Wednesday, December 9, 2009

A Tremendous Theory

Thanks to being snowed in to my apartment all day this past Saturday, I was able to unabashedly catch up big time on my LOST re-watching. (I watched probably 10 episodes or so in one day!) Rarely leaving my couch, I finished up season three. With the LOST s6 premiere just under 2 months away now, speculation from fans and major media alike is picking up.

One of the bggest names in the LOST media world is Entertainment Weekly's Doc Jensen. Since the beginning of the series, he has offered his own thoughts on the show's future as well as shining the spotlight on some of the fan community's biggest fanatics. He just posted a new column that gets very deep into demons (or daemons, or daimons) and their possible role on the Island. I found it very dense and boring, and skipped most of it. However, he also featured an interview with an amateur LOSTie named Andrew Wilmar, aka Eye M. Sick, who has run a LOST-related blog for a while. In the interview, Jensen highlighted Wilmar's Three Black Swans theory, which he posted this past summer. And it's a doozie.

In sum, it proposes that there have been three unexpected Black Swan events that were not "supposed to happen" but did thanks to various characters, that have kept the Valenzetti equation from causing the end of the world. We've seen the first two of these events -- the Incident from last season's finale and Desmond's turning the fail safe key.

In both cases, the energy contained in the Island would lead to the end of the world if not halted in some way. In the 1977 Incident, the normal course of events would be that DHARMA's drilling into it would have unleashed the energy with Apocalyptic results, had it not been for the LOSTies and Juliet detonating the nuclear device first. Essentially the same is true when Des turns the fail safe, keeping the energy from being unleashed after Locke prevents the pushing of the button. The LOSTies and Des are the Black Swan variables that changed the normal course of events.

**This part I am embellishing a little: Faraday's mother knows this, and that is why she is so insistent on making sure Des and everyone else important back to the Island, to keep the delicate balance of the loop in place. We can postulate that Des, when unstuck in time after turning the fail safe, had the ability to change history (whatever happened, happened is wrong), could have married Penny and never gone to the Island, and therefore never would have turned the fail safe. Bam. End of the world. Thus, because of the two events, there has been a loop 27-year loop btw 1977 and 2004 going on for who knows how long (Note: The Valenzetti equation calls for a 27-year period before the world ends if not changed). That is also why Faraday's mother does not hesitate to send her son to the Island, even though she knows his end will come there at her own hand. This also adds to the 'loophole' idea spoken by the Man in Black to Jacob.

The third we shall see in the final season. It's a little too deep to try to summarize here, but it ties in my discovery of the Omega Point motif and essentially states that the two children of the Island that have been born, Aaron and Yi Jeon, must get married before 2031 to restore balance, or order, or Yin-yang, etc. to the Island, and therefore the world. I know that sounds dumb right now, but read the whole theory, and it's actually pretty amazing, when supported with evidence from events we've seen on the Island so far.

4 comments:

PopsArmstrong said...

That's a pretty amazing theory! Let me get this straight: so if Juliet succeeds in setting off the bomb, that leads to the story-line we're familiar with? Doesn't that imply that Chang and several others survived a point-blank nuclear explosion? OR am I misreading the theory?

kilgore said...

Yes, I believe your thinking is correct. By detonating the jughead in 1977 (and acting as a black swan), Juliet neutralized (or at least greatly reduced) the previously apocalyptic power of the energy core into which the DI was drilling, thus saving the world. It also created the 27-year timeline that includes the building of the Hatch, Desmond's pushing the button, Locke's not pushing the button, and Desmond's turning of the key (once again neutralizing the apocalyptic power of the Island's energy and being the second black swan), the LOSTies getting off the island, coming back in 1977 and causing the Incident, and starting the time loop again. This is why people like Faraday's mom are insistent to displaced time travelers like Desmond in "Flashes Before Your Eyes" that everything happen the way it has always happened, else the end of the world comes.

Yes, this means that the Others like Chang and Radzinsky survive the explosion, which the show's questionable physics probably explains due to some energy vacuum or something created by the jughead. The evidence for this would be Chang's injured arm in the DI orientation videos, which we saw occur during the Incident, and Kelivn's tales of Radzinsky living in the Hatch.

What has widely been speculated is that the 6th season will open with two different, simultaneous timelines--one in 1977 after the Incident and one back in 2004 with Oceanic 815 landing safely at LAX (with the jughead explosion having been successful and the clock being "reset"). To me, this would seem that the LOSTies who are now "displaced" into 2004, like Desmond was in 1996, have the ability to change things through choices. But I suppose the Valenzetti Equation is only giving them another 27 years before another black swan would be needed. Or something like that. This is too long and top-heavy and now I truly am LOST.

PopsArmstrong said...

Hahaha! Welcome to the club! So if Chang and Rudzinski survive the Incident, wouldn't it be likely that at least some of the following would too?: Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sawyer, Jin, Miles, and possibly even Juliet? If so, what happened to them between 1977 and 2004 when a second version of themselves arrive via Oceanic 815?

PopsArmstrong said...

Oh, wait, I guess Ben kills them off with the rest of the Dharmites? But we know some Dharmites survived Ben's gas (:)): Rudzinski and Kelven and whoever is making the food drops. Or are the food drops provided by "Ann Arbor" or Charles? Who know?