Lost ends in just five days. For some, it’s been a fact that’s just too hard to accept. I’ve personally seen and talked to people who are avoiding any bit of this last season, just so they can postpone the end a little longer. Sadly, that still won’t stop it. Everyone jumped for joy three years ago when we heard that the Lost big wigs had negotiated an end date for the series with ABC. We were thrilled to know there would be no threat of cancellation, and that in three short years, our patience will have paid off, and all our questions would be answered.
As season six marches on towards its finale, we’re slowly learning that’s not exactly the case. The producers have said on multiple occasions that not everything is going to be answered. When it’s all said and done, some mysteries are going to remain unsolved. To be honest…I’m OK with this. Unlike most fans out there, I’m perfectly fine with not having every single question answered. I like the idea that when the show ends, we’ll still have things to theorize about and ponder over. What fun would Lost be if it just neatly wrapped everything up?
That being said, there are a few questions I personally feel can’t be avoided. I’m not concerned with things like “Who built the statue?” or “Where did the hieroglyphics come from?” Those things just aren’t important to me. The obvious theory on both is that some culture with ties to Egypt did both. I don’t care about how the US military got to the island, and what they did there. None of that is important. It’s all just historical stuff that really doesn’t have any bearing on the resolution of the series. What I want to see answered are the questions that are more based in the mythology and mysticism that the series has established.
I’ve put together a list of eight mysteries I want resolved before Lost ends. Now I know there are going to be disputes to my list, but let’s keep in mind that this is MY list. If you don’t agree, don’t start with the e-bashing like a tough guy, and just make your own list. Feel free to comment and tell me why you disagree and what changes you’d make.
These are in no particular order…
How Does Ms. Hawking Know so Much?
Ever since season three, we’ve seen Eloise Hawking come in, drop a piece of knowledge about timelines, and the way things work, and then disappear until the next season. Well now, we’re at the end. There’s no “next season” for her to show up in. If we don’t get resolution on this now, then it’ll be one of those things that goes unanswered. I don’t want that. I want to know what the deal is with this woman, and I want to know who appointed her to the role of Time Cop.
She seems to know everything there is to know when it comes to things like time travel, island mystery, and alternate realities. But how is this possible? We know she has a history on the island, and eventually left at some point. Was she given this knowledge by Jacob in an attempt to make sure he has an off-island assistant?
I feel like the chances of Ms. Hawking being brought back at this point are pretty slim. She may make an appearance in the alternate reality, once she learns what Desmond is up to. I highly doubt she’s going to be mentioned at all in our main island story.
What is the Smoke Monster?
Every time we’ve seen the infamous Smoke Monster, we’ve learned a little bit about him. This goes all the way back to the pilot when it was just a rumbling in the jungle. Since then, we’ve been learning the true purpose of the “creature” little by little, for six seasons. In Across the Sea, we learned how the smoke monster came to be. Jacob threw his brother in the cave of light, and out came a pillar of destructive smoke. As far as I’m concerned, this is just the latest incarnation of the monster. I’m with the group who believes there’s been more than one smoke monster in island history, and before MIB, it was his mother. I’m not going to argue that point here, but if you want to read more on my crazy ideas on this, you can head over to the forums where we’ve been debating this topic all week.
Even though we’ve seen how the monster came to be, we didn’t actually learn why it exists. We just know it’s afraid of sonic fences, it has the ability to take the form of dead people, and it’s really good at making some people dead. We have yet to get any clue as to what its true purpose is. Is the smoke monster the true protector of the island? Is it just a judgment system for those who have done wrong? What?
One thing we can assume, is that the smoke monster was around before Jacob and his brother. Why am I assuming this? Well, if we look back to last season’s episode Dead is Dead, we’ll remember Ben’s trip to the ruined temple-ish place. While here, we saw hieroglyphic drawings of smoke monster worship. Now, with last episode taking place some time around 23-43 A.D., these hieroglyphics obviously predate Jacob and his brother. This means that the smoke monster predates them as well. So it’s pretty old.
With MIB getting more desperate, and willing to put it all on the line, I have a feeling our answers about the smoke monster are coming soon.
How does Jacob leave the Island?
Since about season three, we’ve seen that the island is both very difficult to, as well as leave. It seems to take a specific bearing to make the magical trip. We’ve seen people come and go via helicopter, boat, plane, and submarine. In the season five finale, we learned that Jacob had visited different characters at pivotal moments in their lives. The only question that was left unanswered was…how the heck did he get to these places?
We know that his brother can’t leave the island. Is this just because he’s also the smoke monster? Obviously Jacob has a means of leaving the island, but what is it? This is one of those questions that I’m going to file under “Not Likely to be Answered.” I just have a feeling we’re not going to get any resolution on it, because of the simple fact that when it’s all said and done, this won’t be that important. There are much bigger things at stake here, and the facts of how Jacob comes and goes from the island just really don’t seem that important.
Would I like this to be resolved? Of course I would. This is definitely one of the least important questions on the list, but it’s still something that’s nagging in the back of my brain. I’d also group this one together with questions like “How in the heck do the Others get across the island so quickly?” The secret tunnel debate has been going strong for six years now. Maybe Jacob has secret tunnels to the main land?
How does the lighthouse work?
The lighthouse was shown for just a few minutes earlier in season six. Hurley brought Jack there, because Jacob told him to. In the end, it seems as if Jacob wanted Jack to go there so that Jack could discover his purpose. By seeing this lighthouse device that somehow had the ability to peer into his life, he was supposed to realize that he was being chosen for something, for a higher purpose.
While I personally thought the introduction of the lighthouse was awesome, it left me begging for more. I was yearning to learn how the lighthouse worked. What was the magical power that was harnessed in order for this device to look into the lives of our characters? While I’m not concerned with who built the statue, or drew the hieroglyphics, I am concerned with who built the lighthouse, and how they made it work. Was it Jacob? It has the same design style as the temple, so putting two and two together, I would just assume that the two were built by the same group of people.
The only reason I’d care about who built the temple, would be to learn who built the lighthouse. It had to have been a group, and not just Jacob by himself. These things are obviously too intricate and contain too many large stones for one person to put together by himself. And was the lighthouse built with the idea of using it as a method of peeking into Jack’s windows? If I had to venture a guess, it’d be that the lighthouse was built first, just to be used as your typical lighthouse. It was then repurposed by Jacob as a method of scoping out his candidates. But how did he make it work this way?
And speaking of candidates…
How are the candidates chosen?
Why Jack? Why Sawyer? Why Hurley? What makes these characters more special than anyone else on the planet? None of them really share much in common, other than their obvious daddy issues. Is that what Jacob bases his decisions on? Since he never had a daddy, he spontaneously chooses candidates based on those who had daddy issues as well? Jack’s dad was an alcoholic, Sawyer’s killed himself and his mom, Hurley’s abandoned him and his mother, only to come back for the money. Heck, even Kate’s dad was an alcoholic douchebag who beat her mom. But there has to be more to the selection process than that…right?
And why was Kate’s name crossed off? I understand the obvious crossing off of anyone who’s died, but what determines the crossing off of those who are still alive? Kate was crossed off, but what did she do differently than the others? Was it because she took Aaron and raised her as her own? Come to think of it, the only thing that does make her different would be the fact that she became a parent. Maybe you can’t be protector of the island if you’re a parent.
That leads us to possibly unlocking more criteria for determining a candidate. Jack, Sawyer, Hurley, Locke, Kate…they all don’t have any real family ties. None of them have siblings. I mean, Jack has Claire, but they’re really not family in the traditional sense. They just met and have no emotional ties to each other, so for the purpose of figuring out candidate selection, we’re going to just say Jack has no siblings. As we’ve said before, none of them have strong parental ties. Jack’s mom hates him for what happened to his father. Kate’s mom hates her for killing her dad. Hurley’s parents are both really only interested in the money. Both of Sawyer’s parents are dead. Locke doesn’t know his mom, and his dad’s screwed him over multiple times.
None of them have children, until Kate took Aaron and raised her off-island. And none of them have significant others. Jack had Sarah, but then lost her. Did Jack’s name get crossed off when he was married? Or was it just assumed he would eventually lose her and therefore it didn’t matter?
I feel like this won’t be answered in the way I’m hoping, but I think some resolution will come. Jacob obviously has to choose one of the candidates, and I feel like it’d be pretty silly if one of them was chosen without so much as asking why. If I were about to be entrusted with the sacred duty of protecting this mysterious and strangely powerful island, I’d at least want to know why. Wouldn’t you? I expect this to be touched upon, but never fully disclosed.
What’s the purpose of the alternate timeline?
Let me just say that this better get answered, or else I’m going to be more than disappointed. If none of the other questions on this list get answered, I’ll be upset. But if we end up wasting an entire season with this alternate timeline as our side story, and we never learn what it’s all about, I’m going to be furious. So far, I’ve hated the alternate timeline idea. It’s shown glimpses of being awesome, but then they waste far too much time with things character’s like Kate, Sun and Jin, and Sayid. It’s obvious they’re trying to go somewhere with this, and I’m guessing it’s all going to involve Jack and Desmond figuring everything out. But so far they haven’t given us any reason to care about the above mentioned characters.
I’m sorry to sound like such a negative Nancy on this subject, but I really don’t care about this alternate timeline. As I’ve said on the forums, the end result of it better be mind-blowing or else I’m going to be left with a bitter taste in my mouth. A few weeks ago, I put up some thoughts I had on what the whole purpose of the alternate timeline was, and got a lot of negative feedback on it (thanks guys!), but no one bothered to serve up any of their own thoughts. Oh well, I can’t win ‘em all.
My basic thought was that this alternate timeline is the result of the characters finally getting what they’ve always wanted. However, this happiness comes with a cost. Just as an example, Sayid is allowed to have Nadia in his life, but he’ll be without her love. I’m not going to get into every character, as that would just be a copy and paste of my previous post, and everyone would just start with the whining again.
Beyond that idea, I’m lacking in any other thoughts as to what the true purpose of our mysterious alternate timeline could be. Anyone out there have any thoughts?
What’s the deal with Walt and Aaron?
I was originally going to use this space to ask “What is the Source?” But I feel that this is something that’s definitely going to be touched on in the next couple episodes, and as of right now I don’t really have any thoughts or ideas on it.
Instead of that question, I’m going to take one from the forums that a lot of people have been asking for. It seems that a lot of people want to know what the deal with Walt is. No one mentioned Aaron, but I threw him in as I feel he falls into the same category as Walt. Going all the way back to season one, we’ve been told that these two characters are special. The Other tried on a couple occasions to kidnap both of them, and even succeeded with Walt.
Aaron was born on the island. Before his mother, Claire, even got on the plane, we were told that her baby was going to be special. Her psychic pal, Richard Malkin, warned her to never let the baby be raised by another. It’s even thought that he had Claire get on the plane, because he knew it would crash and she’d be forced to raise him on her own. I guess he never saw Kate coming into the picture. The Others wanted Aaron, and were willing to cut him out of Claire to get him. This seemed like one of the biggest mysteries of the first season, and then it just kind of faded into the background.
Maybe Aaron was never really that special. Or maybe as we went along, the producers realized they just didn’t want to continue with this and let it fade away, hoping we’d forget about it. Well guess what? We haven’t, and we want to know what the deal is! Is Aaron special or not? Is he going to play into the end game somehow? Why was it always so important for him to be raised by Claire, but then everything seemed fine once Kate took him off the island? The chances of any of these questions getting answered seems very unlikely.
Walt’s story is similar to Aaron’s in the fact that we were told he was very special. The Others took him at the end of season one, in our first big finale twist, and ran some tests on him all throughout the next season. Michael went on a quest to find him, and was asked some strange questions about him appearing in places he wasn’t actually in. The Others straight up said he was special, but agreed to return him to Michael when they realized they got more than they asked for.
But why? Unfortunately, puberty hit, and the actor that played Walt was growing up a little too fast. This caused the character to be written out of the show before we could get any answers. With all the time travel, I was hoping they’d be able to work this in as a way to bring Walt back in and answer some of these questions. Instead, the character went from being very special and important to just appearing once a season. I’m fully expecting Walt to show up in the finale. I’m not sure what context it will be in, but so far we’ve seen just about every character from the first couple seasons show up in some way. And with Walt being one of the more important characters from these early seasons, I’d be shocked if he didn’t show up too. While he shows up, I don’t think we’re going to get much more resolution on his character, and that’s just sad.
What’s the deal with Desmond?
To me, this is the biggest question I have. There are so many unanswered questions surrounding Desmond, and I truly believe his character is going to be the key to the entire show. Desmond was brought into the picture as the answer to the biggest question from season one: “What the heck is in the hatch?!” It turned out Desmond was down there saving the world, one button press at a time. When things got to be too much for Des, he bailed, leaving the responsibilities on the shoulders of John Locke. And when things got to be too much for Locke, he convinced Desmond to let the timer run down to zero, causing the eventual turning of the fail safe key.
The result of turning the key was a hatch implosion, which rocketed Desmond back to a previous point in his life, allowing to relive it for just a couple days. Was it the hatch implosion that made Desmond special, or was he special before he turned the key, and that’s what allowed him to survive. Or is it all just a chicken-egg situation, and impossible to answer? My theory is that it’s a little bit of both. Desmond’s always been special. Just as Jack, and the others were always being watch by Jacob, Desmond was always meant to come to the island and turn the key. Once he did, the electromagnetic force just further strengthened the special abilities that he had yet to tap into on his own.
Back in December, before season six started, I wrote up a whole article dedicated to Desmond. Many of the theories I put together in that article, I still stand by. Back then, I had thought that Desmond may even be Jacob’s son, but as we go on, this is looking less likely. I still think Desmond is special, but not Jacob’s son special. I really hope we get resolution as to why exactly Desmond is so different from every other character we’ve encountered. All our other characters, we’ve gotten hard details on their lives, going back to childhood. In Desmond’s case, we’ve only gotten bits and pieces. In a show where character development is so important, why does this character remain so mysterious with just two episodes left. We know more about Jacob’s childhood than we do about Desmond’s.
When all the dust settles, I believe Lost is going to come down to two characters. Jack will be there to take on the role of island protector. It has to be Jack, because at the heart of this show, Lost is about Jack. Jack will take Jacob’s place and live forever as the guardian on the sacred island, until it’s time for him to choose his own replacement. The other character who will be there at the end, will be Desmond. It’s going to take a big type of event to get rid of MIB, and it’s going to take someone who’s pretty darn special to pull it off.
What if that cave is a source of electromagnetic energy? And what if Desmond, since he’s somehow immune to this energy, is able to go into that cave? I’m not sure what he would do in there, because we really have no information on the light cave at this point. But I believe that’ll be a scene in the finale. We’ll see Desmond go into that light cave, and that’s where all our answers to all our questions will finally come from.
Thanks for reading! As I said at the beginning, this is purely opinion, and if yours differs than mine, feel free to hit up the comments. Keep it clean, and spoiler-free, or else you’ll get deleted.
