ALT v WHH - the debate rages on by Andrew

Alright WHH and ALT folks... plenty to talk about after the premier and both camps should be scratching their heads on this one.

Now that we've seen what clearly is an ALT reality that has been opened up and accessed from events unfolding on the island (bomb detinated) there is no more denying that ALT is a part of the show. It is... suck it up.

BUT... there also seems to be a single timeline at work that the Losties were transported back to after the white flash, post Desmond turning the failsafe key precisely as we once saw it.

Desmond is the analogy here, and Faraday figured it out just before he died. Both WHH and ALT are true -- and the island makes it possible.

Desmond likely accessed an ALT timeline in the events of The Constant and Flashes Before Your Eyes and that's why Eloise Hawking had to strongarm him out of making any changes... even though he had the opportunity. Thats why she threatened him and said if he did make changes then "every one of us is dead"...

And because Eloise appeared in that ALT timeline, and Desmond appeared to Jack in the ALT timeline much the same way -- we as an audience are supposed to deduce that people with these special abilities can craft events to their liking. Free will can skirt fate. ALT can happen while WHH is happening. The duality is true.

For those of you who have maintained it isn't possible to have a single immutable timeline and an ALT timeline coexisting, even from the island -- consider yourself wrong, embarrassingly so.

THAT is why ALT rules -- because we all innately recognize a WHH base law that we all start from but the evidence of ALT that we also had perceived is true; ALT was right.

Since ALT allows for the duality of both WHH and ALT to coexist, and ALT is now literally driving the plot of the show forward -- we can all agree that ALT is a part of the show, and Desmonds turning of the failsafe key is by definition connected to that ever so elusive "island magic" that makes ALT realities accessible.

It is likely the notion of self-sacrifice plays into your ability to change the past, Juliet, Desmond, Jack, Charlie, Jacob -- we're all seeing the loopholes in this game unfold. Sacrifice, desire, and free-will open up new opportunities and in a sense, new laws of physics that indeed makes it possible to have an ALT timeline and WHH timeline coexisting at the same time.

We as an audience are privy to how this is working, but we're not sure where it is going -- and the potential of whether or not there is interplay between the two worlds has been hinted at in several cases but ultimately we are left to question what will happen with this ALT scenario as the series moves on.

We know there is some interplay -- the choice of words Rose chose to use to commune with Jack during turbulence, the fact that there was turbulence as the plane flew over the creepy submerged island, Jack's neck wound that he checks out on the plane, Jack's father's body having gone missing, Locke's knives that have turned up missing.... but there is also a more fate/free will debate that can be had surrounding Charlie's self proclaimed fate of dying having been prevented by Jack.

This is a debate about context that we have been over and over before in the WHH v ALT debates -- doesn't the context of how you die matter?

Remember how Charlie died a hero on the island in self-sacrifice, aided by desmond's uniqueness in preventing that accidental death.

On the plane - he would have died a coward...

Those two obituaries would have been day and night, respectively -- to those of you who maintain dead is dead and context matters not... I think you had better rethink that position in light of this ALT v WHH comparison the writers are obviously showing us in season 6. small differences can have a big impact, and free will has shown to trump fate in certain situations.

Some questions I pose that I think will impact the rest of the story:

- Why was the island underwater in the opening sequence?

- Desmond had no business being on that plane (other than being a pure literary device / symbolism).... so what ultimately are we to deduce from him being there?

- Is the ALT just a story telling device to prove a larger point about fate/free will or will Desmond truly have to undo what he did and keep pushing the button so that the Losties never crash on there in the first place?

- When the MIB as Locke says he wants to go home, where is he talking about and how does he plan to get there?