Category Archives: Destiny versus Free Will

Amazing sneak peeks of 5×14 The Variable, which will air tonight April 29, 2009

Jeremy Davies as Daniel Faraday

Jeremy Davies as Daniel Faraday

The Variable, LOST’s 100th episode, is going to focus on Daniel Faraday, showing his flashbacks for the first time.

In the April 23, 2009 official audio podcast, Damon and Carlton confirm (as I had guessed in an earlier post) that the title “The Variable” is a reference to “The Constant” from last season, and there is indeed a connection between the two episodes — in an interview, Damon calls the new episode a “companion piece” to the previous one.

We will also see Desmond tonight, and find out if he survived being shot by Ben.

In the podcast, Damon and Carlton say they think The Variable came out as one of the best episodes of the season, and they’re excited to see what we think of it.

Here are three great clips from the episode, courtesy of DarkUFO. Don’t watch if you want to remain completely unspoiled! Otherwise … enjoy!

Sawyer and Juliet:

Faraday, Jack, and Miles. Wow. This clip literally gave me chills! –>

Faraday and Dr. Chang:

This episode looks like it’s going to be AMAZING.

My Grand Theory of Everything

Mad scientist working on a Grand Theory of Everything

Mad scientist working on a Grand Theory of Everything

This is my grand theory of everything — from time travel to destiny — in LOST.

I’m starting with the premise that the writers want to avoid major time-travel paradoxes, that they don’t want to deal with problems such as a character being his own grandfather, or killing his mother before he was born, etc. Damien and Carlton have said as much, in one of their interviews (see this video starting at 4:05), and I’m going to take them at their word.

As part of that premise, I’m going to assume that the characters that we know were on Flight 815 cannot be killed while time-traveling in the past to any time prior to Flight 815.

For example, in LaFleur, Sawyer, while trying to rescue Amy, narrowly escaped being shot by an Other. Juliet killed the Other and saved Sawyer’s life. But what if Juliet hadn’t been there and instead, Sawyer had been killed?

It couldn’t happen. If Sawyer was killed in the 1970s, he could not be alive in 2004, and the future would have to be altered. That would create the kind of classic time-travel paradox problem that the show wants to avoid.

Therefore, even if Juliet hadn’t saved Sawyer’s life, his life would have been saved in some other way — because Sawyer simply could not be killed. No one would be “allowed” to kill him, and he would not be “allowed” to kill himself.

That means the characters, while they are traveling in the past, do not have total freedom. They lack, to a certain extent, free will. And that is because they are in the past.

Now, think about how this compares to the way the characters act in the present, and something very strange emerges. Even in the present, the characters appear to lack free will. Locke talks often about “destiny,” about what the Island compels them to do. Even Jack is starting to come around to that point of view. Christian Shephard told Locke that Locke was supposed to turn the wheel, not Ben. Ben said they all had to go back. Eloise Hawking said they could do it only in a certain specific way.

All these characters believe that their actions are constrained. But this is exactly the same thing that happens to characters who are time-traveling in the past!

So why should this also be happening in the present?

How about this: Perhaps the present may not really be the present.

Think about how we watch the show. The show started with the crash of Flight 815, and that became our reference point for the timeline of the story. We saw Flight 815 and the subsequent events on the Island as being in the present. We saw the flashbacks as being in the past, and the flashforwards as being in the future.

But what if Flight 815 is not really the present, for the characters? What if their actual “present” is really decades after Flight 815 took off? What if all their experiences that we’ve seen, including the crash of Flight 815, are all part of the past to the people involved? What if they have been time-traveling in the past all along?

That would explain why their actions are as limited as the actions of the time travelers — because they are time travelers themselves. It might explain why all the Oceanic 6 had to go back, and why the conditions on Flight 315 had to replicate the conditions on 815 so closely. It would certainly explain Locke’s preoccupation with the idea of “destiny.”

If this theory is right, what happens to Locke on the Island would, in fact, be predetermined – because it has actually already happened. But what if Locke didn’t know that? What if he wasn’t aware that he was time traveling in the past?

Then he would have to grope for another explanation for why he sensed that he couldn’t exercise free will. He’d have to use concepts that were familiar to him — concepts such as destiny and fate. To Locke, it would appear that it was destiny that was pulling his strings.

Cool picture of the mad scientist via Wikiepdia. GNU FDL.

You KNOW, Jack. You know that you’re here for a reason.

In this week’s official video podcast, Matthew Fox talks about the evolution of his character Jack.

The podcast starts with a clip from the Season 4 finale, where Jack and Locke, on top of the Orchid Station, are having another one of their arguments about destiny.

Locke tells Jack that he is not supposed to go home. Jack gets mad and yells, “What am I SUPPOSED to do?”

Then he says, “Oh, I think I remember. What was it you said on the way out to the hatch?”

He is referring to their argument in the Season 1 finale — the same argument that I wrote about in my previous post.

This is a great example of the crazy intricate way that LOST works. A conversation starts in Season 1, then picks up again, three years later, in Season 4, then is referenced on the internet in a podcast in the middle of Season 5.

I think this conversation is coming up in the podcast now because finally, after four-and-a-third seasons of Jack and Locke having the same conversation over and over, something is starting to shift.

In the Season 1 argument, Locke said that Jack may not believe the Island is his destiny, but he will believe it at a later time.

That later time appears to be now.

At the Orchid Station, Jack says to Locke that back at the hatch, Locke had told him that crashing on the Island was their destiny.

Locke says, “You KNOW, Jack. You know that you’re here for a reason. You know it.”

“And if you leave this place,” Locke continues, “that knowledge is going to eat you alive.”

Which is exactly what we saw happen in the flashforwards.

In the podcast, Matthew Fox talks about how Jack has always needed to be in control, but now he is starting to give that up.

I have mixed feelings about that in terms of the dramatic possibilities. I do like seeing Jack’s character develop and grow, but if Jack gives in completely to his sense of destiny, what will happen to the tension between Jack and Locke that has been such an important part of the show so far?

For a reason — Season 1 finale

Each one of us was brought here for a reason.” — John Locke

This is the line that inspired the title of this blog, and it’s a line that sums up the central mysteries of LOST:  Why were the Lost-ies brought to the Island, and who or what brought them there? Locke says the line, or variations of the line, in more than one episode — most memorably in this scene from the finale of Season 1:

The short scene is like a greatest-hits recap of all the lines that lay out the show’s themes. Man of science versus man of faith. The Island brought us here. This is no ordinary place. It’s destiny. A sacrifice that the Island demanded. Jack: “I don’t believe in destiny.” Locke: “Yes, you do. You just don’t know it yet.”

So the groundwork for all these themes was already set in place in the first season. Now, part-way through Season 5, some of them are finally starting to come to fruition.

3/2/09 Editing to add Late last night (actually in the wee hours of the morning), I turned on the TV to see if there was anything on, besides infomercials, that I might watch for a few minutes before I went to sleep. I flipped through the channels, and there was a rerun of an old episode of LOST! About a minute later, the scene in the clip above, part of this post that I hadn’t yet finished, came on! Spooky! Cue Twilight Zone music.

I ended up watching the rest of the episode — the very end of Season 1. Even though I am writing two LOST blogs, I haven’t rewatched many episodes yet — I only became a hard-core LOST nerd recently, as a result of writing the blogs, rather than the other way around. It was interesting to see that piece of the Season 1 finale now — to see Walt so small, to see Hurley freak out when he saw the numbers inscribed on top of the hatch, to remember how it felt to watch that episode the first time, to remember the almost unbearable suspense of wondering what was inside the hatch.

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