The Game Theory
Written on 16th May 2009
A Theory of How Things Works in the LOST Universe
Until now, we saw in LOST all kind of ‘crazy’ stuff. Characters that appear in the show after they are dead, miraculous healings, smoke monsters or very strange coincidences.
How is that even possible?
First of all, I don’t think that is possible to raise from the dead, transforming to other person or other mumbo-jumbo supernatural crap. There must be a rational and naturalistic explanation of all things happened in LOST.
I assume that the only valid science-fiction phenomenon found in LOST is time travel. This is actually happened in the show. We don’t know exactly how this works or what kind technology is, but we’re sure 100% that it works. The possibility to travel in time gives the characters ability to make many alternate timelines or parallel universe. The Island gives the ability to travel through these parallel universes.
Let’s make the following exercise: Tim have a way to travel back 24 hours in time. Practically, this is another instance of the timeline. If Tim does not alter in any way the this new timeline, Tim’ (the Tim from the new timeline) after 24 hours will travel back in time creating another timeline” where Tim” lives. And so on, it can be created a number of infinite timelines of the same events.
This phenomenon can explain why, at some point, John Locke is both dead and alive in the same time. One John Locke is from another timeline. The same phenomenon can explain the appearances of Christian Shepard alive on the Island.
The Game Theory
LOST is like a life and death game of chess between Jacob and his friend. Like in the chess game, there are rules (probably this are only the partial rules as they are known by us) and pieces on the virtual live ‘table’. Some pieces are very important (Ben, John, Richard, etc) and other are less important. The players can sacrifice the pieces whenever they think that is good for the game tactics of strategy. The main tactic of the game is to alter the destiny of a specific character to achieve a special goal.
We don’t know (yet) what is the end game or why the game is played.
Things to consider:
The live John Locke from the season five is too confident and knows too much in comparison to the previous character of John Locke (the dead one). I assume that this John Locke knows how the game works and the rules of the game. He’s probably plotting with Jacob’s enemy to win the game
Jacob sacrifice himself for a reason (like Jesus in the judeo-christian mythology). Probably Jacob lose this round and he sacrifice one of his instances.
The man from the island interpreting Jacob’s enemy, act very cool, as if they are friends. I suppose that the meaning of the words ‘to kill you’ refers to kill Jacob in the Game, physically to kill one or many of the Jacob’s timeline instances or to metaphorically kill him to win the Game.
