OK, so here is the deal I think I know why some folks have had a very hollow feeling after the finale of LOST, and no it’s not just because the show is over. It’s because of the prevailing notion that the ALT was merely purgatory, the same purgatory that any of us would eventually experience when we die (assuming you believe in purgatory, which I don’t but I digress) which means the end of LOST wasn’t necessarily connected to all the events in the previous seasons of LOST.

If the ALT or sideways reality was just your run-of-the-mill purgatory then…. we don’t need a mysterious island to get there. We don’t need time travel, we don’t need to be avoiding a smoke-monster, and we don’t need to explode a nuclear bomb in an attempt to “set things right”. Every LOST fan probably agrees the characters in LOST were awesome without the crazy plot points, (such as the hatch, time travel, the “incident”, etc.) but it was those crazy  plot points that made most of us LOST evangelists love the show that much more and that’s why we begged our friends to start watching LOST from the beginning because “LOST is like a 6 year long movie”.

Yet if the purgatory ending wasn’t caused directly by the “incident” then all of the story leading up to it was just window dressing. These things were merely hoops to jump through just to keep us watching, nothing more than props for our characters to interact with. I have a hard time accepting that. Now if you are one of those people who say… “it was just a character show, don’t be concerned with the details” then you can skip my theory and go on being satisfied, I am happy for ya.

But if you are like me want the major plot points to have some sort of connection, some sort of meaning, I offer this explanation… (I hope you like it).

I submit to you that when the “incident” happened (i.e., the detonation of Jughead at the end of season 5) all of our losties and everyone even close to the island were killed. (or at very least… killed in a way, vaporized out of existence)

After all… they detonated a nuclear bomb for goodness sake!

But here is the twist: our characters were killed back in time yet THEY WERE STILL ALIVE in the future.

Dead in the past, yet alive in the future. (that’s cool just thinking about it)

No, no, no… I am not saying that all the things that happened on the island in seasons 1-6 didn’t really happen because everyone was dead. No, they most certainly lived through all of that. We know they lived through that stuff based on what Christian said in the waiting room of the church, everything that happened on the island was REAL (and I am relieved we can know that is the case).

What I am saying is… when they time traveled back to the 70’s they had essentially created two versions of themselves, one in the 70’s, and one that would have to exist in the future because they had already lived up to that point. They had essentially split their souls in two (via time travel). After all, we have direct evidence of this when Sawyer see’s Kate delivering Claire’s baby on the island, we know for sure that there were two Sawyers on the island at that point. And then later Sawyer ends up in the 70’s stuck in Dharmaville and later still he helps Jack detonate Jughead. Two Sawyers: one Sawyer traveling in time, and the  present day Sawyer (apply that same principle to everyone who was effected by the island time traveling).

Now here is the cool part…. when the nuclear bomb blew up and they all died they were instantly transported to the future. Why? Because they were still alive in the future! It was their time traveling version of themselves that was now killed off (or at very least vaporized) . Yet that time traveling version of themselves had a soul and what is that soul going to do in the time between the death of the 1970’s version and the death of their future self???

BAM! A self-created purgatory.

Souls, stuck in time. (at least for awhile)

In other words…. I believe they created the ALT/purgatory by detonating Jughead (the nuclear bomb). Some people say our LOST heroes created the ALT by merely imagining it or by it just being the natural thing that happens when you die regardless of time travel or exploding nuclear bombs. That explanation leaves me feeling that I wasted my time thinking about all the events leading up to the finale. I say… their time traveling soul was stuck in time (so to speak) waiting for the other half of their soul to be released from their physical body before the two halves of the soul could reunite again and finally enter heaven.

Therefore, the incident accomplished two very important things:

1. It absorbed the electromagnetic release that Dharma accidentally tapped into. (this also kept smokie trapped on the island because the island, possibly because even though the Jughead blew up big time it was still better than the island being completely destroyed by the releasing of the electromagnetic energy)

2. It helped all of our losties and everyone else near the island escape from the time loop that was created when they time traveled in the first place. (had they not killed their past self off they would have been stuck in a loop always traveling back in time over and over again).

Yet the side-effect was that now they had a portion of their conciseness (or their soul) stuck back in time with nowhere to go. That soul conciseness needed to do stuff while the person was still alive in real-time hence the events in the ALT. Which is also why some of the things that happened in the ALT were seemingly affected by the events going on on the island. It’s as if their souls were “half-aware” of what was really going on (maybe like being in a cosmic-coma).

As Jack’s dad Christian said in the church…. “This is a place that you’ve all made together so that you could find one another.” I doubt that standard-purgatory is something a normal person could “make” on their own. The universe course corrected itself by making sure the people who were living in the present were still living in the present even if they were vaporized in the past.

When we look at it in this light we can feel better knowing that the ALT wasn’t disjointed from everything that had happened prior to it. It all led up to the end and it was all relevant and important.

1. Time travel created the time loop (paradox).
2. Time travel created another version of their physical bodies, souls, and or conciseness.
3. Jughead killed off their time traveling physical bodies.
4. The ALT was the result (a side-effect) of their time traveling soul having nowhere to go until it could be reunited with their present die soul at death.

There are a couple of possible holes in this theory.
Not everyone was there at the “incident”. Most notably Locke and Sun. But I write this off to the fact that even though not everyone was there at the “incident” the time travel still caused the paradox (time loop) and their souls still were connected to the ones they loved and knew and therefore the self-created purgatory contained all the souls that were connected via the island and their own lives leading up to that point. (it’s not as perfect as I would like but maybe I can tighten it up in the future)

In conclusion…. traveling back in time and the subsequent “incident” caused a self created “purgatory” type reality where a portion of their souls went to work things out and wait until their future (and real-time) soul was finally separated from their body and they died. The universe course corrected by bringing everyone back to the future after jughead exploded but the side-effect was creating a necessary holding place for these souls i.e., the ALT/purgatory – after all… whatever happened, happened and what’s a soul to do when it can’t move on just yet?

If you like this LOST theory please check out my more complete and comprehensive theory “ABC’s LOST: the ultimate explanation of everything“.