[nathanexplosion]

Originally Posted by NJKid45

wait, so who faked the plane wreckage??

Whitmore dude, it's Penelope's dad.

[NJKid45]

ok, thats what i thought..... i guess i cant get over the stumbling block that if widmore had the wits and resources to pull off such an elaborate scheme, how am i supposed to believe that he let some undercover deckhand infiltrate his boat??? with a suitcase of c4....who was actually one of the people he was working so tirelessly to find....

i dont want to be so critical, but ben and widmore are duped by a rinky dink band of castaways far too often and easily.... at one moment, theyre dabbling in the supernatural/unbelievable, but then they end up pulling some rookie mistake in the next

originally i enjoyed Lost because i figured it had some complex and sensible plot....... now i enjoy it because its just so ridiculously bizarre

[2short]

Originally Posted by NJKid45

ok, thats what i thought..... i guess i cant get over the stumbling block that if widmore had the wits and resources to pull off such an elaborate scheme, how am i supposed to believe that he let some undercover deckhand infiltrate his boat??? with a suitcase of c4....who was actually one of the people he was working so tirelessly to find....

i dont want to be so critical, but ben and widmore are duped by a rinky dink band of castaways far too often and easily.... at one moment, theyre dabbling in the supernatural/unbelievable, but then they end up pulling some rookie mistake in the next

originally i enjoyed Lost because i figured it had some complex and sensible plot....... now i enjoy it because its just so ridiculously bizarre

Widmore is not looking for the survivors of Oceanic 815, he is looking for the island. He faked the crash so that no one else will keep looking and happen upon the island by accident.

We have been lead to believe that he does not care about anyone on the island, and that the people on the boat have orders to capture Ben and kill everyone else.

Widmore's people do not know everyone who was on the flight. They only learned the names of people who spoke to them over the radio and then they researched it. That is according to the Ghost Whisperer dude in his conversation with Kate. Michael was off the island before all this happened, which is how he infiltrated their boat.

[NJKid45]

Originally Posted by 2short

Widmore is not looking for the survivors of Oceanic 815, he is looking for the island. He faked the crash so that no one else will keep looking and happen upon the island by accident.

We have been lead to believe that he does not care about anyone on the island, and that the people on the boat have orders to capture Ben and kill everyone else.

Widmore's people do not know everyone who was on the flight. They only learned the names of people who spoke to them over the radio and then they researched it. That is according to the Ghost Whisperer dude in his conversation with Kate. Michael was off the island before all this happened, which is how he infiltrated their boat.

thanks 2short, i think i have to start taking notes every time i watch so i dont confuse myself!

anyways, how does widmore know about ben again? and why does he want to get to the island?

[2short]

Originally Posted by NJKid45

thanks 2short, i think i have to start taking notes every time i watch so i dont confuse myself!

anyways, how does widmore know about ben again? and why does he want to get to the island?

How he knows about Ben is a good question. I don't know. someone else may be able to answer that.

He knows about the island because he has the journals from the (Black Rock?) slaver ship that is wrecked on the island. Presumably those journals notate the approximate location and effects that make the island desireable.

He also had people in the North/South pole that were looking for the electromagnetic signature of the island when the button was not pressed. When Locke broke the computer so that the button could not be pressed, Widmore's people picked up the electromagnetic signature and called it in.

Presumably he knows about and has some connection to Dharma as well.

[markulous]

They still haven't mentioned anything about how Widmore knows about Ben. Just the freighter people have mentioned how dangerous he is, that's it so far.

[YellowHare]

Here's a theory...

Widmore is the one behind the Dharma Initiative. He knows of Ben through the fact that he ran the program and would have access to all the information of anyone who set foot on the island. And the rivalry between him and Ben is due to Ben conducting the murder of all of the Dharma Initiative staff, on behalf of the islands original inhabitants. All coming full circle to one conclusion: Ben is a good guy, trying to protect the island from the exploitation that Widmore was trying to subject it to.

EDIT: And the reason Widmore is having to look for his own island is because Ben disabled the tech keeping it available to be seen to Widmore. Hence why Widmore was looking for a magnetic pulse, waiting for someone to not push the button, in order to locate it again.

2nd EDIT: And Penny is working against her father, which she started doing after learning of Desmond's involvement.

[markulous]

Originally Posted by YellowHare

Here's a theory...

Widmore is the one behind the Dharma Initiative. He knows of Ben through the fact that he ran the program and would have access to all the information of anyone who set foot on the island. And the rivalry between him and Ben is due to Ben conducting the murder of all of the Dharma Initiative staff, on behalf of the islands original inhabitants. All coming full circle to one conclusion: Ben is a good guy, trying to protect the island from the exploitation that Widmore was trying to subject it to.

EDIT: And the reason Widmore is having to look for his own island is because Ben disabled the tech keeping it available to be seen to Widmore. Hence why Widmore was looking for a magnetic pulse, waiting for someone to not push the button, in order to locate it again.

Hmm...I suppose that would explain how he knows about the island as well. I'm not sure if I buy it but it's better than what I got.

[YellowHare]

For those that love rampant speculation, I'll give you something to blow your collective minds. It's a long read, but extremely worth it.

Lost: A Theory on Time Travel
The Timeline of Lost

Early 1800’s: The Black Rock was a slave boat crossing the Pacific. The boat was transporting a large assortment of ****llic minerals, which were highly reactive to other forces of magnetism. Unexpectedly, the boat encounters the island of LOST. Being that the island has unique magnetic properties, the magnetic materials on the boat “react” with the magnetic forces on the island, and the boat is literally hoisted onto the island. The boat, having strong levels of magnetism, creates a hole in the invisible bubble that surrounds the island – this hole is at coordinate “325”, or the “special location/coordinate” that Daniel’s team travels through to get to the island. Once the Black Rock crashes, the leaders aboard the ship, including Alvar Hanso, begin studies on the magnetic aspects of the island. Their descendents ultimately form the DHARMA initiative in the late 1900’s.

1960’s: The DHARMA initiative was created for the enhancement of the human race. What initially began as a simple research initiative developed into a massive project that was designed to test fate. At some point during DHARMA’S studies, someone managed to leverage the magnetic properties of the island to bend time and space – thus, a time machine was created. This time machine isn’t a Delorian with a flux capacitor. It’s, in fact, much simpler. Let’s say that DHARMA created a time machine, and activated it in 1960 – then, after 1 year of the time machine running, someone decides to enter the machine in 1961. They can only go back in time, and they can only go back in time up to 1 year (back to 1960, when the time machine started “running”). Furthermore, once you go back in time, you’re STUCK in the past. You cannot go back to 1961, because you now EXIST in the past. In addition to your body going through the time machine, say you contracted a deadly disease in 1965, but went back to 1960, before you developed the disease – you wouldn’t have the disease when you stepped out of the time machine in a past time.

In the beginning stages of testing the time machine, DHARMA chose to run tests on animals (namely, polar bears), as to avoid creating any time-related catastrophes or paradoxes. The first initiative of testing the time machine was to see they could extend the life of an animal. They sent a polar bear back in time a few years, and then changed its habitat to see if it could “survive.” DHARMA used the same type of mechanism to work with polar bears that Daniel Faraday had discovered back in 1996. DHARMA saw that once polar bears had gone back in time, they could survive off the island, and even in remote extreme climates (such as deserts) – thus making them partially invincible. Realizing the power of this time machine, the leaders of DHARMA opt to only keep limited knowledge of the time machine’s existence. Thus, many of the experiments on the island of LOST are just a façade to conceal the “true” research behind the DHARMA initiative.

Shortly after the experimentation with the polar bears, DHARMA starts sending people back in time. Over a few years of researching the time machine, DHARMA becomes curious to see if this time machine can allow people to alter the course of history. In order to see if people can “change a future that’s already written,” DHARMA begins simple tasking their time travelers with doing things to alter the course of history. Unfortunately, these time travelers were not able to do anything to permanently alter the future that was already laid out.

Now getting desperate to prove that there’s ANY benefit to the new time machine, the leaders of DHARMA find a group of their own people to involuntarily become “test subjects” of their next experiment involving time travel. This being: can sending people back in time permanently cure them of a deadly virus? Without proper warning, DHARMA releases a virus in an area of the island that infects many of the “test subjects.” Then DHARMA claims that they can cure the disease with this special “device,” that device being the time machine. This, however, is NOT obvious to the test subjects - they just want to get cured, and think the time machine is some type of complex vaccination. As fate would predict, the test subjects go back in time and are cured of the virus, only to be later killed by the smoke monster, as the monster is the “physical means” in which the timeline course corrects itself. DHARMA, seeing this smoke monster for the first time, is now officially fearful that this time machine will end up serving no purpose whatsoever. The only thing DHARMA has accomplished is pissing a small portion of their work-force. The surviving test subjects who weren’t originally infected by the virus become a faction of the DHARMA initiative, and are subsequently referred to as the Others/Hostiles – Richard and Jacob are among that group.

1970-1985: Ben’s mother is recruited by DHARMA to come to the island and work on this time machine. After several years of testing the time machine, she too has given up on its abilities. She has also met Richard, the leader of the Others, and he tells her about the horrible experimentation that DHARMA did to his people, resulting in the death of several of his friends. Ben’s mom quickly grows to hate DHARMA for the morals that they’re willing to ignore in the name of science. She deems it her destiny to bring down DHARMA for the pain that they’ve brought upon the innocent. But, instead, she decides to kill two birds with one stone: instead of just leaving the island and possibly angering DHARMA at her departure, she decides to use the time machine to go back in time to the point at which she came to the island. Then, she leaves the island. This way, it would appear to the outside world that she never even left to go to the island. She’s going back in time to re-live 15 years of her life that she lost out on while she was doing testing in the island. Brilliant!

1970: Ben’s mother has traveled approximately 15 years back in time, back to 1970, where she finds herself back in Oregon. She meets a great guy, marries him, and gets pregnant. But, she was childless in the alternate future that she lived out on the island. Unfortunately for her, DHARMA had not yet discovered that connections between the dying children/mothers and time travel. (Remember when Juliet sees the xray of the woman who was only 26, but with a 70-year-old womb? Apparently, a unique effect of time travel is that your womb will always age, however, your body won’t age).

When the time comes for Ben’s mom to give birth, she dies, but still manages to produce a baby boy. The reason she died was because the timeline was course correcting to replace her with Ben. In a way, Ben is the embodiment of her, and was thus “created” to fulfill her legacy as the disgruntled DHARMA engineer that would ultimately bring down the shady corporation. It’s Ben’s role to figure out how to “work around” fate, and to find a way to make the time machine “work” without using DHARMA’s methods.

1980: It’s not long after Ben’s mother’s death that their good friend Horace recommends that they go to the island. Horace is likely affiliated with DHARMA, and was sent to investigate Ben’s mother. After finding out about her death, he sent her husband and Ben to the island so that DHARMA could “contain” a potential hiccup in time. When Ben and his dad get to the island, we find out that Ben’s father was merely to become a peon for DHARMA. Ben was the real reason that they came to the island: It was Ben’s legacy to fulfill his mother’s destiny. Ben, unfortunately, isn’t aware of this at the time. He’s just trying to enjoy himself, and make sure his father isn’t too much of a jerk.

1981: After a good bit of time on the island, Ben hears and sees his dead mother outside his house on the island! The reason he sees her is because in an “alternate future,” she was actually alive and working on this island for DHARMA. She appears half-dead to him because her dead spirit is designed to “help Ben understand his destiny” so that he can carry on her legacy. Thus, her spirit is time’s way of course correcting the future.

Shortly after Ben sees his dead mom, he sees Richard in the jungle, who says “you’re not ready.” Richard is a time traveler - and a DHARMA-hater. When Ben first encounters Richard in the jungle, Richard has traveled back in time from the year 2007 to 1981. Thus, while Richard is working with Ben, Richard is not aging. Why did Richard go back in time to get in contact with Ben? To recruit him. Richard knew Ben’s mother in the alternate timeline, so he knows that Ben is an incarnation of his Mother, and that he is some type of prodigy on the island. From there, Richard and Ben then spend their years plotting on how they will ultimately bring down DHARMA, and use the time machine for tests that don’t involve killing people.

1988: Rosseau’s crew was an opposing force to DHARMA. They weren’t affiliated with the Others; however, they were going to the island to investigate “shady business practices” being conducted by DHARMA - These business practices being the releasing of the virus to the locals on the island. Unfortunately, at the point in time, other Others and Ben hadn’t conceived their “master plan” to bring down DHARMA. However, they didn’t want to expose children to the experiments of DHARMA. Once Rosseau lost her baby, she set up a looping signal. That ran for years on the island, but the signal was being blocked by the looking glass.

(cont.)

[YellowHare]

1981-2007: Ben grows up from the age 10 to 37, planning with Richard and Jacob the “ultimate plan” to wipe out DHARMA, the purge. In the mean time, DHARMA continues to test other unique aspects of the island in order to see if they can leverage the time machine for some other purpose. In the midst of this, DHARMA discovers the magnetic anomaly in the island via the SWAN station. This magnetic anomaly is a bubble that encompasses the entire island. Unfortunately, DHARMA only does some basic tests on this anomaly, as they don’t really know how to use it for anything. During this time, both the others and DHARMA are trying to learn how they can leverage the time machine “for the greater good.”

During the testing of the time machine, DHARMA and the others make the following discoveries about time travel. Note that there is not a specific “definition” of time travel that applies to the show – time travel is simply used as a concept in the show, and the “weird things” that we see are typically fate’s way of course correcting to preserve something that’s meant to happen in the future.

1. When someone enters the time machine, they can only go back in time – and only to a time where the machine was currently running.

2. When you go back in time, you do not de-age. For example, if you are 50, and go back 10 years in time, you do NOT have your 40-year-old body. HOWEVER, while you are re-living 10 years of your life, you body will not age until you catch up with the time in which you entered the time machine.

3. When you go back in time, you will still have your current hair style, tattoos, and memory. However, say you were paralyzed; fate would need to do some course correction to make sure that you are still able to play your past role in life. Thus, time travel can TEMPORARILY cure any physical ailments you may have had prior to entering the time machine. However, fate will still find a way to paralyze you once you catch up with the current time. Say the first time you were paralyzed, it was because you were pushed out of a window. Because “the universe has a funny way of course correcting,” you may get hit by a car the second time around.

4. When you go back in time, you can only “change” things that don’t have an impact on your destiny. In other words, if you went to church on a specific date in the past, and then went back in time, you wouldn’t necessarily go to church in your new timeline. However, if you changed a belief as a result of going to church the first time around, “fate would find a way to influence you into that belief.” Perhaps you would have a near death experience, or maybe a mysterious person would greet you in a jewelry store and tell you that you need to change your beliefs… or, maybe fate would just kill you since it couldn’t find a way to change your belief.

5. If you go back in time and die, you are not “totally” dead because there has already been a variation of the universe where you were alive in the future. Thus, you become “half dead” until time catches back up. In other words, your presence may be known to some people but not others. Your presence would only be known when you are required to make an impact to fate.

6. If you have never had a child, you cannot go back in time and give birth. Fate does not allow for a new entity to exist in a past where it originally did not exist. Thus fate would either have to kill the mother, the baby, or both in order to course correct. UNLESS, fate decides to use the baby or mother to “replace” someone else in the timeline.

7. Basically, the “rules of the time machine” are not governed by any physical definitions of time travel. The “rules,” if you will, are governed by how FATE decides to preserve the timeline. Thus, if you are required to do something profound in a future timeline, fate will find any way possible to preserve the timeline – we’ve seen ghosts and smoke monsters in LOST. So according to the show’s definition of time travel, fate “does have a funny way of course correcting.”

2007: Swelled with hatred, Ben, Richard, and Jacob find a way to hijack the time machine, and go back in time to the year 1996 to wipe out all of DHARMA on the island (The Purge). Note that in Ben’s original timeline from his birth to 2007, Oceanic 815 did not crash on the island and Ben did not come down with cancer. The fact that Ben, Richard and a few others lived out a life to the year 2007 gives them some unique powers: they know that they will technically remain alive until 2007, no matter what happens (unless fate deems their existence as not necessary in preserving their original timeline). This is one reason for Ben being able to survive through the whole power struggle on the island in season 4, and the reason he can take a severe beating from the Losties in almost every episode.

1996 (new timeline on the island): Having gone back in time, and realizing that there are plenty of DHARMA folk in other aspects of the world (Penny’s father), the Others need to quickly think of something that will prevent DHARMA from ever reaching the island. Thus, Ben figures out a way to put the entire island into a “time loop.” This time loop will keep the island suspended in time in the past (in the year 1996) – thus preventing any outside DHARMA people from reaching them on the island. Once Ben and Richard start the time loop, they round up the remaining locals on the island – these people ultimately grow to become the opposing force to DHARMA, the “others.”

In order to create this “time loop,” Ben and Richard snatch up the time machine from the ARROW station, and move it to the swan station. With the engineering mind of Mikhail, they are able to cement the time machine into walls deep within the swan station. In addition, Mikhail is able to “sync” the time machine up with the magnetic anomaly that encompasses the island – thus giving the Others the ability to send the entire island back in time! They then rig-up the computer system that requires the pushing of a button every 108 minutes; however, this button pushing is actually activating the time machine every 108 minutes. So, for a great number of years, DHARMA is able to suspend time on the island by “resetting” the time machine every 108 minutes. Unfortunately, one of the downsides to this is that time on the island is contained in its unique magnetic bubble – thus, time in the rest of the world is still running its course. Therefore, island time stays in the year 1996, while real world time eventually reaches the year 2004 at the time of the plane crash. The only way to pass through the island time and the real world time would be to use the “special” coordinate, which is referenced in season 4. Note that in season 3, Ben makes a comment to Richard “Remember when we used to celebrate birthdays?” Well, there wouldn’t be any reason to celebrate birthdays if the Others are repeating time every 108 minutes, and thus not aging.

1996-1996 (8 years elapse on the island): While time is staying constant on the island, the others, now invisible to the outside world, are able to continue tests in time travel. The Others want to start a new “world” on the island. They want to keep the island in its time loop forever. They believe that with time stopped on the island, the rules of fate won’t apply. But, what’s the only problem? With time suspended, and the fact that fate always kills mothers and babies, the others need to find a way to pro-create on the island. Thus, they recruit Juliet to explore the known pregnancy issue. They also find a prestigious military officer (Kelvin) to press the button, making him think that he’s saving the world. Meanwhile, the rest of the natives are living out their days while not aging (including Richard, Ben, and all of the others).

Because the island is hidden from the outside world, Ben and Richard have to be careful in letting people on and off the island. Furthermore, you can only leave the island through the “special coordinate” that the Black Rock created over a century ago. If you don’t leave through that coordinate, you could end up leaving in the year that the island exists, which would be at some point in the past – this would require you to find a “constant” between island time and real world time in order to survive. Conversely, if you were to try to enter the island from the future into the past island time (assuming you don’t use the special coordinate), then your mind would become “stuck” between the island time and the real world time – also requiring you to find a constant.

Jacob is also a time traveler with Richard and Ben; however, we haven’t seen him in his “alive” state. At some point in time after Jacob goes back in time with Richard and Ben to start the time loop, Jacob dies. However, being that Jacob lived in a previous timeline on the island up to the year 2007, his “spirit” is able to stay alive in order communicate with Ben and Richard.

1996-2004 (Off-Island Time): While the island is stuck in the year 1996, all of the main characters of LOSTS’ lives play out via flashbacks. We see the initial backstories from their second iteration through time. Keep in mind that when Ben, Richard and Jacob lived out their first timeline to the year 2007, the plane did not crash. The Losties’ flashbacks that we see in seasons 1-3 are taking place as the Others are in the time loop on the island (or the Other’s second iteration through time) – and the flashbacks are designed to represent how fate changed the lives of the Losties to ultimately bring them to the island.

(cont.)