Live, from the Shadow of the Statue!

With only five days left, the excitement Charlie and I have for next week’s premiere of season 6 is at an all-time high. We’re having trouble sleeping. We’re having trouble focusing at work (sad, but true). We’re coming up with some of the craziest theories to date and spend hours online, reading and reacting to other fan predictions.

In my quest for a spoiler-free understanding of the bigger picture of season 6, I ran across a series of videos that I watched back in July of 2009, but hadn’t really thought about since. What videos? Well, our esteemed producers gave us three video-clip clues at last summer’s Comic-Con (explanation for non-nerds: Comic-Con is a convention for comic book fans, complete with panels, seminars, and workshops with writers/producers/actors, previews of upcoming feature shows and films, portfolio review sessions with comic book / video game companies, etc.) Lost has participated in Comic-Con for the last several years, hosting a panel discussion with writers, producers, and actors for the thousands of Lost fans at the convention.

So. The videos. There were three of them:

(1) A commercial for Oceanic Airways that boasted a perfect safety record since 1979, the entire time they'd been flying.

(2) A commercial for Mr. Clucks starring Hurley and featuring a new item called Outback chicken.

(3) A clip of America's Most Wanted where John Walsh talked about Katherine Austen, who tried to set up the murder of her stepfather, Wayne Janssen, but actually killed his co-worker, Ryan Milne instead. She was caught, but escaped from a marshal.

If you’re like me, these three clips lead to the biggest question facing us on Tuesday…

Let’s Get Serious: What happened after the bomb went off?
The underlying assumption of this theory is that in the final scene of Season 5 (when Juliet (inside the Swan hole) pounded away at the plutonium core of the Jughead with a rock), Juliet successfully triggered the explosion.

I believe this explosion creates two conflicting realities.

Timeline One is the timeline as we know it. Everything that happened in Seasons 1 through 5 will happen again and the storyline will continue as we have seen.

Timeline Two is an alternate timeline that illustrates what Faraday and Jack hoped would happen.

In Timeline Two, the Swan hatch is destroyed, Jacob never interacted with (touched) the Oceanic-6-Except-Aaron (I have a theory on that, by the way), and Oceanic 815 did not crash on the island. I know, right? Oh. My. Goodness.

In Timeline One, I, unfortunately, believe that those within the radius of the blast are all dead. I know, I know…disagree with me. But I’m having trouble understanding how anyone can survive (IN THIS TIMELINE) such an event. The Jughead explosion is going to end the 1977 storyline from Season 5, leaving only the characters from the present alive: Desmond, Ben, Sun, Richard, Ilana and Bram, and of course, Flocke / MIB.

Desmond, who happens to be the only central character currently off the island, will absolutely be the key to connecting both of these realities/timelines. I believe his consciousness is going to be bouncing back and forth between both versions of himself, essentially as it did in (the-best-episode-ever) “The Constant.”

Once the gap has been closed on these two realities / timelines, we will realize that Lost, all along, has been a tale of good versus evil. We have been shown a visual depiction of this battle in “Locke v. Locke.” Of course one of the Lockes is Flocke, but the other is very much real Locke. John Locke needs to fulfill his destiny, even if it means crossing the boundaries of time / reality to do it.

(And deep breath.)

So what will all of this mean for some specific characters this season?
Kate:
The America’s Most Wanted video said Kate was not wanted for the murder of her stepfather; instead, she accidentally killed her father’s apprentice. Perhaps this is because Kate was not touched by Jacob when she was a young girl…an arguably small change which could have caused a “butterfly effect” causing numerous parts of her life to play out in a completely new way. Taking it a step further, this could end up being the motivation she needs if Desmond (or Faraday?) need her help to close the gap on these two realities. In Timeline One, Kate had no regrets when she killed her father. In Timeline Two, however, Kate is feeling WAY guilty because she killed an innocent man. Kate would want a chance to change things.

Hurley:
Well, if Hurley is in a Mr. Cluck’s commercial, he would need to safely return from his trip to Australia. Since Jacob’s only interaction with Hurley was to tell him to return to the island, this makes sense. Hurley’s life prior to 815 would not be affected. (Sidenote: I’m wondering if Hurley’s hallucinations of dead people will relate to this alternate reality…)

Sawyer:
All kidding aside, Sawyer has grown the most during the last five seasons. We loved to hate him in Season 1, but now, the island has miraculously transformed him. He has been reformed. He is one of the good guys. If we remove the crash of 815 and subsequent island time from his life, Sawyer stays the jerk he was during the Season 1.

Juliet:
A lot of people are wondering if Juliet died in the Season 5 finale. And I’m pretty sure she did. (Sorry.) However, the resulting alternate reality that’s been introduced due to the implosion of the Swan means that everyone will return, including Juliet.

Daniel Faraday:
I’m pretty confident that like Juliet, Faraday is coming back in Season 6. Hopefully this means we will find out why his Mom (Eloise Hawking) sent him to the island TO DIE. I think we can agree that Eloise seems to have a fairly good understanding of both the past and future. Could it be that she sent him to die because she knew he would live again if he detonated the bomb…and that this sacrifice was necessary to change history for the better? Pretty powerful stuff.

Charlie, Boone, and others who have died:
This alternate reality theory allows any characters that have died a chance to return. The actor who plays Charlie made a surprise appearance at Comic-Con…pretty sure his return is in the bag. I think there is a chance Boone is coming back too…and, much to our chagrin, Shannon, too. What about Libby? Well, it looks like she is coming back, too. And how about this for a twist: what if the scene of her in the mental hospital with Hurley is actually from the alternate reality? OR, perhaps it exists in both timelines, but will be explained in this new one???

FIVE DAYS!
This whole theory could, in fact, be discounted in only 5 days!! You don’t have to wait long!

Programming note: I will dive into much more detail about my alternate reality theories in my preview on Tuesday morning. And I promise to discuss the major characters I left out of this post and how they will fit into this season: Jack, Ben, and Jacob.

Namaste,
Maggie