Thursday, May 13, 2010

Quick update on Lost and the Theory of Everything (now at version 3.0)

Once again, I've re-revised my position on how the flashsideways relate to the main Lost U: I'm thinking, again, that the flashsideways follow, narrative-wise, after the resolution of the main story.

The short explanation: If Jacob's Mother was telling the truth when she said that it's bad for humans to capture/harness The Light - and it seems reasonable to suspect that this much, at least, is true - then it's probably also bad that Mother (and Jacob and Smokey) should have it, too. (In brief: Even if they're well-intentioned, there's no reason to think that they're somehow the only people in existence who can't be allowed to have it - that no one else should be allowed to find it or use it because bad things will happen, but these people are an exception. And given all their magical powers, they definitely have it.)

And this is why Jack is a particularly good target to be convinced to accept the mantle - he still wants to fix things, and replacing Jacob essentially makes him the most important fixer in the world. Like Jacob in this past episode, his benevolent intentions make him the ideal, and entirely self-deceiving, candidate.

Why self-deceiving? Because I suspect that The Light should be allowed to leave the island - that the ostensible source of what's good and life-giving probably shouldn't be confined to a cave on an island. So when Smokey-as-Locke finally escapes, it'll be like Pandora's Box, only in reverse, and this is why, for example, the universally bad parents of the main Lost universe will become good parents in the sideways universe, and so on.

And, having written this, I'm at least 95% sure that I'll be proven totally wrong.

2 comments:

James said...

Oh, alright then, here's mine: (Again, this is entirely coloured by what I WANT to happen rather than what I realistically expect): Pretty close to yours, except; instead of Smokey escaping/leaving, Jack & co. somehow force him/the Light back into the cave, and THEN sink the Island, trapping him down there, and THEN the flash-sideways happens.

The two big holes in that would be a) they have to somehow trap/remove the Light from Smokey IN THE PAST and b) it'd be a tacit but fairly definitive win for Science vs. Faith, and I don't see them resolving the dichotomy in that fashion*.

But it'd be a hugely satisfying for me because it involves Jack & co. doing something decisive and heroic rather than just being tools of Fate, and thematically the whole thing ends up a forcible rejection of God/religion, which is pretty close to my heart.

*Or... maybe not so definitive, since Jack had to follow Faith for Science to triumph...

neilshyminsky said...

I can't see any resolution that doesn't, implicitly, end up favoring one end or the other of the science/faith thing. Which is a shame, because it really feels as if the ideal ending would remain as ambiguous as the show has been all along.

Ultimately, though, I'd like to think that science/faith is still just a minor theme, or at least is a subset of something more psychological and less necessarily spiritual - the characters' dispositions of 'i am a tool of fate/i am subject to my greater responsibility' vs. 'i am the master of my own destiny'. And these aren't necessarily in opposition - Jack's character these past couple seasons seems to have blurred the line rather well.