My take on everything:
There is this Island. A special place where miracles happen. It is extremely close to evil and because of that, it must constantly be guarded as to not let out the bad. The Island is like a “bloody snowglobe” as Desmond put it one time. It is what separates the world from all the bad things that could pour out of a Pandora’s Box, if you will.
Jacob became the protector of the Island and for many years kept his nemesis the MIB trapped on the Island. But he knew that it was only a matter of time, and they had forever until MIB would succeed in finding his loophole and killing him. He devised a plan that would help him transfer his responsibilities to another individual and that that individual would have to kill the MIB. He tried for centuries to get people to prove themselves, redeem what have you but it looked as though the MIB was going to be proven correct about man.
Finally Jacob touched the Oceanic passengers and found a way to bring them all to the island and some sort of insurance for himself. But he had to get them to believe in him without interfering in their lives completely. Free will still existed on the Island even though he set them on their paths to get there.
The Losties went through a lot together. They had to learn to live together or die alone and spent the next 108 days on the Island struggling without a clue as to what was really going on. And we were along for the ride. In the end of season 3 we saw a glimpse of what the future held. 6 of the Oceanic passengers (Kate, Aaron, Jack, Hurley, Sayid and Sun) had managed to escape the Island and were back in LA. But the future looked grim and after learning in Season 4 that Locke was dead, I was ready to turn off my TV for good.
However, the death of John Locke hit Jack with a sudden wave of guilt and sadness. Guilt he never knew he felt about Locke. And he convinced the rest of the Oceanic 6 to go back to Island. Not all of the Oceanic six wanted to return, in fact most of them were very adamant about not returning. Somehow, with the help of Eloise Hawking (the mother of physicist Daniel Faraday) they found their way back to Island onboard Ajira Flight 316. Coincidentally (or was it?), Frank Lapidus was the pilot flying that plane and after some turbulence in the air, landed the plane safely on no where other than the Island itself. They were back.
Season 5 was very colorful and showed us a lot of what was behind the Dharma Initiative, one of the Island’s first of many mysteries we encountered. The Oceanic 6 had returned but some of them had transported back in time to the 70s. I think this really had to do with the all the electromagnetic properties in the heart of the Island and all the different physical aspects of it. The Island wasn’t a place in the NOW. It was a place that did not really exist in spacetime as we knew it. Its kind of like how you would describe a literal hell or heave. Remember I don’t believe in either of those places and I am not saying that the Island is one or the other but it is the closest to an explanation of spacetime I can come to. As mentioned before, it was kind of like a snowglobe, undetectable, and really hard to get into. The Island appears in many different times and places all over the world but I think its more, every where all at once. I wouldn’t say that time doesn’t exist on the Island because we know it does when we see the Losties in the 50′s and the 70′s and then in the present, but I believe that Island is very different that normal time. I’m not a physicist so grasping that concept took a little more out of me even after reading Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku and Einstein.
The ending of Season, Juliet detonated a bomb, which after engulfing the Losties in electromagnetic energy threw them back to their “Island present” where Season 6 started. Jack faith was tested again.
Ultimately, I think that the entire series was a show about the characters. The characters had all come from broken backgrounds, were sick, couldn’t walk or whatever you can devise about them. They came to the Island so that they can learn that there was a way that everything could be better. They learned their limits. We learned so much about these characters over time and saw them grow and change. Season 1 was a great example of this but we saw a lot of this throughout the entire series. Charlie and his addiction, Claire and the baby. Sayid coming to terms with his past. Sawyer and the haunting history of his parents. Locke and his wheelchair, Rose and her cancer. Boone letting go of Shannon. Jack was the final person to “let go” of everything in his past and it took him an entire 6 seasons to “move on” with his life or afterlife.
Christian Shepherd~NEXT PAGE
