Quick Lost Theory

29Mar10

I’ve seen last week’s Lost episode “Ab Aterno” three times now, not because I’m obsessed (much) but because I had to catch up with my wife after returning from LA. My initial thoughts were posted on Antenna, but as the weekly airing of episodes offers so much time to mull – and our time for mulling is growing short – I’ve been thinking about it as I rewatched, read all the other blogs I read about the show, and listen to numerous podcasts (including the excellent Geronimo Jacksbeard featuring Jorge Garcia with this week’s special guest Nestor Carbonell). And in my mulling, I’ve come up with a theory I’d like to post before it gets proven horribly wrong by the next episode tomorrow – obviously, there are spoilers if you’re not caught up…

The Man in Black receives Jacob’s gift of the wine bottle, and in an act of defiance, smashes it. I think that Jacob had given him the same wine=evil, cork=island metaphor years or centuries before, meaning that smashing the bottle signifies a major intervention into what lies beneath the island as a plan to free him from his prison. And that intervention is Jughead.

So I posit that MiB – either as Locke or another incarnation – intervened with Faraday back in the mid-1970s to inspire his plot to detonate Jughead. And somehow MiB was responsible for sending Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid back to 1977 to facilitate the plan. Upon the detonation, the timelines reset, sending that 2007 people back to the future which we are now seeing. And the culmination of this storyline is the chain of events to send the Ajira people back to 1977 and guide Faraday.

The other result of the detonation: the flash sideways, representing the world where the “darkness” is free. I’m hopeful that’s not all as bad as Jacob claims, but that there’s something problematic with this seemingly improved version of reality. And then the final eps will be an attempt to raise the island, restore the cork, and set things right, whatever that might mean. I’m still optimistic that it’s not simply a Jacob=good, MiB=evil set-up, but that our heroes will transcend this duality and choose “none of the above.” I have no idea how this will play out, of course. (And I’m also sure that others have argued similar if not better iterations on this theory, but I haven’t seen them yet.)

And in typing this up, it sounds ridiculous and highly unlikely – but that’s what theory is for! Enjoy poking holes…

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Tags: Lost