LOST - If the future is set, then why…
In the recent podcast, produced to commemorate the anniversary of the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof blew any theories of alternate futures out of the water. Or did they? Call me a guy who doesn’t like to let go, but because the future we saw is "set," it does not mean that it does not set at the unfurling of a loop.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve already rejoiced over the collapse of the loop theory because it gives me an opportunity to work the concept into my own weird sci-fi drama, but I’m not ready to give up on it being a possibility. Here’s why:
Time loop theory assumes that there is a catastrophe that bends time and space and creates the loop. So as long as the loop is in existence, the future does not happen. Therefore, seeing the future also tells us that this future is the result of the loop being resolved. It occurs beyond the repeating event that causes the loop.
Time loop theory is also immune to the ‘many possible futures’ concept that Darlton loathe. Because no matter how many times you loop, the future is going to be what it is at any given point relative to another point. The cycle can only be altered for fleeting instances (course correction.)
The final word is this: If guaranteeing a certain outcome, or attempting to influence a certain outcome, are not important, then Brother Campbell and Mrs. Hawking exist in the story as a superfluous distraction. Think the whole "It’s all in your head" business with the episode Dave.
Understanding, of course, that Lost is a story about people in the end we definitely should expect a more character driven resolution to the story. Hopefully, this will not be at the expense of the wonder-inducing mythology that seems to lurk beneath. If there is one thing Lost has accomplished in addition to creating a bold character canvas, it is treating fans of the fantasy and science fiction genre as intelligent, sophisticated people. Something television usually misses out on.
dunno about all that, but could sure go for a fish biscuit…
Comment by South_park300 — September 24, 2007 @ 9:00 am
Doc, I think I get what you’re getting at, but just the round about convoluted nature of time travel doesn’t lend itself to TV. I also think they don’t want to really confuse the audience with some heavy time loop theory. They want it complicated, yet simple. I think what they were getting at is that we are not going to see people jumping back and forth to alter timelines to fix whatever problem that might exist on the island. That the future is as we see it. That something that someone does isn’t going to fix the broken Jack we saw at the end.
Now this isn’t to say that there isn’t a time/loop thing going on, but I think it’s much larger and over encomapsses the whole show. The island also exists out of time as well and that has something to do with it. For instance I would not put it past them to have one big time loop in which the universe is trying to correct itself and we may find out it was charlie who programmed the Looking Glass Station, That Hurley set the numbers in the Transmission Tower etc… But it will be more over-arcing than an intricate plot point.
Comment by downthehatch — September 24, 2007 @ 9:11 am
I agree with you where you said that they should just leave the time stuff open ended. Otherwise, at some point in the show, there’s going to have to be a character that gives us a lesson in time travel theory because not everyone visits these sites or familiarizes themselves with all the possible time travel implications. It would be terrible television, and Lost would lose still more viewers. That’s not what the story is about. You can have the coolest story in the world and still mess it up with boring characters and dialogue (cough, cough…Jericho…cough, cough). The story is about what happens to these people, and whether or not they resolve all the "mythology" of the show, the bottom line is they’re going to have to wrap up these characters’ story in a satisfactory way. Ideally they can do both, and I hope they do. But I wouldn’t mind a few loose mythological ends as long as they don’t drop the ball on the elaborate character drama they’ve managed to build.
The time loop is something you’ve come up with, and I think it’s a cool idea. But I just don’t see it being the resolution to the real show. The explanation alone would take two episodes.
Comment by Jared — September 24, 2007 @ 10:31 am
Doc,
In the podcast, Damon still implied that time travel and the bending of space-time will continue to be important to the series. So I’d venture to guess that Ms. Hawking will probably be important as well. I think all they were saying was that the flashforwards are definitely going to be experienced by the characters, because if they were an alternate future that our characters wind up avoiding, it would suck the drama and weight out of them. It seemed like they were responding specifically to the idea of, not just alternate futures, but the concept that the flashforwards are an alternate future which will not ultimately be experienced by our characters. So, just because the flashforwards are set-in-stone for this version of events, doesn’t mean we won’t get a reference to a time loop somewhere down the road. I think the answer we get to the whole time distortion thing will be presented in an easy-to-grasp way, but that there will be more there for those who want to look further. (Such as in THE DARK TOWER, where the basic answer you get is, “Oh, time and space are screwy cause the universe is falling apart.” LOST will probably deliver a similar answer, but I bet there’ll be more background information presented in some fashion, sort of like all the background info for DONNIE DARKO that could be found on the net and on the DVD’s).
Anyway, that’s my two cents!
Comment by Paula Abdul Alhazred — September 24, 2007 @ 11:45 am
Holy timeloop, Batman!
downthehatch, I’d love what you suggested:
The Lostaways get off the island, but in doing so, they weren’t around to build the hatches, set the Swan countdown, start the Dharma Initiative, etc.
Jack et all realise that they must go back to do those things, then flip a switch to send an island back in time so that they can crash on it again to do those things to send it back in time to crash on it again, etc.
So simple, yet would be a great, bittersweet "Damn, these guys are never actually escape the island…" ending. Well, our Jack, Kate (unless they are the skeletons), Hurley, Sawyer, Desmond, etc will get off the island, but their past selves will arrive again and again and again to throw the island back for another set of past selves to arrive.
Comment by Andy Spark — September 24, 2007 @ 12:24 pm
Mrs. Hawking as well as TPTB say that the future is set. Hawking claimed that if she saved the guy with the red shoes he’d die tomorrow. We’ve also seem that Charlie died - dispite Desmond’s best efforts.
I wonder if this natural (?) force of historical course correction is why everyone seemed fated to be on the island. The highly unlikely crossings of the characters in the past and the unlikely survival of the crash are all part of this. Maybe something was changed in the past that is so wrong that the course correction must be this extreme.
I hope the wrongs of season 3 are course corrected in #4
Comment by Aardvark — September 24, 2007 @ 1:35 pm
I was confused by the podcast as well. I believe Damon and Carlton tell us the truth. It’s just hard to figure out right now. I need to think about it some more.
I, too, believed that somehow there was an alternate timeline happening. I thought, maybe, Season 4 would be about taking actions so that Jack didn’t grow a beard in the future, become a drug addict, and not get together with Kate.
But in the latest podcast, Carlton & Cuse said they are "not big fans" of multiple futures. "The future is fixed," Damon said. "And not parallel," Cuse interjected. "Jack and Kate are going to get off the island."
So … I was most depressed to learn that the whole flash-forward IS the future! And there’s no changing it.
I’m still thinking about it all.
Comment by Matt — September 24, 2007 @ 1:55 pm
The alternate futures and timelines junk is what lead to the downfall of Star Trek. I’m glad Lost is steering away from that.
Comment by Larry — September 24, 2007 @ 2:32 pm
Matt…
Yes, there is no way in changing that PART of Jack’s future - Jack WILL be beardy, become a depressed druggie who’s own past friends (who went through hell together) do not want to be around him anymore…
That cannot change, however, as they also keep pointing out: the flash-foward in the Season 3 finale was not the end of the end.
Jack will be a bearded depressive, but that doesn’t mean that from that point on he cannot end up putting the world to rights again and ultimately end up happy, which is what I think the ending will be (Jack’s part of the ending anyway - he’ll end up being the hero again who makes everything okay). Bittersweet or plain sweet, Jack won’t stay depressed and hooked on drugs forever.
Comment by Andy Spark — September 24, 2007 @ 5:10 pm
The flash-forward we witnessed in the finale was not a possible future, or even a flash forward for that matter, it was the present. The island story is the past. Every episode since the first one on 9-22-04, the date of the Oceanic airlines plane crash, has been a story about the past.
I think this is what Darlton is talking about when they say the future is set. It’s not that the future is concrete, or that it theoretically cannot be changed, it’s the fact that the island story is simply showing the events that led to the present we are currently watching unfold. The island story is a flashback. What is happening in the island story right now won’t change the future, it’ll just lead us to the present story.
Think of it this way,… the Star Wars prequels didn’t change the story of Star Wars, they simply showed the events that led Anakin to make the choices he made. And showed how those decisions eventually led him to become Vader.
Hopefully that means that the real story of LOST is about to be told, and that the island story has, and continues to, set up thesatisfying end of the greatest story on television.
Comment by Brad — September 24, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
Yes, Brad, I know that since it is a set-in-stone part of time, it is probably best to now call that the present and everything else in the past.
However, we have spent 3 seasons on the island with these people. It is just easier (for the time being) to call the on-island stuff before they get rescued ‘the present’, the flashbacks ‘the past’ and Jack’s flash-foward ‘the future’, albeit a set-in-stone one.
Next season will probably change that - I am assuming that the islanders meet with the frieghters soon on and Jack and Kate will steal their boat and get away or get on the freighters’ side and get away by the end of the season, leaving everyone else to ‘defend the island’.
The present - as I see it - is the bulk of the story thus far: Jack’s thing at the end of Season 3 is too vague and confusing to be called ‘the present’. It was, in essence, a flash-foward, but that future will become clearer and clearer until we see enough from that point in time for it to be called the present.
Comment by Andy Spark — September 24, 2007 @ 7:33 pm
well…i gotta say i was quite upset with the end of the season.
as the producers said on "the answers", there would not be more Lost if they got off the Island… but come on, they showed Jack and Kate, and if that´s the real future then everything sucks ! i mean… what´s the point then ?
the cool thing about all this was the expectation and the anxiety it created to us who were waiting for them to escape, but if i know already they could get off the Island… hmmmmmmmm i think they will have to make a great effort to catch my attention back.
Still, i cannot wait for season 4 to start, but i´m not expecting much of it, not anymore (and this hurts
Comment by Nikko (from Argentina) — September 24, 2007 @ 9:12 pm
I agree with larry on this one time travel is just a cop out and a boring story,you’ve lept from something which could be slightly possible to just full blown science fiction,mystery gone,at least with lost it offers some sort of scietific goings on rather than just obserdity in all its story lines,time travel, time bable,
Comment by nick — September 25, 2007 @ 3:11 am
or babble!
Comment by nick — September 25, 2007 @ 3:17 am
I think relating LOST to The Dark Tower is the most appropriate analogy we can make (and the most obvious, as Lindelof and Cuse are huge DT fans).
Dharma Island is the Dark Tower, with all possible timelines converging at its nexus. Our central characters have their past, island present, and off-island future because it is their timeline. Characters from other timlines can arrive simultaneously. What we have yet to discover though, is what timeline you arrive in when you leave.
For instance, our freighter characters have advanced technology because in the timeline they come from (no-survivor 815) 2007 or some other future point. They FIND the island further along in their timeline. When our losties leave the island, we know they arrive in the correct loop. But say the plot has Jack and Kate returning to the island?
I think this is where Adam and Eve come in. By the end of the show, Jack and Kate (and possibly other characters) will reach Dharma island, looking for some kind of retribution; but, due to the randomness of Island Time-Loop Nexus business, will arrive 50 years before the crash of 815.
Events will have them trapped in the cave together, you can bet on that.
Comment by Secondserkis — September 25, 2007 @ 8:44 am
although I think this idea is awsome and makes beautiful sence, I still think there has to be a ‘constant’ in understanding our characters, so that it doesn’t turn into ‘journeyman’ or highlander completeley…I think there is a time travel purpose, but that the future is the future, but don’t forget we still don’t know if 2007 is ‘the final destination’ of the show….it seems to me that the island is a pocket or black whole and perhaps in that pocket time is truely relative and thus a sfae heavon against evolusion (maybe thats why children can not be born there??) The must unique thing will be the relationship the island has in corresponding to the rest of 815/juliet/desmonds world…..As much as I would love for lost to go to a more complex all changing experience in showing us a theory in time loops I think 48 episodes isn’t enough.
-but at the same time the writters have also siad in the first two seaons there would be no time travel and all of those theories were debunked, but then comes season three episode 8 and they aknowllage that desmond did time travel! The writters are getting closer to an over all climax…i don’t think they would just tell us anything…i think they would lie and confuse us to get us off their backs! -I don’t blame them…so you may be right after all!
Comment by Islandpolarbear — September 25, 2007 @ 9:14 am
Actually Nikko, In The Answers D&C said that the show does NOT end when they get off the island, they infact went on to say that theres a whole other part of the story that occurs off the island, thats what the flash forwards are going to help with. So keep your chin up and don’t give up on them yet. Like Andy Sparks said, Jack will most likely pull himself together again.
Comment by Avrey97 — September 25, 2007 @ 6:51 pm
Avrey97, thanx for your words
ohhh, so there is life and "lost" after the island, hehehe. i hope this flashforwards thing works…
i actually don´t know what to expect right now. well, yes… i want it to be February
Comment by Nikko — September 26, 2007 @ 5:55 pm