Lost Season 6 - RE: LA X

yup

and they were on the island, and they left it at some unspecified point.

didn't faraday explain the goal of the bomb was to make it so they'd never end up on the island in the first place? (meaning once they set off the bomb, they don't have to set it off "again")

in the original reality yes. the alt reality is defined by them never having been on the island...the memories they awaken being from the original.

in the original reality yes. the alt reality is defined by them never having been on the island

At home, Ben stares at his reflection in the microwave as he waits for the frozen turkey dinner for his father, Roger. While changing his father's oxygen tank, Ben reflects on how unimportant he feels at his job, especially given he has a PhD degree. Roger says he wished better for Ben and that is why he signed up with the DHARMA Initiative and moved them to the Island when Ben was a child. Roger wonders aloud whether their lives would have been better if they had stayed on the Island.

I know this is par for the course with Lost by this point but Richard casually mentioning he KNOWS WHAT THE ISLAND IS and everyone else basically shrugging it off is some next-level ridiculous.

oh come on...he meant jacob's "the island is a bottle of wine/needs to be corked" analogy from ab aeterno

polyphonic i'm just talking about the 815 people

oic

they're as wise to that kind of shit as we are, surely. "Yeah we know, the island is................ our destiny"

Oh yeah I'd forgotten the bottle of wine thing.

yeah, no 815ers were ever on the island in altworld - all stuff involving them before the bomb was wiped out too

but the bomb was set off by 815ers!

time travel storyline be paradoxin'

yeah this still confuses me massively

there's no paradox, the whole point of alternate universes is that they allow you to have time travel without paradoxes

ehh

it's not really a parallel universe; it's defined by SOMETHING happening/not happening that did happen/didn't happen in the regular timeline

i mean, they could have done a parallel universe where ben's father never went to the island, or where jack never trained to be a doctor, or where kate never took up a lyfe of crime, but they didn't

How do we know it's defined that way?

uh thats kind of how parallel universes all work isnt it? xpost

ok stopping myself before i go on some long-winded diatribe about parallel universe theories in the philosophy of science on the fucking lost thread, what the hell is wrong with me

It is pretty frustrating that after this many sideways flashes we still don't know for sure when or how this alt-timeline branched off. Does Marvin Candle remember Le Fleur and his adult son from the island? Did wiping out the 815 crash somehow also wipe away the 1950 and 1977 contacts the Others and Dharma made with the 815ers? (And if so then how did the Incident go down?) Did MIB escape or drown? Does Eloise know shit about the original TL the same way Libby & Daniel (& now Hurley, Charlie, & Desmond) do, or is she still on some Timelord steez?

Doesn't seem like there's time to answer all of this as well as provide the Island mythology in 5 more hours (4 without the commercials.)

Or I guess the finale is 2 hours--so 6 more hours.

the only certain thing that separates sideways from the original is that oceanic 815 never crash in the sideways, right? so the 815ers never make any contact with the dharma

But they were already there in 1977 and earlier. You can branch off timelines but you can't yank shit out of the past.

too hard to suss that out. the island sank for some reason.

+ also desmond never got on the yacht

but it's not like they were on the island in 77 before they were there in 2004, so it's not really yanking shit out of the past

It is pretty frustrating that after this many sideways flashes we still don't know for sure when or how this alt-timeline branched off.

yes it is, because here we are two thirds of the way in and we still don't know what's at stake. we sort of know where our rooting interest is supposed to lie but we certainly don't know what we're rooting for. and none of our leads has yet done a goddamn thing for their own reasons.

still...

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100219000451/lostpedia/images/thumb/d/d7/S6cast.jpg/800px-S6cast.jpg

the way I see is there's a fork in time at the time of the explosion in 1977. You have one timeline with the crash and another without. everything before is the same. Since the 815ers went back in time to 1974, they are in the common past of both timelines.

xp

So Ben and Roger Linus left the island after the explosion?

A lot of this makes my head hurt, but:
http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Benjamin_Linus_(flash-sideways_timeline)/Theories

do we know that Ben and Roger Linus weren't on the submarine that left the island before the explosion?

though I guess since Pierre Change is still alive, that means the island didn't sink immediately after the explosion.

the way I see is there's a fork in time at the time of the explosion in 1977. You have one timeline with the crash and another without. everything before is the same. Since the 815ers went back in time to 1974, they are in the common past of both timelines.

xp

― peter in montreal, Friday, April 16, 2010 6:05 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

but they couldn't have travelled back to 1974 unless they had crashed in 2004

the 815ers from the crash timeline traveled back to 1974, not the non-crash timeline 815ers. in the non-crash timeline, the 815ers that appear in 1974 are 815ers from the crash timeline.

the way I see is there's a fork in time at the time of the explosion in 1977. You have one timeline with the crash and another without. everything before is the same. Since the 815ers went back in time to 1974, they are in the common past of both timelines.

OTM. If this doesn't turn out to be the case I'm not going to watch another season of this show.

time travel storyline be paradoxin'

You have one timeline with the crash and another without. everything before is the same

but this is not true is it? there are differences in the alt-timeline before the crash (sun + jin aren't married ...jack has kids!)

it is a paradox

and generally lol at ppl talking about how alternate universes work like we should all remember it from physics class

Nobody in alt universe has a beard that shouldn't have a beard, therefore I call bullshit.

Why is forking more palatable than universe coughing up a completely separate timeline? They've already established that the LOST island/universe goes to some pretty ridiculous lengths to bend people on certain paths, and a nuke is a great device wherein the island/universe is stretched beyond its abilities to do it to the point where it's forced to vomit them out into alt-verse. We've seen forking and parallel universes on TV before, but I don't think we've seen barfing pocket-verses yet -- this is progress!

i think we will only find out the real nature of the alt. timeline in the finale. i reckon detonating the bomb did absolutely nothing except cause the 'incident' that crashed the plane in the first place.

but who detonated the nuclear bomb in the alt timeline? THIS IS THE QUESTION

everyone keeps telling me its a 'fork' but can someone actually explain where this fork happens - it's not a fork. they blew up a bomb and then were transported into the future and then we saw them on a plane.

does the island look nuked in the alt. timeline? didn't someone say upthread that turning the donkey wheel actually sinks the island?

It looks as though they are playing it so that the explosion in 1977 meant they never went to the island EVER, not even in 1974 as they would have needed to be on-island to travel back to 1974 in the first place. That way they can make the differences in their lives more far-reaching eg Jack having kids. Also they would otherwise have to explain away how these people were on the island (in 1974) before having been born yet, fucking up their memories, or whatever. Keeps things "simpler" for the explosion to mean none of the 815ers have experienced the island at all.

I do think they should address all this though, as it's kind of central to what they're trying to say.

they are in the common past of both timelines

i don't think so and would be quite annoyed if this somehow turned out to be the case. as has been said there are too many unrelated differences in the alt. i don't want the parallel universe thing either tho and they did say they wouldn't be doing that Heroes-type shit...so hoping they're doing something beyond and better than that but no idea what.

guess we can't see Michael in alt world because of the Walt issue. surely he'll re-appear tho...seems silly just to have him pop up as a mere island ghost (however useful it was for hurley).

if any oceanic 815er is on the island in 1974 they would also remember crashing in 2004, but in the sideways this never happens ergo they are not in the island in the 70s xp

basically we need to know what the donkey wheel is don't we?

jacob's wine bottle explanation doesn't rele deal with the wheel that makes the island disappear and jump through time

Something else that always bugs me - why do dead people suddenly acquire a whole bunch of super-knowledge relevant to the livings' interests? Michael didn't really have a clue about anything on-island, why is he now wise to the big picture?

- the island is constantly moving (eloise says thats why they need the pendulum to find it)????
- 'jacob' told locke to move the island (so move it more than its already moving?)???
- time runs at a difference pace on the island?
- the wheel that moves in the island if not pushed correctly makes people skip through time?

i don't consider myself part of the 'answers' brigade but will feel annoyed if we don't get some closure on this stuff

i thought the consensus was that the dead ppl aren't actually ghosts but smokey or the island appearing as ppl...until last week when we were told they were ghosts

lol what a ridiculous show <3

There needs to be a showdown between Hurley and Miles where Miles uses his human black-box playback to hear a dead guy say one thing, then a ghost of that guy say something else to Hurley -- and it turns out the things talking to Hurley aren't really dead, cause all those hurley ghosts are pretty manipulative.

Alt timeline?

http://auntiefashion.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/carol-alt.jpg

I've never thought the ghosts or hallucinations were Smokey unless it's been made obvious (eg Alex. Maybe Nemi). Hurley's always seen "ghosts" and the Smoke monster being able to appear as people has only really been implied up until the Locke thing where it was made pretty clear. Also can't remember clearly, but I thought the ppl Hurley saw couldn't be seen by anyone else - except for that time dead Charlie came to the mental institute.

Early on I'm "happy" with the assumption that most of em were hallucinations or something, just a plot device to prompt the flashbacks - even as much as a whole episode (when Locke gave Boone the LSD head-paste). Not sure about Christian, though.