What is Death? A collective look at what we know.
This season our notions of death have been challenged yet again with a dead Charlie being seen in the future off the Island as well as Christian Shepard also being seen off the Island in the future. Now we have Claire to wonder about, is she dead? So let’s take a look at what we know about the dead on LOST.
I would also like to note that I am not trying to pretend to present a brand new original theory. This is a comprehensive collection of information we’ve been given as well as a compilation of board discussions with lots of brilliant LOST minds. Special acknowledgement to T8 who has had his “Dead Island” Theory for some time! For details visit the Unified thread.
The Dead
We first had reason to wonder if Christian Shepard was really dead or if he was actually alive. After seeing a dead Christian in Australia, Jack saw him on the LOST beach and then in the jungle. Christian lead Jack to the caves where Jack found his coffin which was, as we all recall, empty. Since then we saw a distraught post rescue Jack confused about whether his father was alive or dead when he tells the Chief of Surgery at St. Sebastians to go upstairs and see if his father is drunker than he is! We saw a little bit about how Jack got to this point when we were with Jack when he first sees Christian off the Island. It starts to send Jack into a tailspin. We also saw in perhaps the most intriguing of the “Missing Pieces” episodes a very alive looking Christian immediately after the crash talking to Vincent telling him to wake up his son because he has work to do. Damon and Carlton have said countless time that yes Christian Shepherd is DEAD. That was before they told us about un-dead too! We’ll most certainly come back to this.
We were all there when Charlie died. It was very sad. But then an off Island Hurley, a member of the Oceanic 6, is spooked when he sees Charlie standing by the ho-ho’s, then again in the police station and most definitively at the Santa Rosa Mental Hospital. Charlie was most certainly there for everyone to see. Hurley’s friend told him that there was some guy staring at them. Then they have this conversation:
HURLEY: No need to freak out? I'm trying to buy some jerky and a slushy, and suddenly you're standing over there by the Ho Hos. You're dead, what do you expect me to do?
CHARLIE: Can we just sit down?
HURLEY: I may be in a mental hospital, but I know you're dead and I'm not having an imaginary conversation with you.
[Charlie takes off his sunglasses and stares Hugo in the eyes]
CHARLIE: I am dead. But I'm also here.
HURLEY: Ok, prove it.
[Charlie slaps Hurley]
HURLEY: All right, ok.
So he actually slaps Hurley to prove that he’s there! Charlie died on the Island too. Well, just slightly off its shore, but we haven’t seen his body and I don’t think we ever will. We will come back to Charlie again too. But there’s more to look at first.
Yemi. The short story with Yemi is that he was killed in Nigeria just before his body was shoved into the drug plane which is later found by Boone and Locke. Eko confirms that this is Yemi because he recognizes the cross necklace he had. Yemi’s dead body was last seen in the “23rd Psalm.” Then in “The Cost of Living” Yemi confronts Eko in the scene where Yemi asks for Eko’s confession and Eko refuses to give it to him:
YEMI: [Almost in disgust] You speak to me as if I were your brother.
[Eko cringes back from him, scared and angry.]
EKO: Who are you?
[Yemi turns without answering, and walks away toward the jungle tree line. Eko stands.]
Later Eko returns to the Beechcraft for some answers. He finds Yemi’s body gone! Yemi said “you speak to me as if I was your brother.” Indeed he was not. It was just Yemi’s body.
Un-dead
In the March 21st podcast, Damon and Carlton were asked about the dead, the apparitions and the monster. They gave some concrete answers:
Ben's mother = Apparition
Sawyer's Boar = Animal
Spider = Monster
Hurley bird = No Comment
Dave = Apparition/imagination
Yemi = Monster
Mikail' Cat Nadia=animal (coincidence)
Walt = Walt the person is a person, some have been apparition, some have been monster
Boone in Locke's Dream = Dream
Kate's Horse Yemi and Christian Shepard = Undead
Note, the only “un-dead” confirmed are those whose bodies were confirmed missing after they were present on the Island. I wonder if they could confirm Charlie as undead. I do think they helped us to connect those dots in Charlie’s revelation “I am dead, but I’m also here.”
Now we have Claire. Claire was in her house when the freighter mercenaries sent an RPG flying at it. The house blew up in a spectacular display only matched by the engine blowing up in The Pilot. Pieces of the Otherton bungalow flew everywhere. Sawyer in his newfound brotherly protection for Claire charges over there, digs through the rubble and uncovers Claire who is a little dazed. After he brings her to Ben’s house we hear this conversation.
SAWYER: You all right, sweetheart?
CLAIRE: Yeah, a bit wobbly, but, uh, I'll live.
MILES: Well, I wouldn't be too sure about that.
Now before you tell me that Miles is referring to the mercenaries outside, let me say, I know that! But I think this is wrought with double meaning. Miles who can talk to the dead, tells Claire to not be so sure she’ll live. Then later that night she awakens to see our friend and her daddy, Christian. Next thing we know she’s gone and she’s left Aaron behind. Miles saw Claire and he saw her walk away with someone she called Dad. He saw Christian too. Next time we see Claire we find she’s gone off to Jacob’s cabin. When John sees her she looks odd. Not quite like our Claire. She has a knowing and creepy smile. She’s not scared, or concerned. She’s just hangin’ out in Jacob’s cabin with her daddy waiting to give John the message to move the Island. We get a good sense that something is not quite right with Claire. So what is it?
What Damon and Carlton have to say about it
From an e-Online interview with Kristin:
Obviously the big question after last night's episode, leading into that finale, is: "How are they going to move the Island?" which is a fantastic twist. Also, "Is Claire dead?" Is that a question you are wanting the fans to be asking at this point?
C.C.: I think we want the fans to ask, "What's happened to Claire?" I don't think it's "Is she dead?" I think it's like, "Where is she?" and, "What's going on with her?"
D.L.: What's fascinating with Lost is there's a scene where Claire is in the cabin, and she is sitting next to a guy who is dead, and nobody is saying "What's up with that?" They're all asking "Is she dead?" I think the more operative question is "What is dead?" That's a good question to ask, and one you will certainly be asking over the long hiatus.
What is dead?! I think that’s a great question. One that we’ve been toying with since the beginning. So here it is, the answer. Dead on the Island isn’t dead like in the rest of the real world. If you die on the Island, or your dead body ends up on the Island, the Island can use you and your body for its purposes. It can use you to communicate. You can be on or off the Island. We’ve seen both. It will most often use you to communicate with people that know you, that recognize you. Christian to Jack. Yemi to Eko. Charlie to Hurley. Harper to Juliet. Harper you say?! Let’s look at her too.
Harper the Un-dead.
In “The Other Woman” another phrase with double meaning, we saw Harper the Other psychologist and husband to Goodwin. She didn’t much care for Juliet who was indeed, the other woman. Then whilst the unwanted bunch from the freighter are making a run from the beach camp Juliet and company are searching for them we see her. First is begins to rain- a sure sign of something strange on the Island. Then we hear the whispers which cause Juliet to do that special little where-did-that-come-from spin. Then she appears out of nowhere. Harper has a message:
JULIET: What are you doing here?
HARPER: I came to deliver a message... from Ben. The two people you're looking for--Faraday and Lewis... they're headed to the Tempest. And if they figure out how to deploy that gas... then everyone on this island is going to die.
JULIET: Why don't you stop them?
HARPER: Because Ben wants you to go.
JULIET: How can Ben possibly know where they are when he's a prisoner?
HARPER: Ben is exactly where he wants to be.
JULIET: How am I supposed to stop them?
HARPER: By pointing the gun and pulling the trigger.
JACK: Hey!
(Jack comes up and cocks his gun.)
JACK: Who are you?
HARPER: I'm an old friend of Juliet's. I just told her where the people you're looking for are headed. Maybe you and your gun can go, too.
(Ghostly voices whispering)
(whispering stops)
(Jack and Juliet are distracted, and look around for the source of the whispers. When they turn back around, Harper has vanished.)
I think that given the mysterious circumstances of her arrival and her timing I think that Harper was an un-dead person coming to Juliet. She wasn’t delivering a message from Ben, she was doing the Island’s bidding. How else would she know that Ben was, where he wanted to be? If she knows so much why would she want Charlotte and Dan killed? They were going to render the gas inert- harmless. Perhaps the Island wants that gas available or something else.
In a podcast the question was asked “was it the real Harper who appeared and disappeared” and they said YES it was the real Harper. I think that it was indeed the real Harper, she is just un-dead.
DEAD Conclusions
This was our season to figure out a little bit about death on the Island. Damon and Carlton helped us along a bit by showing us Claire who I believe is giving us some insight to the process of being un-dead. When she first came to after her house being blown up she uttered “Charlie?!” and later she said she was feeling OK and at least she wasn’t seeing things anymore. What happened to her after the house blew? I think that the Island began to explain some things to her. A little lesson in being un-dead. Perhaps it even used a familiar face- Charlie.
So, if you die on the Island or your dead body ends up there, you become and bondservant servant to the Island. It needs your body to do that. Perhaps otherwise you just become a whisper! The Island will use you to go where it needs to go, to do its will and its bidding. What is dead? I think we can conclude that on LOST dead is when you’re body ceases to function, your heart stops beating and your DEAD. What is un-dead? Un-dead is when you’ve died on the Island or your dead body is there and the Island then reanimates your body and then uses it for all time. You become a part of a collective bunch of Island servants. What happened to Claire? She’s un-dead now!
Perhaps one day we will see Vincent’s empty doggie kennel. We’ll know that all along Vincent has been the Island watching and guiding the Losties. It seems that way to me since un-dead Christian told un-dead Vincent to go wake up Jack. That was a combining of what Christian knows (who Jack is) with what Vincent knows (how to wake up a person) and the Island knows (where Jack is and that he has work to do!).
So the ongoing joke about the Zombie season. Well, you can make your own punch line for that!
Theory by LostMommyof3
This season our notions of death have been challenged yet again with a dead Charlie being seen in the future off the Island as well as Christian Shepard also being seen off the Island in the future. Now we have Claire to wonder about, is she dead? So let’s take a look at what we know about the dead on LOST.
I would also like to note that I am not trying to pretend to present a brand new original theory. This is a comprehensive collection of information we’ve been given as well as a compilation of board discussions with lots of brilliant LOST minds. Special acknowledgement to T8 who has had his “Dead Island” Theory for some time! For details visit the Unified thread.
The Dead
We first had reason to wonder if Christian Shepard was really dead or if he was actually alive. After seeing a dead Christian in Australia, Jack saw him on the LOST beach and then in the jungle. Christian lead Jack to the caves where Jack found his coffin which was, as we all recall, empty. Since then we saw a distraught post rescue Jack confused about whether his father was alive or dead when he tells the Chief of Surgery at St. Sebastians to go upstairs and see if his father is drunker than he is! We saw a little bit about how Jack got to this point when we were with Jack when he first sees Christian off the Island. It starts to send Jack into a tailspin. We also saw in perhaps the most intriguing of the “Missing Pieces” episodes a very alive looking Christian immediately after the crash talking to Vincent telling him to wake up his son because he has work to do. Damon and Carlton have said countless time that yes Christian Shepherd is DEAD. That was before they told us about un-dead too! We’ll most certainly come back to this.
We were all there when Charlie died. It was very sad. But then an off Island Hurley, a member of the Oceanic 6, is spooked when he sees Charlie standing by the ho-ho’s, then again in the police station and most definitively at the Santa Rosa Mental Hospital. Charlie was most certainly there for everyone to see. Hurley’s friend told him that there was some guy staring at them. Then they have this conversation:
HURLEY: No need to freak out? I'm trying to buy some jerky and a slushy, and suddenly you're standing over there by the Ho Hos. You're dead, what do you expect me to do?
CHARLIE: Can we just sit down?
HURLEY: I may be in a mental hospital, but I know you're dead and I'm not having an imaginary conversation with you.
[Charlie takes off his sunglasses and stares Hugo in the eyes]
CHARLIE: I am dead. But I'm also here.
HURLEY: Ok, prove it.
[Charlie slaps Hurley]
HURLEY: All right, ok.
So he actually slaps Hurley to prove that he’s there! Charlie died on the Island too. Well, just slightly off its shore, but we haven’t seen his body and I don’t think we ever will. We will come back to Charlie again too. But there’s more to look at first.
Yemi. The short story with Yemi is that he was killed in Nigeria just before his body was shoved into the drug plane which is later found by Boone and Locke. Eko confirms that this is Yemi because he recognizes the cross necklace he had. Yemi’s dead body was last seen in the “23rd Psalm.” Then in “The Cost of Living” Yemi confronts Eko in the scene where Yemi asks for Eko’s confession and Eko refuses to give it to him:
YEMI: [Almost in disgust] You speak to me as if I were your brother.
[Eko cringes back from him, scared and angry.]
EKO: Who are you?
[Yemi turns without answering, and walks away toward the jungle tree line. Eko stands.]
Later Eko returns to the Beechcraft for some answers. He finds Yemi’s body gone! Yemi said “you speak to me as if I was your brother.” Indeed he was not. It was just Yemi’s body.
Un-dead
In the March 21st podcast, Damon and Carlton were asked about the dead, the apparitions and the monster. They gave some concrete answers:
Ben's mother = Apparition
Sawyer's Boar = Animal
Spider = Monster
Hurley bird = No Comment
Dave = Apparition/imagination
Yemi = Monster
Mikail' Cat Nadia=animal (coincidence)
Walt = Walt the person is a person, some have been apparition, some have been monster
Boone in Locke's Dream = Dream
Kate's Horse Yemi and Christian Shepard = Undead
Note, the only “un-dead” confirmed are those whose bodies were confirmed missing after they were present on the Island. I wonder if they could confirm Charlie as undead. I do think they helped us to connect those dots in Charlie’s revelation “I am dead, but I’m also here.”
Now we have Claire. Claire was in her house when the freighter mercenaries sent an RPG flying at it. The house blew up in a spectacular display only matched by the engine blowing up in The Pilot. Pieces of the Otherton bungalow flew everywhere. Sawyer in his newfound brotherly protection for Claire charges over there, digs through the rubble and uncovers Claire who is a little dazed. After he brings her to Ben’s house we hear this conversation.
SAWYER: You all right, sweetheart?
CLAIRE: Yeah, a bit wobbly, but, uh, I'll live.
MILES: Well, I wouldn't be too sure about that.
Now before you tell me that Miles is referring to the mercenaries outside, let me say, I know that! But I think this is wrought with double meaning. Miles who can talk to the dead, tells Claire to not be so sure she’ll live. Then later that night she awakens to see our friend and her daddy, Christian. Next thing we know she’s gone and she’s left Aaron behind. Miles saw Claire and he saw her walk away with someone she called Dad. He saw Christian too. Next time we see Claire we find she’s gone off to Jacob’s cabin. When John sees her she looks odd. Not quite like our Claire. She has a knowing and creepy smile. She’s not scared, or concerned. She’s just hangin’ out in Jacob’s cabin with her daddy waiting to give John the message to move the Island. We get a good sense that something is not quite right with Claire. So what is it?
What Damon and Carlton have to say about it
From an e-Online interview with Kristin:
Obviously the big question after last night's episode, leading into that finale, is: "How are they going to move the Island?" which is a fantastic twist. Also, "Is Claire dead?" Is that a question you are wanting the fans to be asking at this point?
C.C.: I think we want the fans to ask, "What's happened to Claire?" I don't think it's "Is she dead?" I think it's like, "Where is she?" and, "What's going on with her?"
D.L.: What's fascinating with Lost is there's a scene where Claire is in the cabin, and she is sitting next to a guy who is dead, and nobody is saying "What's up with that?" They're all asking "Is she dead?" I think the more operative question is "What is dead?" That's a good question to ask, and one you will certainly be asking over the long hiatus.
What is dead?! I think that’s a great question. One that we’ve been toying with since the beginning. So here it is, the answer. Dead on the Island isn’t dead like in the rest of the real world. If you die on the Island, or your dead body ends up on the Island, the Island can use you and your body for its purposes. It can use you to communicate. You can be on or off the Island. We’ve seen both. It will most often use you to communicate with people that know you, that recognize you. Christian to Jack. Yemi to Eko. Charlie to Hurley. Harper to Juliet. Harper you say?! Let’s look at her too.
Harper the Un-dead.
In “The Other Woman” another phrase with double meaning, we saw Harper the Other psychologist and husband to Goodwin. She didn’t much care for Juliet who was indeed, the other woman. Then whilst the unwanted bunch from the freighter are making a run from the beach camp Juliet and company are searching for them we see her. First is begins to rain- a sure sign of something strange on the Island. Then we hear the whispers which cause Juliet to do that special little where-did-that-come-from spin. Then she appears out of nowhere. Harper has a message:
JULIET: What are you doing here?
HARPER: I came to deliver a message... from Ben. The two people you're looking for--Faraday and Lewis... they're headed to the Tempest. And if they figure out how to deploy that gas... then everyone on this island is going to die.
JULIET: Why don't you stop them?
HARPER: Because Ben wants you to go.
JULIET: How can Ben possibly know where they are when he's a prisoner?
HARPER: Ben is exactly where he wants to be.
JULIET: How am I supposed to stop them?
HARPER: By pointing the gun and pulling the trigger.
JACK: Hey!
(Jack comes up and cocks his gun.)
JACK: Who are you?
HARPER: I'm an old friend of Juliet's. I just told her where the people you're looking for are headed. Maybe you and your gun can go, too.
(Ghostly voices whispering)
(whispering stops)
(Jack and Juliet are distracted, and look around for the source of the whispers. When they turn back around, Harper has vanished.)
I think that given the mysterious circumstances of her arrival and her timing I think that Harper was an un-dead person coming to Juliet. She wasn’t delivering a message from Ben, she was doing the Island’s bidding. How else would she know that Ben was, where he wanted to be? If she knows so much why would she want Charlotte and Dan killed? They were going to render the gas inert- harmless. Perhaps the Island wants that gas available or something else.
In a podcast the question was asked “was it the real Harper who appeared and disappeared” and they said YES it was the real Harper. I think that it was indeed the real Harper, she is just un-dead.
DEAD Conclusions
This was our season to figure out a little bit about death on the Island. Damon and Carlton helped us along a bit by showing us Claire who I believe is giving us some insight to the process of being un-dead. When she first came to after her house being blown up she uttered “Charlie?!” and later she said she was feeling OK and at least she wasn’t seeing things anymore. What happened to her after the house blew? I think that the Island began to explain some things to her. A little lesson in being un-dead. Perhaps it even used a familiar face- Charlie.
So, if you die on the Island or your dead body ends up there, you become and bondservant servant to the Island. It needs your body to do that. Perhaps otherwise you just become a whisper! The Island will use you to go where it needs to go, to do its will and its bidding. What is dead? I think we can conclude that on LOST dead is when you’re body ceases to function, your heart stops beating and your DEAD. What is un-dead? Un-dead is when you’ve died on the Island or your dead body is there and the Island then reanimates your body and then uses it for all time. You become a part of a collective bunch of Island servants. What happened to Claire? She’s un-dead now!
Perhaps one day we will see Vincent’s empty doggie kennel. We’ll know that all along Vincent has been the Island watching and guiding the Losties. It seems that way to me since un-dead Christian told un-dead Vincent to go wake up Jack. That was a combining of what Christian knows (who Jack is) with what Vincent knows (how to wake up a person) and the Island knows (where Jack is and that he has work to do!).
So the ongoing joke about the Zombie season. Well, you can make your own punch line for that!
Theory by LostMommyof3
