An Idea of the Narrative Path of Season Six (Among Many Other Divergences) by Sean

Possibility: The detonation of the bomb in “The Incident” creates two alternate time-lines, starting from 1977 onward. One time-line contains everything from seasons 1-5. The second time-line is a slightly altered version of the first time-line in which the plane never crashes and events leading up to the plane crash are slightly different. In this new time-line, on September 22nd 2004, the events that lead to Seth Norris filling in for Frank Lapidus do not transpire, and Frank is in the pilot seat on that day. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that every time we’ve seen Frank pilot a plane on the show thus far, he has landed it safely. Perhaps 815 would have always landed if it had a better pilot?

So, Frank navigates the plane through whatever problems occur, and they land in LAX. I believe that at least Jack, Kate, and Sawyer will be affected by the blast (I don’t really have any idea about Hurley, Jin, Miles, or Sayid… I guess I’ll just assume they are effected also), and the same thing that happens to Desmond when he turns the fail-safe key will happen to them, given that it is not only in the same location, but it is (just going by the white screen) a very similar explosion to the one in season 2. So, Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are all lying naked in the jungle somewhere, in sometime (perhaps 2007? Maybe this is how they all sync-up to the time of the events at the four-toed statue). While they are lying there, like Desmond, they experience time-flashes within their individual consciousnesses that take them to… September 22nd 2004 in the alternate time-line.

Going off of this idea, if they have the same abilities as Desmond, they will be able to change things. Perhaps they wake up on the plane and Jack somehow notifies Frank of the upcoming navigation failure, allowing him to figure out a way to land the plane before they have gone too far. Maybe they wake up in LAX after the plane has already landed. The use of this narrative device (ALT-time-line flashes, I guess) would allow the writers to keep intact everything that has happened on the show, while allowing characters to get closure with certain things (and by this I mean mostly Sawyer and Juliet, if she is in fact a goner). Maybe this is also how Jack seems to know where the beach is when he wakes up in the first episode: his 2007 (or, 1977) consciousness flashes there.

The first things I thought when I heard about them possibly experiencing a sort of alternate time-line were:

- How will they get back to 2007 if there is no more time travel?
- How will them seeing what “could” have happened be emotionally satisfying for the audience if the experience doesn’t lead anywhere?

I have no idea of the answer to these questions. My best guess is that these ALT flashes could lead to certain characters getting their happy endings in this alternate universe. It would be very bittersweet, but it would maybe allow Jack to finally be at peace about all the bad things that have happened.

Anyway, I believe that this is why Jacob made a point of touching them at some point in their lives. He transferred some of his “power” to them, thus enabling them to keep their memories intact. Maybe this takes the place of needing a constant? He is giving them the ability to survive not only physical time travel, but mental as well. This is what he means by “They’re coming”: the group of people that he is playing the game with are on their way to join with the Man in Black’s pawns.

This idea of two alternate time-lines would also explain certain things that have happened in the first five seasons that need explaining:
- The food drop is simply one coming from an alternate time-line where the Dharma Initiative is still functioning.
- All the “ghosts” that Hurley sees are people from the alternate time-line who have somehow retained their memories of dying (“I’m dead, but I’m also here.”)

Now, another thing that has interested me is what is so special about Walt, and I’m almost positive they will touch back on this in the next season (just the fact that they came back to Charlie’s ring gives me hope). What makes Walt so special is that he has the natural ability to manipulate time-lines and electromagnetism and other things of that nature. This would explain the pile of birds in the deleted scene, and the bird that flies into his window. His ability to project himself using the exotic matter of the Island would explain his ability to appear to Locke. This is similar to how I feel about Hurley. I think that he will be a much bigger part of the next season simply because he has the natural ability to “talk to dead people” (which, going along with this theory, is simply the ability to see through time-lines). Also, I think the guitar case will be a big deal, but I don’t know how or why.

Another topic of interest is that of the Whispers, and I believe I have figured out what they are. LOST has a way of introducing something that you think is unimportant early on and having it end up being extremely important. This, I believe, is the case with the underground tunnels. The Others cannot be heard and they do not leave trails because they travel underground. The “whispers” are them talking. When Richard takes Jack and Sayid down into the tunnels in the season 5 finale, I noticed pillars of light coming from above ground that appeared regularly. This could be how they are heard; perhaps their cryptic whispering is amplified in the underground space, and can be heard from up above. This would also explain why Walt was soaking wet when he first appeared to Shannon. On much lesser a note, the underground tunnels also seem to explain how the Others were able to use the gas in the Tempest to wipe out the Dharma Initiative in the Purge. The Tempest pumps the gas ou! t into the underground tunnels, and from there it seeps through the vents in the ground, into the air. This would also explains Richard’s comment about the sonic fence “not keeping them out”.

Now, the things this does NOT explain:
- Michael hearing the Whispers on the boat.
- The fact that the Whispers seem to know what is going on and very cryptically comment on things.
- How in all of the survivors treks through the jungle, no one never got a foot caught in one of these supposed “vents”.
- Many more that I cannot think of, but would surely punch holes in my theory.

I won’t pretend to know the answers to these things.

Yet another thing that I’ve wondered about is Daniel’s notebook. How was it filled? If he brought it back to 1977 and Eloise had it ever since then, did she give him that notebook when he graduated? And If she gave him the notebook full of his writings… then who wrote it? My idea is that she kept that notebook and bought him a new one that was exactly the same, and that is the one that he gets at their lunch together. Daniel fills it up when he uses his time machine (after Desmond gives him the correct setting?) to take his conscious back in time to 1974-1977, where he is researching with the Dharma Initiative in Ann Arbor. He comes back to the present and takes down information in his journal. After doing it too many times, his brain (along with Theresa’s, who may have just been a one-time user?) is fried and he experiences frequent memory loss. What makes this scenario even more plausible is the deleted scene from season four with him asking Miles about his noteboo! k with his “research on the Dharma Initiative”.

Now, something else that has been pointed to and hinted at is the concept of a “double” or something to that effect. The manuscript “Bad Twin” and the two rabbits in the Orchid Orientation film come to mind. Another mysterious occurrence that may or may not be related is in a deleted scene from season four, where Ben returns to the “exit point” in the middle of the Tunisian desert and takes a block out of a wall, revealing a bag of passports. When he looks over his shoulder, there is another man lying on the ground, seemingly uninjured. My thoughts lead me to believe that this is a copy of Ben. The effect of turning the wheel (as the polar bears possibly did to end up in the desert) is that it creates a double of the person turning it. This is why the Island tells Locke he has to move the Island even after Ben does. The Man in Black needs a copy of Locke to inhabit so he can manipulate Ben into killing Jacob.
One more thing, then I’m done.

I don’t even want to seem like I think I’ve figured out the thing with Jacob and the Man in Black, because I have no idea. I’m hoping that next season will be full of Jacob and Richard flashbacks that will illuminate everything. That would be great. However, everyone can still have their theories. Mine is pretty basic, but I think it fits.

Okay, so Jacob and the Man in Black are both players in some sort of cosmic game. It seems like Jacob wants to prove that people can be good and learn to live together. The Man in Black just thinks people corrupt and destroy, and he wants nothing to do with them. He wants nothing to do with them so much that he badly would like to terminate Jacob. So, what I think is happening is that the survivors were brought to the Island (obviously) as a trial of Jacob’s plan, but how many trials came before them is still unknown (it seems like the Black Rock was a previous incarnation of the same idea; possibly Dharma, Rousseau’s team, etc.). Jacob wants to prove that man can exist like it used to. So, they survive with a few scratches when they should all be dead. The first season is about people living together on a deserted Island and the problems that come about from that. Things go alright (if we don’t include torture, guns, etc.) until the introduction of the Hatch, which is! when bigger secrets start to be kept (not that people were very truthful before). It seems to me that the Hatch could be the Man in Black’s way of tampering with the game. He introduces civilization to the people living on the beach and off the land. (See Hurley and Rose’s conversation about the laundry machines in the Hatch in season two)

The second season deals with the religious theme of “will you do something without being told what it’s for?”. For a while, Locke wants to push the button. It isn’t until they discover the Pearl and the Orientation tape there that Locke abandons his ideas about the button and purpose and destiny. He decides he’s not going to push it. What it seems like is this is Jacob’s way of retaliating to the other man’s introduction of the Swan hatch. Jacob gets Locke down to the Pearl and he finds out that the Hatch isn’t special, and that it’s one of many. So, Desmond turns the fail-safe key (which I think is also a really huge event that we might not have seen all the repercussions of just yet) and the Hatch implodes. This is a large blow to the Man in Black’s plans because it leads to the Island being found and more people coming to it later on. After that, I am still unsure.

(There is a really interesting theory called “Exotic Matter Grand Theory” by IllyriaLegacy that I think is well-worth the read and much more in-depth than what I have, specifically the ideas of propagating good and evil from the Island, which are very cool.)

So, the Man in Black finds his loophole (why he cannot kill Jacob is a complete mystery) and Jacob is apparently dead now. Where this all leads I have no idea. A lot of the thoughts in this theory are my own, but some come from unconscious memories of other theories I have read, so if anything is blatantly taken from somewhere else, I apologize, and the credit is due there, not here. This entire text is probably very jumpy, and a lot of the things I’ve put in here have probably been discussed before, so if it sounds familiar, it’s just because I wanted to get everything down in one place. So, thank you.

(And and all errors in grammar or spelling were 100% intentional.)