I keep running into people who are 100% convinced that Jack died just after the plane crashed and the entire series was one big dream sequence in his head created to cope with the fact he was dying. Surprisingly, there is nothing I can say that will convince them otherwise – not the fact that Jack is wearing different clothes, or that to believe that you have to believe everything Christian said in the church was a lie, etc. Is there any better piece of evidence I can give to these people to convince them that they’re full of it?
It’s usually best to lead with this question whenever you’re trying to convince anybody of anything that they are hostile to. It’s the best way to determine, for example, when you’re dealing with a dedicated conspiracy theorist in fringe political and cultural issues. If they can’t give you an answer to that question, you’d be wasting your time trying to convince them of anything. If, however, a person in that group comes back with “Well, if the producers/writers/whatever said that he wasn’t dead,” that’s when you can go find the citation where it shows that it was the network that added the beach shots after final printing or whatever.
I can see what you’re saying; does that make Eloise, Daniel, Charlotte, and the others that didn’t go to the church (but who were on the island) props, or not? Eloise’s comment to Desmond leads me to believe that they are not props - she seems aware that she is in the afterlife, and that Desmond is ushering people to some other place.
I think that sideways world is for everyone.
Besides Eloise and Ben, two self aware individuals who interact with the Losties and choose to stay behind, what are we to make of Daniel and Charlotte interacting? That scene was Charlie’s invention, to help him work things out?
I don’t think so. What about Boone and Shannon? Their parts in this were over when the bomb thing happened.
I think the bomb had nothing to do with this place. I also believe Christian meant only their meeting place, not the entire sideways world. He also said “no one does it alone” I take that to mean NO ONE, not just the Losties.
The ‘most important part of their life’ can mean a lot. It can explain why Charlotte and Daniel don’t trigger an awakening with each other, why Ben doesn’t go with them. If these people had more important parts with other groups, those are the groups they’ll ascend with.
Jack’s son makes sense as a prop, mainly because we know Jack’s character had specific father/son issues so it ties in. Kate was still on the run, Sayid still couldn’t be with Nadia and still committed violent acts, and so forth. It seems to me that this afterlife allows some flexibility towards working things out.
And finally Desmond tells Eloise “not with me”, meaning Daniel’s not going with Desmond, not that he’s not going at all.
If they base this on the beach crash shot in the credits, give them the link above where ABC said it was meaningless.
I think you have quite the uphill battle with the bolded part. The series gained a reputation (you can debate whether it’s deserved or not) of being filled with secretive characters that continuously lied to each other, themselves, and the audience.
Now that I think of it - what about the people in the sidewaysverse that died there…like Mikhail? Did he follow the castaways into purgatory only to be killed again? And what about Michael, who is trapped on the island as a troubled spirit (or, as he put it, one of the whisperers in the woods)?
I think it’s probable that Mikhail was a ‘prop’, and if he’s a prop then others could be as well.
Well, I think they are all props in a way.
They are all spirits, or at least non physical entities.
When Ben tells Locke he doesn’t need that chair, was he saying “because your legs work now in this place”? No, I think he was saying “you don’t even have legs anymore, why are you acting like your legs don’t work?”- that is so like Ben, always a step ahead of everyone.
So what they ‘see’ in this place is all a representation that is understandable to them. That helps in it being a place to remember and let go. That being the case, it would not be inconsistent that some entities in there are not moving on, they are just props.
The ones I keep going back and forth on are Alex and her mom. I can’t decide if they are props, for Ben’s benefit, or real and just not ready to move on yet…or maybe Ben is not ready and is holding them back ala Eloise and Daniel.
I’m not sure that’s what I meant by ‘prop’ - when I say ‘prop’, I mean that they are fictional constructs of the sideverse not tied to a previously incarnated soul. The Losties are not props in the sense that they are disembodied spirits.
That was a good one. One of the best moments in the finale, in my opinion. The interplay between Locke and Ben outside the church gave me the biggest smile that night.
See above…
I don’t think they’re props, at least not as I’ve defined it. I don’t think they meant as much to the core Losties, hence not at the church. But Ben, despite having received an invite (and hence a reprieve, I guess), stayed behind to spend time with Alex and Danielle as a family. Quite touching, I thought - especially in light of what little family Ben had,
The first shot of the sideways universe is a pan over the nuked island. Either this is just a completely irrelevant scene of something that never existed in any reality placed there for the sole purpose of confusing the audience
[li], or it means that the sideways universe is an invention of the Losties. In particular, they coordinate their afterlives on the fiction that the bomb exploded. Why would non-Losties’ purgatories exist in that universe?[/li]
[li] A possibility we ought not rule out, given the incompetent writing in season 6.[/li]
He also said “no one does it alone” I take that to mean NO ONE, not just the Losties.
I interpret that as meaning everyone gets some sort of purgatory in which they meet important people in their lives, not that everyone winds up in the nuked-island-Lostie-purgatory.
Well, my idea of that sideways/purgatory world is that it exists for all, as a blank slate. One big blank slate, not lots of separate pockets for different groups of people.
Taking Christian at his word, two or more people will ‘make’ something out of it as per their important time.
This is where my representation idea comes in. If I were in the same purgatory as Jack I would not ‘see’ the same things. He is seeing what he needs to see to work out his issues and let go and move on., etc etc etc. I would see what I need to see while in the same place doing the same thing.
Now if Jack and I are part of the same group, what we see will have overlaps, ie be the same for both of us. This would explain Juliet and Jack sharing a son as a prop, they are part of the same group so they both get the same prop.
This would also explain something like Charlotte and Daniel’s exchange- they are there because they were part of the group enough to overlap a bit, but not enough for that group to be the most important to them. That could also explain a lot of Sayid’s encounters, he saw what he needed to see PLUS people like the Russian who were on the island(thus sharing a connection) get pulled into an overlap.
As an aside, maybe getting ‘killed’ in the sideways world means you were a bad boy and no ascension/reincarnation/whatever for you!
edit: Boone and Shannon died before they could in any way be tied to that bomb’s explosion, and yet they are there in the church and move on with everyone else. This is my main problem with the bomb theory.
The fact that anyone would think that the Sideways World is somehow consistent flies directly in the face of the fact that they didn’t bother to develop any substantial logic in the “real” world over the course of six years.
Like the Island itself, it’s just a place where stuff happens, and sometimes it makes you cry.
The nuked island (like “the Cake”) was just a bullshit lie. One of many the writers floated in the final season to make the purgatory reveal seem like they had pulled the wool over the audience’s eyes. Ultimately they are lies that harm the overall story if you bother to go back and think about them because they are dirty tricks with no real logic to prop them up.
I’m not sure the nature of their purgatory is worthy of any debate at all given the combination of sloppiness and outright trickery the writers displayed over the final season.
Pretty astute, CCZ. The long pan over of the nuked underwater island was simply meant to make the audience go “hoooolllyy shiiiiit. WTF?!@$” And then wonder about it forever. It was a tease in the same way that never revealing the MiB’s name was: it had no point, but it made you wonder: will this finally be the scene where they explain it?
But that’s Lost. I like Mayer’s take on purgatory as well.
I disagree, not giving MiB’s name isn’t really relevant to the story and therefore they can be coy about it without misleading anyone or impacting the events of the story. The Island however is absolutely central to the story and it being sunk in the alternate timeline is (or should be) absolutely relevant. The fact that they didn’t explain it or what impact it had means it was a complete misdirection. The writers aren’t telling you a story with it, they’re trying to trick you into believing it has some relevance and it didn’t. They might argue it’s to show that world is somehow different but we (the audience) would get that almost immediately when all the characters are leading different lives.
My problem with Lost was that they weren’t trying to tell a story or develop the characters they were trying to fool the audience.
Yeah. Whoever came up with the magic show analogy had it exactly right.
Well, I finally watched everything. Interesting, I suppose. So was the whole alterna-timeline supposed to be the afterlife? I notice that Ana Lucía (Michelle Rodríguez) gets short shrift (she wasn’t in the big love-in scene in the church at the end), whereas Libby (Cynthia Watros) is in attendance.
BTW, I must say that Evangeline Lilly looks extremely good in a little black cocktail dress and high heels. She’s got some very nice stems.
Desmond says Ana Lucia “isn’t ready”. Given how much negative reaction she had from the audience and what was described as a “lack of chemistry” with others in the cast (she was originally supposed to have a more Juliet-oriented arc, I believe) it was a nice touch to have her in the show.
The fact that she’s a crooked cop in the afterlife proves Desmond’s point I think.
And Evangeline Lilly gets extra points from me for looking that good in that dress and heels AND delivering what I think is her best acting during the her entire run on that show. I had no problem believing she’d convince a married guy to leave his family behind to follow her whereever.
I disagree with your disagreement. How many times did you ask yourself, at the beginning of each episode (especially Across The Sea) if this would finally be the episode we’d learn his name?
Maybe I’m in the minority (I don’t think I am though, even Kimmel made a joke about it after that episode) but it was just another part of the magic show. The less you know, the more you want to know about it.