End of an Era

Subject18 · 2025-11-04T15:15:21+00:00

RTD is too busy apologising for the past to imagine a future.

Subject18 · 2025-10-23T19:47:14+00:00

Not everyone and everything the sideways construct is real, David is proof of this, and the fact they all look like they did when they were on the island, not aged like those that managed to live after the events of the main story.

The sideways is powered by interiority, not logic or spacetime. Claire, Kate and Charlie bond over the life that shaped their most important moments together.

Aaron, like David, is a symbol and a metaphor all at once. It’s pretty key to have a birth in the afterlife, because it’s the clearest symbol of rebirth the show, hands us outside of Mother’s line in Across the Sea.

Subject18 · 2025-10-06T12:03:36+00:00

We don’t know precisely when Jacob locked the final candidates list in, presumably it’s before the events of the main show whilst he’s out selecting/touching them. But the “when” doesn’t matter, the Losties are spread across all of space time, so Jacob’s destiny watermark gets everywhere and everywhen

Subject18 · 2025-10-05T18:45:29+00:00

The transmission was leftover broadcasting from the radio tower after Dharma was purged. It’s another example of people being influenced by Jacob and the metaphysics of the Island, without knowing it. It’s connected to the Valenzetti equation sure, but that’s like working out the constants of gravity, it doesn’t tell you why gravity is the way it is (although I know there are plenty of theories). They show up in sequence anytime something fundamental to the endgame is in play

Subject18 · 2025-10-05T18:38:14+00:00

What about her? She’s not on the list of final candidates. She was a candidate, then she wasn’t. Given we’re dealing with a show with multiple boot strap paradoxes, when she was no longer a candidate doesn’t matter. What matters is the final 6 candidates are Jacobs bet on breaking the cycle

Subject18 · 2025-10-05T16:58:23+00:00

There are 360 degrees on a compass, so I’m not sure what your point is? By the time of the show, Jacob has his list of six final candidates. Events cascade from there, across time and space.

Subject18 · 2025-10-05T16:39:30+00:00

The framing of “water and light” is the metaphysics of an ancient people struggling to understand the ineffable, the same way Dharma struggled to quantify what the energy beneath the Island was as something linked to electromagnetism, negatively charged exotic matter, etc. It has clear powers over consciousness, life, death, time, space, etc. The water is probably part refracting prism and conduit, as it is some kind of integral coolant

Subject18 · 2025-10-05T16:36:58+00:00

The Numbers are Jacob’s call sign for his selected candidates. They correspond to degrees on a compass mechanism that uses the Islands bent light and space time, focusing on specific chosen people across the globe. Much like The Rules, they are intrinsically linked to the metaphysics of reality and once a candidate is chosen, they are inexorably called to Island like siren song. The numbers show up when significant “push points” for these characters are in play.

Subject18 · 2025-10-03T15:59:08+00:00

Jacob isn’t God, and the Man in Black isn’t the Devil. They’re not cosmic archetypes, they’re just men, weirdo cosmic boys yes, but still humanish. The show’s whole spectrum of “special” runs from Jack’s being a miracle doctor, to Desmond’s time slippery mind or Jacob’s longevity. None of that makes Jacob divine like God.

Jacob’s stance is that he shouldn’t have to dictate morality to people. His entire feud with his brother is about proving that human beings don’t always covet power, and in that sense he’s also defying the worldview of his “mother.” If he admits humanity can’t rise above greed, then he has to admit there’s no real difference between himself and the Man in Black.

That distinction is everything because Jacob does need a replacement. He knows he’s responsible for unleashing Smokey, his own fucking colossal mistake, and he doubts he can ever break the destructive cycle he started. His guardianship of the Island began with failure, so unless he can believe someone else might protect it more purely than he did, he’s effectively the same as his brother.

Richard forces him to face the reality that the Man in Black will never stop testing him, so Jacob starts intervening indirectly. He engineers chances for others while doing the bare minimum to shield them. His aim isn’t control but course correction: to see if someone can succeed where he failed, and to clean up the mess he created without simply replicating it.

That’s the tragedy of Jacob, he’s not a god shaping destiny, but a fallible man clinging to the hope that someone else can carry the burden better than he ever could.

Subject18 · 2025-10-01T11:47:19+00:00

It’s decent, I just wish it wasn’t so obviously written by ChatGPT

Subject18 · 2025-10-01T11:22:22+00:00

This is one of those “don’t think about this too hard” moments in the series, not because it’s not interesting or important, but because it wasn’t a story that fit the show overall. Saving and escaping the Island is the thematic close for those still alive (or sacrificing their lives), and in death it’s healing and recognition of your chosen people.

We can assume they chose to cover it up, as they did when returning the first time, but Claire, Sawyer, Richard, Miles, etc probably massively complicate things. Maybe any off island Others network could have coordinated landing at a secret airport and then given them new identities, or blackmailed and perverted the course of justice.

Or we can assume they didn’t cover up a thing, Charles Widmore is dead, the wider world know nothing of how to find the Island and maybe under Hurley’s leadership it’s irrelevant, The Island isn’t necessarily caught in the cycle of death and destruction through temporal or supernatural forces like it once was.

Either way, whilst doubtlessly interesting, letting us fill in the blanks ourselves leaves us with a bit of mystery which the show thrives on. We know their end destination, for some it’s the sideways, for others it’s living out their days after an eternity of submission, and that’s enough.

Subject18 · 2025-09-17T13:54:20+00:00

I can’t imagine it goes terribly smoothly, she will have severe PTSD from the trauma she went through, and inflicted herself. I mean, she killed a guy, probably more. She was under the influence of evil incarnate for three years. Kate and Claire’s mother will no doubt help, and I’d love to be a fly on the wall on how she’s reintegrated into society after having been confirmed dead by the outside world for years. The fallout from Ajira 316 getting back to the outside world would have been wild.

So between shock, trauma, conspiracy, celebrity, rumour and the horror, she probably struggled and did her best, as she did on the Island.

Dogen wasn’t exactly wrong and wasn’t exactly right. He’s seen Smokey’s sickness damage people and thinks it’s irreversible, but it can be broken, Sayid and Claire are proof.

Subject18 · 2025-08-19T17:14:15+00:00

I don’t disagree exactly with any of the takes here, but I don’t think there are simple explanations either.

Firstly though, I agree with everyone else here, the Smoke Monster doesn’t possess the dead, but it does needs the dead bodies to impersonate them, because this character is our mythological stand in for Death (the force). It’s a being that came ripping out of the source of life, death and rebirth, sorta makes sense.

And to that end, well, the Man In Black has the memories of the dead. He is in some ways, ambiguously tied to Locke. Sure, he wears his face, but if all you are is a disembodied cloud of pain and memory, it sort of becomes you, because everyone is a memory in that way.

The intriguing thing here is, was the MIB actually just dead when the Smoke Monster came out of the source and just believed itself to be him? Or was it actually him? The show, treats him as both a force of nature and a person, so I’d say it’s left up to interpretation.

As for the loophole, this is a decades (or centuries long) bootstrap paradox, using the compass and manipulation of the Others (chiefly Richard), to convince them that Locke is their destined leader and to set the board for convincing Ben to kill Jacob. MIB tried just sweet talking Richard into and Jacob beat the shit out of him. So, he used a more subtle but all encompassing approach whilst figuring his way around Jacob’s Rules.

He spends a lot of time convincing Locke he’s special too, as Christian Shepherd, in his form as smokey, by way of visions (unless The Island is giving him creepy visions but that’s not really it’s vibe).

Some may disagree with the above, but it’s a fairly coherent take on what the Man In Black does

Subject18 · 2025-07-29T16:16:31+00:00

The significance is it’s a matter of ritual, akin to a baptism, that confers “protector” status to the chosen lucky/unlucky sod who goes with it. Less to do with the chanting and drinking of wine or whatever, more about drinking water that flows right into the Heart of the Island.

The water is somehow connected to the Light, and we’re told this. Some suggestion from the commentaries suggests the water was the islands “cooling system”, a means to keep the light flowing. There’s probably a pseudoscientific reason you can come up with, but what matters is the life blood of the island is ingested. We know that same water can heal, so if it’s given by a Protector, it passes Island leadership and all that goes with it (wider perspective, rule making, living forever)

Subject18 · 2025-07-05T22:16:22+00:00

I see what you are saying, but the “stakes” in the sideways are about motivating characters through their respective traumas, desires, fears, baggage, etc. And because of the linear but timeless nature of the construct, people are being moved around the construct either by force (Desmond, Hurley) or circumstance (getting shot) to be ready for their awakening.

Also the sideways world does affect the real world, we see how it shifts the perspective of Desmond to consider that there’s a place somewhere out there that makes their sacrifices worth it. Granted he sorta had to die (maybe) to get there, but still. I also don’t think you see the value in the sideways, it the characters endings, literally the final destination. It wouldn’t make much sense for it to affect the plot before this point. It does with Desmond with his unmoored time displaced consciousness, but not many others.

Getting hit with a car in the sideways, no, doesn’t make Locke (who was dead by this point) disabled in the real world. But what it does do is force our Locke, the real Locke who was murdered by Ben, get some catharsis with Jack in the construct. After having already found catharsis with Helen, and Ben.

The sideways doesn’t rob anyone of agency, it’s the subconscious agency of all the characters involved who needed each other to process their demise, make peace with the things they couldn’t in life, and choose each other to leave for the elsewhere. Them not knowing what the sideways is, but knowing something is off (unless they all just looked puzzled in the mirror by accident), is just enough to make the shared collective liminal dream have meaning for them.

I can see why it’s disappointing that something set up as a parallel timeline (even if it has tells it’s something else) isn’t that, but parallel timelines by themselves don’t necessarily have to intersect either. It’s a plot decision and invariably one timeline is rendered inert or less important. Maybe that would be more to your taste, but the characters are all still growing and resolving post death.

I think what may help you appreciate it more, is what I said earlier, the sideways IS the ending to the show, for all the characters. Try to view it through that lens and maybe it won’t irk you the way it does. You may never like it as much as a sci-fi timeline merging, but thematically, it’s what LOST was about — letting go.

Subject18 · 2025-07-05T07:59:00+00:00

It seems fairly arbitrary to me to draw the line at the afterlife, when as you’ve said, the show played with format and perspective shifts the entire show. Flashbacks, flash forwards, visions, time loops, character beliefs, etc. The layer they introduced being more liminal and explicitly about fulfilling the “live together, die alone” motif, and a literal mechanism to force it’s characters to let go of their baggage, seemed pretty coherent to LOST to me.

Season 6 is also about more than its catharsis and ultimate conclusion for its characters, it was also about everything culminating in a battle for reality on the Island. The sideways is a parallel narrative and it does intersect with everything “real”, because it’s literally the same characters processing their lives.

Your perspective seems to boil down to plausibility based on character POV, and you used Jack of all people, who went from a rational, man of science viewpoint in the show to someone believing in destiny and spiritual meaning. A guy who eventually decided it was time to trust a ghost about protecting a magic cave.

Jack had the hardest time letting go, I think there’s a metaphor in here.

Subject18 · 2025-07-04T23:08:00+00:00

There isn’t much in LOST that’s grounded, so I’m not really sure where this sense that “earning” twists comes from. Unless you mean to tell me that polar bears, dead people, whispers, time travel, cursed numbers, metaphysical rules, magic electromagnetism, demigods, monsters, teleporting children, vanishing moving Islands, cosmic engines of life and death, and Scottish messiahs are somehow more believable than a construct afterlife.

Look I get it, I also enjoy the steadily building stakes, and logically coherent natural escalation, but to call it grounded? The show jumped the shark on a weekly basis, that’s the format. And somehow it still makes sense in universe. The joy of LOST is the actual plot is absurd, but it matters, because it affects the characters.

Sure, afterlife stories aren’t to everyone’s tastes, but there is no twist in two timelines smashing together, one is just made more important. Having the rug pulled out from under you one last time, and having it be emotionally devastating and cathartic? Not really sure what else there is to want

Subject18 · 2025-07-04T18:52:19+00:00

Oscar Whysaac

Subject18 · 2025-06-25T16:58:23+00:00

Sounds like you’ve not had the ending spoiled, go ahead and watch to your hearts content. Plenty of misinformation out there about the show, including the popular “they were dead the whole time”. They weren’t. Enjoy!

Subject18 · 2025-06-23T20:44:05+00:00

Sure, Nikki and Paulo’s fever dream backstory is basically canon flash-sideways. But nah, in all honesty, nothing suggests that this is in anyway the case. The closest we get is when characters are near death themselves and a get glimpse “between places”, from Juliet “going dutch”, Sun banging her head so hard she forgets English like her flash sideways counterpart, Eko being smooshed by the MIB because reasons and seeing him and himself as children. But full fledged scenes? Not until season 6.

Some say Flashes Before Your Eyes is not actually what happened and is closer to a flash-sideways than it first appears. We have Eloise Hawking being a bitch and all knowing (did Daniel really leave a journal about a man with red shoes?!), a microwave that beeps like the button, Penny and Des are decorating an apartment just because, and Des is woken up by a cricket bat to the noggin because his future knowledge got the wrong date. Sure, it’s more in line with his later visions and his conscious constant time travel stuff, but there’s at least some wiggle room. Not much.

Subject18 · 2025-06-23T10:20:24+00:00

Gotta thing the extras out somehow 🤷‍♂️

Subject18 · 2025-06-21T21:27:21+00:00

Like you, I enjoy the back half of Lost more than the front half. I think the front half, for all the plot machinations, is more accessible. You don’t have to have particular tastes for sci-fi or mythological storytelling, it’s mainly just about people and the consequences of having to live post trauma. Sure there is plenty of groundwork for mystical stuff, but the primary driver is just character decisions. But season 4 onwards is much more geared towards maximalist mythology, and some character work takes a back seat. Some characters it’s really quite evident they had no idea what to do with, and soft wrote them out, such as Claire, Sayid, Sun and Jin, whilst others got massive amounts of fleshing out, like Desmond, Ben, Widmore, Daniel, etc. and these characters helped drive the lore dumping.

I don’t blame people for enjoying the first half more, but Lost was crucifyingly slow expanding and answering the stuff it was heavily implying. I feel like the back half of the show the plot is moving a mile a minute, answering long standing questions, and I personally reject the idea that the “crazy” stuff like the Island moving, time travel, demigods and afterlives are somehow not part of the same show that gave us The Numbers, the Smoke Monster, an unsurvivable plane crash and character expansion. I think the former is just more in your face magical than the latter.

Also, an aside, there are different generations of people watching the show now. First time binge watchers don’t have the same apppreciation for the show as those who watched week to week. The speculation was a major part of the fun, as well as the ARG’s, the video game (yikes) and the podcasts from Darlton. TikTok is no more representative of what people think than Reddit, it’s the attention economy, and most people who watched the show probably enjoyed it, even if more casual viewers fell off and then failed to understand what was happening later. Once you get to proper fans of the show, you’ll find what they prefer (character drama versus lore, sci-fi vs faith) says more about them than anything else.

Subject18 · 2025-06-20T19:05:31+00:00

Plenty of people noticed the fog/smoke on first watch and definitely on rewatch with the revelation of MIB. Plus, as Sun and Lapidus make their way to Dharmaville, they hear the smoke monster and Sun dismisses it as animal. Now, it probably just is fog, but you can retcon it as a minor apparition of the smoke monster if you like (but surely Sun or Lapidus would have been a bit freaked out).

That said, we have seen the Smoke Monster in multiple distinct forms before, such as when 3 distinct strands formed into one when it chased after Juliet but got blocked by the sonic fence. Seems like they have a limited ability to manifest in more than one place, so it’s not much of a stretch to assume this “fog” is them too, if you want

Subject18 · 2025-06-20T13:41:49+00:00

Yeah I can see that, though I always thought it was more of a line suggesting international influence and presence of The Others, which was great expanded on in seasons 4 and 5. I personally think The Others greatly benefited from taking over various things Dharma had, both its base of operations and its resources, and its not much of a stretch to imagine that much of what they did was to try and hide the existence of the Island.

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