The whispers = time travel?
Just thinking about the recent time skips the island has been going through. What we see from the perspective of those traveling through time is a bright light and a whooshing sound. Hold that thought.
What strikes me about the nature of these time skips as Shanimal pointed out here, is that they tend to happen when someone has an important message to pass on.
Other times we’ve seen messages being passed on only for the messenger to disappear as quickly as they came: Walt interrupting John’s suicide bid and Harper appearing in the forest to tell Juliette to go to the Tempest are two that spring to mind.
These times the messenger has usually been accompanied by the eerie whispers we puzzle over so much.
So my theory: The time traveler experiences a blinding light, while the ‘temporal native’ (for want of a better term) hears whispers.
Could it be that from Richard’s perspective, just after Locke told him to go witness his birth, instead of a blinding light and a whooshing sound he heard whispers and Locke was gone? Similarly could it be that when Harper visited Juliette (from her perspective) there was a blinding light and a whooshing sound?
If I’m right on this one, that would mean that Walt returns to the island at some point (with the O6?) and skips back to where John is lying in the Dharma pit to deliver his message, and likewise Harper skips through time to visit Juliette.
Can anyone think of any other examples of whispers preceding a message?
“If I
Thanks for pulling me up on that Emzi. I actually didn’t want to mention Shannon’s vision of Walt because I haven’t really figured it out.
The most likely reason I can think of would be that maybe Walt’s ‘special’ skills include being able to travel at will. Before he was captured perhaps he didn’t understand this skill, but the room where the others performed their tests on him may have been the catalyst that helped him to understand. He might have been soaked because it was raining wherever he traveled from, or maybe the others submerged him in water as part of their tests – and that’s the point where he jumped. Perhaps he was speaking backwards because this was enforced time travel (as opposed to the accidental time travel Locke and co are experiencing now) and he hasn’t quite managed to control his power.
So a whole can of speculative worms – which is why I omitted this part 😉
macutchen….great job reinventing the wheel here. I remember this from another site long ago. But you did a great job including new info we now know and made this the most plausable answer to the whispers. Nice post!
nice take on the whispers, it’s nice to read some new ideas once and a while 🙂
although i feel i have to point out that there are numerous other accounts of the whispers in which no one appears/disappears. There have been plenty (like 10 or so) times when the whispers came up while someone was alone in the jungle (saywer, sayid, shannon, Charlie yadda yadda). so for me, although i like the idea of your theory, i don’t think it really works….
MacCutcheon, I really like your theory. One of the most plausible explanations of ‘the whispers’, I’ve ever heard! (minus Walt).
Nice job!
Fresh take. I hope you continue to work on this theory. I know that I will do a little research.
Hey thanks everyone for the comments.
A.E.S. – I hope I haven’t stepped on anyone’s toes with this. I would normally hit ‘search theories’ but there’s not so many to look through just yet.
Bailey – I don’t think that every time we hear the whispers we get a messenger, but I do think the messengers are usually accompanied by whispers. Perhaps the times when we’ve heard the whispers and there’s been no messenger are times when people are traveling through time but not making contact. In other words, I’m not saying it’s people consciously time traveling to serve a purpose – I’m saying that if there’s people jumping around willy nilly, the whispers could be a sign that time travelers are entering the timezone where the action is taking place. I notice we haven’t seen an awful lot of blinding lights prior to season 5, except for the time the Swan imploded.
macutchen, if you step on toes, then someones feet are too big. One of my biggest gripes on other sites was the i said it first..search first, blah’. One of the problems with not posting your theory because someone else has one similar is that 1)they become outdated and 2) people think different. I only stated that because i like YOUR particular theory better than the ones ive previously read.
i think the way you percieved Richard viewing Locke is dead on. Ive said before, the key to the show is perspective. Whos are we seeing at a particular time? In this case, its a very different take on richard seeing Locke, the same way Losties see visions and hear whispers. Dig away on this one my friend, you are on to something important i believe.
ahh macutchen, baby steps now..getting closer to confirmed.