Two Great Theories That Taste Great Together1

[Vex Machine]

A friend and I, who both enjoy reading and concocting Lost theories but who rarely agree on them, recently had a conversation on the nature of The Island. Oddly, we actually agreed about many things, and as such we got to a few very interesting places.

Of course, after we’d broken off the conversation and tried to separately summarize our mutual ideas, we found that we did in fact differ on many points.


So here they are: 2 very closely related ideas about what’s happening on Lost. We believe these theories to be fresh; we expect that the various bits and pieces that comprise the overall theories have been touched on several times over by fans of the show but we haven’t seen all of these pieces put together in quite this way. Credit wherever it’s due, if it is, in fact, deserved elsewhere.

(More follows in the next few replies...)

[Vex Machine]

Here goes Theorist 1, from what would be the beginning…


In the late 60s or early 1970s, a modestly funded and perhaps privately owned research group/organization/team of scientists opened a portal into an alternate or pocket dimension.


The portal, which existed deep beneath the ocean surface, is connected at one end to an alternate, pocket dimension and what we know as the Island. At the other end, the portal connects to “our world,” off-land of what we currently know as the headquarters of Mittelos Bioscience. The mysterious wire that runs off the island’s beach into the ocean is essentially a tether to the real world. This wire is anchored to the island, runs out through the ocean, and passes through the portal to the Mittelos side. The reason a submarine is needed to travel to and from the island is because it is the only reliable means of mass transport that can follow the wire through the otherwise unseen and untraceable underwater passage. (Don’t worry, we’ll revisit this later with regard to Flight 815, Henry Gale’s balloon, Naomi’s- helicopter, and the food drops.)


Now, whether they were seeking to unlock such a portal or literally stumbled into such a discovery is not important, nor are the scientific how’s and why’s of the discovery. What is important is that this discovery became the impetus for the DHARMA. initiative – a movement specifically engineered to research this amazing new discovery in secret, outside of any political or ethical scope and privately funded by the minds behind the portal’s discovery.


The clandestine nature of the find, the Initiative, and all that followed is the reason for so much of the apparently coincidental crisscrossing of some Lost characters, and of the (seeming) manipulation of others that served to move them toward or away from the Island. Some Losties are directly tied to the original DHARMA group. Others, perhaps, are connected to individuals who escaped with or stumbled upon DHARMA secrets. Some may even be linked to the island’s original inhabitants or are the results of DHARMA experiments that advanced beyond the Island itself.


Whoa whoa whoa… “Island’s original inhabitants?” Yes! The DHARMA researchers were equipped with the scientific know-how and financial resources to exploit their “discovery” of the Island portal, but like Columbus with the Indians, their new world was already inhabited. The healing powers, temporal anomalies, and psychic conundrums that make up the Island’s core mysteries are just the tip of the iceberg. There was also an entire “alien” race inhabiting the pocket dimension. Humanoid, sentient, but not human, these beings were overrun by the eager scientists, used as guinea pigs, and nearly eradicated in the name of science. But, as is wont to happen with alien humanoid beings, these original island dwellers didn’t go quietly. In fact, they didn’t GO at all. Instead, their collective alien lifeforce lived on and grew stronger as their physical forms were wiped out. They took on what is now a very familiar form to us – the black storm cloud of psychic energy. Coming to grips with their dire fate and new phase of evolution, this mass of psychic power began fighting back by feeding off of the raw thoughts and emotions of the DHARMA researchers, and, in an even stranger turn of events, began to take an interest in their human motives, instincts, and curiosities. The psychic cloud discovered that it could even break off and inhabit the empty vessels of dead humans and experience physical life again… and so a PURGE of the remaining DHARMA humans took place, giving the psychic mass new bodies to inhabit. And just like the human minds, the new human bodies offered new and exciting experiences. Thus, the Others were born.


But the Others were trapped by the Island. These psychic alien Island dwellers couldn’t survive for long off the island in their stolen human bodies, nor at all in their smoke form. At least they couldn’t yet. But the Others did have access to all of the DHARMA research and technology, and a tether through the portal to our world. Perhaps in time, they’d uncover a way to spread out into a new world of their own. And so, for many years more, the Others continued with their own variations on the DHARMA experiments, bringing in what they identified as worthy subjects or useful experts (or both) from the other side of the portal, and picking their minds clean of anything and everything they could possibly use in order to unlock the key to survival off the island. This is why some of the hatch experiments seem totally arbitrary or pointless – like the journals from the Pearl piled high in the middle of nowhere – while others seem to have genuine results – development polar bears with enhanced mental abilities was an original DHARMA idea with possible real-world applications. You see, what seems to be a paradise to us, is just a prison to them at this point. They have been decimated and mutated, and now want only to have their own second chance as a species in this wonderful world that they’ve only experienced through the minds of those they bring to the island. What we’ve been seeing recently with the fertility research will actually tie back to the ability or lack of ability for the Others to procreate in their new human bodies. Could Claire and Sun be unwitting Others who were sent out to live away from the island and get knocked up by real human men, specifically for the purpose of returning to the island for the births? Is Kate in the process of being taken over (purged) by part of the island’s psychic collective. (Explaining why she is so aloof yet eager to get impregnated by Sawyer? You know she’ll be pregnant in season 4.)


(Continued in immediate reply...)

[Vex Machine]

So, how did Flight 815 or any other flying machine, get to the island if the portal is underwater? Well… the original portal is under water. One of the core DHARMA experiments was the attempted harnessing of the massive amounts of electromagnetic energy on the island. In fact, following the energy readings from the island may have been what led the initial group through the portal, and may even be what ripped a hole through space and time in the first place. So it may have been during the purge or some other incident that a FIRST purple sky event took place, and a new hole in the fabric of our reality was torn. Perhaps several of these exist. Did Henry Gale balloon through the same portal as Flight 815? Or were these (and other incidents we don’t and may never know about) controlled “accidents” engineered by the Others to bring new subjects to their island?


The regularly scheduled food/supply drops, however, most likely come through the underwater portal – a creation of the original DHARMA, and something the Others realized they needed to continue in order to maintain their new human forms. The helicopter or plane used for the drops came later as a means of getting the supplies dropped deeper into the island, and, of course, after an airship of some kind was assembled on the Other side of the portal or was salvaged after one of their many controlled accidents. Or could the “purple sky events” make the portal bigger… and is the original rift still in the same location, only over time it has expanded out of the water? Whether there are other portals now or just one big (tall) one, the tether and the coordinates that Michael was given to escape the island are key.


And speaking of Michael… what was up with psychic Walt? Well, he was an original island baby born of his island mother, and one of the most successful experiments the Others had ever conducted. The success was first suggested by the fact that the mother was able to survive for many years before succumbing to sudden, violent illness – something that usually happens during pregnancy or immediately at birth. Walt’s psychic powers come from his half-Other heritage, and he and Michael were spared but likely tagged so the Others can check up on Walt’s progress in the future (read: Season 4, when the boy has mysteriously aged at an accelerated rate).


Speaking of aging at an accelerated rate, two other Other babies who were born and raised under very different circumstances and are clearly not in the same age bracket as Walt are Ben and Locke! Ben knows who/what he is, but Locke has no idea (yet).

Other notable characters with mysterious talents born of the island or one of its experiments? Hurley (the master of the numbers) and Desmond (possibly locked in some sort of time/space turmoil that has him bouncing between worlds).


END Theory 1.

[Vex Machine]

And now, Theorist 2 and the Brigadoon Theory of Lost

Many parapsychologists theorize a world that exists just outside of ours. An invisible world where miracles are possible because the rules are all different. There are some parts of the world where this Other universe nearly touches our own: Sedona, Arizona; Tibet; the Bermuda Triangle; maybe even Loch Ness and the center of the Sahara Desert.

These are places where the impossible happens. Places where those people who are sensitive to it can feel the Other world, some even seeing it and interacting with it.

The Island on Lost exists in the Other world, near a place where the 2 worlds are close to each other. But it is also more than that. The Island is a place where the 2 worlds not only exist closely, they occasionally touch. When they do, the Island exists in both places. It becomes part of our world, and on it both worlds exist, only to flash out of our existence in our world sometime later.

Think of the classic Broadway musical Brigadoon, where that mysterious Scottish city emerges for 1 day, once every hundred years. After 1 day, it disappears from this world, and woe to any who happened to visit and didn’t get out in time. While it is unknown how often the Island emerges, and how long it remains as part of this world each time it does emerge, it can be theorized that it appeared hundreds of years ago and caught a slave ship that happened to be passing through the waters it inhabits when it does touch this reality. The Island appeared, and the unfortunate ship, the Black Rock, found itself, quite to the surprise of crew and prisoner, no longer in the water, but stranded on this mysterious land mass. Shortly after, the Island disappeared, taking the ship and its poor inhabitants with it.

The Island appeared again sometime in the 1950s (but there is no reason to believe that it didn’t also appear in the interim), when it was discovered by several researchers including defense engineer Alvar Hanso. Hanso, luckily for him, was not himself trapped by the Island and taken back to the Other world; instead, he remained here, and was able to turn all his resources over to discovering the secrets of this place. Hanso discovered many things early on; great and terrible possibilities for scientific research that existed only on this mysterious Island. Medical achievements, psychological investigations, parapsychological events. The Island seemed almost magical, almost sentient. Of course, Hanso was hoping to find something that could also exist here, on his world.

But there were problems. Political ones. Hanso knew that he’d never be able to learn everything the Island could teach him, not in this world of laws and ethics and business and politicians. But in the Other world, the Private world, he could do whatever he wanted. No rules, no consequences, and no safety concerns. So early on, Hanso had only 1 goal: to control the comings and goings of the Island himself.

Somehow, Hanso figured out how to manipulate the magnetic fluctuations that allowed the Island to become part of our reality. Through some sort of mechanical means, he locked the Island in the Other dimension, the Pocket Dimension. Using what he had learned, he devised a way to open a portal to the Island. This access he granted only to a chosen few.

The machines kept the Island out of the real world by keeping the two worlds from ever touching. The machines utilized the strange electromagnetic anomalies of the Island, and those energies required constant human monitoring and control. Seeing all these needs combined with the myriad research possibilities, he set up the DHARMA Initiative to perform such tasks as maintaining the Island, keeping it locked in its pocket dimension, being gatekeepers of the dimensional portal, and performing experiments. He brought in the finest minds from around the world and gave them bottomless funds and a place where miracles happened. They gave him their lives and countless scientific discoveries, some of which could be applied to the real world, and others which created technology that could only exist on the Island.

The Island itself, though, was in essence being held prisoner. By its very nature, it needed to come through to the real world occasionally. As Hanso built his apparatus, the Island was safely locked away in the pocket dimension. However, a time would come when the Island’s own nature would try to punch through to the real world, and Hanso’s machines would be put to the test. That time came. The Island exerted considerable force to punch through to the real world, and Hanso’s machines failed. The resulting incident was extremely hazardous and damaging to the entire system. As a result, a new system was set up, one that would dissipate the considerable magnetic energies of the Island after a fixed period. The Island would build up energy for a punch-through attempt…and a DHARMA representative would dissipate this energy mechanically…only to have it build up again for another try 108 minutes later. If the Island punched through to the real world while Hanso’s machines were running, the resulting shockwave could be catastrophic. In the event of a major error, a failsafe system was built that would destroy the machines and allow the Island to peacefully pass into the real world, and assume its normal schedule of coming and going from this universe. Of course, this would leave the Island open to being discovered by unwanted third parties, so Hanso hoped the failsafe would never be used.

The need for a human being to push a button every 108 minutes has interesting social psychological implications, which were added to the research being conducted on the Island.

For nearly 50 years (except for the Incident, when it pushed through with catastrophic results), the Island lay hidden from the world. There were comings and goings, surely, to those who knew where and how to look for them, but it seemed no one outside of DHARMA and Hanso did. These comings and goings were through the Hanso/DHARMA created portals, and were sometimes planned and sometimes not. One of these was Oceanic Flight 815. On route from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles, California, the plane went off course and passed through a portal into the Island’s pocket dimension. It seems that this was no accident, that several organizations interested in the Island, both outside and inside the pocket dimension, desired the presence of these passengers on this plane and of this plane on this Island.

Shortly after, an unlikely recruit of the DHARMA Initiative, a Scotsman named Desmond Hume (Brigadoon is a Scottish city, remember), is forced to finally trigger the failsafe that destroys the apparatus that maintains control over the comings and goings of the Island. The entire controlled pocket universe system fails (SYSTEM FAILURE) and the 2 worlds collide in a flash of purple. Immediately, the Island becomes visible to the real world; far away, Penny Widmore’s research team becomes aware of a locator beacon on Desmond’s boat, and are surprised to learn that the boat is on the Island they’d been searching for.

The Island may still be connected to the real world. Or it may have faded from the real world soon after. As explained earlier, we don’t know how much time it spends in this world, or the interval between visits. It stands to reason that the Island has returned to its old schedule of comings and goings. However, it also stands to reason that some organizations still have technology that can open a portal to the pocket dimension. The Others/Mittleos Bioscience might have had such technology, but as John Locke has recently destroyed the submarine that they used to create and travel through a portal, it is unclear whether the Others still have this capability. Perhaps only real-world organizations like DHARMA, Hanso, Oceanic, and Widmore Industries have the capability to return to the Island.

Questions remain: Who are the Others? What else was DHARMA researching? Why do moms and babies die on the Island? Why are some characters displaying psychic powers? What is the smoke monster? While these are not part of this examination, though Theorist 2 has several ideas that could fit within this framework.

END Theory 2.

[Vex Machine]

Sorry this took so many posts to get across. Enjoy the read and tell me what you think.

[pugsy]

Nice! There's a lot of speculation about the smoke monster being a psychic manifestation of one kind or another, but that might be the first time somebody has tied it all into a collective-hostile-souls-bent-on-revenge theme. It fits the current story line nicely and also puts a spin on the Others obsessive interest in children and birth. Personally, however, I'd rather deal with a smoke monster than a cranky 4 year old, but thats just me...

With all the hints the show has been dropping about the space/time continuum I wonder how they are going to explain how flight 815 in this world gets dropped on the island as a result from a local system failure in the Other's world. I'll bet they make some reference to the Philadelphia Experiment.

...which leads me to my next question: Are there any type of Tail Section Awards for the person who is the first to figure out a major theme or the nature of the island? Not only would it be some major bragging rights for the authors of the ideas, it could generate some press for the web site.

[Vex Machine]

Thanks for the thumbs up!