Lost 6x05: "Lighthouse"

[Mr Light]

I thought they explained this in Season Five, if you're "initiated" into the Others you're locked to the Island and don't timeshift. This is the whole thing about Lil'Ben being taken away by Richard to be healed at the Temple and he'll come back "different". As for the reason why Sun didn't time travel, a) they needed a main character to be with the Ajira survivors not just Illana and Frank, b) this further procrastinates the Jin/Sun reunion.

 

[Lindley]

So far, Jack appears to be the only one affected by this "merging" of the timelines.

I dunno, Charlie seemed pretty convinced he was supposed to be dead.

 

[LitmusDragon]

Hopefully a Richard episode as well, him on the deck of the black rock. Give us something!

The producers said in an interview that Richard's back story would be explained this season.

I'm looking forward to this, too!

 

[Starbreaker]

Lost ... the only show where you can be alive, dead, and a smoke monster.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

- Dogen being in the US seems off. I realize everything is supposed to be coincidental, but Ethan, Ben, Dogen, and whoever else being in the LA area seems beyond coincidence. It starts to make me think that the X in "LA X" doesn't just mean a parallel world, but literally X means crossing because everyone is crossing there (which I thought in the first place).

Under the theory of infinite parallel realities, anything that is physically possible must happen in at least one reality. I suppose that extends to any physically possible sequence of events. So that means that the most insane coincidences not only can happen, but must happen.

Dogen, Ethan, Ben, etc being in LA is coincidental only compared with the original reality. There are an infinite number of realities out there where they aren't all in LA, none of them are in LA, LA doesn't even exist, etc. So a coincidence between a paltry two realities in an infinite range doesn't seem so coincidental after all.

And this could explain away all the coincidences on this show - there has to be some reality in which a guy wins a lottery with a certain sequence of numbers, and the same sequence appears on a hatch on an island he's marooned on. Why shouldn't that reality be this one? There are a ton of coincidences that haven't happened, after all, that are happening in other realities we haven't been shown.

 

[chrisspringob]

Anyone notice Sayid's accent is considerably different? I wonder if that's just Naveen Andrews or some sort of clue about how he's different?

Also interesting, is that the flashbacks seem to be mirroring season 1 (as producers said there callbacks to S1).

Season 1 Episode 3 was a Kate flashback, and so is Episode 3 of this season. Episode 4 was Locke (the classic Walkabout), and this season's Episode 4 was Locke. Episode 5 was Jack - White Rabbit, the episode where he chased Christian and found the caves... and this Episode 5 was jack.

hence, i'm guessing next week is a Jin and/or Sun episode.

However, if the pattern holds I dunno wtf happens with Episode 7 which was originally a Charlie episode...

If you take out both Charlie episodes, the Boone episode, and the Walt/Michael episode I believe we have the correct number for the season (maybe one less). It would take quite a bit of skill to work that out, though. If it holds, though, the flash sideways would be:

Everyone
Kate
Locke
Jack
Jin/Sun (the episode is called Sundown, fwiw)
Sawyer
Sayid
Claire
Jack
Kate
Sawyer
Jin
Hurley
Locke
Sayid
Kate
Everyone

Hmmm...I think I read that Sundown is actually a Sayid episode, so they'd actually be abandoning the Season 1 thing as early as next week.

Also, I thought this was quite interesting....based on freeze frames from the lighthouse scene:

http://www.slate.com/id/2242745/entry/2245927/

My eyes are still strained from squinting at the lighthouse list of 360 names—a desperate attempt to catch clues. Luckily, fans take screenshots. Here's what we know:

No. 51 belongs to Austen, and the name isn't crossed out. Does that mean Kate's a candidate, even though she's isn't one of the Numbers?

For all of Ben's whining about how Jacob never loved him, he was once a candidate. Linus is crossed out at No.117.

Either Michael or Walt also made the list. Next to No. 124 is the last name Dawson. Unclear which Dawson, though.

Faraday lives on at No. 101. (But he's crossed out.) I suppose this could also refer to his mother, who may have taken on "Hawking" later in life.

So does Rousseau. She's crossed out at No. 20. Her French partner Montand (the guy who lost an arm) is at 102.

And Juliet is immortalized at position 58. The name Burke is crossed out.

Boone or Shannon was in the running for a bit. Rutherford is No. 32.

Lewis is at slot 104. Unclear whether this refers to Charlotte Lewis or to one of her parents, since they were also on the island as part of the Dharma Initiative.

Jacob asked Hurley to turn the mirror to 108 degrees. (One hundred and eight is the sum of all the original numbers, and the amount of time between button-presses in the hatch.)

Next to No. 108 is a last name we haven't heard before: Wallace. If someone really is coming to the island, maybe it's yet another new character.

Also, the mirror reflected three different images: the pagoda-looking place where Jin and Sun get married and where Jacob touches them; the church where Jacob touches Sawyer as a child; and Jack's childhood home. But Jacob touches Jack at the hospital—not at his house. So why would the mirror show the house, rather than the hospital? Perhaps Jack was so stubborn Jacob needed to touch him twice.

 

[Hober Mallow]

I have a feeling this won't be explained. Cuse and Lindelof have already said there was a reason Sun didn't go in the past with Jack, Hurley, Kate, and Sayid, but they will never explain it. They've said viewers may figure it out from the show, but they aren't going to explain it themselves.

Where did you read/hear this?

Here somewhere. Could have been one of the podcasts, I don't remember. I believe it was discussed in the spoiler thread, too.

 

[chrisspringob]

Here's another thought on the two timelines. One feature of "whatever happened, happened" time travel rules is that they tend to involve ontological paradoxes (what people around here call "predestination paradoxes"). Whether you should even consider this to be a paradox or not is open to debate. I'll get to that in a minute.

An example of an ontological paradox is the character of Ben. Ben is shot by Sayid as a kid. This leads to him being taken to the Others to be healed. This leads to him growing up to become adult Ben, who contributes to a series of events that leads to Sayid going back in time and shooting Ben. Which suggests that Sayid shooting Ben is an event that "caused itself" in a sense. OK, but that seems weird that you have a closed loop of causality, with nothing outside the loop causing it to exist. How did the universe "decide" that that closed loop of causality should exist, while another one doesn't?

Well, with quantum mechanics, it doesn't have to be such a mystery. Quantum mechanics can "decide" which one happens and which one doesn't. Maybe the prime timeline on Lost is a perfectly self-consistent timeline, in which the bomb going off in 1977 actually contains the EM pocket that they drill into at the Swan, and prevents it from doing much damage. The "sideways" timeline is then also a self-consistent timeline in which Dharma still drills down into the EM pocket, but no one sets off a bomb to contain it, and the EM pocket being breached makes the Island sink, which means that Flight 815 never crashes on it in 2004, and the Losties never go back in time to 1977 to set off the bomb which would have contained the EM energy. In this latter timeline, since the Losties never went back in time, Ben was never shot, and he stuck with Dharma the whole time, and was able to be evacuated with other Dharma folks.

Each of these two timelines would be perfectly self-consistent, and would not have any grandfather paradoxes. Further, maybe Jacob's lighthouse allows him to see into all the various possible timelines, and he uses fragments of information from other timelines to decide who he needs to draw to the Island. So, for example, he used something that he saw in the "sideways" timeline to decide that he needed to do something to make sure that he would draw the Losties to the Island in his own timeline.

Or something like that. Wow, I'm rambling.

 

[Ryan8bit]

I have a feeling this won't be explained. Cuse and Lindelof have already said there was a reason Sun didn't go in the past with Jack, Hurley, Kate, and Sayid, but they will never explain it. They've said viewers may figure it out from the show, but they aren't going to explain it themselves.

Bastards. Seriously, that's BS. But I figure it won't be the only thing not explained.

I can live with it being something that we can figure out. If it's something totally unexplainable, well, then that sucks. But that's going to be bound to happen.

Under the theory of infinite parallel realities, anything that is physically possible must happen in at least one reality. I suppose that extends to any physically possible sequence of events. So that means that the most insane coincidences not only can happen, but must happen.

Dogen, Ethan, Ben, etc being in LA is coincidental only compared with the original reality. There are an infinite number of realities out there where they aren't all in LA, none of them are in LA, LA doesn't even exist, etc. So a coincidence between a paltry two realities in an infinite range doesn't seem so coincidental after all.

And this could explain away all the coincidences on this show - there has to be some reality in which a guy wins a lottery with a certain sequence of numbers, and the same sequence appears on a hatch on an island he's marooned on. Why shouldn't that reality be this one? There are a ton of coincidences that haven't happened, after all, that are happening in other realities we haven't been shown.

I've always had this impression that this alternate timeline though, is logically alternate instead of just magically different. Like it should follow cause and effect. The kind of timeline you speak of is nice as a narrative, but really makes no sense.

DS9's continuance of TOS' parallel reality was really far fetched. Mostly because you know that it's insanely improbable for dozens of characters to be in the same place, much less exist a century later in a future that was so different.

The only way I piece these Lost coincidences to make sense is this: The "alternate" timeline is a result of no interference by Jacob. Somehow Jacob had access to this timeline, and saw the many interactions between people, and decided to twist the fate of those people by bringing them together later on the island. For what purpose, I really don't know, but I think it will come together by the end of the show.

 

[Hober Mallow]

An example of an ontological paradox is the character of Ben. Ben is shot by Sayid as a kid. This leads to him being taken to the Others to be healed. This leads to him growing up to become adult Ben, who contributes to a series of events that leads to Sayid going back in time and shooting Ben. Which suggests that Sayid shooting Ben is an event that "caused itself" in a sense. OK, but that seems weird that you have a closed loop of causality, with nothing outside the loop causing it to exist. How did the universe "decide" that that closed loop of causality should exist, while another one doesn't?

That's not as difficult to wrap your mind around as the compass. It literally doesn't exist outside the loop. John gave it to Richard in the 50s, Richard gave it back to John in 2004. It has no starting point. Where did it come from in the first place?

 

[RoJoHen]

Where did it come from in the first place?

I think Bones picked it up at an antique store.

 

[chrisspringob]

An example of an ontological paradox is the character of Ben. Ben is shot by Sayid as a kid. This leads to him being taken to the Others to be healed. This leads to him growing up to become adult Ben, who contributes to a series of events that leads to Sayid going back in time and shooting Ben. Which suggests that Sayid shooting Ben is an event that "caused itself" in a sense. OK, but that seems weird that you have a closed loop of causality, with nothing outside the loop causing it to exist. How did the universe "decide" that that closed loop of causality should exist, while another one doesn't?

That's not as difficult to wrap your mind around as the compass. It literally doesn't exist outside the loop. John gave it to Richard in the 50s, Richard gave it back to John in 2004. It has no starting point. Where did it come from in the first place?

I thought it was clear that, in 1954, Locke gave Richard the future version of a compass that Richard already had. The whole point was to prove to 1954 Richard that he was from the future. Thus, the compass is something that was created at some time before 1954. I don't see how it could be any other way. If it only existed within the time loop, and was never actually created, then it would have infinite age, and entropy wouldn't allow it to exist.

 

[Checkmate]

I never understood why people have trouble understanding loops like that. The events that create the loop are not necessarily the events contained within the loop. Sayid, for instance, may not have shot Ben in the original timeline, but whatever it was that occurred that caused Ben to be taken and healed lead up to a timeline where his impact on the world influenced Sayid to travel back in time to shoot him instead of whatever the original event was, thereby initiating a loop.

 

[chrisspringob]

I never understood why people have trouble understanding loops like that. The events that create the loop are not necessarily the events contained within the loop. Sayid, for instance, may not have shot Ben in the original timeline, but whatever it was that occurred that caused Ben to be taken and healed lead up to a timeline where his impact on the world influenced Sayid to travel back in time to shoot him instead of whatever the original event was, thereby initiating a loop.

Ah, but see, that's the thing. If your time travel works according to the "whatever happened, happened" rule, then there is no such thing as "the original timeline". There is just the one and only timeline, which never changes. According to WHH rules, Sayid always went back in time and shot Ben. Ben was always healed by the Others. All of it was always part of history. At least, that's how it would work if you follow WHH logic. Whether the writers are still following that logic or not is unclear, because we now have the alt-timeline in the story.

 

[Mr Light]

I still believe in "whatever happened happened". After all Jack et al caused the Incident to happen. This sideways garbage is just them trying to have their cake and eat it too.

 

[Checkmate]

Except that's not the case in the show's universe. If it were, there wouldn't be multiple timelines. So trying to argue that it's a "whatever happened, happened" universe is pointless because it's not.

The Incident, for instance, wasn't caused by Jack. We saw what caused it. Jack and Co.'s plan was to help stop it. To this day we don't know exactly what happened as a result of that, only that a minimum of two timelines now exist due to those actions. Which, again, proves that the "WHH" concept has no bearing whatsoever on Lost.

 

[Lindley]

Except that the 77ers were thrown back to their original future, not an altered one, nor were they simply killed. That indicates something more complicated is going on.....although there's not yet enough information to say what, exactly.

If the detonation of that bomb somehow leads to the alternate-timeline intersecting with the "main" one later than the current 2007 timeframe, then the WHH rules still apply; that alterna-timeline always existed, they just didn't show it to us until it mattered narratively. The fact that events in the past caused it to affect the future won't violate WHH, because it will still be the characters' relative future that it's affecting.

 

[Mr Light]

^^ I think my head just exploded trying to read that

 

[Hober Mallow]

Until we get an explanation for the other apparent timeline, all the evidence of the show is that whatever happened happened.

There is, of course, a problem then with the compass. When unLocke asked Richard in 2007 if he still had the compass, Richard told him it was a little rusty. If that's the case, it's going to continue to age and rust until there's no longer any compass.

 

[chrisspringob]

There is, of course, a problem then with the compass. When unLocke asked Richard in 2007 if he still had the compass, Richard told him it was a little rusty. If that's the case, it's going to continue to age and rust until there's no longer any compass.

Ah, OK. I'd forgotten that he said that, and that he specifically asked him to give Locke *that* compass. If so, that proves he wasn't just giving him a future version of a compass that 1954 Richard already had, and the whole thing doesn't make sense.