LOST - the unanswered questions thread (SPOILER discussion)

Even the article you just linked me to makes note that dead Christian is not the real Christian, but MIB posing as Christian. We never see Christian's ghost until the flash-sideways, which is confirmed to be purgatory. To say the island has to be purgatory because we saw something that looked like Christian is the same as saying the "Why is Wolfe barking?" scene from Terminator 2 is purgatory because we see John's stepmother when we know she is dead.
 
ThrowingChicken said:
Even the article you just linked me to makes note that dead Christian is not the real Christian, but MIB posing as Christian.
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Actually, it posits that Dead Christian may be a manifestation of MIB, Jacob, or the Island itself. I can authoritatively speak to author's intent on that one. :)
 
Ha, I missed that. Anyway, it's not a may, at least not anymore. MIB stated clearly that he was posing as Christian, that he lead Jack to the water, etc etc. Flash-sideways Christian, flash-back Christian, and on-island Christian are 3 different people, and only once were they a dead person.
 
ThrowingChicken said:
Ha, I missed that. Anyway, it's not a may, at least not anymore. MIB stated clearly that he was posing as Christian, that he lead Jack to the water, etc etc. Flash-sideways Christian, flash-back Christian, and on-island Christian are 3 different people, and only once were they a dead person.
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Yeah, because of that timey-wimey theory Willie linked to upthread, I don't think they were. I think Fake Locke was a lying heinie, and that because of "Say hello to my son for me" in the Frozen Donkey Wheel Room, Christian really was there, because The Island was outside of time. That some people might call it Limbo or Purgatory or Whatthehellever. I mean, you have to explain the 48 people surviving from 38,000 feet before you'll get this audience member to start taking any other theory seriously. :)
 
Just for clarifications sake, you think the island is a type of purgatory, but that living people can go to it and return to the real world, alive, or... you think all 48 people died and then their souls went to the island?
 
ThrowingChicken said:
Just for clarifications sake, you think the island is a type of purgatory, but that living people can go to it and return to the real world, alive, or... you think all 48 people died and then their souls went to the island?
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Well, "clarification" might be too strong a word, because when I throw around "purgatory" it's not Catholic capital-P Purgatory, you know? This show doesn't exactly lend itself to clarification. But, yes, my present thinking on LOST is that everybody died and they collectively coalesced the Island to work out their various troubled pasts towards personal redemption. As Christian explained the "church" in the finale as a place outside of time where they were able to meet and go into the next phase together, so too do I think the Island was a "stop-over" place for them to help work out everything. A "purgatory" of sorts, if you will.
 
Well, again, that definition is one I just can't subscribe to. If you were to tell me that you thought the physical island was some sort of middle ground that could be inhabited by both dead and living bodies, then perhaps that is something I could get on board with. You've brought up Christian as evidence of your view, but I've yet to grasp how that means they are all dead when there is a whole back-story to why we are seeing Christian walking around. What purpose does Across the Sea, or Ab Aeterno serve in this story if they are all dead? Seventy-one people survived the crash because the island had special properties, that doesn't mean the island has to be purgatory.
 
ThrowingChicken said:
You've brought up Christian as evidence of your view, but I've yet to grasp how that means they are all dead when there is a whole back-story to why we are seeing Christian walking around.
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I was going to leave it, but I'd really like someone to explain the eye color changes, Charlie's grey-and-heather green shirt gaining sleeves and then losing them and then regaining them, Claire's medical room being pristine and then days later looking abandoned for years, Hurley and Miles and Kate and Jack and everyone else seeing and interacting with dead dead dead people and things on the Island, the Icelandic dude looking like Jack, Desmond appearing on the school recruitment poster and and and and...

Seriously. Maybe I'm Inception-poisoned, but there's years worth of coincidence and random stuff that is wildly unexplained ("Jack Shephard" being mis-spelled nearly every way you can do it on hospital signs and business cards and receipts and whatnot in "Something Nice Back Home" for example) that I'm thinking the only explanation is afterlife-esque.

Tell me how those folks survived a fall from 38,000 feet, again? :)
 
Larry Young said:
Claire's medical room being pristine and then days later looking abandoned for years,
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In the theory above where the island light is time, he explains this really well. They go there when it's pristine, then, Locke plays his game with Desmond not pushing the button - time begins to slip by quickly and years pass before he pushes it and stops the flow.

The button is a way to reset time so that the people on the island can live forever.

He says it better...

As for your theory of purgatory, I disagree with it too. :D If the island can make Richard and Jacob don't age, the island can obviously protect people from dying. Somehow.
 
The island and everything that happened there was REAL. IT WAS NOT purgatory. The "future flashes" were more purgatory than the island was.
 
Larry, I agree with your thought in that I also believe the writers planned on the island directly being purgatory from the beginning and switched it up midstream when so many people began calling that out. There are so many references to it early on, none more clear than when Jack states, "Three days ago we all died. We should all be able to start over."

The fact that Christian says everything that happened was "real" is unreliable. All their experiences were real to them no matter what "flashway" they were. There is certainly a great deal of evidence to support multiple theories. There's a classic line that great writers, "show me, don't tell me." That these talented story tellers would have to hit the audience over the head and tell us everything was real diminishes the experience for me and calls it into question.
 
I wouldn't doubt that they had planned on making it purgatory - but I also don't have a problem with the switch and going with the new direction, which I personally like better.

There are things that do point to it not being purgatory and that the Jacob/MIB/Notmom story was intended from the beginning, most notably the adam and eve bodies and the black and white rocks.

As a writer myself I know that my novel has evolved as I write to be much better and more interesting than what I initially thought it was going to be. Characters that were going to be minor supportive subplots ended up pivotal to the entire story arch.

Bottom line- it was excellent writing and they tied up MOST of what they had laid out to work with. If they had told us too much at the beginning it might have been impossible to do the switch, for some maybe it was - not for me. :)

:love Lost
 
Guri said:
There are things that do point to it not being purgatory and that the Jacob/MIB/Notmom story was intended from the beginning, most notably the adam and eve bodies and the black and white rocks.
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The "Adam and Eve" bodies are what you call a "story bomb;" something you plant to make something interesting out of later. I'd bet you a dollar when they did that, they didn't have any idea what it'd turn out to be specifically, and certainly not the bodies of MiB and Fake Mom. Just based on Jack saying from the decomposition, it looked like they'd been there about fifty years...

With the Jughead time-travel stuff, and the bomb being brought there fifty years before, it looked to me like they were setting up Sawyer and Kate sacrificing themselves in the past to save their friends.

Honestly, this show had so many smart people in the audience working the narrative together that to stay ahead of the hive mind the writer's room just had to tap dance faster than what makes sense, I'm thinking.
 
I'm even more confused having read all this than when I started. I may just have to buy the box set lol.
 
Larry Young said:
Honestly, this show had so many smart people in the audience working the narrative together that to stay ahead of the hive mind the writer's room just had to tap dance faster than what makes sense, I'm thinking.
Click to expand...

That's probably true, but also what made it an even better show than it would have been. :)

What would be ideal is to have a 'hive mind' focus group for a story like this that would put the pressure on the writers and then to be able to go back and fix everything so it works perfectly together. **

I'm satisfied that they did well enough for what they had to work with and what they made out of it. It's better entertainment than most of what's out there, and that's the bottom line.

I'd love to see them collaborate on another series where they could implement some of the lessons they learned.

You know, what they SHOULD do is write a book about the experience and the ideas they had, where they were going to go, why they changed their minds and what they would do differently if they were starting over. That would be a fascinating read.


**This is why I'm not even trying to publish anything until all 3 books of my trilogy are written and edited with beta reader inputs. It's WAY too complicated to risk the end not fitting together with the rest of it. I rely very heavily on my readers to tell me what they picked up and what questions they have to know if the story and mysteries are flowing the way I want. Lost is a huge inspiration and I learned so much by watching on what NOT to do when putting hints of mysteries in. :D
 
Here's a new question...
When Jack goes all 'mad at dad' psycho on the mirrors in the lighthouse, he grabs a telescope to do it. Why is it facing the wrong direction? When you look out over the sea you look out the small end... but Jacob has left his facing the WRONG direction!!

lostblooperornot.jpg


How can they not have explained why???



;)
 
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