As the time for series finale gets closer, people have asked me how I think LOST will end. I’ve never had any insider information for any of this, so if you’re looking for definitive answers, hang out around the ABC studios, because that’s the only place that has them right now.
And even they won’t have the definitive answers. The series show runners, Damon Lindelof and Carlon Cuse have already stated that there’s going to be a lot of theorizing about what the end of LOST means, in typical LOST fashion. They’re even going so far as to go into a “blackout” phase when the show ends, and won’t be giving any interviews to try and “explain” things.
This all points to questions that won’t be answered at the end of the series. My hope is that they won’t be the BIG questions; what fans really want answers to are what happen to the main characters. If they don’t answer that, I think people will be disappointed.
Enough of that.
What do I think is going to happen? If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, you’ll know I’ve thrown a lot of theories out there. Some of them have stuck, and some haven’t. At one point I was pretty convinced that the smoke monster was a cloud of nanobots. We all know now that it’s not, and it was a decent theory at the time, but….
What I’m saying is, take the following with a grain of salt. We’ll see how close I was when the series ends.
The Sideways Timeline.
I believe that what the writers have been doing this season is showing the aftermath of the events in the “real” timeline we’ve been following since the beginning of the series. In other words, they knew that people would want to know what happened to the characters after the show ended, and that’s what we’ve been seeing for this entire season in the sideways timeline.
I think the “resolution”, if you can call it that, is that all of the characters who were on the island will come to realize they did have another life on the island, and the events that took place there have resulted in the timeline they’re in now. Whatever happens in the “real” timeline from here on out will be remembered by the people in the “sideways” timeline, and they’re just going to have to live with it, because that’s the life they will have from now on.
The one thing (as of this writing) that supports this theory is that Desmond has a strangely calm “air” about him on the island. He appears to realize that the events on the island are going to unfold in a certain way… and that’s just the way it is. I believe he realizes that he realizes that no matter what happens, the true destiny of people on the island will be in the “sideways” timeline.
Eloise’s reaction in the “sideways” timeline supports this as well. She called what he was doing a “violation”. A violation of what?
I’m guessing that it’s a violation of an agreement that someone makes in the “real” timeline. That agreement is likely to be something like: You have a choice. You can continue in this timeline and let things play out as they are (which is likely to be bad) or you can make a sacrifice, and give everyone in the “sideways” timeline a new life.
I’m just throwing that out there. What the sacrifice is, I have no idea. It could be Desmond giving up his life on the island, it could be someone volunteering to take over as the Man in Black to keep his power under control, it could be about anything.
It’s just an idea.
What do you think?