Many different timelines and realities
I have posted this idea before but I think it bears repeating.
Warning: This is not a unified theory that explains everything in Lost. Just an idea.
Since episode one we have seen flashbacks of the different Oceanic 815 survivors. We have seen certain contradictions. We have seen an odd number of links that defy the laws of statistics and coincidence (i.e. all the so called easter eggs that link characters). My take on this as of the end of season 2 was that the flashbacks are from different realities, not just one omnipotent view point. This is in keeping with the narrative devices that the writers keep throwing in to surprise us and challenge our expectations.
When you think you are seeing a flashback it is actually a flash forward (Jack S3). You think it is a flash forward but it is a combination of flashback and flash forward (Jin and Sun in S6). You think it is a Snark but it is a Boojum. Then there are the outright contradictions and implausibilities. By contradictions I mean the same scene playing out with Charlie and his guitar in London where it starts raining. In one version Desmond comes out of Widmore building and recognizing him. In another he saves Nadia (of all people) as she is getting mugged! By implausibilities I mean the presence of Nadia in California having a house assessed by John Locke and also in London on other business and getting mugged. John Locke working for a box company AND being part of a commune AND working in a toy department. The different incarnations of his relationship with Helen.
It felt to me as though the writers felt free to invent alternate versions of each character’s life, and because these alternate versions are presented in short snippets with elipses we are left to re-construct an imaginary timeline which is falsely sequential.
Maybe John Locke never met Helen face to face in one version of his life. He was a pathetic rag of a man who fell in love with a voice.
Maybe John Locke learned to hunt with his father and lost a kidney in another incarnation.
Maybe John Locke met Helen in a group therapy session in another life.
What does Desmond say to Jack In season 3? “See you in another life, brother!”
So we are now confronted with a splintered universe in which two (or more) of these realities are brought together by Jacob into a collision course. Jacob the weaver who has perhaps been bringing threads of reality together for some dark and sinister end (of the world?). Or perhaps Jacob has been trying to reconcile the different realities by merging them to one end, the rest (or slight overlap of realities) is progress.
Wow that very good. I was unsure at first but that was very good & I was upset that it ended so quickly & would like you to add some other timelines of other characters like Sawyer & Kate cause they seem to follow the same timeline with no alternate yet. Kate seems to be on the run after she kills that guy & is always on the run until the Crash of 815 so hhmm???
Sawyer in his flashbacks or flash forwards also seems to be living the same reality with no alternation at all but I definitely see what you mean with John & the others mentioned.
As I’m reading your “idea” I’m viewing a program on the Science Channel which is all about the Parallel Universe theories. Interesting stuff… To me it coincides works well with your ideas here, Andre7.
Perhaps the Island is a middle ground… some sort connecting place where all these various wormholes from different parallel universes have entry and exit spots. Yet the Island (as we are told by Eliose) moves right? Well what if each time it stops at a point on the earth, it is also a stopping at a point in a parallel universe. At that moment or for however long the Island is at that point, the two universes are existing at once and the Island is the bridge. Maybe the black smoke monster is the reality of the two universes intersecting or maybe its actually a wormhole that connects the to universes… Just maybe the whispers and the “supposedly” dead people that keep appearing are the direct result of the intersecting of these two universes… what if the flashbacks and flash-forwards are realities of two different identical universes?
That reminds me of a movie that I saw way back in the ’70’s when I was a young Pup, called “Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun”. It was kind of a cheesy 60’s Sci-Fi movie, but cool for a young lad like me. Anyway I always thought the premise was pretty neat… Scientist’s on Earth detect another Planet similar in shape and size to our Earth and following the same orbit around the sun but completely on the opposite side. To make a long short, they send astronauts to this other Planet, they crash and like a old Twilight Zone episode they realize they are back on earth. Yet it turns out everything they use to be familiar with now is backwards, or rather opposite. It turns out they landed on an exact mirror image of Earth and yet their doppelganger’s from this “Mirror Earth” were experiencing the same thing at the same time back on the real Earth. It was as if the two Earth’s were intertwined with one another.
Maybe the different timelines and realities that you speak of are true because of this huge magic box we know as the Island. Locke: “It’s where miracles happen” or maybe its just where parallel universes meet!
And maybe the coincidences are not so coincidental… we may not be privy to it yet but what if certain characters like Libby & Nadia are “universal travelers”? The first time we hear the expression “see you in another life” is when Sayid tells Rousseau what the writing says on the back of Nadia’s picture, “See you in another life… if not this one”.
On the Science show they theorized that the “Big Bang” theory was not the beginning of time, rather it was two parallel universes colliding with one another, creating a new universe. They mention that our universe is one of many, many universes – picture each universe as a bubble in water and when they collide with one another, they splinter forming new smaller bubbles. This would explain your theory in your last paragraph. The colliding of these two universes…
Wow!
First because I like the intersecting universes idea with smokey as a sort of manifestation of that collision of worlds. When Ben is threatened by Alex, would this be a mirror universe Alex who is pissed off that Ben let her alter ego die? Hmmn…
So the awareness that these apparitions seem to have of what is happening would be related to their awareness of the island’s traits? How would that work?
In other words Christian stumbles on to Jacobs cabin, a doorway on the island between universes, and comes upon someone from another universe. From the cabin he can look out and see images (?) of the multiverses or listen to the whispers (?) He then leaves the cabin to tell someone else about his ‘find’ only to discover that he has stepped out into a universe where he is dead and Jack sees him as a ghost. He decides to play it safe and stay in the ‘doorway’ to wait for Jack or someone to come to him. Lo and behold Locke appears!
What about the apparitions off the island? Does the multiverse manifest itself off the island as well (with Charlie and Libby ghosts?) and how does this affect the laws of physics (like Michael’s gun not working)?
A friend of mine saw that movie twenty years ago and told me about it, and I have been looking for the title ever since to see it. Thanks for filling in the gap! 60s Sci-fi movies might have had a large “cheese” factor but they threw out some great ideas.
Like I said, it was not a unified theory and does not cover a lot of what we see, but I have a suspicion that there is more to the flashbacks than a simple linear presentation. I read somewhere that someone tried to edit all the flashbacks together into one single linear timeline using clues we are given as to their order. I suspect that was a mistake and that some of the events are parallel, not sequential.
This is very interesting. I just wonder how something this complex would play out in one season. A season in which the writers have already said the most important questions to be answered are the fates of the characters, who lives, who dies, who ends up with who.
interesting idea, but your “evidence” is a little off. characters clearly remember their flashbacks in many instances of the show (charlie writing down his “greatest hits” just one of the many examples, including kate’s horse, eko saving yemi, basically every flashback). the only supposed “alternate reality” is desmonds, although it hasn’t been proven to be alternate either (for we have never seen those days in his life before).
Andre7, as for the movie, I periodically searched for it for 20+ years too, and yet could not find it anywhere – and then it appeared on Amazon one day (but on video only – no thrills package) so I snatched it up!
As far as this theory or rather “idea” about LOST, I’m just adding to what you wrote and regards to what I saw on that Science Channel last night… I don’t claim to have all the answers, I haven’t even thought this one out all the way… but I’m hoping someone else may see this post and add on to this as well…
Its funny that you mention Michael not being able to kill himself because last night I deleted that paragraph on my comment because I could not work it out quite right… I’m still pondering it, but what I was thinking was that if you are in an alternate universe maybe you can not die until you get back to your own universe and/or come within the radius of the Island where both universes intersect. Think about it, even when Keamy tried to shoot Michael, they were outside the radius – yet the ship was obviously within the radius at the time it exploded, otherwise how would Sawyer & Juliet have seen the plume of smoke? And how would have Jin time shifted with the Island?
I agree with you as far as the story line that we have been privy to so far and it NOT being a linear one – it just doesn’t make sense!
And Banlinus, I don’t think that a parallel universe would be that complex at all. A matter of fact, I think it would open the door to the answers of many questions on LOST. And it certainly would dispell all this paranomal crap! I certainly would buy it over the fact that FLocke is MIB in disguise! I still believe that Locke is Locke and the dead Locke is Locke as well – and if there is a parallel universe involved in the equation, then I could rap my head around that – it has to do with physics and science theories that are prevelant at this moment in time. Although I liked the Invasion of the body snatcher’s idea in previes theories, it is just a bit to Sci-Fi for lost – and I believe the writers are looking for a more logical and possible conclusion.
Ekolocation, I’m not sure that Charlie remembering his greatest hits dispells this “idea”, but in regards to Kate’s horse – that could easily be a result of the two paralell universes coinciding with one another on the island at the same time and listen, maybe like Andre7 says, Jacob and MIB have figured out a way to manipulate this phenomina on the island…? Like we said, we don’t have all the answers here, and this isn’t a grand “end all” theory… its just a few ideas being tossed around.
I thank the writer’s of this show because they got me back into reading books on a more daily basis, more importantly books that I really dig! The one book that I read (and although very intriguing, I’d have to admit that it was a very hard read) was Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. We see Aldo reading it and highlighting important parts… there’s a section about wormholes and parallel universes…
I don’t know, I’m leaning this way right now, it makes a lot of sense but we still haven’t answered all the questions to LOST here, but I believe this is the track that they are on.
good ideas. if your theory rings true it would mean that from the very off, the writers have been deceiving us anf for all of us who have done the who rewatch, we would need to do it again!!
the one arguement i would put against it does not come from me as a dedicated lost fanatic, it comes from the rest of the audience you just watch lost for its entertainment value. i would say that the writers won’t use things such as a splintered universe, not one thats been happening over 5 seasons anyway as you need to spend many an hour on sites like this to understand whats going on. i know that the writers love to try and trick, confuse and mislead us viewers but i don’t think they will delve much deeper into the realms of theoretic sceince and quantum mechanics as they will loose touch will a large percentage of their audience. i honestly believe that the story and its time lines will follow a linear sequence and the end of the story will be in 2007 onwards.
i love the theory, its really good but i am wearing my ‘lets be realistic’ hat at the moment until i am proven wrong!!! 🙂
I_Am_Jacob:
Good point!
My major bugaboo with many of the ideas presented on Lost forums has been exactly that. The writers need to find a simple and easy to follow resolution to the series in 18 episodes and the splintered universe one is very tough.
But there is evidence that the writers have been planting seeds for at least three seasons of at least two or more realities coinciding. I find the Charlie saving Nadia scene lame in the extreme. This is one of his ten greatest moments? You’ve got to be kidding! The only justification for this scene is to show an altered reality from the earlier scene shown with Desmond.
There are other possible explanations for this (and contributors of this site have come up with genius theories that encompass those two scenes).
Desmond spends most of the second part of season 3 altering or splintering either the time line or reality by saving Charlie. The payoff is in season 4 with the introduction of Daniel Faraday and the notion of quantum mechanics. (this was earlier introduced with Desmond’s physicist friend Donovan).
I agree with Ardent Knight that the explanation will have a science-fiction basis. No ghosts or goblins. I am just suspicious enough of the writers to think they have one more narrative trick up their sleeve that they have been saving for a big reveal. I figure that if Bryan Singer can pull off Kaiser Sozay in one single scene at the end of “The Usual Suspects” then these guys are clever enough to be able to show us a splintered reality narrative along several episodes in season 6.
Maybe Im not as educated in theoretic science or quantum mechanics as you two but if there are are parallel universes & wormholes my understanding of them is this, A parallel universe would be like what you two describe that movie about with A OPPOSITE EARTH on the other side of the sun except everything wouldnt be Opposite just different.
Now a wormhole to my understanding seems like its a hole in the fabric of time maybe more like a tunnel to another hmm??? not sure what to call it but I guess another universe or maybe just to another time idk??
Anyways the one thing that got me off the whole idea was when Ardent Knight tried to explain Kate’s Horse-“that could easily be a result of the two paralell universes coinciding with one another on the island at the same time”- Well If Kate from “our” universe sees a Black Horse owned by “Kate” from a parallel universe then why would “our” Kate recognize it as her own???
If there are parallel universes & there are millions of exact copies like me, then like I know nothing about them they should know nothing about me.
what you two are talking about sounds like a wormhole that her horse from the past actually somehow gets to that island in her present through a hole in time maybe due to her on that island.
I think a lot of what you say could also be used in an altered timeline theory. If there are two distinct timelines from 1977 to 2007, then many of the aspects that you mentioned could be explained by that as well. I prefer that theory, since it relates directly to time travel, which is something the show has already dealt with.
Ban Linus: I agree with you. A lot of this discussion crosses along into a discussion of time travel. Had the creators stopped there last season I would be content and just figure that only fools believe in time and space.
But with the Comic Con videos they have made public in which they open the door to an alternate reality in which EVERYTHING changed. No more 815 crash. No bad numbers. Kate still accused of murder but of someone different.
Juxtapose this with Jacob’s appearance in the Losties lives and I am left with the thought that there is more to this than meets the eye. They have introduced an element of only fools believe in time, space and fixed reality. Whatever happened did not necessarily happen. Juliet may have saved her own life by striking the H bomb with a rock. No 815 crash, no Juliet recruitment into Dharma. No John Locke dying. And yet we see John Locke both dead and alive in the season climax.
I keep replaying scenes from the flashbacks in my mind. We are not given a lot of context and we are left to fill in a heck of a lot of blanks.
Again I am probably wrong but I thought I would put the idea out there again before February just in case details start cropping up that support it.
We’ll see.
The flashbacks could certainly be from either one of the two distinct timelines. Especially since most of the flashbacks occur after 1977. Maybe being on the island, they are able to remember both somehow. Off the island might be different and this is the reason for Jacob’s touch.
BING, I wouldn’t get stuck on the Kate/horse thing… nor would I get stuck on everything that we are mentioning here as part of a grand theory – my comments are ment to be more of a discussion as to possibilities rather then exact theories, and I gather Andre7 has similar motives since he’s prefaced this entire thread with “Warning: This is not a unified theory that explains everything in Lost. Just an idea.”
I will let you all submise your own thoughts and ideas to the Science show that I saw, I found a YouTube link, check it out for yourself… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7SDrj4Tjvk
Wow! On second view of this Paralell Universe documentary, it freakin’ stinks of the LOST World that we all know and love…
Ok Ardent Knight I would like to hear the similarities between Lost & parallel universes if you could please help.
@ Ardent Knight, is the documentary you were talking about from the BBC on M theory, I found it very interesting but fail to see any connection to the sorts of science that have happened on Lost. It seems so much bigger than what the creators of Lost have worked from, I really haven’t seen any mention of parallel universes, many worlds, infinite possibilities in the show. Sometimes I think I’m watching a completely different show to some of you. I’m quite confused.
Ardent Knight:
I am 45 yrs old and do not know Ricochet Rabbit. Will have to check that out. I guess it is not an age thing at all… Don’t have satellite either (but my kids would love to have it!)
Also BiNG:
To clear up a misconception, I never even took high school physics, so you probably have more education about theoretical physics than I do. Only in the last couple of years have i developed a layman’s interest in the subject. It comes from reading about the Manhattan Project. Also from Sci-Fi shows like Star Trek The Next Generation and Quantum Leap (and Lost).
But I am lovin’ it! I also think this is a great forum for exchange and want to thank both of you for contributing to this thread. I will mull over Intersecting vs parallel realities all during the Christmas holidays as I re-watch seasons 1-5. Thanks!
Tas:
We are talking about the show that has Ghosts, strange ghost whispers, people coming back from the dead, mysterious tropical islands where Polar Bears roam free, Smoke monsters, time travel, soldiers of fortune blowing s**t up, love triangles and circles and crashed balloons and drug planes and genetically modified animals, cursed numbers, and underground bunkers dating back to the seventies and H bombs from the 50s… And philosophical discussions about fate, science and faith…
I think there are as many versions of this show as there are viewers… 🙂
I think this is a very cool idea, but as a book or something. I don’t think it’s going on in Lost, though. People can have different jobs, stages of their relationships, and multiple things can happen while it rains in London (which is all the time!); without the need for multiple universes in this way.
I think it’s just taking that step too far towards being even more meta-complex. Plus as a writer, I’d be asking “why?” – What’s the point of that from a narrative / character perspective? I think the threads are going to come together very soon, not be revealed to be even MORE complex.
But again, excellent idea for a script!
Andre7, that’s what makes this show so great, the narrative has been so well constructed with so much stuff tying so many different ideas and philosophies together. The thoughts and ideas that have been sparked, some theories on this site I think are really interesting in and of themselves, there’s been a wealth of new ideas and stories put forth. I agree with Yojimbo, I think your ideas would make a great book but I can’t see that level of complexity being able to be resloved in 17 episodes, especially when as a character based show, they have so many character arcs to complete. I guess I’m just curious (if Ardent Knight and I were watching the same doco), how he figures it links with Lost, cos the parallel universe ideas didn’t have them interacting or impacting on ours in any way.
Im not trying to fight or argue with you Ardent. I just felt like I was somewhat being judged because my age & because I like to smoke but I was just shocked to see it on this post…I was kind of out of line so sorry about that & lets keep it to lost on theories but if you have some personal stuff to discuss we can go to a general chat or something.
An Andre I got some ideas but I will need to think & figure how to explain it the best of my ability but its tough since Im covering stuff im just learning along the way.
P.s.
Ardent, is that documentary you saw on parallel universes from the History Channel? The Universe? cause thats what I found.
Sorry for the delay response all… again, BING I didn’t mean to make fun of your age, I don’t judge people in that regard, I was just busting your chops because of the e-mails that I received from your casual talk – anyway, I already mentioned, “my bad” for checking the box… And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with what you enjoy doing during your personal time, I definitely do not judge there, I was rather speaking from experience – hey, just look at my Avatar… Again, Peace and lets move on…
As for the Parallel universe show, I’m not sure that it is on the History Channel because I saw it on the Science Channel, but it very well maybe… Either way it is on YouTube in 5 different clips. It has some very interesting theories, and I feel that some of them coincide with LOST as well as Andre7’s original “idea” on this post. I’m not saying that it is the end all, or the “magic key that opens the box”, I just thought it was interesting and definitely related to some LOST topics – again especially the original post here by Andre7. That’s why I posted the link for all to view, and make their own assumptions.
Tas, the writers of LOST do make mention and reference to A Brief History of Time written by Stephen Hawking a few times (hell they pay tribute – Eloise Hawking.) – Aldo is reading and underling specific passages in this book in “Not In Portland” when Kate, Sawyer & Alex pull the “ol’ Wookiee prisoner gag” on him. Although this book supposedly claims to be an easier read then most Science articles, and attempts to explain a range of subjects in Cosmology (including Paralell Universe’s), I still found it pretty difficult to wrap my head around some of the concepts – I’d like to read it again when I get some time. Yet there are theories in the book that could possibly explain some phenomenons in regards to LOST.
Also, Tas… you & Yojimbo, state that these ideas that Andre7 has put fourth and I and others have extrapulated on would be good for a movie or a novel, but essentially isn’t what LOST really is all about or rather is to complicated for LOST. I’d say that we could all agree that LOST is not your same old “run of the mill” TV show… The writer’s of LOST have specifically stated that you could take each Season and create a 6 part book series, because each Season essentially has a life of its own. We have so much more content to evaluate in this show because of the medium it is viewed on – being TV, that it absolutely dwarfs any single movie, novel or trilogoy for that matter!
Andre7, I’m 42 so we pretty much grew up during the same general era, I think the difference may be that I strictly viewed English language shows on the 5 to 7 channels that we had here in the States… I’m sure (and assuming because of where you state you live on your Profile) that being you are a Quebecois (as my wife is as well) that you may not have gotten the chance to see Ricochet Rabbit… With that said, it’s really not a cartoon to go crazy about, its just my dry humour and my way of being a punster being that it has the “Rabbit” theme (we know and love in LOST) and Ricochet’s favorite line being “Bing, bing… BING” – I just thought it was apropos for the moment, that’s all.