To follow up on Dan’s comment here and clarify my current stance on time travel in Lost, I thought I’d post my thoughts on it (in the context of this show).
There’s probably no one who’s a bigger fan of time travel stories than I am, but even so, I really was hoping (even after watching the Desmond episode) that there wasn’t actually any “real” time travel going on in Lost.
After watching Desmond’s episode this season (and to some degree, before that) my theory on the flashbacks was that they were more a part of the story than it seemed. I believed (and still suspect, albeit to a lesser extent) that the flashbacks we are watching are the survivors’ memories, but that the specifics of the scenes they are remembering are somehow being influenced (and sometimes slightly tweaked) by something on the island. This would be the explanation for the common characters as well as some other almost easter-eggish stuff that we’ve seen.
After watching Desmond’s episode, I initially thought it supported my theory, and that Desmond just got a super extra dose of whatever the island is giving everyone else to induce their flashbacks, only because of the extra boost / overload some things were different. One was that he was aware that he was experiencing the flashback (as in a lucid dream, when you realize that you’re dreaming but you’re still interacting with the “dream world”). The other was that the island influence was also on overdrive and he was given multiple possible projections about potential future events, which he now keeps experiencing as further “flashbacks”.
However, this hope / theory was apparently debunked by the producers (although I haven’t heard it myself) who apparently confirmed that Desmond did indeed travel back in time. I’m not sure why I was hoping that the whole time travel thing isn’t true for this show, other than maybe it’s too easy.
Well, that and then you have people who start making really crazy theories (as if they hadn’t before), like mine from this week where I suggested that Ben is Juliet’s sister’s baby, who had been pushed back in time (after she and Juliet came to the island and either before or after he was born), and that’s why he’s been there his whole life and is in such control – he had knowledge of future events the whole time he was growing up.
Now if that theory doesn’t convince you that time travel is a bad idea for this show, I don’t know what will. =)
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