“It Worked” – A WHH Theory by Diana

A lot of people are assuming that the Alt-Lost reality, where 815 doesn’t crash, is the reality where the bomb goes off successfully. The bomb explodes, sinking the Island or in some other way preventing the Swan hatch and the button from being built, therefore preventing 815 from crashing.

Actually, the Lost reality we have come to know for the past 5 seasons (let’s call it LostClassic) is the reality where the bomb goes off. When Juliet in the LostClassic reality says (through Miles), “It worked,” she literally means “It” (the bomb) “worked” (detonated).

The two realities are:

(1) The Alt-Lost Reality. The Incident itself, which is a release of electromagnetic energy by the Dharma folks, causes the Island to sink. Incident occurs => island sinks => Oceanic815 never crashes => Losties never go back in time and set off the bomb => Incident occurs => and so forth.

(2) The LostClassic Reality. It’s WHH. The Losties successfully set off the bomb, it counteracts the energy released by the Incident, keeping things in check enough that the Dharma folks can contain the energy and/or nuclear radiation and build the Swan Station. Things proceed as we’ve always seen them. At the moment of the explosion the Losties get jolted back to the future.

The advantage of this theory is that each reality is a closed, self-sustaining timeline (or timeloop) with no time-travel paradoxes. The two realities don’t interact. They always are as they’ve always been.

SOME EVIDENCE

If we think that Alt-Lost is the reality where the bomb explodes, it leads to all sorts of crazy time-travel paradoxes, such as: The Losties travel into the past to blow up a bomb to prevent 815 from crashing, but if it doesn’t crash how would they ever be around to go back in time to blow up the bomb to prevent it from crashing? When they successfully blow up the bomb, where/when in the Alt-Lost reality do their consciousnesses go? Assuming Juliet dies in blowing up the bomb, does she die in Alt-Lost? And on and on until your head hurts.

How would a nuclear bomb sink the entire island but not blow up any of the Dharmaville houses we saw underwater? It seems more likely that some crazy eruption of electromagnetic energy (the Incident left unchecked) could sink the island without damaging the stuff on the surface.

The theory offers one reason why Jacob would want the Losties brought to the island – so that they can eventually travel back in time and keep it from sinking. (Sure there were probably a million easier ways Jacob could have achieved this, but easy answers are not how the show works.)