Flash-Sideways: The Free Will Timeline by Ratchet36

One of the biggest themes of LOST is fate versus free will, and I’m thinking that this will follow through to the ending of the show as well as tie into the flash-sideways. I should say that I am completely un-spoiled and know nothing of the remaining episodes this season.

For the past six seasons we’ve seen what happens when Jacob (and possibly the Man in Black) manipulates people and events, getting them to do specific things. Jacob and the Man in Black represent fate controlling and course-correcting the crash survivors’ lives. So essentially the LOST we know is the version of the story in which fate controls everything.

The flash-sideways is an example of what happens when Jacob and the Man in Black don’t exist, and, therefore, fate doesn’t control the crash survivors’ lives. Instead, this flash-sideways is governed by free will.

I believe (and I am just speculating here) that the crash survivors’ will find a loophole (among the many that exist in the rules) that allows them to break the cycle of replacing Jacob and the Man in Black. As a result, the fate-based timeline ceases to exist, and life starts over from the beginning of time now based on free will. So, the ultimate goal of the crash survivors’ is to free the world from being controlled by fate.

As such, the flash-sideways act as a type of epilogue to the story of LOST, providing us glimpses into the world they created in which their decisions are wholly their own. The free will based world may not be happier, but one could argue it is definitely better because it is what each character makes of it.