Λοιπόν αυτή την ψαγμένη θεωρία παραθέτω σαν τροφή για το μυαλό εν αναμονή του πέμπτου κύκλου του LOST. We have to go Back...
The Timeline (Main Theory)
Timeline Illustration: Click To Open for Reference
Early 1800’s: The Black Rock was a slave boat crossing the Pacific. The boat was transporting a large
assortment of metallic minerals, which were highly reactive to other forces of magnetism. Unexpectedly, th
e boat encounters the island of LOST. Being that the island has unique magnetic properties, the magnetic materials on the boat “react” with the magnetic forces on the island, and the boat is literally hoisted onto the island. The boat, having strong levels of magnetism, creates a hole in the invisible bubble that surrounds the island – this hole is at coordinate “305”, or the “special location/coordinate” that Daniel’s team travels through to get to the island. Once the Black Rock crashes, the leaders aboard the ship, including Alvar Hanso, begin studies on the magnetic aspects of the island. Their descendents ultimately form the DHARMA initiative in the late 1900’s.
1960’s: The DHARMA initiative was created for the enhancement of the human race. What initially began as a simple research initiative developed into a massive project that was designed to test fate. At some point during DHARMA’S studies, someone managed to leverage the magnetic properties of the island to bend time and space – thus, a time machine was created.
The time machine serves two different functions:
1. one piece of the machine is synced up to the magnetic anomoly that encloses the island. It has the ability to send the entire island back in time - to as far back as when the time machine was created. At the end of season 4, Ben turns the crank to "move the island" back in time to when the machine was created.
2. The time machine also is a phycial device that can transport an individual human back in time, to as far back in time as when the machine was created. In the beginning stages of testing the time machine, DHARMA chose to run tests on animals (namely, polar bears), as to avoid creating any time-related catastrophes or paradoxes. The first initiative of testing the time machine was to see they could extend the life of an animal. They sent a polar bear back in time a few years, and then changed its habitat to see if it could “survive.” DHARMA saw that once polar bears had gone back in time, they could survive off the island, and even in remote extreme climates (such as deserts) – thus making them partially invincible. Realizing the power of this time machine, the leaders of DHARMA opt to only keep limited knowledge of the time machine’s existence. Thus, many of the experiments on the island of LOST are just a façade to conceal the “true” research behind the DHARMA initiative.
Shortly after the experimentation with the polar bears, DHARMA starts sending people back in time. Over a few years of researching the time machine, DHARMA becomes curious to see if this time machine can allow people to alter the course of history. In order to see if people can “change a future that’s already written,” DHARMA begins tasking their time travelers with doing things to alter the course of history. Unfortunately, these time travelers were not able to do anything to permanently alter the future that was already laid out.
Now getting desperate to prove that there’s ANY benefit to the new time machine, the leaders of DHARMA find a group of their own people to involuntarily become “test subjects” of their next experiment involving time travel. This being: can sending people back in time permanently cure them of a deadly virus? Without proper warning, DHARMA releases a virus in an area of the island that infects many of the “test subjects.” Then DHARMA claims that they can cure the disease with this special “device,” that device being the time machine. This, however, is NOT obvious to the test subjects - they just want to get cured, and think the time machine is some type of complex vaccination. As fate would predict, the test subjects go back in time and are c
ured of the virus, only to be later killed by the smoke monster, as the monster is the “physical means” in which the timeline course corrects itself. DHARMA, seeing this smoke monster for the first time, is now officially fearful that this time machine will end up serving no purpose whatsoever. The only thing DHARMA has accomplished is pissing a small portion of their work-force. The surviving test subjects who weren’t originally infected by the virus become a faction of the DHARMA initiative, and are subsequently referred to as the Others/Hostiles – Richard and Jacob are among that group.
1970-1985: Ben’s mother is recruited by DHARMA to come to the island and work on this time machine. After several years of testing the time machine, she too has given up on its abilities. She has also met Richard, the leader of the Others, and he tells her about the horrible experimentation that DHARMA did to his people, resulting in the death of several of his friends. Ben’s mom quickly grows to hate DHARMA for the morals that they’re willing to ignore in the name of science. She deems it her destiny to bring down DHARMA for the pain that they’ve brought upon the innocent. But, instead, she decides to kill two birds with one stone: instead of just leaving the island and possibly angering DHARMA at her departure, she decides to use the time machine to go back in time to the point at which she came to the island. Then, she leaves the island. This way, it would appear to the outside world that she never even left to go to the island. She’s going back in time to re-live 15 years of her life that she lost out on while she was doing testing in the island. Brilliant!
1970: Ben’s mother has traveled approximately 15 years back in time, back to 1970, where she finds herself back in
1980: It’s not long after Ben’s mother’s death that their good friend Horace recommends that they go to the island. Horace is likely affiliated with DHARMA, and was sent to investigate Ben’s mother. After finding out about her death, he sent her husband and Ben to the island so that DHARMA could “contain” a potential hiccup in time. When Ben and his dad get to the island, we find out that Ben’s father was merely to become a peon for DHARMA. Ben was the real reason that they came to the island: It was Ben’s legacy to fulfill his mother’s destiny. Ben, unfortunately, isn’t aware of this at the time. He’s just trying to enjoy himself, and make sure his father isn’t too much of a jerk.
1981: After a good bit of time on the island, Ben hears and sees his dead mother outside his house on the island! The reason he sees her is because in an “alternate future,” she was actually alive and working on this island for DHARMA. She appears half-dead to him because her dead spirit is designed to “help Ben understand his destiny” so that he can carry on her legacy. Thus, her spirit is time’s way of course correcting the future.
Shortly after Ben sees his dead mom, he sees Richard in the jungle, who says “you’re not ready.” Richard is a time traveler - and a DHARMA-hater. When Ben first encounters Richard in the jungle, Richard has traveled back in time from the year 2007 to 1970(ish). Thus, while Richard is working with Ben, Richard is not aging. Why did Richard go back in time to get in contact with Ben? To recruit him. Richard knew Ben’s mother in the alternate timeline, so he knows that Ben is an incarnation of his Mother, and that he is some type of prodigy on the island. From there, Richard and Ben then spend their years plotting on how they will ultimately bring down DHARMA, and use the time machine for tests that don’t involve killing people.
1988: Rosseau’s crew was an opposing force to DHARMA. They weren’t affiliated with the Others; however, they were going to the island to investigate “shady business practices” being conducted by DHARMA - These business practices being the releasing of the virus to the locals on the island. Unfortunately, at the point in time, other Others and Ben hadn’t conceived their “master plan” to bring down DHARMA. However, they didn’t want to expose children to the experiments of DHARMA. Once Rosseau lost her baby, she set up a looping signal. That ran for years on the island, but the signal was being blocked by the looking glass.
1981-2007: Ben grows up from the age 10 to 37, planning with Richard and Jacob the “ultimate plan” to wipe out DHARMA, the purge. In the mean time, DHARMA continues to test other unique aspects of the island in order to see if they can leverage the time machine for some other purpose. In the midst of this, DHARMA discovers the magnetic anomaly in the island via the SWAN station. This magnetic anomaly is a bubble that encompasses the entire island. Unfortunately, DHARMA only does some basic tests on this anomaly, as they don’t really know how to use it for anything. During this time, both the others and DHARMA are trying to learn how they can leverage the time machine “for the greater good.”
During the testing of the time machine, DHARMA and the others make the following discover
ies about time travel. Note that there is not a specific “definition” of time travel that applies to the show – time travel is simply used as a concept in the show, and the “weird things” that we see are typically fate’s way of course correcting to preserve something that’s meant to happen in the future.
1. When someone enters the time machine, they can only go back in time – and only to a time where the machine was currently running.
2. When you go back in time, you do not de-age. For example, if you are 50, and go back 10 years in time, you do NOT have your 40-year-old body. HOWEVER, while you are re-living 10 years of your life, you body will not age until you catch up with the time in which you entered the time machine.
3.When you go back in time, you will still have your current hair style, tattoos, bodily organs, and memory. However, say you were paralyzed; fate would need to do some course correction to make sure that you are still able to play your past role in life. Thus, time travel can TEMPORARILY cure any physical ailments you may have had prior to entering the time machine. However, fate will still find a way to paralyze you once you catch up with the current time. Say the first time you were paralyzed, it was because you were pushed out of a window. Because “the universe has a funny way of course correcting,” you may get hit by a car the second time around.
4.When you go back in time, you can only “change” things that don’t have an impact on your destiny. In other words, if you went to church on a specific date in the past, and then went back in time, you wouldn’t necessarily go to church in your new timeline. However, if you changed a belief as a result of going to church the first time around, “fate would find a way to influence you into that belief.” Perhaps you would have a near death experience, or maybe a mysterious person would greet you in a jewelry store and tell you that you need to change your beliefs… or, maybe fate would just kill you since it couldn’t find a way to change your belief.
5. If you go back in time and die, you are not “totally” dead because there has already been a variation of the universe where you were alive in the future. Thus, you become “half dead” until time catches back up. In other words, your presence may be known to some people but not others. Your presence would only be known when you are required to make an impact to fate.
6.If you have never had a child, you cannot go back in time and give birth. Fate does not allow for a new entity to exist in a past where it originally did not exist. Thus fate would either have to kill the mother, the bab
y, or both in order to course correct. UNLESS, fate decides to use the baby or mother to “replace” someone else in the timeline.
7. Basically, the “rules of the time machine” are not governed by any physical definitions of time travel. The “rules,” if you will, are governed by how FATE decides to preserve the timeline. Thus, if you are required to do something profound in a future timeline, fate will find any way possible to preserve the timeline – we’ve seen ghosts and smoke monsters in LOST. So according to the show’s definition of time travel, fate “does have a funny way of course correcting.”
2007: Swelled with hatred, Ben, Richard, and Jacob find a way to hijack the time machine, and go back in time to the year 1996 to wipe out all of DHARMA on the island (The Purge). Note that in Ben’s original timeline from his birth to 2007, Oceanic 815 did not crash on the island and Ben did not come down with cancer. The fact that Ben, Richard and a few others lived out a life to the year 2007 gives them some unique powers: they know that they will technically remain alive until 2007, no matter what happens (unless fate deems their existence as not necessary in preserving their original timeline). This is one reason for Ben being able to survive through the whole power struggle on the island in season 4, and the reason he can take a severe beating from the Losties in almost every episode.
1996 (new timeline on the island): Having gone back in time, and realizing that DHARMA may still have a presence in the outside world, the Othe
rs need to quickly think of something that will prevent DHARMA or Widmore from ever reaching the island. Thus, Ben figures out a way to put the entire island into a “time loop.” This time loop will keep the island suspended in time in the past (in the year 1996) – thus preventing any outside DHARMA people from reaching them on the island. Once Ben and Richard start the time loop, they round up the remaining locals on the island – these people ultimately grow to become the opposing force to DHARMA, the “others.” In order to create this “time loop,” Ben, Richard and Mikhail is able to “sync” the time machine in the Orchid with the magnetic anomaly that encompasses the island – thus giving the Others the ability to send the entire island back in time! They then rig-up the computer system that requires the pushing of a button every 108 minutes; however, this button pushing is actually activating the time machine every 108 minutes. So, for a great number of years, The Others are able to suspend time on the island by “resetting” the time machine every 108 minutes. Unfortunately, one of the downsides to this is that time on the island is contained in its unique magnetic bubble – thus, time in the rest of the world is still running its course. Therefore, island time stays in the year 1996, while real world time eventually reaches the year 2004 at the time of the plane crash. The only way to pass through the island time and the real world time would be to use the “special” coordinate, which is referenced in season 4. Note that in season 3, Ben makes a comment to Richard “Remember when we used to celebrate birthdays?” Well, there wouldn’t be any reason to celebrate birthdays if the Others are repeating time every 108 minutes, and thus not aging.
1996-1996 (8 years elapse on the island): While time is staying constant on the island, the others, now invisible to the outside world, are able to continue tests in time travel. The Others want to start a utopia on the island. They want to keep the island in its time loop forever. They believe that with time stopped on the island, the rules of fate won’t apply. But, what’s the only problem? With time suspended, and the fact that fate always kills mothers and babies, the others need to find a way to pro-create on the island. Thus, they recruit Juliet to explore the known pregnancy issue. They also find a prestigious military officer (Kelvin) to press the button, making him think that he’s saving the world. Meanwhile, the rest of the natives are living out their days while not aging (including Richard, Ben, and all of the others).
Because the island is hidden from the outside world, Ben and Richard have to be careful in letting people on and off the island. Furthermore, you can only leave the island through the “special coordinate” that the Black Rock created over a century ago. If you don’t leave through that coordinate, you could end up leaving in the year that the island exists, which would be at some point in the past – this would require you to find a “constant” between island time and real world time in order to survive. Conversely, if you were to try
to enter the island from the future into the past island time (assuming you don’t use the special coordinate), then your mind would become “stuck” between the island time and the real world time – also requiring you to find a constant. Jacob is also a time traveler with Richard and Ben; however, we haven’t seen him in his “alive” state. At some point in time after Jacob goes back in time with Richard and Ben to start the time loop, Jacob dies. However, being that Jacob lived in a previous timeline on the island up to the year 2007, his “spirit” is able to stay alive in order communicate with Ben and Richard.
1996-2004 (Off-Island Time): While the island is stuck in the year 1996, all of the main characters of LOSTS’ lives play out via flashbacks. We see the initial backstories from their seconditeration through time. Keep in mind that when Ben, Richard and Jacob lived out their first timeline to the year 2007, the plane did not crash. The Losties’ flashbacks that we see in seasons 1-3 are taking place as the Others are in the time loop on the island (or the Other’s second iteration through time) – and the flashbacks are designed to represent how fate changed the lives of the Lostiesto ultimately bring them to the island.
For example, in Jack’s original timeline, his father was perfectly normal and didn’t end up getting killed in
1996 (Island Time - around 2001 in Off-Island time): Richard and Ethan leave the island via the special coordinate, about 5 years into the time loop to carry out a recruiting mission. (note that Richard also traveled back in time back in the early 1970’s, or earlier, to begin conditioning Locke to ultimately come to the island). Richard and Ethan pinpoint Juliet to explore the child birth issue o
n the island. She is genuinely a good person, and will do anything to help her sister. However, she is not aware of the time loop which is occurring on the island, and Ben is using her lack of awareness to keep her at the island. Since Ben was from the future, he knew that Juliet’s husband would get hit by a bus on a certain date – so he strategically timed Richard and Ethan’s visit to be a few days prior to the husband’s accident, knowing that would be a trigger to get Juliet to the island.
Also, Ben knew that Juliet’s sister would ultimately get cured of her cancer and have a baby girl. That’s why Ben is so persistent on the fact that if Juliet comes to the island, that they can cure her sister. Thus, Ben isn’t a liar. He knows from his past timeline what is going to happen, and he’s manipulating things based on his knowledge.
1996 (
Widmore hires Libby’s husband to be the first “test subject” to try to reach the island. Widmore give’s Libby’s husband a boat with pre-programmed coordinates – this will ultimately allow him passage into the island, through the time barrier. However, Libby’s husband unexpectedly dies, and she hands the boat over to Desmond. It’s unclear whether or not Widmore is intentionally sending Desmond to the island just to get rid of him, or if it’s a total coincidence that the boat ends up in Desmond’s hands.
2004 (Off-Island Time): Oceanic 815 crashes on the island because Desmond temporarily stopped pressing the button to reset the island time back 108 minutes. Not pressing the button temporarily stopped the time machine from harnessing the power of the magnetic bubble, thus creating an opening over the island the split second Oceanic 815 flew over – 8 years into the island timeloop, and in the year 2004 outside the island. The resulting power of the current flowing through the magnetic field ripped the plane in half. We, as viewers, are left with two huge questions: was it a complete coincidence that the plane just happened to crash over the island leading Locke to not press the button OR did DHARMA somehow engineer this plane crash to happen the exact second that the plane flew over the island, knowing that specific group of peopl
e would free the island of its time loop? That, my friends, brings us back to the theme of LOST – did fate cause the plane crash, or had DHARMA staged certain “characters” to ultimately “lead” our heroes to the island… OR was it some combination of both fate and the work of DHARMA?
After the plane crashes, our heroes now exist in the year 1996 on the island. They are all still the same age that they were in 2004, and they are existing in a new timeline in the year 1996. Locke is healed because he hadn’t gotten into his accident until around 2002 – the same with Rose. Also, in the original timeline of the universe, Oceanic 815 did NOT crash. Therefore, if the losties ever got off the island and back into the year 2004, fate would deem that they survive at least until 2007 (which was how far the future had been written in Ben’s original timeline).
1996 (island time): All of the events in the first 2 seasons of LOST take place. The hatch is discovered and Locke ultimately ends up not pressing the button and Desmond turns the fail safe. The turning of the fail safe disconnects the Swan with the time machine, and now the island time is officially moving again; however, the purpose of the fail safe was to permanently set time back to the original start date of 1996! Now the island is moving at about 8-9 years behind real world time. When Desmond turned the fail safe key, his life flashed before his eyes… Well, actually, he got to “re-live” about 9 years of his life! He got to relive being rescued from the island, witnessing Charlie’s death, and then starting his life up again off the island, meeting Penny, and then ultimately coming back to the island, thus creating a full loop for his life story. Desmond could not escape his fate. The reason only Desmond got to re-live his life was some function of him being the “key turner” OR the fact that he was exposed to the extreme magnetic radiation levels in the hatch (which is referenced in Season 4). I’d venture that he was probably “at the heart of magnetic bubble” thus, he was a little more clairvoyant to his alternate future than say, the folks who were out on the beach. And, that is ultimately how he gets “flashes” of Charlie’s death. Who knows how many times Desmond actually got to “re-live” his life. And, each time Desmond re-lived his life, he saw what would ultimately lead our heroes to getting off the island – and that would be Charlie sending out the message.
2004 (Off-Island time, after the plane crash): Widmore stages a fake Oceanic 815 plane crash because he has gotten wind that the plane may have entered the secret DHARMA research island. The fact that the plane can’t be found at the island’s location leads Widmore to believe thatthe time machine is still up and running. Widmore, already having profited from time travel, still wants to get hold of it to make even more momey.
On another side of the power struggle, there are a few DHARMA folks left in the real world, who also are desperately trying to get back to the island to preserve the original timeline. Once DHARMA discovers that Widmore is sending a ship to the island, they round up a small crew to travel to the island as spys: Naomi, Farada
y, Lapidus, etc.
Ben is on the third point of this power triangle. He knows that he’s destined to survive until at least 2007 – yet in his original timeline, he didn’t have to
deal with this struggle. However, since Ben believes that there is a pre-written future for him, he doesn’t have much fear that Widmore or DHARMA will ever be able to succeed in bringing him down. So, with that, Ben sends Tom off the island to recruit Michael to destroy everyone on the boat: DHARMA and Widmore’s folks. So, from Ben’s perspective, he’s killing two birds with one stone.
1996 (island time): after Desmond is able to finally lead Charlie to his destiny and losties remove the blocking-signal, Jack is able to communicate to the freighter using Naomi’s device. Her device is a specially manufactured DHARMA device that allows Naomi to communicate in the past (on the island) with the future DHARMA in 2004 (on the freighter). Note that even Sayid pointed out how futuristic the device was – it’s futuristic because it’s used to communicate between different times!
Daniel has his friend on the freighter launch a payload in order to “test” the special coordinate that allows passage from the island
. If the payload had been launched very far away from the special coordinate, it may have arrived as much as 8 years later in time! The fact that the payload arrived 31 minutes suggested to Daniel that they had almost found the exact coordinate. When the doctor was thrown off the boat and killed, he didn’t drift as close to the coordinate, thus he arrived at a different time as well. As for the motives of Naomi’s crew - these are working for DHARMA, they are not happy, and they are after Ben. They want to know why DHARMA was wiped out on the island.
1996 (Desmond’s timeline): As Sayid and Desmond leave the island, they pass through the time barrier between the island time and the real world time. In other words, Desmond is instantly passing from the islan
d time of 1996 to the future time of 2004. Only Desmond is impacted by the “time transition,” because he was originally exposed to the high levels of the magnetism (aka radiation) in the SWAN hatch for the past 3-4 years. While Desmond makes the transition, his mind is meshed with the 1996 version of himself. Daniel understands exactly what is happening to Desmond – so he uses his communication device to talk to the 2004 version of Desmond in order to create a “constant” for himself so that he could eventually make it off the island. That is why when Daniel checks his log; he is able to see the newly written content, saying that “Desmond is his constant.” Daniel wasn’t actually changing the past by asking Desmond to make contact, he was just trying to figure out how he could get off the island, and back in to the present year of 2004.
Unfortunately for Daniel, Naomi, and their crew, they were hand selected by DHARMA to be guinea pigs. We’d seen in th
eir flashforwards that they possibly knew too much about DHARMA – thus they were expendable.
As for the other crew member on the freighter who’s experiencing Desmond’s symptoms – that guy attempted to get to the island
, but didn’t pass through the special coordinate. As a result, his mind was sent from 2004 to 1996, and he didn’t have a “constant” to keep his mind connected between the two timelines. As a result, he died. So, the only true way to get to the island is through the special coordinate, which allows passage between timelines.
1996 (island timeline): Once the power struggle on the island plays out, 6 “survivors” emerge and leave the island: Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sun, Aaron and Sayid. As they are in the helicopter, leaving the island, Ben turns the crank in the Orchid station. This crank is another type of "fail safe." It is using the magnetic properties surrounding the island to send it even further back in time - I'm guessing that it goes all the way back to the year 1960!
2005: When Ben turns the crank in the Orchid station, fate immediately places him off the island, in the year 2005, in the desert. His role is to now use Sayid to help course correct to ensure that the future to 2007 plays out according to plan. Sayid is likely working for Ben because he has promised S
ayid that they will go back in time “after their work is done” and Sayid would get a second chance with Nadia. It is likely that Ben’s targets must die in order to preserve the new timeline – perhaps they are members of DHARMA, and once Ben can eliminate all of them, they will be able to easily reach the island. It’s clear, however, that Ben’s interest is now taking over DHARMA and regaining control over their time machine. Once he can obtain that, he can travel back in time to 1960, go back to the island, and change the past to ultimately create a new future.
1960 (new timeline on the island, with Locke and Richard): Locke has now travelled back in time many years. He has become the leaders of the others on the island. Note that because the swan is now destroyed, the island and all time exists relative to Locke, in the year 1960. Now Locke has teh ability to re-shape almost 50 years of the past. And what happens? Nothing! As fate would have it, Locke can't alter the past. Once Locke gets back to the year 2003, DHARMA starts infiltrating the island again. Locke loses control, and flees the island. The island is ultimately destroyed in the year 2003 by DHARMA, and that is why it disappears from view when the "6" leave via helicopter - because in the new timeline that Locke created, the island no longer exists in the year 2004!
2007: Jack has lived about 3-4 years off the island in the new timeline. Locke has made contact with the "6" because he believes he can take them back in time and to the island, and they will ultimately be able to prevent the island from being destroyed (along with all of the other survivors of 815, who were destroyed with the island). Ben and Widmore are also trying to find the island - but they can't because the island can only be found by traveling back in time
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