Before I get into this, I just got my nightly work out in and ate my requisite meal at Shalimar so to follow my Lenten goal, I’ll be eating din-din at the hotel tomorry. With that said, if you’re not into Lost or don’t care, then dont
As stated previously, I’ve been getting into the Lost forums and found this particular conversation after last week’s episode: Miles & Hurley’s Convo1. After reading this, I have come up with what I think are a few key rules to the time travel element of Lost:
1. There exists one, and only one, timeline, that has led us up to 2007.
2. There is free will.
3. There is no predestination.
4. Whatever happened, happened, not whatever WILL happen, WILL happen.
5. Desmond’s special and is therefore the wildcard.
Essentially, there are two possible theories of time travel: 1) there is one and only one timeline and 2) there are an infinite number of timelines that branch off at every possible choice every person makes. Lost has obviously chosen the former, i.e. the theory which is analogous to that of 12 Monkeys2 while choice number two is analogous to that of Back to the Future.
Many on the forums have said that one timeline implies that there is no free will because you already know what will happen. This is not the same thing. You can make choices that are a part of this timeline, it is just that noone can go back in time and change them, because if they “tried” they would have always tried in the past which would have played a part in eventually creating the circumstances that influenced them to travel back in time. Only by existing outside of time (Jacob, anyone? or maybe Desmond?) can you see what choices these people will make and possibly react to them, but the question has not been answered regarding if you can change these choices from being made as you saw them made when you existed outside of time by intervening in some way.
A clever example of this that I didn’t really catch until I started to think about this blog was when Michael tried to kill himself and the gun jammed. Michael couldn’t die at the time, because he plays an integral role in the future, which creates the past that created his present. Only in this way, where someone will be involved in future events that lead to past events, can we possibly believe in “predestination”, but again, only someone that knew the past was influenced by people from the future could “know” what will happen and then only in broad strokes.
Regardless, I still believe that there is no predestination or “course correction” to force the future to one outcome. I think that the course correction theory only applies to special people like Desmond so that when he goes back in time he can’t change will happen eventually, i.e. things that occurred and influenced events between the point in time that he traveled back to and when he traveled in time. For example, he couldn’t save that guys life, or propose to Penny because that would have changed his past which even he couldn’t do. What he COULD do, is affect the past to affect his future, i.e. tell Penny to stay at the same phone number so he could call her from the freighter in the future.
Overall, Des is clearly the wildcard3, but I don’t think he can change or alter the past in any meaningful way to change what has happened up until 2007. One thing that I can’t quite wrap my head around is why Des didn’t remember that Faraday talked to him until 2007, when in Faraday time it would only have been a few days, at most, since the turning of the wheel so it should still have been 2004 for Desmond. This must have been done for story-telling purposes, but maybe they’ll explain more about Desmond’s special ability in the coming weeks.
Before I go, where the hell are Rose and Bernard? I can’t imagine they’re dead, so they must be with the Hostiles. It’s either that, or the final time shift affected everyone a little differently, which would be uber gay, and they’ve shifted to some other time altogether. I suppose it’s always possible they are Adam & Eve, but I’m not really buying that just yet.
So that’s my 1.36 pence on the subject. I certainly find it enthralling even though we theoretically know what’s coming (i.e. the Incident, the Purge, the eventual removal of the losties from the 70s4).
Catch you on the flipside.
1 You may be forced to join the forum to view if it is a Wednesday or Thursday.
2 Credit where credit is due, Roper first brought up this comparison.
3 Always Sunny style.
4 Via death, the donkey wheel5, or the most logical, the Incident.
5 Interesting thought here; the wheel could not be from the Black Rock, because it was there when John turned it, which was when the giant statue was outside implying some time in ancient history.
