Many spoilers ahead. If you have not watched all of LOST include last night’s episode, “Lighthouse,” you should move along. There’s nothing to see here.
Last night’s episode was a bit light on the theory fodder, I think. That’s not to say it was a bad episode. On the contrary, it was engaging and fun with just a couple moments of annoyance. “Lighthouse” was a perfect mirror (sorry, I had to) to season one’s “White Rabbit,” where we saw Jack racing through the forrest after his dead father only to find an empty coffin in the caves. This time around, in the season six iteration of the story, Jack raced through the forrest after Hurley’s dead friend Jacob (I think Jack hoped this “Jacob” fella was really his father) only to find an empty lighthouse and a fat guy who can’t make his dead friends appear on a whim.
Nate put forth two ideas that I’ll quickly write about since I wasn’t left with any striking revelations upon completion of the episode. The first was, “If the island exists (even if underwater) in the alternate universe, does that mean the lighthouse wheel is stuck on Jack’s name, and if so what is its significance?” Were it possible, there would be a lot to unpack in those questions. Sadly, I don’t think it is plausible or sensical given the timeline. Jack on the island is in the year 2007, and Jack’s sideways flashes occur in 2004. So there’s no way that the wheel could have been rotated to 23 degrees in the sideways world if it was still three years away from being rotated by Hurley on the island.
Secondly, Nate asks, “What if Wallace is Jack’s son’s last name (since we know he lives with his mom and maybe he took her/step father’s last name), and in the alternate universe it is JACK who dies in Australia and his son DAVID brings him back only to crash on the island with Jack’s dead body?” Whoa. Slow down, Nate. That sounds like the plot for a new television show. We’ll call it LOST. Although it would be interesting to see the sideways world and the true timeline merge by some great force via inconsistency (see: Jack has a son!), I think the likelihood of that happening is slim. It would raise far too many questions for them to possibly answer. It would indicate that there are actually two Jack Shephard’s alive and on the planet at the same time, and they are identical and have kinda the same life. Like clones or something. It just wouldn’t make any sense, nor would I be able to make the kind of leap of faith necessary to follow the logic. The part about Jack dying in Australia wouldn’t make sense because he clearly didn’t die in Australia. His father did.
Back to the drawing board, Nate!
The problem with episodes that don’t include big answers or big questions is that they rarely allow us to create stunning new theories. Instead, we are forced to spend another week rehashing what we’ve already supposed, and working to see if anything has changed following the introduction of new information. This week really didn’t introduce all that much. We saw another iteration of the numbers on the wheel in the lighthouse. We saw some inconsistencies (deliberate) in the sideways flashes. So rather than come up with more ideas, I’ll use this week’s new intel to see if my other theories are aging well.
As far as the reboot is concerned, we haven’t —
WHAT THE FUCK? HOW DID I JUST SEE A POP-UP AD ON MY WEBSITE? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? I know I have three little advertisements on the side of my website, and they have been here for a long time now. Never before have I see what I just saw. A small circular image appeared to fall from the top of my screen to the bottom, and it asked me to take a survey. While I was browsing my own website. This is entirely fucked up. I’m going to kill somebody.
Sorry, back to the reboot. We haven’t found out what the significance is yet, but we have seen more inconsistencies in our castaways’ storylines. Jack’s son is the latest one. More importantly though, we saw Jack last night study his appendix removal scar, and forget when it happened. This is not some mere coincidence. There is something lurking in the back of his consciousness that refuses to remember his island past/present/future whatever you want to call it. Unfortunately, his lack of memory and his having to ask his mother (embarrassments) to remember when he had his appendix taken out completely debunks my theory that in the sideways flashes Jack has already assumed the role of “New Jacob.” So, that was fun while it lasted, but consider it debunked. Now, my theory that this sideways world is what happens with no Jacob to pull the puppets’ strings has not been debunked yet. A lot of people have argued that Jacob touched people like Jack, Locke and Sun/Jin later on in life. But what the Man In Black says to Sawyer is that Jacob visited them at some point in their lives. Maybe they’ve each been visited multiple times, which we haven’t seen yet, and his touches are simply intended to alter his plans somehow. We now know that Jacob has been following Jack since childhood because the lighthouse bearing 23 degrees pointed to Jack’s childhood home. If we are to believe that Jacob just sat there watching Jack — and didn’t visit that house at some point — we are being completely naive. I think Jacob has been bumping into these people and touching them throughout their lives, and that the touches we saw in the season five finale were just a launching point for our seeing how Jacob has manipulated the castaways.
Again, Hurley is most definitely not crazy. He’s having regular conversations with a dead guy now. Did you notice how Jack doesn’t even question Hurley’s sanity anymore? I thought that was cool. He definitely questioned the purpose of Jacob, and became enraged when Hurley could not produce his spectral friend (that’s a play on special friend, by the way), but he never once called Hurley crazy or doubted that he was conversing with somebody. I still think Hurley has never been insane, and that his Dave will prove to be Libby’s husband David, which I blogged about a few weeks ago.
I also think it’s becoming more and more clear that Jack will be “The Last Recruit,” that he will fight down the Man In Black with help from his friends, and will assume the position of New Jacob by the end of the show. My theory for the final scene between Jack and Locke being a carbon copy of the Man In Black/Jacob scene that began season five’s finale still holds true.
One interesting note that I have not heard anyone discuss is the potential finale of the series as it relates to the first season finale. If we are to believe that season six is a mirror image of season one (and we are supposed to — so far each episode’s main character has been the same as that of the first season), would it not hold true that this finale will mirror season one’s? If the same holds true, and the format continues to follow the same path, we can predict some things that will happen in the finale. So…what happened in “Exodus Parts 1 & 2″…
– Rousseau joins the castaways and tells them about how the Others took her baby from her.
– They go to the black rock to get dynomite and Arzt gets exploded.
– We see all the castaways in the moments leading up to and then boarding Oceanic 815.
– Locke gets dragged by the monster, Jack and Kate save him with a stick of dynamite.
– Rousseau takes Aaron and wants to trade him with the Others’ for her child.
– Walt is taken by the others. The raft is destroyed.
– The hatch lid is blown up.
So, basically, what I want to know is…what’s going to happen when we see Jack and Locke sitting on the beach having that conversation “Do you know how badly I want to kill you?”? Are we going to see a raft drifting towards them in the distance, or is there going to be another plane crash? Because that’s kind of what happened in the season 1 finale!
