LOST: no alternate reality by cabinboy

(original post)

As far as we know, the Island has always been in a little pocket dimension separate but accessible from our day-to-day reality. Things within are unconnected to things without. Inside, the Losties travel back in time to 1977 and detonate Jughead over the Swan. The resulting event returns the time-tossed Losties to 2007, on the Island, inside the snowglobe.

At the same time, in 1977, the Incident destroys and/or releases the Swan's exotic energy, resulting in a chain of yet-to-be-revealed events that leads to the shattering of the snowglobe and the Island sinking beneath the ocean, sometime before the year 2004, when Oceanic 815 flies over it (relatively) unmolested.

In the years following the Incident, from 1977 to 2004, the rest of the world goes on about its business, with events differing from those of the reality we've come to know in LOST seasons 1 thru 5 in that the influence and interaction of Jacob, Esau (I'm gonna keep calling him Esau until I hear something better), the Others, the DI, and by ripple effect, the likes of Hanso, Widmore, and Paik industries, is limited, changed, or even absent.

But the Island in the snowglobe that we've watched for 5 seasons still exists and persists in 2007. Reality has rewritten itself outside of it, around it. Why? How? Maybe because it's still home to its exotic energy, capable of maintaining the snowglobe as well as powering events like Island-moving. Maybe simply because it MUST exist as it is the cause and source of the resetting of reality in 1977.

As the site and agents of the Incident, the Island and its inhabitants are the cause of a massive effect on reality—the pre-reality chicken to the reality egg (or vice versa, of course)—and can't just blink away. MAYbe there's a BACK TO THE FUTURE fade-out in store as the new reality, and the new not-lost Losties, somehow assimilate the snowglobe's information on some level (like Juliet, Jack, and Kate apparently having flashes of recognition and confusion across realities). Yeah... Not gonna try and provide an explanation here for this bleed of info between alternate doppelgangers.

In fact, it could be OUR actual, lame, low-energy reality, dropped like a Kansas farmhouse on the Wicked Witch of a high-energy reality that allowed for communication with the dead, shapeshifting monsters, teleporting Islands, and reckless time travel.

Note that (so far) since the time skippers returned to 2007, we've seen nothing of the off-Island world of LOST1 (the shared history/reality of the 815 crash survivors), only activity on the Island. All off-Island storytelling has been in the world of LOST2 (the shared history/reality of the 815 LAX arrivals). I'm really hoping that the visitor/s Jacob expects are LOST1 buddies who have flown or floated into the snowglobe before the tachyonauts' return. Perhaps a private jet or yacht carrying Widmore, his ex, and family?

In a Marvel comic, the rewritten reality phenom would be explained in a couple panels of conversation between Mr. Fantastic or Dr. Strange and the other heroes who still remember the original reality, cuz they were in the presence of or mystically or superscientifically shielded from the reality-warping effects at the "heart" or "focus" or "nexus" or "origin" of the phenom that rewrote everything in the first place (i.e. Infinity Gauntlet, Cosmic Cube, Kulan Gath, or Scarlett Witch), y'know? In a DC book, it would probably be the Spectre, Rip Hunter, or Waverider explaining, and it would be about something like the Anti-Monitor, Parallax, or Monarch.

I'll hold off on trying to follow the threads of ramifications of this theory, including the rewriting of the lives of some favorite characters like Desmond and Penny, and the never-born-ness of children of our Losties. Did Rousseau wash up on the Island and give birth to Alex? The Aaron that Kate took off the Island shouldn't exist (altho, given his hinted-at enigmatic abilities, maybe he does). Would Sun and Jin have been able to have JiYeon without the help of the Island?

That's me *Holding off* =)

Please see other LOST posts for more episode-specific rambling and riffing.