Stones and Boulders by choyjay

A deleted scene from Season 5 has Daniel further explaining his theory of people as variables. In reality, this is more of an extended scene than a deleted one. It occurs when Kate, Jack, and Daniel are on their way to the hostile camp, specifically when Kate stops to rest and drink water. The scene was posted on DarkUFO and can be found at this link:

http://dvdlost.blogspot.com/2009/10/s5-2-deleted-scenes.html

The scene I'm discussing is in the first video, at 1:34.

Faraday says that time can be seen as a creek, or river. Our losties' attempts at changing the flow of time can be seen as small rocks thrown into the creek. When a change (a rock), is introduced to the timeline (the river), the rock continues with the flow. This is essentially course correction. Even though you introduced a change to the flow, the flow continues just as it was before you threw the rock in.

Daniel then says that in order for the variables to actually change anything, they must be significant. The small pebbles did not affect the flow of time, but something larger might. In the scene, Daniel tosses a boulder into the creek. This boulder is much more significant than a small rock, and it effectively changes the flow of the creek. Since the boulder is a bigger change than the pebble, the boulder breaks the flow and causes a change. The river splits and goes around the boulder.

This scene supports a theory I had a long time ago, which essentially said the same thing: Time is constant, and whatever happened, happened, unless the variables can introduce a big enough change to affect the big picture in the long run. Sayid shooting Ben, and Jack refusing to help led to Ben being healed at the temple. These were small attempts to change the past, which are just as good as tossing pebbles into a creek. What could possibly be a big enough "boulder" to change anything, you might ask? The detonation of a hydrogen bomb.

People have been saying that an alternate timeline does not fit into the context of the show, given that all evidence supports the notion of "whatever happened, happened" so far. This is true, but that's because no significant attempts to change anything had yet occurred. Nobody tossed any boulders. Now, by the end of season 5, we have a nuclear explosion happening. I can't think of anything else of this magnitude that could be a metaphorical boulder, one great enough to cause a split in the river of time. Given the sheer scale of Jughead's detonation, I'd say the chances of changing the future are pretty good, and an alternative timeline doesn't seem out of the question for season 6.