LOST - the unanswered questions thread (SPOILER discussion)

[lonepigeon]

Why did the statue have four toes?

Funny, I think I just solved this one...
Alligators only have 4 toes on their hind legs (5 on the front) so the statue was actually anatomically correct.

In all the recent episodes we clearly see that it was an alligator and not a hippo as some fans had speculated.

EDIT - I see that "officially" the statue is said to be Tawaret, the hippo, and not Sobek, the alligator. If so that's the worst hippo sculpture I've ever seen (not to mention Tawaret is supposed to be female and pregnant).
Either way hippos also only have 4 toes.

 

[Megamicrofish]

How come Jack didn't say the magic (Latin/greek whatever) words before giving the water to Hurley to make him the keeper ?

 

[oblagon]

Food drops were done by helicopter to supply the Swan station button pushers. See this page: http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Food_drops

but as I mentioned, helicopters kept crashing anytime they went near the island. Not to mention the problem of keeping the helicopter and food drop on course.

I doubt there was a group of Dharma left with a huge catapult lauching food to the other side of the island. Seems a bit silly and also the show made it quite clear that Dharma and everyone who was not a other was wiped out.

 

[MegaPrime33]

Why did the statue have four toes?
Why did the smoke monster sound familiar to Rose?
Why did the donkey wheel always teleport you to tunisia?
Why didn't the jughead bomb kill everyone? What happened to the fallout from it exploding?
Who released smokey from his cabin prision?
When did the cabin become a prision?

Those are the questions I can think of right now off the top of my head.

1) As other mentioned, the statue was of an Egyptian god that was not in human form.

2) I read somewhere that the clicking sound the smoke monster makes sounds similar to a catscan machine. Remember that Rose had cancer and probably had several catscans. I dont know if this is true or not, it's not really based on facts from the show, but its the only logical answer I've found.

3)There is as far as I know no explanation as to why Tunisia was chosen or is "the exit". However, it is always the point or spot where the person who turns the wheel is brought and also in what we would consider present time. When Ben pushed the wheel, he ended up 10 months in the future in tunisia from the island time. When Locke pushed the wheel, we are lead to believe he was in the time frame on the island before the statue was destroyed, but ended up in Tunisia, presumably, present time, in which Widmore's people picked him up.

4)The bomb did go off, as we saw Jack, Sawyer, Kate, etc. get thrown back and there was a large crater in the ground. It also caused them to shift to present time, as oppose to 1977. My theory is that it has something to do with the electromagnetic energy and it somehow shielded/absorbed the blast. Remember that the Army had done testing on that island for awhile as well. They probably saw their bombs act in a similar way.

5,6)The cabin was never a prison for MIB. It was built by Horace Goodspeed, a dharma member, before the purge. It was then thought to be used by Jacob. When Ilana and a couple of others went there, they noticed the ash line to be broken. After looking through the cabin Ilana said that Jacob is no longer there and that it was being used by someone else. At no point was it ever referred to as a prison.

 

[dfrey79]

Weren't all the kids from the flight kidnapped by the Others. What happened to all the kids? Maybe they did explain this and I missed it.

 

[MegaPrime33]

The kids were in the Temple with Cindy. When MIB came and said to them, you can either join him or die, Cindy took the kids and joined him. Since, that's basically the last we've seen or heard from them, it is presumed that they are still on the island, when all that stuff went down.

 

[Gigatron]

The whole plot point of MiB not being able to leave, seems to have been completely pointless. He couldn't leave in Smokey form. In order to leave, he had to be human. Un-cork the island, smokey turns human, heads to america - so friggen what? Now he's just a normal guy - not this huge, evil cloud of smog that can kill millions. Chances are, he'd get hit by a bus and we'd be done with him.

So, a thousand years ago, they un-cork the island, the island sinks, killing everyone on it, including smokey. No plane crashes, no one else's lives are ruined, problem solved. It doesn't seem to have any noticeable effect on the rest of the world. It's a self-contained problem and solution.

So, what was the point of a protector and monster that couldn't go anywhere or do anything, even if they wanted?

-Fred

 

[oblagon]

1)
5,6)The cabin was never a prison for MIB. It was built by Horace Goodspeed, a dharma member, before the purge. It was then thought to be used by Jacob. When Ilana and a couple of others went there, they noticed the ash line to be broken. After looking through the cabin Ilana said that Jacob is no longer there and that it was being used by someone else. At no point was it ever referred to as a prison.

The cabin was a prision for MIB. When Ben took Locke to the cabin for the first time it wasn't Jacob who was there. Illyana even commented that it was a prison and that Jacob hadn't been there for a long time. Not to mention the ash that surrounded the cabin. Which we now know contains smokey as he can't cross it.
Although they never did explain how Goodspeed's cabin became inhabited by the MIB or why. Or why/when Ben started going there as Richard it seems always knew Jacob lived in the statue (as seen in his backstory).

I guess all the questions can be summed up with the immortal words of Lucy Lawless "A wizard did it". :lol (just had to throw a simpsons joke in there)

 

[dfrey79]

This is a great point. For a while now, they were telling us how "bad" it would be if he leaves. Turns out the only way he can leave is as a mortal. So unless he became the next Hitler or something, how much harm could he do? Nothing as catastrophic as they claimed.

I thought he also said he had to kill all the candidates before he could leave. So even if he uncorked the island, he still had to kill all the candidates, right? He failed to do that. But maybe that rule changed once Jack was the new protector, maybe he just had to kill Jack. I don't know.

The whole plot point of MiB not being able to leave, seems to have been completely pointless. He couldn't leave in Smokey form. In order to leave, he had to be human. Un-cork the island, smokey turns human, heads to america - so friggen what? Now he's just a normal guy - not this huge, evil cloud of smog that can kill millions. Chances are, he'd get hit by a bus and we'd be done with him.

So, a thousand years ago, they un-cork the island, the island sinks, killing everyone on it, including smokey. No plane crashes, no one else's lives are ruined, problem solved. It doesn't seem to have any noticeable effect on the rest of the world. It's a self-contained problem and solution.

So, what was the point of a protector and monster that couldn't go anywhere or do anything, even if they wanted?

-Fred

 

[oblagon]

The whole plot point of MiB not being able to leave, seems to have been completely pointless. He couldn't leave in Smokey form. In order to leave, he had to be human. Un-cork the island, smokey turns human, heads to america - so friggen what? Now he's just a normal guy - not this huge, evil cloud of smog that can kill millions. Chances are, he'd get hit by a bus and we'd be done with him.

So, a thousand years ago, they un-cork the island, the island sinks, killing everyone on it, including smokey. No plane crashes, no one else's lives are ruined, problem solved. It doesn't seem to have any noticeable effect on the rest of the world. It's a self-contained problem and solution.

So, what was the point of a protector and monster that couldn't go anywhere or do anything, even if they wanted?

-Fred

I think some would argue that the world we saw the island sunk didn't matter from a danger, end of the world point of view. As in that world (if you will) all the losties were dead and they created that "waiting room" themselves.

But I would agree that there needed to be a better explaintion of the stakes at hand in the real world. Once the cork was removed perhaps show various parts of the world being affected in some way.

 

[Guri]

MIB told Jacob that some day he could make up his own game with his own rules - and that's what he did... one of those rules was that MIB couldn't leave.

But those were his rule and didn't apply to the next protector. Just like Ben told Hurley, not letting people leave was just how Jacob ran things.

It's kind of like Not-Mom not being keen on others coming to the island and Jacob actually BROUGHT people.

Once Jack became protector he probably had a choice to continue with those rules, or not - and to a point he did start to do things differently than how Jacob said he should do it... he let MIB put Desmond into the light....

I need to watch it again to be clear on this, but basically, I think the protectors get to make up their own rules...

 

[Larry Young]

This is a great point. For a while now, they were telling us how "bad" it would be if he leaves. Turns out the only way he can leave is as a mortal. So unless he became the next Hitler or something, how much harm could he do? Nothing as catastrophic as they claimed.

I never thought there'd be some sort of Bay/Emmerlich end-of-the-world scenario; I gathered it'd be much more insidious than that. Jacob and MiB had been playing their Man is Corruptible/No, he's inherently Good game for at least 2000 years. Fake Mom said that if the light went out in the heart of the Island, it'd go out everywhere. I took that to mean that the Good/Evil balance the Island was protecting for the world would tip towards the Evil, and mankind would destroy itself with a human MiB at the lead.

So I think the Next Hitler would have been the least of Man's worries; MiB would have been Evil Incarnate, let loose in the world in human form.

 

[ghostryder]

Unanswered L O S T questions - the video:

http://www.collider.com/2010/05/24/some-unanswered-lost-questions/

 

[Aegis159]

Unanswered L O S T questions - the video:

http://www.collider.com/2010/05/24/some-unanswered-lost-questions/

very nice find!

 

[dfrey79]

I get annoyed when I read things like... "the story was never about the things happening on the island... it's always been about the character development..." or something to that nature.

I say BS.

For 6 years, every episode linked to another mystery on the Island. It's what we ALL talked about on the countless threads. Every one of us.

Let's count the threads about character development (not saying there weren't any) vs. threads about the crazy stuff happening on the Island. I'm sure it's a landslide.

So stop telling me it was always about the characters!!!!!! :angry

 

[Knightsaber]

It was always about the characters with a really interesting sci-fi show used as a vector to keep our interest.

 

[Treadwell]

4)The bomb did go off, as we saw Jack, Sawyer, Kate, etc. get thrown back and there was a large crater in the ground.

The crater was from when the hatch blew up after Desmond turned the key seasons ago. The bomb never went off.

 

[wackychimp]

This is a great point. For a while now, they were telling us how "bad" it would be if he leaves. Turns out the only way he can leave is as a mortal. So unless he became the next Hitler or something, how much harm could he do? Nothing as catastrophic as they claimed.

I don't think that it was that MIB was going to kill everything on the whole planet. It was "very bad" for him to leave because the "light" had to go out in order for him to do so. The light going out was the bad part.

I take it that MIB was maybe a bad guy (he did kill lots of people after all) but he wasn't the devil who would take over the earth if he left.

 

[dropshipbob]

What about the Hanso corporation and the guy running it? He too seemed interested in the island...not to mention the captain of the Black Rock was named Hanso.

When the Black Rock was marooned on the island, evetyone on board was killed except Richard. Then later, his wife/girl friend just shows up, the smoke monster appears and kills her, but later on, MIB says he had nothing to do with that?

What was that all about? How did she get there and why did he not admit to killing her? Further more, why did MIB kill her?

To *try* to answer an earlier question about what happened to the kids the others kidnapped, I assume they were killed.
They went with Smokelocke, and at one point Widmore started shelling them. The only ones we see emerge from that unharmed are Jack and Smokey, so I assumed they were all killed, along with any others that defected to Smokies side.

 

[the_batdemon]

Why did the statue have four toes?
Same reason it has a dog head... it's an ancient god that wasn't human in form.

I thought it was a hippo head, representing the god of rebirth.

okay, all the original others were killed. where did the current ones come from? more shipwrecks after Richard's ?
Julia came after the purge, who was funding the initiative then? Ben?