Juicy Lights

Still wondering what the television show LOST was all about? I have answers!

SPOILER ALERT – the following article will completely explain and therefore give away to the most important puzzle pieces from the hit ABC television series LOST. Therefore if you haven’t seen the show and don’t want the end to be spoiled, stop reading this article right here! As for the rest of you who have wondered… what did it all mean? I have the answer for you!

Now that the spoiler warning is out of the way, lets get right to it… 

Are there Twinkies in there mommy?

The most mysterious lingering question remaining regarding the television show LOST is… what is the golden light in the cave at the heart of the island?

If only we knew what the light was maybe we could determine what the island was. And if we knew those facts we could piece together all the remaining details. Some might say the question was already answered when Jacob claimed the island was like a cork (when he said that he wasn’t lying which I will explain later) yet saying the island is a cork really only raises another question instead of giving any type of comprehensive answer, after all… if the island is a cork, what does that mean? I for one am glad that the writers didn’t spell it all out for us because if they had, it would have robbed us the opportunity to ponder the larger questions and solve the puzzle ourselves and ultimately that was the fun of LOST.

SO WHAT WAS THE LIGHT?

The golden light in the cave at the heart of the island is the same light that was behind the frozen donkey wheel that the MIB, Ben, and Locke, all were attempting to manipulate or channel to their benefit throughout the show. It also seems to be the same light (or a type of it) that engulfed the island when Desmond flipped the fail safe, when Juliette ignited Jughead, and each time our losties were bounced around when the island was skipping in time.

Most folks assume the light is God, or spirituality, or possibly the personification of goodness, or life, or something similarly vague. None of those solutions help us piece together the puzzle that is LOST.

Drum roll please…

I submit to you that the light is…. time. (how’s that for an abrupt answer?)

The future is so bright, I gotta wear shades.

Now think of what Jacob’s mother told him about the light in the episode “Across the Sea” she tells Jacob and his brother in black they must never enter the cave. The Boy in Black says that it is beautiful, she agrees and tells them that a little bit of the same light that is in the cave is inside every man but that people always want more. Mother says… that while the other people can’t take the light, they might try and if the light goes out here it goes out everywhere.

Think about it, don’t we all wish we had more time? And if we could make time wouldn’t we make more, and more, and more?? We could never get enough. And she wasn’t being purely philosophical when she said that a little bit of that light is in every man because every living human has a little bit of time left (be it an hour, or be it 100 years) but we always lust for more. That’s why we have sayings like, “if I could just make some time”, “there is never enough time in the day”. But even more importantly, if we could manipulate goodness would we travel in time? Of course not. The light is time, NOT goodness.

If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do, is to save everyday till eternity passes away…

TIME, WHAT IS IT ANYWAY?

Here is a tidbit about time from wikipedia…

Einstein showed that if time and space is measured using electromagnetic phenomena (like light bouncing between mirrors) then due to the constancy of the speed of light, time and space become mathematically entangled together in a certain way (called Minkowski space) which in turn results in Lorentz transformation and in entanglement of all other important derivative physical quantities (like energy, momentum, mass, force, etc.) in a certain 4-vectorial way (see special relativity for more details).

Therefore light is time, and conversely time is light, (also note the reference to mirrors in the common explanation for time. For six seasons they showed us our favorite characters looking at their reflections in various mirrors, in essence they were looking at a past version of themselves in time which symbolizes the struggle we all have with our past).

When physicists attempt to visualize time it sorta looks like a hourglass. (see image below)

Just imagine what you could do if you could alter the flow of time by slowing or speeding the passage through the center. Maybe like with a cork?

We can measure time in various ways…

• Hourglasses (like the one above)
• Grandfather clocks with chains and weights (more on these later)
• Watches, with gears and magnets (magnets and electromagnetism are important time keeping tools)
• Pendulum clocks (such as the one in Eloise’s church)
• Atomic clocks
• Water clocks (invented by the Egyptians)

All of these types of clocks are present or hinted at throughout the six seasons of LOST.

With all of this in mind it leads us to the story behind the story of LOST. To do this we must make some educated assumptions but I think you will find that this theory makes the entire six seasons of LOST come to life and all the puzzles pieces fit together like a glove.

THE VERY FIRST MISTAKE

Let’s travel way back in time, back before any of the story of LOST had been told. Let’s assume the island isn’t an island yet, let’s assume the island is merely an undiscovered place in a remote location on the earth, maybe like… Tunisia. Let’s further assume that the golden cave of light/time is located there. Maybe this cave of light/time is the very source of time and reality that we live in and time flows out from this point to the rest of the earth and ultimately to the rest of the universe. Think of this place as the middle of an hourglass. It’s a passage way between the past, present, and future – it’s essentially the eternal clock. The light is time, therefore it represents the future, things yet to come, things that are not tampered with by us. The future is clean untainted by things such as sin, pain, destruction, etc. To us the light represents a clean slate i.e., a Tabula Rasa.

Let’s assume that some ancient Egyptians stumble across this light (which is actually the flow of time). And let’s assume that these ancient Egyptians discover that by manipulating the flow of the light/time they manipulate time itself, maybe like if you placed a small cork in the middle of an hourglass it would let less sand flow through the hourglass giving the illusion that time was slowing, but in the case of the golden cave of light the clock is real and any blockage in the flow actually does in fact affect the passage of time. Obviously this would be an advantageous discovery. After all, if you can manipulate time you could gain power, wealth, and possibly eternal life apart from God’s help i.e., by jumping back in time over and over again you could theoretically live forever!

Now look what you did!

The Egyptians partially blocked and channeled the light (i.e., time) and began to manipulate it. In fact it appears that the Egyptians installed some sort of valve device that could alter the flow of time, depending on how the cork was placed in the device time could be slowed, sped up, or even regulated to flow normally (as it was in the end of the End). The instant that the Egyptians manipulated time there was two serious side-effects. First, the past, was no longer just a memory. The past became an actual entity because now the past exists in more than just the mind, now the past actually exists in the real world because by manipulating time you are not allowing the past to be “let go” (by creating the ability to travel back to it). Ultimately the entire message of the show LOST was our struggle to let go of the past and not be consumed by it, yet LOST took this concept a step further and designed the show around our character’s battling their pasts in a very real way. In LOST the flash backs of our characters not only told the back story but also helped to define the monster which was a combination of all of their pasts and others that had come before them

Thus, the birth of the smoke monster was a side effect of the very first manipulation of time.

THE SMOKE MONSTER IS THE PAST

Not just Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley’s past, but the smoke monster is all of our pasts, filled with the dark, dirty, pain, hurt, and everything else we leave behind us in our lives. Think of the light in the cave like fresh clean gasoline that you pour into your car, but as your car uses the gas it spits out the tail pipe in a cloud of black smoke. The clean unused gas is the symbol of your future and the smoke is a symbol of your past and all the things you leave behind. Yet, if you backup your car you can run into your own exhaust i.e., your own smoke consumes you. And that’s what had happened on the island they had “backed up into their own exhaust” so to speak.

Therefore, the ancient Egyptians were the first to manipulate time, but in doing so they created the smoke monster which is really nothing more than a physical version of the past.

The light = time (the future, hope, etc.)
The smoke = the past (the exhaust of our lives)

A land disjointed from time becomes a floating island separated from us not just geographically but also chronologically. Maybe similar to the Mystery Tales #40 cover seen in LOST episode “Cabin Fever”

The second side effect of the first instance of time travel was that the area around the source of light/time was no longer attached to it’s surroundings either geographically or in time. The entire area was “lifted” from it’s location and had become a “floating” island in time. Finding the island took more than just knowing geography but also took knowing how to determine where the island might be in time via reading other similar electromagnetic pockets of energy around the world. The ancient Egyptians secretly handed down the instructions for locating the island in time from generation to generation (eventually ending up in the hands of Eloise Hawking).

After the Egyptians’ initial discovery, it didn’t take long for them to figure out that the ability to manipulate time could be used in ways that might harm them. Yet that was only the beginning of their fears. The Egyptians determined that if time was placed in the wrong hands it could spell the end of reality as we know it. If someone were to completely dam up the light/time, the future could no longer proceed and we would all be stuck in time never able to advance to the next moment. Or if someone were able to allow all of time to flow too quickly all at once the future would evaporate into thin air and time would cease to exist and therefore we would all cease to exist. Again think of the hourglass, if you plug the hole, time stops.If you make the hole too large, time slips through so fast that no sand is left and time stops. Clearly time needs a protector!

FATHER TIME

Jacob wasn’t the first protector, and he wasn’t the last. Jacob was only one ofwho knows how many island/time protectors since the ancient Egyptians. Jacob, had been installed in a “Father Time” type of role in that he was a protector of time but not an eternal protector, he would be replaced when his own time was up just like Father Time is depicted as being replaced by a baby at the end of each year. No, I am not suggesting that Jacob was literally Father Time, what I am saying is Jacob was a type of Father Time (it’s symbolism)similar to the fact that Father Time himself was merely a type of Chronos who was the personification of time in ancient Greece. Chronos was depicted in Greco-Roman mosaics as a man turning the Zodiac Wheel (hmmm… turning a Zodiac wheel you say???). Either way, Jacob was there to protect time from humans that had come to manipulate it to their advantage and also to protect it from the past i.e., the smoke monster (more on that later).

Like Chronos and Father Time, Jacob is the protector of time. (note that Chronos is often depicted as turning the wheel of the zodiac)

“Jacob was the closest thing I ever had to a father” (Father time that is) - cry-baby Llana

THE SECOND BIG MISTAKE

Long after the Egyptians were gone, pregnant Claudia washes up on shore and “Mother” is there to help her deliver her baby and we later learn that the “baby” turns into “babies” as twin boys are born. At that point, Mother is in the role of Father Time i.e., she is the protector of the island and time but she is tired and she wants out, so she murders Claudia and manipulates the two boys into taking over her role. The two boys make a perfect duo; one boy is innocent and faithful enough to do what is right for the island, and the other is willing to lie and kill to get things done (a perfect balance). But something bad happens here that I don’t think even Mother could foresee. Jacob throws his brother into the light/time cave and at that point the smoke monster (the past as an entity) becomes a person via the merging of it with the MIB. The smoke monster had existed prior to this incident (as we see in the Egyptian art), however I don’t think it had ever been merged with a human soul before, this gave the smoke monster purpose. The smoke monster was no longer a mindless cloud of past memories, it was now a very mad person whose body was removed and whose soul was merged with a pillar of smoke and hurtful memories.

By manipulating time, the past is like cosmic back-wash into the present yet Jacob has just given it purpose!

When the MIB is in the primitive well speaking with his mother, he tells her that they are going to attach the wheel to a hole which will make a system that channels the water and the light and when he turns the wheel he will finally be able to leave the island. Mother knows that the MIB is correct and she responds rhetorically “how do you know all this”? It isn’t long after that when Mother slams the MIB’s head into the rocks knocking him out. She proceeds to kill all “his” people and fills in the well which makes the MIB extremely perturbed and in turn he kills Mother. Mother then thanks him and dies. The important part of that story is that Mother knows the MIB is right. She knows that by manipulating time, the MIB will be transported off the island and likely will never return. Mother doesn’t want to lose her replacement protector because she wants a permanent vacation. So she takes it upon herself to destroy the early version of the time traveling machine. Therefore, even though Mother got her replacement, I don’t think she envisioned Jacob throwing his brother down the cave and creating a monster even bigger than before. The sin, pain, and hurt of the past was growing, but now it had purpose.

At some point somebody eventually uncovers the well and installs the wheel correctly, but their identification is not known and frankly somewhat irrelevant, all we know is that happens between the time of the MIB’s death and the Dharma Initiative.

FLASH FORWARD TO THE HIPPIES!

As time passes, more and more people come to the island via instructions handed down from the ancient Egyptians and eventually we end up with a group of people called the Dharma Initiative. These folks come to the island to do testing and experiments (based on external LOST information we might conclude that they have come to the island because they believe the earth is coming to an end and they might be able to use the power of the island to stop the series of events that will end the earth). We also see that in the Dharma school house the children are being taught how to read Egyptian hieroglyphics therefore there is clearly a connection between what is currently happening on the island with what had happened originally with the Egyptians.

Kid, your brain is about the size of a Polar Bear brain. Does my asking you that make you nervous?

The Dharma Initiative is somewhat sophisticated. After all, in the 1970’s we were able to successfully put a man on the moon, along with so many other important inventions. Dharma started experimenting with time on the island. They started channeling the light/time/water which manipulated time. They most likely figured out quickly that if you are not careful with how you move through time you can hemorrhage your brain and die (the worst nose bleed ever!). Therefore, they did a lot of testing, and found that it was most effective to test animals that were similar in size to humans. But even more importantly, they needed a mammal with a brain that was a similar size to a human brain. Therefore, the Dharma Initiative brought Polar Bears to the island for testing purposes. One of the side effects to time travel (at least near the Orchid Station) is when the traveler is ejected out of the time worm- hole and transported to the Tunisian desert, which clearly had happened to at least one poor Polar Bear that Charlotte found in the episode “Confirmed Dead”.

HIPPIES DON’T NEED GOD TO LIVE FOREVER!

4+8+15+16+23+42=108

Or so they think. Just as every person who had came before them, the Dharma folks eventually lose their interest in saving the world and find out that they themselves can benefit from the golden cave of light and time. They realize that by continually traveling back in time they can effectively live forever! They perfect the process and find that to have the least amount of adverse side effects from the time travel they will reset time about every two hours, or 108 minutes to be precise. There is one problem with their plan however, they can’t have the time resetting device too near their own living quarters because it turns out that if you travel in time backwards you can never get to the future to travel in time again (it’s a paradox). In other words… if they are pushing the button themselves their entire life is like a skipping record and they can never live normally. So, they decide to create the button pushing device far away from their living quarters in a hatch that they seclude as to separate them as far as possible from their button-pushing guinea pigs. The hatch was built near another pocket of electromagnetism (time) and these two pockets of magnetism acted like wormholes to each other, but the important part was that the button would reset time near the other wormhole which was by the orchid station and therefore the Dharma folks could live forever (theoretically).

Eventually, the “Others” kill off the Dharma folks but continue to use the time traveling scheme to their advantage as Ben knows the drill and is able to live a healthy “normal” life in Dharmaville with his fake girlfriend Juliette and his fake daughter Alex.

Another problem with the Dharma plan to continually reset time is that time is building up all around it. Imagine our water clock with a partially plugged time hole, the pressure behind it keeps increasing because time wants to happen! And when that button isn’t pushed, time gushes through like a raging river pulling everything with it as it goes. Keeping time steady is like a balancing act, you can’t allow too much to escape, but you also can’t allow too much to be held back and while Dharma had perfected the balancing act to some extent there were “incidents” that happened along the way.

Which is why each time the button isn’t pressed the island rushes through time trying to “catch up” with the ever passing moment. When Desmond fails to press the button on September 22, 2004, which brought down flight 815, it also caused Dharmaville to lose some of the time they had made for themselves and their bodies feel the wrath of time as Ben develops the cancer on his spine which he had been avoiding via time travel.

Nothing is gonna happen John, well besides a burst of time of course.

Another interesting example of this is in season 2 in the episode Maternity LeaveClaire is having flashbacks when she was abducted by Ethan and the “Other’s” and is brought to what looks like a fully functioning, modern, clean hospital station underground. They are treating her with “medicine” and are preparing to “take” her baby from her. She later escapes with the help of Rousseau. In that same episode Rousseau and Kate take Claire to the Dharma medical facility in hopes of finding the “medicine” that Ethan was given Claire and the baby but this time when they find the medical station is appears to be abandoned and shows the effects of many months (possibly years) of being vacant. So how is it that a place like that can look so old and run down in such a short amount of time? The answer is found in the episodeOne of Them which was aired directly prior to Maternity Leave. In One of them, Sayid is in the hatch trying to get the truth from Ben, AKA Henry Gale, and he has locked himself in the armory so that he can torture Ben. Jack is mad that Locke has lied to him to allow Sayid to torture Ben so Jack and Locke start to tussle.

My how time flies when you are fighting in the hatch.

During this struggle, the hatch timer runs out and the red hieroglyphics appear and things start to shake (time is starting to rush to the present). After just a couple moments Jack allows Locke to enter the numbers and the clock is reset to 108. Yet in just that short amount of time that the clock was at zero I believe several months, or possibly a couple years rushed by which explains why the medical station seemed to age so dramatically in just a short amount of time.

DESMOND IN THE HATCH, JACOB ON THE ISLAND

The hatch is a symbol of the island as a whole….  Desmond (hoping for a replacement) was trapped in the hatch pushing the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 to save the world similarly to how Jacob (hoping for a replacement) was “trapped” on the island pushing the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 (metaphorically pushing their buttons) orchestrating the events that would ultimately save the world. Desmond was constantly battling time trying to hold off the past in the hatch just as Jacob had spent his entire life battling the past and that gets old after awhile. 

Jacob wants a replacement as every Father Time before him and every Father Time after him wanted. Yet with Dharma and the “Others” constantly resetting time, Jacob needed to clean up some messes in time (namely the monster he helped to create). Using time to his own advantage Jacob begins to choose candidates to replace him. These candidates all had a flawed past. They all had reason to dislike the past which would work in Jacob’s favor because Jacob needed people that were willing to battle their past (figuratively and also in reality).

Look at me… I am weaving the tapestry of time.

Jacob orchestrates events that bring people to the island that might be good candidates to take the role as “Father Time” or protector of time, Jacob can see the candidates through the mirrors in the Lighthouse which reflects images from any point in time. Ultimately what Jacob wants is for somebody to uncork the island releasing all the pent up time and then to have somebody place the plug back in properly so that time can flow normally and the past (at least to that point) can be “let go”. In a way, Jacob is being merciful to the MIB by orchestrating events that allow the MIB to become mortal again and then be killed so that he is essentially released from his duties just as Jacob is being replaced by Jack and eventually Hurley. Why doesn’t Jacob do the job himself you might ask? Well, after seeing his brother get merged into the smoke monster he certainly didn’t want the same fate. Therefore Jacob sets into motion a series of events that will prepare Desmond to do the task for him.

In the sideways world the past and the future are in balance as indicated by Widmore’s paintings.

The future and the past need to be in balance for the fabric of reality to flow properly. Thinking of the future as the white rock on the scale and the past as the black rock on the scale they should be of equal weight keeping all things in check, yet our island was dramatically out of balance. It seems like the past, AKA the smoke monster, was winning the battle. He was tipping the balance of time into his favor and he knows it and demonstrates it by tossing the white rock in “Jacob’s cave” out into the ocean telling Sawyer this was an “inside joke”, this also explains why the water in the temple was going dark, as the future was in jeopardy of being consumed by the past.

Yet Jacob was not going to go down easy, Jacob drank the “time Kool-Aid” that Mother gave him and therefore Jacob has light/time inside him similar to the MIB being merged with the past. Therefore Jacob is the embodiment of the future and when he touches people he can pass a bit of that light/time on to them (when you are time… you can travel anywhere in time that you want). This is how Jacob’s powers worked, he could place aspects of time into other people. He couldn’t absolve Richard of his sins nor bring his wife back to life but he could make Richard not age because that was within Jacob’s powers. Jacob eventually places these powers fully into Jack, who in turn passes them on to Hurley. Jacob wanted to die and move on just as “Mother” wanted to die and move on. Yet Jacob needed to get his replacement set and also attempt to get the balance of time reset and in proper working order. Jacob ultimately achieved his goal with the help of all of our Losties but most notably Jack and Desmond by their flushing the past down the cosmic toilet and then resetting the hourglass so that time could flow in a balanced way as it was intended.

STARTING TO PUT IT ALL TOGETHER

SIGHTS AND SOUNDS FROM THE PAST

Don’t be consumed by your past, just ask Mr. Eko, Nikki, and Paulo.

Knowing that the smoke monster represents the past, it’s no wonder that the sounds that the smoke monster made were a mix of sounds from clocks (chains of winding a grandfather clock, a distorted ticking sound etc.) as well as sounds from the past of our LOST characters (Locke’s adding machine from work and Christian Shepard’s cash register purchase from his final drinks, etc.). Another sound that the smoke monster made was that of a receipt machine from a taxi cab which I believe symbolizes the moment you have to pay for your past.

This also explains why the smoke monster can only appear to people as things from their past: Jack’s dad, Kate’s horse, Ben’s mom, Richard’s wife (in the Black Rock), Mr. Eko’s brother, Yemi, etc…

In the Season 6 episode “The Substitute” Smokie asks Sawyer who he thinks he is, Sawyer says… “I don’t care if you are the Ghost of Christmas past.” Flocke aka the Smoke Monster nods and smiles in amusement as if to say… you are very perceptive!

This brings us to a very interesting point about the smoke monster. Think back to the very first episodes of the show LOST, where in flashbacks we find Kate running from her past figuratively (as a fugitive) and also literally as she ran from the smoke monster (the past) when she, Jack, and Charlie hiked out to the front piece of the plane to find the transceiver. Charlie, on the other hand, ran from the smoke monster (the past) but was slipping and sliding and getting stuck in the mud similar to what his actual past was like as we saw in flashbacks with his drug addiction. Yet, in that scene they never once show Jack running from the smoke monster, instead a few episodes later (White Rabbit) we see Jack chasing after his father, not just in a real life flashback, but also on the island… Jack is chasing his past while Kate is running from it. You can look at all the characters from LOST and see the same types of connections when we view the smoke monster as the past the story on the island makes even more sense.

Here are just a few examples…

- Jack: chasing his past and refuses to let go (flashbacks and island action reveal the same story).
- Kate: Running from her past (flashbacks and island action reveal the same story).
- Sawyer: searching to kill a part of his past he ultimately finds out that his lust for revenge was misplaced (flashbacks and island action reveal the same story).
- Locke: manipulated by his past, his father manipulated him out of his kidney and the undercover cop manipulated him into revealing the pot growing operation in a flashback. Locke is also manipulated by the smoke-monster/the past on the island.
- Charlie: Made a mess of his past and now it haunts him, his dark past (drug addiction) keeps trying to make a mess of his life over and over again (flashbacks and island action reveal the same story).
- Mr. Eko: attempting to get redemption from his past but ultimately is consumed by his past (flashbacks and island action reveal the same story).
- Sayid: his past turned him into something he never wanted to be yet in the end he redeemed himself (flashbacks and island action reveal the same story).

I’m not judging you! (no, really I am not)

THE FUTURE ISN’T ALWAYS BRIGHT AND THE PAST ISN’T ALWAYS DARK

One thing that many folks battle with regarding LOST is they mistakenly assume that the light is goodness and the smoke monster is pure evil which seems confusing because they can’t figure out why sometimes it seemed like Jacob was bad and the MIB wasn’t so bad. For instance, Jacob distracted Sayid which caused Nadia to be hit by a car and killed, how could the guardian of goodness do such a thing? Conversely the MIB seemed to have a legitimate beef regarding being trapped on the island, he was a man of his word, and even a caring father-figure for Claire, how could someone like that be pure evil??? The answer is this theory I am presenting in this blog post. After all… the past isn’t always dark, and the future isn’t always bright.

Furthermore, many folks (myself included) believed that the smoke monster was somehow judging people when it would confront them in the jungle, for instance if you played your DVD player frame by frame you could see images from their past flashing through the smoke monster when it would confront people on the island. Yet now knowing that the smoke monster WAS the past we can deduce that the smoke monster wasn’t judging our losties but instead our losties were merely seeing their own past within the cloud of smoke that was the past.

This, of course, also explains why when Mr. Eko looked into his past what he saw was very dark indeed and it eventually consumed him, yet when Locke looked into his past, what he saw was beautiful. Locke’s past wasn’t as dark as Mr. Eko’s was, but more importantly, the past was manipulating Locke because the MIB/Smoke Monster/The-Past saw a vulnerability in Locke which was his innocence, naivety, which led Locke to being manipulated so many times in his past. Therefore the past showed Locke what Locke wanted to see to gain his trust and begin to manipulate him.

FORBIDDEN PLANET – FORBIDDEN ISLAND

After watching all six seasons of LOST twice, I began to watch it a third time with my sister and her husband and early in season one I asked them what they thought the smoke monster was. My brother in-law, Gordon, said he thought the smoke monster was like their “id” similar to the monster in the classic 1956 movie Forbidden Planet, and he was more right than even I realized at the time. In the movie Forbidden Planet Dr. Morbius has unknowingly created the monster that is trying kill them all from his own conscience. The monster, who is kept away by a force-field fence can only be killed by killing Morbius because the monster is an extension of his conscience. Similarly, the smoke monster in LOST is an extension of our characters because the smoke monster is their past and therefore in a very real way they are battling an extension of themselves.

Where’s Robbie the Robot when you need him?? 

Have a monster problem? Just put up a fence! The id monster from Forbidden Planet is stopped in it’s tracks by the force-field fence similar to Dharma’s sonic fence.

AN EPIC BATTLE TO SAVE THE FUTURE FROM THE PAST

Looking at the the show through this filter (the light being time, the smoke monster being the past), it makes the finale that much more epic. Jack has spent all six seasons of LOST chasing and battling his past and now he actually gets to fight the past physically on the cliff-side! Jack (with Kate’s help) confront and defeat the past, but not without paying a price, the past has mortally wounded Jack. At this point the only way Jack can move on is for him to let go of the past which he does in the sideways reality (metaphorically), and on the island with Desmond’s help in the cave of time errrr… golden light. In a way, you can think of the entire show of LOST as a symbolic battle between our past and our future. We are left asking ourselves… if we were somehow given a clean slate would we give in to our own smoke monsters and be consumed by our past making the same mistakes we had made already? Or, would we let go of our past, embrace our future, learn from our mistakes and move on?

You have to learn to let your past go. Or better yet, throw it off a cliff.

LOST was one of the best, most creative, mentally compelling, TV shows ever produced. The writers and producers took a huge chance by not spelling out the answer to every puzzle, and they stayed true to their style by allowing us fans to speculate and figure out the ultimate meaning of the show. Yet LOST wasn’t just a mystery it was also a symbolic statement about the very core of human nature told with great dialog, fantastic acting, and some of the best science fiction ever laid down on film. Because of all of this, LOST has staying power (it sticks to your ribs) and hopefully the theory I have presented above will be as fun to read as it was fun for me to write.

- End