ABC’s LOST explained!
Still wondering what the television show LOST was all about? I have answers!
SPOILER ALERT – the following article will completely explain and therefore give away to the most important puzzle pieces from the hit ABC television series LOST. Therefore if you haven’t seen the show and don’t want the end to be spoiled, stop reading this article right here! As for the rest of you who have wondered… what did it all mean? I have the answer for you!
Now that the spoiler warning is out of the way, lets get right to it…
The most mysterious lingering question remaining regarding the television show LOST is… what is the golden light in the cave at the heart of the island?
If only we knew what the light was maybe we could determine what the island was. And if we knew those facts we could piece together all the remaining details. Some might say the question was already answered when Jacob claimed the island was like a cork (when he said that he wasn’t lying which I will explain later) yet saying the island is a cork really only raises another question instead of giving any type of comprehensive answer, after all… if the island is a cork, what does that mean? I for one am glad that the writers didn’t spell it all out for us because if they had, it would have robbed us the opportunity to ponder the larger questions and solve the puzzle ourselves and ultimately that was the fun of LOST.
SO WHAT WAS THE LIGHT?
The golden light in the cave at the heart of the island is the same light that was behind the frozen donkey wheel that the MIB, Ben, and Locke, all were attempting to manipulate or channel to their benefit throughout the show. It also seems to be the same light (or a type of it) that engulfed the island when Desmond flipped the fail safe, when Juliette ignited Jughead, and each time our losties were bounced around when the island was skipping in time.
Most folks assume the light is God, or spirituality, or possibly the personification of goodness, or life, or something similarly vague. None of those solutions help us piece together the puzzle that is LOST.
Drum roll please…
Continue…
Eric I have struggled for last couple of years, especially with the 6th season, which I thought was not good at all. I felt cheated at the end, because it seemed too easy and cheesy an ending. Jack dying at the very end with the dog Vincent at his side. I did not like it. I think you really made since of the main characters in Lost and describing Jack and MIB, time, light and Jacob and MIB not being completely good or bad. They are were flawed, which makes us all human. Just like the Mom killing Jacobs and MIB real Mom. A lot still does not make a lot of sense, but that is OK. You made the most sense with your theory. I have many other questions that leaves a by why they do that in the entire six years.
I was upset with the last season of Six Feet Under, as the killed off the main guy before the end. I thought maybe it would had be best if both shows ended in the 5th season, but I guess I always want happy endings, but life really does not end that way most the time. I just hope with my faith, there is a light after death and brings us all to a better place and we get to see our dogs, family, and friends again 🙂
PERFECT explanation. I love it!!!!!!
Just fantastic. It’s been one year since I finished Lost and it was and still is my favorite TV Show but I never thought that a theory can make it even more fantastic. You nailed it, body!
I still have one question. Why did the MIB chose Locke as his human appearance?
When Mr. Ecko faces the black smoke and charlie asks why he didn’t run Ecko replies I am not afraid of it. Did Ecko know what that the black smoke symbolizes? I was always curious about just how much Ecko knew that he didn’t share with the other survivors
Lewis,
Sorry but i can only give an answer to one of your questions, the Pearl Station. They make it seem as though the button is an experiment to make what the people in the pearl station were doing seem more important. Those in the Pearl were told to write everything they saw down on notebooks that would be sent to head office or something for analysis of the experiment but it was realy the Pearl station that was the experiment, hence why the losties came across thousands of filled in notebooks that just went to the middle of nowhere. Im assuming that there were cameras all around the pearl the same as the hatch and they were the ones being experimented and watched.
i think you nailed it buddie great job it makes alot of sense
Have to say I am extremely pleased someone such as yourself took on the mammoth task of trying to decipher the LOST mystery. I do have to say that your theory is probably the best so far and also makes the most sense, although its the niggling questions that I just ‘have’ to have the answers too. What the flipping heck do the numbers mean?????? they seem to have some significance/power behind them, especially with Hurley and the hatch. Also the mystery surrounding children who seem to be special/different in of course the instance of Walt, I kind of get the fact that the ‘Others’ want him as a possible candidate for Jacobs replacement, but why/how has he got this special something that makes him a candidate? Then there is the issue of this mysterious fever that plagued the island for some considerable time, and how the hell did the black rock ship get that far inland??? Also what was the theory behind ‘The Pearl’ observers Dharma station and why did the orientation video seem the insinuate that pushing the button was more of a test/joke when it was actually important. Also why i f the island was skipping through time were they able to escape the island by following exact compass bearing, was this supposed to be the only gateway possible of escaping the time vortex they seemed to be trapped in, but if they were skipping through time exiting through the gateway could leave them anywhere?
As you can see I have a million and one questions about the mystery of Lost, as much of a brilliant programme it is I cannot help but think that the writers got ‘Lost’ themsleves and seeming as the show was such a big hit they possibly just started to write as they went along and had no proper structure to the story after the first season or two in a bid to keep it going, there is ending a programme with a few un-answered questions then there is just plain taking the p*ss and not bothering to explain things and as you can see it has left me slightly frustrated lol
If anyone (Eric who seems to have the best idea) can answer these questions or at least throw out a theory that makes tangable sense it would be mush appreciated, once again brilliant thesus answered a lot for me although just left me hungry for morrrreee!!
Hey,
This really makes sense I mean it does answer a bunch of questions.
But still there are some unsolved mysteries that I don’t think this theory would answer, like Jacob’s cabin, why does it change places and whose eye was it when Hurley looked through the door eye. There are more unsolved questions in lostpedia website although some of them don’t really matter to the understanding of the show.
Anyway it was really interesting reading this post. Since the show ended I haven’t re-watched the show or read any explanation theory, Until today when you followed me on twitter and I saw your tweet about the explanation and I followed you back immediately 😛 I’m glad this is the first one I read it makes perfect sense 🙂
Now I think I can die in peace 😀 Thanks alot!
the backgammon theory actually makes sense… in the episode where the island is explained when jacob and is brother are kids, the brother ( boy in black) finds that boardgame and makes up the rules, but when jacob questions his rules, the brother says that someday jacob can make up his own rules to the game…. oh my gosh makes perfect sense 🙂
I also agree that you may be right with a lot of the time/light theory. I just started rewatching the series again, and watching the very first few episodes, I realized that the entire show also has a major subtext regarding the game of Backgammon. The show is full of layers.
I downloaded a backgammon app for my iPad and stared reading through the games rules, and completely echoes the show, including what people were calling the flash forwards or alternate reality time lines.
The (abridged and LOST centered) point of backgammon is be the first of two players (jacob and MIB) to clear all of your player pieces off the board first, between two opposing colors; white and black (our losties are the pieces, which Jacob hand picked to win him the game). Each player rolls the dice and gets to choose which piece(s) to move, and if two single pieces land on the same line, the new piece forces the existing piece to jump back to the beginning of the board (think about Jin being pushed back in time).
As pieces reach the end of the board (end of their lives/death), that is when they can be cleared and moved to the holding area (think about the alternate reality where everyone one was waiting for the main characters before they could move on to what’s next). Once all of the pieces are cleared from the board, the player has won the game, and the pieces can be taken out of the holding area.
If there’s a better explanation of the show, I’d like to hear it. Plus it compliments your theory.
I think the smoke monster killed Locke early on and was actually the MIB trying to get people on his (side of the game) to compete against Jacob. We know that dead bodies can be consumed by the smoke monster/the past and then be used to as avatars, so maybe when the smoke was released by Jacob and the MIB, the smoke killed and took the form of the MIB.
So Jacob can travel off the island to pick his playing pieces, but the MIB cannot leave so he tries to manipulate people who get lost on the island, and the game plays out.
How about this theory.
WOW! That’s a really great theory and it does answer most of my questions. With this as background, how do you explain the time on the island moving at a faster rate than the outside world? I mean, when Sayid and gang leave for the freighter on the chopper, almost a day passes on the island while the people on the chopper expeience a much lesser time.
Hello. Great take on your thoughts on this AMAZING series which I have just finished watching for the 2nd time. I am not sure that I do agree with the smoke being the past and the light being the future but your ideas on it are fantastic. I do think the light is purity and goodness and that is why people like Charles Widmore want the island. But when somebody who goes in who is pure evil goes in like when Jacobs’ brother who gets thrown in, then that person gets rejected (the same way a bad person couldn’t get into heaven, they would be rejected) and then for whatever reason, gets turned into smoke and loses their own physical presence. This would have happened before as the Egyptians had problems with a smoke monster probably because one of them went in when they weren’t supposed to. I don’t know! Just my theory!
This was all very interesting to read and really brought on a new perspective to how I viewed the show, so thank you for that. However, I am still curious, and I may have just missed it, but how does it explain Walt. In the series it shows Walt as being back home and off the island, but if he made it to the island doesn’t he have his own past to battle? Just curious! Great read thank you so much!
Whoa… that’s awesome. Thank you E.D. for posting that. That diagram does blend VERY well with my theory. I lean much less on the side of “positive” and “negative” energy thing but even still I think I and the person who made that diagram would be in almost complete agreement on many aspects of our view of “what it all meant”.
Very, very… cool!
Did you see this? The Magic Mushroom of Lost Diagram- Posted about a month before your theory. Blends well with your theory except for a couple iota.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/athyrius/4642171435/in/photostream/
Hi!
just want to say, reddit.com brought me here (/r/lost to be more specific).
I saw your text and thought: “no way, its too long”. but after some lines i got hooked and read the whole thing. And yeah, you pretty much gave me a whole new idea on the whole LOST story and the finale episode. Just want to thank you for that!
Greetings from germany
Chris.
Yikes… this guy copied my entire theory (pictures and all) and reposted it on his blog. http://juicylights.tumblr.com/ His Twitter handle is… @deeewang
He did give me credit for creating it but it would be much better if he only posted a small excerpt instead of the entire thing.
I have asked him to remove it. Lets hope he complies.
HUGE THANKS for this. (I’ve read your essay but not the comments, yet, so I don’t know if anyone else suggested this).
I have a *slightly* different take, based on yours. My personal belief (whether any science bears this out, or not) is that time is an illusion; in reality all time exists at once. “Time” as we know is a mental construct created/imposed by humans because our fragile psyches simply cannot bear that much chaos. (Our human experience is built on the idea of chronological time).
So I would say that Jacob, as a protector of sorts, is not protecting time from being manipulated so much as he is protecting human beings from having a TRUE understanding of time.. as all existing at once. This would cause them to go mad. At a certain point, I felt like he was trying to prevent this madness, and that MIB was an expression of that madness. (But I like your Smoke Monster-as-embodied-past theory).
Time happening all at once is, of course, how time travel is possible. As an aside, it would also explain shamanic dreaming, and the very real and normal day-to-day phenomena of intuition, even pre-cognition.
Being a fan of time and how we as human beings percieve it has really intrigued me for a long time (:D). I’m so glad i ran across your theory as it cleared up alot of questions regarding the mythos and overall mystery regarding meanings and symbolism within the show. It just makes sense after watching and hearing the clock ticking in the monster and the monsterous acts of Jacob. I appreciate the time and effort you put into writing your theory as it connected alot of seemingly misguided, misunderstood feelings i associate with symbolism. Most of us percieve light to be associated with good and dark to be associated with bad, inherently ingrained into our psyche with many cases of good versus evil in literature, experience, and stories. Thats why initially i was so confused by it all, and questioned why the element of time was even introduced at all if that was the case. I knew there had to be more than the already proposed ‘explainations’
So again thankyou for your insight into this amazingly produced peice of science fiction as it will remain one of my all-time favorite TV shows
I didn’t steal anything from anyone. I created my post and theory in 2010. Did you ever stop and consider that somebody may have stole something from me?