Pffft…that wouldn’t work anyway. They couldn’t assume there would be somebody fat enough on The Island to plug the hole and stop the release of the toxic gas.
Pfft, quantum effects happen differently in the presence of a human observer*.
- Plot solution**
** But this can, in fact, be demonstrated in a lab.
jeffd
4943
Welcome to closed timelike loops!
Or perhaps you would prefer the Many Worlds explanation, wherein two parallel but separate universes have become entangled, such that each John Locke in his respective universe is interacting with the other in some unexplained and probably impossible way. This way one avoids the paradoxes inherent in time-travel, while introducing an unknown and likely apocryphal aspect of physics.
Which implies infinite John Lockes, seeing as each would require one other.
So…you’re basically saying that the reason we’ve finally come upon a Competent Locke is a direct result of the Locke-specific derivation of the Infinite Monkey Theorem?
Niiiiiiice.
Well, yes. It implies infinite everything.
The problem with many worlds in time travel stories, is it can make for tough drama. Why bother doing anything, since every choice makes an alternate branch, so even when you succeed you’ve also failed. I don’t think they’ll take it that far, though, so it probably won’t come up. But who knows, maybe the final season will be all about a cluster fuck of alternate universes. It would explain many of the dead people who are still “alive”.
I’m hoping Farraday was wrong about them being variables and that time really is immutable. Otherwise, preventing the crash means they won’t be there to prevent the crash. OR, my fiancee’s theory that events are fixed, but the present is alterable. So if they prevent the crash, their consciousnesses will time travel to a world where they never crashed. Desmond’s form of time travel already shows that form, so maybe that’s how it will happen.
I dunno. I liked the idea of what happens, happens. I just hope if they break away from that, it’s into something interesting, not how time travel has been treated in every other time travel story we’ve ever seen.
jeffd
4948
Or you can just allow time travel with paradoxes. They prevent the crash, but they’re still right where they are - orphaned in a new timestream.
HRose
4949
If they’ll succeed in preventing the crash it is also likely that they will all die.
There must be some compensating rule that prevents time loops to multiply human beings.
This is sort of a yes and a no from what I’ve read and gathered from what the producers have said.
When they introduced “The incident,” they always knew that our cherished losties would be the ones to cause it, in the past.
What they didn’t know is what the incident was, or what the computer was doing, or what the consequences of not pressing the button were. They sort of figured that out as they were writing the show.
It’s organic storytelling with specific milestones. I think it makes perfect sense to write a series that way. Even JMS did it with Babylon 5. (Less so, but there was definitely wiggle room.) It’s not, however, “making it all up” wholesale as they go along. That’s BSG.
‘Hi! I’m a Lost character! If you don’t like my current motivation, just wait a few minutes!’
I demand to know right now who the hell Jacob and the other dude are, and why they’re messing with people’s lives. Damn you, Lost, for making me wait for answers.
Khoram
4955
No kidding. 7 and a half months til we get any more answers. That’s cruel.
So, uh… how are we supposed to understand the John Locke situation revealed at the end when the statue people opened their box?
Jacob guy touched each of the people. Notice he wasn’t in Juliet’s flashback though.
Freakin’ weird episode.
And if you don’t understand my motivation, be patient - the producers will retcon it in a clip show at the end of the season.
We laughed that Jacob showed up and changed everyone’s lives…and gave Jack a candybar.
Great finale other than the terrible flip-flopping in motivation. I assume we’re all talking about the same person, but I don’t know how spoiler sensitive we’re being since this is the first time I’ve actually watched the show as it aired (instead of downloading it later).
Disappointing actually.
The only thing we learned is that Richard can speak another language, probably Latin. Haven’t they already done the Locke is dead “shocker” and the mysterious stranger interacts with everybody in flashbacks with both the black guy who’s name I forget, and Richard? Only enjoyable thing was seeing our guys finally kick Darma ass, but they already did that too with “our guys finally kick Others ass”. Now if they had sprinkled in the Jacob scenes over the past few seasons, then I might believe they actually planned stuff out.
So who is “Locke”, the other guy on the beach at the beginning? And if “Locke” really isn’t Locke, how did he know to meet wounded Locke at the plane?
Mookee
4959
They did. dun dun dun
So who is “Locke”, the other guy on the beach at the beginning? And if “Locke” really isn’t Locke, how did he know to meet wounded Locke at the plane?
The synapses will fire soon and your mind will be blown! The answers lie within your questions.
Really?? I don’t remember ever seeing Jacob before. I’m not talking about adding him like Forrest to scenes we have seen.
Enlighten me.
