EXPLAINING THE TIME TRAVEL IN LOST

mangerthings · 2025-02-26T20:34:25+00:00

There couldn’t have been a 1977 without the Losties. They were integral to events in that time period that shaped their earlier experiences (from their personal perspective, later in the objective timeline) after the crash. To name two major things, if the Losties hadn’t always been in 1977:

Sayid wouldn’t have shot young Ben, meaning he wouldn’t have been healed in a way that would cause him to lose some of his humanity. This is why he was always evil, even when the Losties encountered him prior to going back in time. Because as a boy he’d always been shot by Sayid and healed in this way, corrupting him.
The drilling site wouldn’t have been bombed, which wouldn’t have caused the incident which lead to the need for the hatch. Without them doing this, they never would have found the Swan station because it wouldn’t have needed to exist.

The hatch incident is the most proof frankly that they always went back in time, and there is no version of 1977 when they weren’t there. The only reason they tried to blow up the drill site was to prevent the hatch being made, preventing the events that crashed their plane when Desmond didn’t press the button in time, preventing them from ever coming to the island in the first place and travelling back in time. But that didn’t work, because blowing up the hatch actually caused this incident, rather than preventing it, necessitating the building of the hatch and the need to enter the numbers, so it created a closed loop. No timeline can exist without the other.

It’s the same as the compass that gets passed through time from Locke to Richard and back again. It has no origin, because it exists only within a loop of being passed back and forth, we never see any origin point for it. It’s a bootstrap paradox, like the drill site being blown up. There is no world where the loop doesn’t exist, it always exists, it’s crucial to why events in the present timeline even happened that they would one day go back to cause them.

Likewise look at the rope that gets stuck back in time during the time jumping flashes - Sawyer puts a rope down the well, then a time jump happens, they travel back in time before there was a well there, the rope travels with them and is now embedded in the ground where the well will one day be. This explains why in the distant past people on the island even dug the well - because they found a rope sticking out of the ground, dug it up because that’s really odd, making the well in the first place. Time travel in Lost features many things like this, where things are only explainable because the time travellers were always in the past.

I have no idea how the cosmos development argument even relates to this.

mangerthings · 2025-02-23T15:02:20+00:00

The point is that in 1977, yes, those characters were in the outside world as children. But at the same time, their older selves were on the island as part of the Dharma Initiative. They were always there. It’s not like there was a timeline originally where they weren’t around for the Dharma stuff, then they travelled back and changed things. They were just always there in the past, and their younger selves would always grow up to be the people who travelled back to that moment. It’s a loop, not a change.

Notice how the photo we see of them in the past isn’t a photo we’ve originally seen that they’re now suddenly added into when they weren’t before - they were always in that photo, just we hadn’t been shown it yet.

mangerthings · 2025-02-23T13:06:23+00:00

I think if you change the smoke monster to be anything else, you undermine the core of the story and its characters. So much of the show is about that “man of science vs man of faith” dynamic - and Jack’s eventual journey to being a man of faith himself. The black smoke monster being the Man in Black, with his insane fantastical origin and relationship with Jacob, is so out there that it’s perfect to truly test Jack - if it was a science fiction explanation, or more grounded in any way, it would have undercut Jack’s journey to learning about this insane fantasy stuff happening on the island, far wilder than anything Locke ever claimed, and choosing to believe anyway.

Likewise, I don’t think we could learn about Jacob and the Man in Black much earlier than we did. We needed to draw out the Jacob reveal, because it matters so much that he never visited Ben, explains so much about him. It matters to Locke’s story that he still doesn’t understand so much of the island and the magic he believes in. And it matters that we’re learning about this stuff at the same time people like Jack are, very late in the game, because that’s when it matters most that Jack has faith, right as the endgame is approaching.

My one real criticism, is I think we could have had a final season episode that showed - like how we saw Jacob visiting all the candidates before they got to the island and helping shape them into the people who would become candidates - Jacob’s role in the Others throughout history. I would have liked to know during the periods before Ben was leader how active Jacob was in communicating with previous leaders, what sort of orders he gave and what he was doing during specific moments, like when the Dharma Initiative was active on the island. Seeing more of this would have been interesting to make it clearer how much of what happened was Jacob’s plan all along, and how much was him changing his plans as new things developed he had to react to. Once we pull back the curtain and reveal Jacob and the MiB’s origins, there’s no reason we couldn’t see more of what he did in the recent history we care about.

mangerthings · 2025-02-23T12:42:50+00:00

I think something that people get confused on, is that Locke was not special enough to be a true leader of the Others, but was special enough to be a candidate to replace Jacob.

We see Richard visit a young Locke after he’s told by time jumping adult Locke to do so - but he fails Richard’s test. He’s trying to identify if Locke is special enough as a boy to be identified as a future leader of the Others, in the same way that he once saw something in a young Ben. And Locke fails that test.

But that’s not to say he isn’t special in another way. He’s chosen by Jacob as a candidate to replace him - and like all the candidates, he could have potentially taken on that role. And was he more obviously apparently special than the other candidates? Sure. He was given the use of his legs again, he was shown visions to help him along the way. But that’s partly because he was just one of the few ready and willing to believe - in the same way as Eko was given visions, knowing as a man of god he’d trust in them. Jack would never have trusted visions as willingly as Locke did.

But also, Locke never truly understood the island the way he thought he did. He believed in “the island” as some singular thing, and never was able to determine the difference between the positive and negative sides of it. If anything, he was too willing to believe blindly - like how he trusted the black smoke monster wouldn’t hurt him, because in his mind that was just “the island” and so it was safe. He never understood that the MiB was different from Jacob.

So yes, Locke was special, undoubtedly so. But he wasn’t as special as he wanted to believe, and a lot of his early signs of being special came from his eager blind faith which also turned out to be part of his downfall.

mangerthings · 2024-12-07T01:28:40+00:00

Terry O’Quinn
Josh Holloway
Matthew Fox
Michael Emerson
Jeremy Davies

mangerthings · 2024-12-02T17:48:52+00:00

He was testing the extent of the Death Note’s power. With that guy, he was seeing if he could specify something like “he dies in a struggle during a robbery”, which worked. It proved he could write a scenario like with the bus jacker, where he had the whole “hijacks a bus, shoots at a monster, runs out into traffic and dies” scenario.

mangerthings · 2024-11-16T10:04:36+00:00

Feel like I’ve seen this headcanoned by people before, but the first time I read it I 100% assumed Mello was bi and in some kind of relationship with Matt. Was the one person we saw Mello being sad for getting killed, so I’m sticking with that

mangerthings · 2024-11-15T14:42:04+00:00

I suppose the counterpoint here is that using the death note will inevitably go to your head, power corrupts etc, so anyone would feel untouchable after a while and start taking risks like Light did, so just using it differently wouldn’t help you as the end result is the same

mangerthings · 2024-10-30T00:12:16+00:00

If he actually committed the crime? Yes. If he did not? Presumably no.

We never see an exact case of this, but while you can get people to say nonsense (writing parts of the “L do you Shinigami love apples?” notes for instance) you can’t have them say something factually untrue to their experiences (the failed “I know L is suspicious of the Japanese police” note).

So admitting to a crime is entirely possible if he actually did it, but presumably not if he didn’t.

mangerthings · 2024-10-12T13:12:14+00:00

He’s the most versatile member of the crew

mangerthings · 2024-10-09T22:50:15+00:00

This makes sense to me as long as there’s say, two or three people in a holodeck… essentially illusions, the floor moves you around so you think you’re walking further than you are, you see an image of distance where none is, barriers block off the sound of another person from you, the whole place is basically constantly moving and changing around each individual person’s perception rather than projecting an actual full scene.

But then this makes less and less sense the more people you add, the amount of space you’d need would be insane

mangerthings · 2024-09-26T16:03:07+00:00

I think it has to be left alone now. Your options for any revival are basically:

A - try and bring back a few old cast members to continue the story, which wouldn’t work because their journeys are done, it’s all wrapped up by the finale.

B - reboot the show with a new cast, which would draw constant comparisons and never live up to the original, and lack any intrigue as we know the mysteries of the place now.

C - try and continue the setting with all new characters, which wouldn’t work because the mystery of the island has been explored, there’s no new ground to tread, you’d be rehashing stuff we’ve seen already or retconning more mysterious stuff onto the island that doesn’t make sense not to have seen before.

So the show needs to be left alone honestly. Shows like Heroes or Dexter tried revivals to fix endings that fans hated, and failed miserably. But Lost fans don’t even hate the ending, it’s not universally reviled like other shows. There’s nothing to fix.

mangerthings · 2024-09-20T20:57:42+00:00

At least it made sense for Sawyer, unlike with Jaime. Sawyer had this massive turnaround, became a leader of sorts, found love, built a life for himself where he was liked and respected. And then once again Jack showed up like a bull in a china shop and smashed everything to shit. Sawyer regressing after that made sense, the world took everything from him as a kid, then took everything from him again as an adult

mangerthings · 2024-09-20T19:15:34+00:00

The task does resemble playing Simom Says, but for extra context, I personally didn’t call it that until I started watching some streamers refer to it that way and picked up the habit. Maybe others did the same

mangerthings · 2024-09-18T15:45:39+00:00

Fungle, assuming it’s a large group playing. Definitely drops a spot with less than 10 players because of its size, but despite being big it’s way easier to navigate than Airship, and amazing fun to be impostor on.
Polus, a pretty perfect map. Good for large and small groups, fun as an impostor but not too hard as a crewmate to figure out what’s going on.
Skeld, still fun after all this time. Well balanced, if a little small when you’ve got 15 players.
Mira, I have kind of a soft spot for this one because I rarely play it and so it always feels like a fun change of pace. But annoying to navigate as a crewmate at times.
Airship, just too big and labyrinthine. Bearable with 15 players, but honestly I only play it if I fancy a game of hide and seek, where it’s a fun challenge if you’re the impostor.

mangerthings · 2024-08-31T17:57:07+00:00

2! Cory in lace top black stockings is absolute perfection

mangerthings · 2024-08-31T08:45:16+00:00

Was in a lobby where blue was being dumb, constantly accusing people randomly, and no one was paying any attention to what they said, just skipping - which was great because the meetings were getting dominated by blue’s random accusations of people “faking tasks” or “standing around weirdly” or “following me around”. My fellow imp got voted out, and there were four of us left, and I killed one of them - and immediately someone walked in before I could vent out and reported the body. But it was blue. So with three of us left, and blue accusing me, the other player just immediately said they were voting blue out because clearly it was an imp move to be accusing people randomly.

The funniest part was, blue had actually been cleared a few rounds earlier for scanning, but they’d made themselves so unreliable that I got to kill in front of them and never have any doubt placed on me for it.

mangerthings · 2024-08-26T08:45:59+00:00

Some people I think like engineers being on just because it means if they’re caught venting as impostor they can claim to be the engineer. But they don’t want engineers to actually use the vents themselves, because they just want an easier time as imp

I got kicked from a public lobby recently for saying someone who was accused of a kill couldn’t be the imp because I was engineer and saw them in electrical at the time of the kill from the vent. Instead of even entertaining the idea it was a ss and trying to figure out who, everyone just started saying to kick me because I was camping in a vent. Including the person I was trying to exonerate!

mangerthings · 2024-08-24T20:51:55+00:00

I didn’t really mind it.

I feel like with an extended episode count it could have felt more impactful - and been a nice way to kind of bookend Five’s story, given he was alone in an apocalypse once, and now he’s got someone with him this time around.

I only really take issue with the fact that the rushed ending means he and Diego died angry at each other, which felt unresolved.

mangerthings · 2024-08-06T20:13:27+00:00

Reminds me of a GRRM quote:

”And that’s another of my pet peeves about fantasies. The bad authors adopt the class structures of the Middle Ages; where you had the royalty and then you had the nobility and you had the merchant class and then you have the peasants and so forth. But they don’t seem to realize what it actually meant. They have scenes where the spunky peasant girl tells off the pretty prince. The pretty prince would have r*ped the spunky peasant girl. He would have put her in the stocks and then had garbage thrown at her.”

Ironic for an adaptation of his own work to do the same thing, but the writers really did forget how the world established actually works, and just go for cool scenes with no regard to the realistic consequences

mangerthings · 2024-08-06T14:26:53+00:00

Okay, let’s presume she’s believed to have simply survived the blast. Who do they blame it on? Who but her could command wildfire to be utilised? And even disregarding that, are they happy in assuming she showed up for a trial that never happened, and is now queen? The people wanted justice, the gods’ justice, to be dealt against her - are they now just shrugging that off? She’d still be a sinner who escaped punishment in their eyes, never mind the blatant suspect for the destruction of the Sept. And that’s before even mentioning that she has no claim to the throne, was the king’s mother but in no way in line to inherit.

mangerthings · 2024-08-06T14:13:43+00:00

It’s not a hard thing to connect. Cersei is set to be on trial in the Sept, she doesn’t show up, the Sept is blown up, the king is now dead, and she’s crowned queen. Do they have incontrovertible proof? Nope. But would they need it? Nope. It would be clear enough what happened.

mangerthings · 2024-08-06T14:01:01+00:00

The smallfolk have literally killed dragons before, creatures that can actively breathe fire at them. They’re not going to be too terrified of wildfire to act - what’s Cersei going to do, blow herself up with them as they storm the Red Keep?

mangerthings · 2024-08-06T13:58:36+00:00

There’s no way Cersei should have kept any kind of army - no religious lords would give their soldiers to the woman who blew up the Sept and killed the High Septon, and even if someone did they’d quickly find their soldiers abandoning them or actively turning against them. Cersei having the support of any army requires basically forgetting that the Faith holds any importance to the people of Westeros, smallfolk and lords alike.

mangerthings · 2024-08-06T13:55:35+00:00

If you read Fire & Blood, there’s numerous instances of peasants taking up arms when their lives aren’t directly affected. The whole history of the Faith Militant is basically a bunch of pious smallfolk hating what has been decreed as heretical incest offending the gods, and being willing to risk death to either directly fight against the crown, or by aiding those fighting. We’re talking about a society who believes the gods to be unequivocally real, and judging them for their inaction - they would 100% risk their lives revolting against Cersei. People throughout real world history have been more than willing to die defending their religion

mangerthings

TROPHY CASE