"Lost" Theory

No, this is not about a theory that I had that I can no longer find (although there are plenty of those), it's a theory about the "Lost" TV show.

I don't watch a whole lot of television, but every Wednesday night, my whole family sits in front of the TV to watch "Lost". My wife recently picked up some kind of magazine that had an article on "Lost", and in it they describe some of the theories people have on what's happening in this show. They said that "... the most popular is that the passengers of Oceanic flight 815 are stuck in purgatory." They supposedly did a survey of people's blogs or something and came up with that. My question is: "most popular" among who, morons?

Okay, maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but how does that explain the birds that died when Walt got angry while he was reading a book on birds? (This happened during one of the early episodes during one of the Michael/Walt flashbacks) Or the fact that Walt's mom suddenly got sick and died when Walt got angry at her? Or, how does it explain the what the supposed palm reader said about Claire's baby, and how he arranged to get her on the flight?

I have two theories, and I think the truth is actually somewhere in between, but it's still easier to explain it as two different theories.

The first is that the Dharma experiment was an experiment in psychic power. Alvar Hanso collected a bunch of people who exhibited some weak psychic power and took them to the island to test them. The island had some kind of power that enhanced psychic ability, and Alvar wanted to use that to improve his results. (The concept that some areas of the planet can have strange effects on people was introduced in the Rose flashback where her husband tried to take her to a place in Australia to heal her cancer. The guy there examined Rose and told her that, while that place did have the ability to heal some cancers, it couldn't heal hers.)

Anyway, the island made the psychics too powerful, and they revolted against the Hanso corporation, and began to implement their own plans. I think they're trying to take over the world. Their strategy is to subtely influence events in the world to cause other people with latent psychic power to come to the island, and then to assimilate them into their group. The main man in the "Others" group, probably had the most psychic power, and he controls the rest of the people in the group. They can leave the island, but when they do, they lose the islands enhancement to their psychic power, so their main base of operations has to be the island.

Their psychic powers, even with the island's enhancement, is relatively weak. It gives them an edge, but they can't just go out there and mind-control people into doing what they want. They have certain things they have learned how to do, and they are limited to using these tools to acheive their goals. They are not all-powerful.

It's been 13 years since the French Woman's boat came to the island. Maybe it was brought there by the psychics, or maybe it was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, it's pretty obvious that the Dharma Initiative was circa 1950's or 1960's or so, so it's taken the Others quite a while to arrange for the plane crash. What were they doing in the meantime? Experimenting and learning how to control and use their powers. I think the smoke monster and the polar bears are a result of this experimentation.

My second theory is a good vs. evil thing. The island is evil and it's somehow trying to get people to do its bidding. It first seduced John Locke by giving him his legs back and turning him into a virile hunter. When it threatened to take those gifts away again, it frightened John into doing its bidding. John, who first helped Charlie get over his heroine addiction, later turned against him when Charlie had a dream that Claire should get the baby baptised. That's because the island wanted to prevent the baptism. John tried to discredit Charlie's opinion in the group by highlighting the fact that Charlie had been a drug addict, and when Charlie was on the verge of being able to destroy the rest of the heroine, John took it and hid it, preventing Charlie from destroying it, and giving John the power to use it to influence Charlie in the future. (Somehow the drugs ended up in Sawyer's stash, and I'm not sure how that happened.) Charlie, who appears kind of weak and lacking in confidence, is no match for studly John, and this kind of sets up a David and Goliath kind of battle.

The palm ready who got Claire to go on the plane saw a little of this struggle. He know Claire's baby had the potential for two possible futures, one as a good person, and the other as a terribly bad person. That's why he was so scared when he read Claire's palm. He first wanted Claire to keep the baby, saying that it must be raised by her, but she insisted that she wanted to give him up. Then, when Claire came to tell him she had decided to keep the baby, he insisted that she fly to California to give the baby to a couple there that could raise him. At first, the audience is led to believe that this new couple could also raise the baby in the right way for him to become a good person (at least, that's what I believed), but by the end of the episode, Charlie suggests that he knew about the crash all along, and that Claire and her baby would survive, and that this was all part of his plan to have Claire raise the baby. However, another possibility is that the island somehow got control of the palm reader, and either made him believe that getting Claire on the flight was good for her, or somehow threatened him to get her to get on the plane.

Echo is another interesting character. Actually, I think it might have been him who suggested that Claire's baby should be baptised, based on an interpretation of one of Charlie's dreams. As a boy in one of the flashbacks, he saved his brother from a life of killing and drug running by offering up himself to be kidnapped instead of his brother. When Echo went with the kidnappers, he gave his small cross that he wore around his neck to his brother. It was obvious from this that Echo had been a very religious kid, and after receiving this cross, Echo's brother went on to become a priest in the church. Echo, after being kidnapped, went on to lead a life of killing and drug running until his brother ended up getting on a small plane, leaving Echo behind. At this point, Echo pretended that he was his brother, and assumed his brother's role in the church. When he came to the island, Echo found the plane that his brother had been on, and his brother's decayed body, and took back the cross. He then told people that he was a priest, or at least, he said 'yes' when Charlie asked him if he was a priest.

In a way, the cross represents the person that Echo was supposed to be. When Echo was kidnapped, his brother received the cross and became that person. When Echo got the cross back, he got his original destiny back.

At first, it seemed that Echo was in the "good" camp. He interpreted Charlie's dream as a message that Claire should have her baby baptized, and he kind of backed Charlie up, albeit behind the scenes as far as everyone else was concerned, when John turned against him. But lately he's been acting kind of rude to Charlie, and then in the last episode he gave up on building the church and moved into the shelter.

John, on the other hand, has seemed to have escaped the evil influence of the island, although I can't quite put my finger on why I think that. I read in this article that Terry O'Quinn, the actor who plays John, told the producers that he missed the old John Locke. It may be that the producers decided to make John swing back to the good side, and have Echo become the evil person, or maybe now it's Michael. I think the producers have some basic plan as to what's going to happen, but I also think their letting the story kind of evolve to fill that plan, letting the characters develop in a natural way and so forth.

As to how to merge these two theories, the fact that Echo thought that the baby should be baptized, and John's attempts to downplay the importance of that (he couldn't come out strongly against the baptism, because that would've given him away), makes me think that this is a battle between good and evil in the Christian belief system. Echo's being a priest, and the Mary dolls holding the heroine could just be coincidences, Christians live in this world, so we could expect some Christian icons in the movie without this necessarily happening in a Christian universe, but that John was opposed to the baptism means that the island was opposed to the baptism, and this means that the island's plans could've been thwarted by the baptism, so the baptism must somehow protect the baby from the island, and that could only happen if the island was somehow related to the Christain devil, and the good was somehow on the side of the Christain God.

The question is, how to fit this in with the psychic experiment theory. The only thing I can think of is that the devil is the one who provides the island with it's psychic-power-enhacing power, or maybe that he's simply using the island's power for his own purposes. Maybe he subtely influenced the Hanso Corporation to begin the experiments there, knowing that the kind of power the island gave would corrupt most people and give him influence over them. Or maybe the main "Others" guy is the devil, but then, what would be the whole purpose of the psychic power that Walt obviously had?

I'm not really happy with this merging of the two theories. That's why I presented it as two theories instead of one.

One other theory, one that I thought was probably obvious to anyone who's been watching the show, but after reading the article I'm not so sure. Although the last episode showed the Others as living in pretty primitive conditions, we all know that's not true. We saw the episode where Claire began remembering what had happened to her when she was kidnapped, and we saw the fake beard that Kate found in the locker in the area where Claire had been taken to, and anyone who saw the last episode saw Walt tell his father that things weren't what they seemed, and that they were just pretending. Also, the guy who kidnapped Claire, I forget his name, was very clean cut. He obviously got some nice clothes from somewhere. I think it's pretty obvious that the Others have a pretty sophisticated setup.

Another question: do all of the survivors of the flight have latent psychic ability, or do just some of them have it? Walt and Claire's baby obviously have it, and I would say John Locke probably has it as well. Also, although I like the idea of Jack not having it, and maybe just having good leadership abilities, I think he probably has it. I think he used it when he helped restore the use of her legs to that woman who later became his wife during one of the flashbacks. His psychic power is probably what made him a good doctor and have a reputation for never losing a patient. Echo might have it. He's kind of in the same ballpark as John. Maybe they have it, or maybe you don't need it to be influenced by the island. Personally, I kind of think everyone who's alive now has it. I'm not sure if the people who survived the plane crash had it, and were either died because the island can't plan things perfectly, didn't have it and the island killed them off because it didn't need them, or did have it, but were going to go to the good side, and the island killed them off for that reason.

Finally, in the final battle between good and evil, who is on which side? Jack and Kate are certainly on the good side, at least so far. Like John and Echo, people can change sides at the will of the producers. I think the producers think everyone will think Sawyer will be evil, so they'll have him be their "surprise" good person. I think Charlie, Claire, and Claire's baby are pretty solidly in the good camp. The baby may appear to be close to going to the bad side, but good always triumphs, and Claire's baby is definitely key, so I don't see how they can make him end up on the bad side.

The real surprise, I think, will be Rose. She seems like such a good, spiritual, Christain woman, but she stopped her husband from making the big SOS sign because she knew the island had healed her cancer, and she was afraid that if she left the island, she would get the cancer again. Like John, the island has a hold on her. Will she beat it and come back to the good side? That would make a good feel-good story, but it would be kind of polly-anna-ish if everybody stayed with the good side. I think the producers need to sacrifice someone for the sake of the plot-line, and I think that someone is Rose.