Christian was probably the Smoke Monster, rather than Infected.
Infection theory #2: Again, it claims the unburied dead, but these are then possessed by the essences of people who have previously died on the island. If this explanation is correct, Christian was Infected. Rousseau was not, but Claire is now channelling her personality.

ALT... Or is it?
So, it looks like the infection may have spread to the Alt timeline. This is a sign that Smokey is exuding an influence on that timeline. He has talked about wanting to go home – so perhaps his home IS the alternate timeline? If that is so, then it must have existed once before, presumably before the apparently original timeline we saw through seasons 1-5. Perhaps Alt IS the original timeline, and the Seasons 1-5 timeline were created by Jacob’s meddling. Perhaps the Island is the only place in the world that can actually sustain more than one timeline, and the rest of the world has to erase one timeline to create another. On the Island, there can be parallel universes, but for the outside world Whatever Happened, Happened. Smokey could not go ‘home’ until Jacob died, because until Jacob died Smokey’s home (the ALT timeline) did not exist, due to the changes he had made. Jacob had to die for those changes to be reversed and Smokey’s home timeline restored. With J! acob dead, the Island unprotected and sunk, and Smokey’s timeline restored, he is free to exert his influence using the Infection.

The Valenzetti Equation, the Candidates and... The End of the World.
The Numbers were always said to be the Valenzetti Equation... six numbers corresponding to six variables that predicted the end of the world. We have now discovered that these six variables are six people on the Island. Bear with me on this, I’m about to go Through the Looking Glass.
We know that the Island was destroyed (in the ALT) in Dharma times, or shortly afterwards, due to what we can see on the sunken Island. Part of Dharma’s mission was to change the Valenzetti Equation. Valenzetti was employed by Dharma’s founder, Alvar Hanso, a descendent of Magnus Hanso, who was on the Black Rock. My theory is Magnus Hanso discovered things about the forces on the island and passed that information down to Alvar Hanso, who in turn employed Dharma and Valenzetti to glean the information necessary for saving the world from whatever is happening on the island.
This backfired spectacularly. Up until Dharma times, the Alt universe (really the original timeline) existed alone. What changed to allow Jacob to exist and protect the island, and meddle with the outside world, when the island was originally meant to sink? The Incident. It didn’t sink the island, it saved it. In Season 2, Sayid compared the concrete-covered area under The Swan to Chernobyl, implying it may have been the scene of a radioactive disaster. And In LA X, we saw the lsties return to the future to find that nothing had changed. Just like Richard’s watch, their timeline exists in a loop, creating itself. They came to the island because they helped create the Jacob/swan timeline because they came to the island, because they created that timeline... etc. So, their intervention in 1977 catastrophically altered time, thus erasing the timeline that was meant to eixst (see my earlier ideas in Alt... or Is It?) by creating a new timeline that is a closed loop and (seem! ingly) inescapable. The actions of the six Candidates (or, as Faraday would call them, Variables) that correspond to the Numbers from the Valenzetti equation, actually did end the world, just as Valenzetti predicted.

But in the timeline we are seeing in season 6, in which the Island sank, most of the passengers of 815 are still on that flight, and still crossing paths afterwards. So although Jacob may have influenced them to make them who he wanted them to be, they were always destined to be on that flight and effect each other’s lives, and thus free will and fate turn out to be the same thing. But can this world of science and free will last, or will Cerberus (smokey/the infection) be unleashed upon that world, forcing these happier, more well-adjusted versions of our heroes to make the ultimate sacrifice, restore Jacob’s timeline and save the world?

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