This is an expansion on the ideas put forth in Vozzek69's article "Things I Noticed - The Little Prince" Note for anyone who has not read the Dark Tower, by Stephen King, this has a rather SPOILER filled explanation of the Dark Tower in it, but it is necessary to put forth my ideas. In this I attempt to explain all aspects of the time travel theory in Season 5 of Lost.
Most notable is the section titled "Jin is a Lovable, Indestructible Piece of Season-Finale Driftwood." I think this provides the key to what's happening, why its happening, and why there is no paradox. [Note - you should read that section now before reading the rest of what I wrote, as what I wrote is an expanded explanation of that section]. Lindelof and Cuse (the creators) have said they are enormously influenced by Stephen King. The explanation of time in the noted section is identical to the end of the Dark Tower. In the Dark Tower, Roland reaches his tower that he's been hunting from the start, only to open the door at the top and suddenly be hit with the memory of all his past lives, that he has been in a loop seeking and finding the tower countless times before, and by opening the door destined to repeat it again. A dark destiny indeed, however the story ends with a hope for redemption. The one regret Roland had in his life was that at a battle years prior all! his friends died by his side fighting to protect him. At one point he stopped to try to collect a horn that one friend always carried with him, but swept up in the battle wound up leaving the horn. That plagued Roland throughout the novels. In the last few pages King rewrites the first few pages of the first Tower novel, with one change, describing Roland stopping and placing the horn to his lips. In essence a single new event has been placed into the timeline that never happened in any prior loop, thus eradicating the loop. Since King and Cuse/Lindelof worked on Lost season 3 together (King served as a consult) it stands to reason that Lindelof and Cuse would want to use the ideas King held in their show. We now have evidence of it. This loop is the first time the changes in events have occured - the first time Ethan met Locke at the crashed plane by the Flame station, the first time Desmond was able to enable the island to be seen. In past occurences it didn't. ! By "past occurences," I mean the events of the show have taken! place c ountless times before, just as in the Dark Tower. Ka is a wheel - this line was perpetuated all throughout the Tower novels, "ka" being King's word for "fate/life." In the Lost universe, Time, like Ka, is a wheel, as evidenced by Faraday's record analogy. Time is like a record, spinning around and around, but always in one direction, unless something intervenes and reverses it, or jars it. Reversing the record would affect everything and everyone; the entire universe would be travelling backward in time. Jarring the record though, may not affect everyone, but only those near the spot of the jarring. This is what Ben did with the wheel he spun, he jarred time, with the epicenter being the island. Everything not a part of the island, but merely traveling forward in time on it (the survivors) began to be jostled around to random time points - like if you jar a record, the dust on top of the record will bounce up and land on some random spot on the record. So time is spi! nning round in a forward motion, but when one looks at it from a distance, its cyclic, events in the past occur as many times as the record spins - infinitely. To understand what I'm getting at, think of it like what happens when you look in a mirror and see a mirror behind you. In the mirror you are seeing in the mirror, you will see yourself looking into a mirror, seeing another mirror in which you are looking into a mirror seeing another mirror - an infinite regression of the same image. Likewise, all events in the past regress like this (maybe not in REAL life, but in the Lost universe and under its hypothesis for time travel). As with looking into the mirror you can see all the events in your past infinitely, via introspection or more abstractly via time travel. Only thing is, you, yourself, though you may be travelling backwards or forwards in time, see yourself as always travelling forward. Like if you were dust sitting on a record. You would only see what is ! in front of you, you would keep aging and moving forward regar! dless of whether "forward" was actually back to an earlier point in time. So to each person, time is a continuous forward direction, events occuring within one's life always being novel events. So back to the short little section that started this mini-thesis "Jin is a Lovable, Indestructible Piece of Season-Finale Driftwood" Let's take the simplest one, Locke encountering Ethan when the plane with the virgin mary dolls crashed. This event occurred before Locke first came to the island, so when it originally occured, Locke was not there, Ethan would have shown up and just seen a crashed plane. But Locke, who at the time would have been a kid or early 20s adult wandering around America kept moving forward with his life until he arrived on the island, experienced the events of the island, got tossed back in time, and encountered Ethan at the plane. This was the first time such an event took place. When the event actually happened, Ethan didn't see Locke because Locke's timeline! hadn't progressed to the point where Locke had been tossed back in time. That encounter was at a point in Locke's future that hadn't occured yet. So this encounter was a novel one, happening for the first time, only when Locke reached the point in his personal timeline where he was tossed back into the past. Locke keeps saying "when are we" in the show. Granted the actual "when" may be 1954 or 1970 or 1980, or some other time, but the "when" for Locke himself is the present, just like riding on the record, you keep seeing yourself as moving forward even though when you step back you see it's cyclic. This is why when Ethan saw Locke back in season 1 he didn't go "oh you're that weird guy who I saw in the forest and shot in the leg" because that event hadn't taken place yet, even though it was "technically" in the past, because Locke hadn't reached that point yet. Theory by ineel
Most notable is the section titled "Jin is a Lovable, Indestructible Piece of Season-Finale Driftwood." I think this provides the key to what's happening, why its happening, and why there is no paradox. [Note - you should read that section now before reading the rest of what I wrote, as what I wrote is an expanded explanation of that section]. Lindelof and Cuse (the creators) have said they are enormously influenced by Stephen King. The explanation of time in the noted section is identical to the end of the Dark Tower. In the Dark Tower, Roland reaches his tower that he's been hunting from the start, only to open the door at the top and suddenly be hit with the memory of all his past lives, that he has been in a loop seeking and finding the tower countless times before, and by opening the door destined to repeat it again. A dark destiny indeed, however the story ends with a hope for redemption. The one regret Roland had in his life was that at a battle years prior all! his friends died by his side fighting to protect him. At one point he stopped to try to collect a horn that one friend always carried with him, but swept up in the battle wound up leaving the horn. That plagued Roland throughout the novels. In the last few pages King rewrites the first few pages of the first Tower novel, with one change, describing Roland stopping and placing the horn to his lips. In essence a single new event has been placed into the timeline that never happened in any prior loop, thus eradicating the loop. Since King and Cuse/Lindelof worked on Lost season 3 together (King served as a consult) it stands to reason that Lindelof and Cuse would want to use the ideas King held in their show. We now have evidence of it. This loop is the first time the changes in events have occured - the first time Ethan met Locke at the crashed plane by the Flame station, the first time Desmond was able to enable the island to be seen. In past occurences it didn't. ! By "past occurences," I mean the events of the show have taken! place c ountless times before, just as in the Dark Tower. Ka is a wheel - this line was perpetuated all throughout the Tower novels, "ka" being King's word for "fate/life." In the Lost universe, Time, like Ka, is a wheel, as evidenced by Faraday's record analogy. Time is like a record, spinning around and around, but always in one direction, unless something intervenes and reverses it, or jars it. Reversing the record would affect everything and everyone; the entire universe would be travelling backward in time. Jarring the record though, may not affect everyone, but only those near the spot of the jarring. This is what Ben did with the wheel he spun, he jarred time, with the epicenter being the island. Everything not a part of the island, but merely traveling forward in time on it (the survivors) began to be jostled around to random time points - like if you jar a record, the dust on top of the record will bounce up and land on some random spot on the record. So time is spi! nning round in a forward motion, but when one looks at it from a distance, its cyclic, events in the past occur as many times as the record spins - infinitely. To understand what I'm getting at, think of it like what happens when you look in a mirror and see a mirror behind you. In the mirror you are seeing in the mirror, you will see yourself looking into a mirror, seeing another mirror in which you are looking into a mirror seeing another mirror - an infinite regression of the same image. Likewise, all events in the past regress like this (maybe not in REAL life, but in the Lost universe and under its hypothesis for time travel). As with looking into the mirror you can see all the events in your past infinitely, via introspection or more abstractly via time travel. Only thing is, you, yourself, though you may be travelling backwards or forwards in time, see yourself as always travelling forward. Like if you were dust sitting on a record. You would only see what is ! in front of you, you would keep aging and moving forward regar! dless of whether "forward" was actually back to an earlier point in time. So to each person, time is a continuous forward direction, events occuring within one's life always being novel events. So back to the short little section that started this mini-thesis "Jin is a Lovable, Indestructible Piece of Season-Finale Driftwood" Let's take the simplest one, Locke encountering Ethan when the plane with the virgin mary dolls crashed. This event occurred before Locke first came to the island, so when it originally occured, Locke was not there, Ethan would have shown up and just seen a crashed plane. But Locke, who at the time would have been a kid or early 20s adult wandering around America kept moving forward with his life until he arrived on the island, experienced the events of the island, got tossed back in time, and encountered Ethan at the plane. This was the first time such an event took place. When the event actually happened, Ethan didn't see Locke because Locke's timeline! hadn't progressed to the point where Locke had been tossed back in time. That encounter was at a point in Locke's future that hadn't occured yet. So this encounter was a novel one, happening for the first time, only when Locke reached the point in his personal timeline where he was tossed back into the past. Locke keeps saying "when are we" in the show. Granted the actual "when" may be 1954 or 1970 or 1980, or some other time, but the "when" for Locke himself is the present, just like riding on the record, you keep seeing yourself as moving forward even though when you step back you see it's cyclic. This is why when Ethan saw Locke back in season 1 he didn't go "oh you're that weird guy who I saw in the forest and shot in the leg" because that event hadn't taken place yet, even though it was "technically" in the past, because Locke hadn't reached that point yet. Theory by ineel
