Excellent "Timing" by LouA

Alternate timelines. I’m sure everybody is sick of them. Last night I was on the toilet and I dreamt I was taking an ALT poo.

My theory is about that. Not the poo, the show. But it's an ALTERNATE ALT theory. And I think it might actually hold some water.

I don't believe in WHH or ALT.

I believe in

WHATEVER HAPPENED, REALLY HAPPENED AND WE JUST DIDN'T GET TO SEE IT UNTIL NOW.

Stick with me!!

Without slipping into pseudo-science psycho-babble-mania, I will suggest this as Season 6’s big revelation regarding a possible "ALT timeline" that we might see.

Remember the Keyser Soze ending to The Usual Suspects? Remember how we were led to believe throughout 95% of the story that what we were seeing in those flashbacks was what really happened? And then at the end, at the drop of a coffee mug, all was made clear? That’s what I suspect Lost will do in Season 6 via this "ALT timeline."

So if Season 6 starts and we’re like WTF?!! because an Alternate Timeline actually happens then we have to concede that Jack's plan worked right? 815 lands safely at LAX. Everyone is back alive again. How is this possible? How?!!! Why are the writers even doing this? Why?!!! If it does happen, it has NOTHING to do with Jack's plan. The explosion of Jughead only serves for the characters to REMEMBER the truth.

Well, this is my theory on that.

This ALT timeline where 815 lands at LAX is not a dream, nor simply a Desmond mind-flash, nor a ALTERNATE TIMELINE. It is in fact, THE ORIGINAL TIMELINE.

It’s what happened before Jacob and MIB traveled back to change the past. Whatever Happened, Happened is only true to some degree.

Using Locke and that damn old compass as an example.

At some point, this Original Timeline was Linear. There was a beginning, a middle and eventually an end. Locke and the compass loop was an example of what happens when you introduce “a variable” into a Whatever Happened, Happened universe. You get an alternate timeline where the loop continues to loop around again and again forever!

When we saw Jacob (seemingly ageless) saying howdy-doody to all of our Losties throughout their pasts and touching them, that was Jacob traveling back in time (somehow) from the future to change the Original Timeline he came from where none of these people ever crashed on the island. His touch was part of creating a causal effect to get these specially selected people to where he would need them to be one day – to change his future and what he had seen.

Could be the end of the world, could be something else.

MIB also traveled back in time, only his goal was not to change things in order to change the future, but to change the details and events of the Alternate Timeline Jacob had now created in order to ENSURE events would lead back to the ORIGINAL TIMELINE’S OUTCOME.

Everything we have seen since Season 1’s opening right through to present day Lost, has been part of the ALTERNATE TIMELINE created by one, or both, of these newly introduced characters from the Season 5 finale opening.

Getting 815 to crash was Jacob’s goal. Getting those people to the island would effectively change the outcome (like the Valenzetti equation) of some disastrous future. Locke was right. Each one of them WAS brought there for a reason. To change the future in this alternate timeline they were experiencing unknowingly.

We will see what was SUPPOSED to happen to each of them in Season 6, but that fate, that destiny, was changed. The ALTERNATE timeline is what we have experienced all along.

MIB has been shifting back in time and manipulating events not just to become the leader of the Others, but to undermine and expel Jacob’s changes in the Original Timeline.

That is what their battle has been about.

Their conversation on the beach at the start of S5 finale was before either of them had gone back. The Black Rock was going to be the instigating factor in their war. Whatever happened with the Black Rock crew set the stage for their later opposition and eventual time travel game of checkmate almost 100 years later.

HOW they travel back and how they know WHAT TIME to travel back to is up for grabs. Where they come from and what they are is also ambiguous at this point, but I believe this could be possible.

Misdirection and lots of red herrings abound.

Jack/Faraday’s plan to change their destiny by detonating Jughead is ironically a moot point. Their destinies HAVE ALREADY BEEN CHANGED. The lives they are living now IS the ALT universe. Jacob and MIB have already re-adjusted their destinies. The ORIGINAL TIMELINE is what we and our Jughead proximity Losties from 77 will get a glimpse of in Season 6. They will see how thier lives/destinies were SUPPOSED to and in fact DID turn out originally before everything got reset.

Desmond’s trajectory is key as he was the one who was ultimately responsible for 815’s crash. His “mistake” changed the future. His involvement, I’m guessing by Jacob, started a major ripple effect. But Jacob had been creating ripples for the Losties long before by visiting them and “touching” them. His touch changed their paths; that led each of them to depart Sydney, Australia on September 22nd 2004 just in time for Desmond to fail to push that damn Execute button

MIB’s discovery of this change in the timeline led to immediate course correction by ensuring those Donkey Wheel time skips happened in order to create a loophole in which he could begin setting events up so they could reach the ORIGINAL TIMELINE’S outcome – the end of mankind is quite possibly that outcome.

We have been, in a sense, Keyser Soze’d.

Or I could just be drunk. ;-S