“THE INCIDENT”
This is an amended Theory. I have not changed anything. I am merely adding to it. I was really surprised by how many people on various websites asked me questions regarding this. It has really been a lot of fun, and thanks to everyone who wants to talk about it! I’ve taken some of the info/ questions/ thoughts and incorporated it into what I’ve written so far.
(First – to differentiate properly, I’ll refer to the two universes as Lost PRIME, which is where the story has taken place for the past 5 seasons, and Lost SIDEWAYS, as the executive producers have labeled the new continuity)
* In Lost PRIME The Incident was never clearly defined. What was the Incident? According to “Dr. Marvin Candle”, a.k.a. Dr. Pierre Chang, in the Swan Orientation film, the Incident was an electromagnetic anomaly that caused a catastrophic event at The Swan construction site. Not very descriptive, right? Could they have been hiding something? Of course they were!
* I suggest that The Incident was always the splitting of the Lost PRIME universe into the Lost SIDEWAYS universe in 1977.
What happened happened.
You cannot change the past.
It only ends once, and anything that happens before that is just progress.
* We’ve heard all of these things before, and it was always the truth. The Dharma Initiative and the Others/ Ben and Richard’s people in Lost PRIME knew about the Incident, and were protecting the island and the universe from any further schisms.
* The hatch/ Swan Station in Lost Prime contained a computer that needed a sequence to be entered every 108 minutes. If that were not accomplished, the energy under the hatch would flare. The numerical sequence is the cosmic lock combination to a doorway between Lost Prime and Lost Sideways.
* Every 108 minutes, Lost SIDEWAYS attempted to encroach on our reality and take the place of Lost Prime. This Can Never Happen. If it does, then the castaways will never travel back in time to detonate Jug-head, so Lost Sideways can be created, so Flight 815 can land safely in LaX. The discrepancies/ paradoxes would destroy the universe. Both universes need to continue to exist for the sake of each other.
* By entering the sequence, Desmond effectively closed the cosmic door between Lost PRIME and Lost SIDEWAYS, and buying Lost PRIME 108 more minutes to live. He was really saving the world by pressing that button (Which ironically was labeled ‘execute’)
* Mr. Buckles asked about ‘The Numbers’: “Any idea why they were broadcasting the numbers originally? Or why they were stamped on the side of the hatch?”… Why would they (The Others or Dharma) do that? Because it is the most important combination in the entire Lost PRIME universe. Without it, the entire universe will cease to exist. You wouldn’t want to lose that combination, would you? You’d write it down and tell everyone, just in case you couldn’t get to the button in time.
* Hurley’s friend, Leonard Simms, at the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute in L.A. taught Hurley the cosmic combo, but Hurley calls them ‘the numbers’. It was all Leonard could say. The numbers drove him insane. While in the Navy he heard the transmission from the island and the knowledge must have allowed him to travel or peer into the Lost SIDEWAYS world. Maybe he saw himself living a very different life. Maybe he was a millionaire, or a bank robber or a movie star. Whatever he saw, it broke his grasp on reality.
* One day, Desmond got too drunk and chose not to enter the sequence. The electromagnetic energy pulling flight 815 out of the sky was not just pulling the plane to the island. It was pulling Lost SIDEWAYS towards LOST PRIME, in order to replace it.
* Nathaniel White asked me:” When Desmond failed to push the button, he couldn’t have been pulling the plane from Lost SIDEWAYS to the Island because that plane had different occupants than the original plane (Desmond was on it, and no Shannon). Also, the Island in Lost SIDEWAYS is underwater.”
* When Desmond failed to push the button, the energy pulled Flight 815 of the Lost PRIME universe out of the sky, AND was beginning to pull the entire Lost Prime universe in on itself, or collapse in on itself like a black hole. Black holes are one of the strongest forms of gravity in the known universe after all, which could easily pull 815 from the air. Then, once Lost PRIME in its entirety is gone, Lost SIDEWAYS would simply take its place. After all, nature abhors a vacuum.
* With regards to the Lost Sideways plane, we just didn’t see Shannon. Boone never said she wasn’t on the plane. But, that really doesn’t matter anyway because she doesn’t need to be on the plane. It’s fine that there were different occupants, because It is a different timeline where everything is and can be different since the explosion in 1977. Why couldn’t Desmond be on that plane? His life might have taken many different turns from the Lost Prime universe? Maybe he is a VP of Widmore Industries for all we know? Hmmmmmm?
* Daniel Faraday’s radiation research to cause mind transferal to the past was not moving the mind to the past. It was allowing the subject’s mind to shift from Lost PRIME to its counterpart on Lost SIDEWAYS.
* A few people asked how Desmond’s ‘Time Travel’ would work in my theory as well. Desmond’s time traveling in ‘The Constant’ was actually the same reaction as was created by Faraday’s research, just without the harmful radiation. His mind was shifting to the Lost SIDEWAYS universe, and would have continued to do so until he could forge a true bond with one universe or the other. He needed to anchor himself, and his anchor or constant was Penny. He is unique in this universe and can travel back and forth without use of the doorway created by the Incident. Desmond and Penny’s storyline is one of my favorites. I hope they make it out alive by the end.
* The Island is able to ‘hide’ from the world because it IS the doorway between the two worlds. It is the tether between Lost PRIME and Lost SIDEWAYS. To hide, it shifts from one universe to the other.
* On November 27, 2004, John Locke and Desmond convinced that the button sequence was a psychological test, chose to not press the button. As the station started to violently warp from the Electromagnetic energy, Desmond changed his mind. The computer itself was already destroyed, along with the countdown clock. Desmond entered a crawlspace to initiate the fail-safe procedure, which was the simple turning of a key. The Swan imploded upon activation of this fail-safe.
* The fail-safe was the permanent (?) closing of the doorway between Lost PRIME and Lost SIDEWAYS, so neither could overwrite the other in the universe. Both universes were safe. I was asked quite a bit about the Fail-safe key, and why it wasn’t used earlier to protect the universe. In my theory… They didn’t use it earlier because the Dharma Initiative was studying the nature of the energy. They wanted to see if they could harness it and use it for their own purposes, be it to time travel, to heal, to weaponize it, or travel between worlds. If they used the failsafe, they would have dispelled the energy and Lost this opportunity. So they got a person to push the button every 108 minutes so the world could go on and they could continue their research.
* The Dharma Initiative was the first line of defense in protecting the universe from a major paradox created by our time traveling castaways. Their tool to continually act as a finger in the dam of the universe was the Swan Station.
* On Facebook, Maria Moraitakis asked how this theory worked with the underlying theme of good and evil. My response is simply that Good and Evil will always be in conflict. It is their nature to clash. One attacks, the other defends. This is merely a different battleground, with a different prize. And what better prize than a doorway between worlds?
* For now The Universe is safe, except Jack in Lost SIDEWAYS seems a little too aware of Lost PRIME. He’ll do something to make the universe rip at the seams of reality. That is what Jack does. He breaks things. He broke his relationship with his dad, his marriage, himself with pills, and finally he broke the universe. Thanks Jack!
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