Ever since the beginning of Lost there have been far too many coincidences. I don't think most of them were coincidences though. As we have seen, Widmore and Hawking have influenced what happens. If this is all predetermined anyways is still something the producers are trying to get us to figure out on our own.
The big themes of Lost is fate vs. choice, belief vs. assumption, and faith vs. science. They have been appearing the entire series, and most of the island mystique stems from doing things the way that the island wants them done. This all seems like a big smokescreen to me. With the introduction of time travel they could literally make anything possible. Who knows if the smoke monster is some super high tech security system from 500 years in the future? As long as there is a way off the island you have the means that you need to get that technology. If you have people who time travel and share their knowledge, which has already happened by the way, then you have a way to appear omniscient to people who have no clue of how time travel works. You could also have people like Richard who seem to appear at pivotal moments (the only moments we see since they are relevant) and seems to have some kind of other-worldly feeling about him.
Do you also notice that we didn't see Richard in the show before Desmond stopped pushing that button in the Swan? Sure, we see him later through flashbacks and what not, but we didn't see him in flashbacks before that.
I think that everything changed when Desmond stopped pushing that button. Everything that has happened in the show after that moment has been changed. Oceanic 815 crashed and all of these characters were introduced in the show to influence the direct future. Through this single act, Desmond has influenced everything connected to the island because he is the one that introduced time travel into the show's plotline.
Remember that in the 1970's, when Chang had discovered the time travel phenomenon with the bunny experiment. A man as smart and with as much pull as Chang wouldn't allow something like time travel to occur. Any scientist would realize, even though it is theoretically impossible, that doing ANYTHING in the past could have disastrous results in the future/present. That was why he was hesitant to even get the time travelling bunnies near each other, this was completely new ground. Maybe a few very minimal tests would occur after that but it is far too dangerous to try to capitalize on through any larger scale experiments. That is why nothing happened until Desmond went into the hatch all those years later. Dharma went on doing their other experiments, even The Incident (whatever it is) probably still happened, and Ben wiped them out all of those years later.
What I'm trying to say is that the island's history and future are in a free for all right now. I think Richard and Jacob are men from the future who have mastered time travel who have been directly intervened because Desmond didn't push that button. They have come in at opportune times to push events a certain direction. I'm not sure what the endgame is that they are trying to get to by influencing these events, but I'm not sure if Desmond is done being "The Variable" that Daniel was talking about.
The big themes of Lost is fate vs. choice, belief vs. assumption, and faith vs. science. They have been appearing the entire series, and most of the island mystique stems from doing things the way that the island wants them done. This all seems like a big smokescreen to me. With the introduction of time travel they could literally make anything possible. Who knows if the smoke monster is some super high tech security system from 500 years in the future? As long as there is a way off the island you have the means that you need to get that technology. If you have people who time travel and share their knowledge, which has already happened by the way, then you have a way to appear omniscient to people who have no clue of how time travel works. You could also have people like Richard who seem to appear at pivotal moments (the only moments we see since they are relevant) and seems to have some kind of other-worldly feeling about him.
Do you also notice that we didn't see Richard in the show before Desmond stopped pushing that button in the Swan? Sure, we see him later through flashbacks and what not, but we didn't see him in flashbacks before that.
I think that everything changed when Desmond stopped pushing that button. Everything that has happened in the show after that moment has been changed. Oceanic 815 crashed and all of these characters were introduced in the show to influence the direct future. Through this single act, Desmond has influenced everything connected to the island because he is the one that introduced time travel into the show's plotline.
Remember that in the 1970's, when Chang had discovered the time travel phenomenon with the bunny experiment. A man as smart and with as much pull as Chang wouldn't allow something like time travel to occur. Any scientist would realize, even though it is theoretically impossible, that doing ANYTHING in the past could have disastrous results in the future/present. That was why he was hesitant to even get the time travelling bunnies near each other, this was completely new ground. Maybe a few very minimal tests would occur after that but it is far too dangerous to try to capitalize on through any larger scale experiments. That is why nothing happened until Desmond went into the hatch all those years later. Dharma went on doing their other experiments, even The Incident (whatever it is) probably still happened, and Ben wiped them out all of those years later.
What I'm trying to say is that the island's history and future are in a free for all right now. I think Richard and Jacob are men from the future who have mastered time travel who have been directly intervened because Desmond didn't push that button. They have come in at opportune times to push events a certain direction. I'm not sure what the endgame is that they are trying to get to by influencing these events, but I'm not sure if Desmond is done being "The Variable" that Daniel was talking about.
