MYSTERIES

As the journey stumbles to a close, it is a good time to look back at what lostpedia.org had listed as the mysteries of the series to determine if any have really be solved, or are still relevant. It is interesting to note that the list really has not changed for several seasons.

1. Adam and Eve. Identity still unknown, but this season Hurley speculated that they could be one of them, who time traveled back to the island. Upon initial discovery by Jack, he found the black and white stones, which again have popped up on Flocke's scale in the ocean view cave.

2. The Black Rock. We now know that the ship was brought to the island in 1867, and Richard was on board as a slave. Once it was tidal waved to the center of the island by Jacob, the MIB told him that he was in hell and he had to kill the devil (Jacob). The Black Rock's biggest contribution so far is an unlimited supply of unstable dynamite.

3. The Blast Door map. (See below for translated image and discussion). The events stated in the map diagram have been basically unconfirmed, except that Hanso, the captain of the Black Rock, died on the island on his ship. There are several references to other stations, abandoned places, a 1985 unknown incident, and scrawls of a trapped mind about the disease, dragons, and hell.

4. Candidates. We have been told that Jacob continually brought candidates to the island, allegedly to replace himself. MIB has grown disgusted by humans coming to the island. We know who the candidates are, but we do not know for certain what the purpose of the candidates will be to conclude the story. Flocke is in need of gathering all the candidates together, in his words, so they could leave the island.

5. Dharma. We only know very little about Dharma. Only the remains and flash backs of the island time of Horace. We know that Dharma brought recruits to the island so that they could scientifically study the island's unique properties. But once the Others turned against them, Dharma was purged - - - wiped out - - - and Ben took over the stations and compounds. Ironically, Ben also recruited people to come to the island to do scientific work, like Juliet and the infertility problem.

6. The Discharge. When Desmond turned the Hatch fail safe key, the sky turned purple, the hatch door exploded all the way to the beach, and the station was left deep down inside an implosion crater. No scientific or sci-fi explanation has been made of what actually was the discharge (except vague reference to the EM), or why or how humans such as Desmond could have survived the blast.

7. Flight 815. We believe Flight 815 crashed on the island because Desmond failed to input the Numbers in the computer in a timely manner. This caused the EM to pull a part the plane, causing it to crash on the island. There is a parallel Flight 815 which landed safely in the sideways world. How or why the manifests of the flights are the same or different is unknown.

8. Hanso Foundation. The relationship of Hanso and the island dynamics-politics-power struggles has been merely glossed over as a footnote. We know Capt. Hanso died in 1867. However, we have no idea who created the foundation, and what its role is on the island.

9. Healing properties. The island healed Rose of her cancer, and John Locke of his paralyzed condition. No true explanation of how that happened has been said to date, but speculation runs the course that the EM is the source of the healing properties, the "sickness" may affect people differently, or that everyone was healed because they are "dead" and the island is the after life.

10. Hieroglyphics. We spent a great deal of time translating the hieroglyphs in order to find hidden clues. It is clear that the ancient Egyptian belief in the after life was represented on the island and in the temple. Dharma apparently believed some of that ancient religion because they wore Ankh, a symbol for life or eternity. But it is unclear whether the Egyptian decor and beliefs are mere relics from the island past or have any meaning in the present time line.

11. The Island. The island remains the biggest character and mystery. It is a character because people have referenced it as a person; "the island is not done with you" as spoken to Michael in NY when he tried to commit suicide. Ben snarked that the island will get them all in the end. The island has been seen to have supernatural properties, such as being able to move, disappear, hard to locate; and it has been described as "hell" by Richard.

12. Christian Shepard. His ghost image on the island was the first peek at future ghost interactions for the islanders. He was the original focal point of the "daddy issues" story that seemed to envelop most of the 815 characters back stories. Christian is still an enigma; is he truly a ghost spirit of himself, or is he a manipulation by either Jacob or MIB to get Jack to behave in a certain way. Christian has been seen by other characters not in the presence of Jack which led many to believe Christian had a greater role in the island chain of events. But as Season 6 winds down, Christian's presence is lost. Instead, we have the emergence of Flocke, and the unknown children who taunt Flocke as he gathers the candidates.

13. Jacob. We know Jacob has been on the island for a long time. We know he has a tenuous relationship with MIB, so much so that MIB convinced Ben to "murder" Jacob in the statue. But after being "killed," ghost Jacob has been moving around the island, speaking mostly to Hurley. He used a lighthouse to spy on the candidates lives, which freaked Jack out. The Others were Jacob's followers, and in Room 23 brainwashing video, there was a slide that said "GOD LOVES YOU AS HE LOVED JACOB." It is interesting to note that the viewer is told God loves them in the present tense, but in the past tense in reference to Jacob. Some speculate that Jacob may be a fallen angel, once favored by God but cast away for sins like Lucifier. For a character who was unseen for the first five seasons, Jacob now commands center stage in unraveling the island mysteries.

14. The Man in Black. We learned that the MIB has been on the island a long time with Jacob. We also learned that the MIB is the smoke monster, who has the ability to shape shift into the form of dead people (such as Locke). MIB stated that he was once human, and that Jacob had taken away his body, his humanity. MIB's stated goal is to take all the candidates in order to leave the island that has trapped him to "go home." MIB has little remorse for killing people who stand in the way of his goals.

15. Kate's Horse. This was one of the early projections, hallucinations or odd sights in the show. Why Kate conjured up her memory, or whether some one took her memory to give her a clue, is unknown. Other characters have had run ins with their dead parents, like Ben, Jack and Locke.

16. Lists. Apparently, Jacob was keen on making lists. That habit was passed down to Ben who liked to get list of people. The major list was that of the candidates, apparently more than 300 mentioned on the lighthouse dial.

17. Lock down Incident. There is little clarity on what the lock down incident meant during the time of Dharma or during the rule of the Others after the purge. It is suggested that Kelvin and Radinsky used the lock down protocol in order to trigger a Dharma food drop, in itself, a strange event that is difficult to explain if the island was hidden.

18. The Numbers. The Numbers were the most repetitive mystery, weaved throughout the character stories and island sets. The Numbers had to put into a computer every 108 minutes or some one would escape a place of death (according to the hieroglyph alarm). The Numbers were believed to be cursed by Hurley. Some speculated that the Numbers were part of the variables to the equation that determined the end of the world. This season, we learned the Numbers apparently only meant to designate the names of Jacob's remaining candidates.

19. Orientation films. The Dharma videos narrated by Dr. Chang, using different aliases, vaguely inferred that each Dharma station was segregated from the main barracks, each with its own specific purpose and protocols. No one has been given a complete explanation of the work(s) being done by Dharma on the island. The entire Dharma purpose has been eliminated from current island events.

20. The Others. They were called the native "hostiles," by the Dharma group, who had an uneasy truce with them until Ben helped the Others purge the science community in 1992. The Others had been on the island for at least fifty years from the fooming 815ers in the Jughead bomb episode. It appeared that they were nomadic or tribal. It was learned that they were followers of Jacob (during Ben's time), but unclear if they had any history with the temple or its beliefs. It is inferred that the Others may have been the survivors of past Jacob recruits, and the leadership of Ben bringing his people to the island to maintain control and order.

21. Pillar of Smoke. It was never clearly explained, but Rousseau deemed it a sign that the Others were ready to attack . . . when they stole Alex and then Aaron. It was never really connected to the smoke monster, whose entrances have been marked by mechanical sounds.

22. The Sickness. The disease that Rousseau mentioned, and which Desmond, Claire and the Others were vaccinated for has never been explained fully. The sickness was seen after Rousseau's crew was taken under the temple wall by Smokey, and then returned to camp with the intent to murder Rousseau. Desmond was told to take the vaccine, until he saw Kelvin's hazard suit had rips in it . . . meaning that the claim was false. Juliet told Claire that she needed to be vaccinated in order to save her baby, because she said all babies and their mothers died on the island prior to child birth (which was not true because Ethan was born on the island).

23. The Statue. The four toed statue was confirmed to be that of Tawaret, an ancient Egyptian goddess of evil and fertility, who protected souls through their journey through the after life. The destruction of the statue was confirmed in the Black Rock story, where a tidal wave crashed the ship over the statue.

24. Supply drop. As mentioned above, how and why there were supply drops on the island (by parachute) when boats could not find the island remains a nagging mystery. Also, why the drops continued after the Dharma purge. Note: viewers have not seen a supply drop since the Hatch exploded.

25. Time Travel. Early on, TPTB stated that the show was not about time travel. As the seasons wore on, it was clear that the characters did physically time travel from 2004 to 1954, to 1860s, to 1977, and then to 2007. The mechanisms and sci-fi mythology of what kind of time travel is in LOST has not been explained, and as such leads to rampant speculation of paradoxes, parallel universes, multiverses or some other explanation not related to time travel (mind control, hallucinations, mental instability, reality perceptions).

26. Temporal displacement. Before the concept of full time travel hit the show, we saw Desmond has mind "flashes" which were explained that his conscious was time traveling to another time frame. In order to avoid nose bleeds and brain death, Faraday said that a person has to have a constant in both time frames. (However, everyone subject to these events had constants, including family, colleagues and co-workers but they met with their demise while Desmond did not). Why there was a difference between mind travel and full physical time travel remains unexplained at present.

27. The Temple. The Others considered the Temple to be the safest place on the island. It was an Egyptian temple with scripts toward the sun god, Ra, and the after life. The Others sought refuge in the Temple from MIB-Smokey, which is strange since Smokey actually lived under the Temple walls. The Temple housed Dogen, the mystic master, who said that he had made a deal with Jacob to save his son from death from an accident he caused, but he was bonded to the island service and could never see his family again. Many believe that Jacob made cruel bargains with lost souls like Dogen or Richard in their time of grief. Some called it deals "with the devil." The temple served as the stage for MIB-Flocke's smoke monster rampage which killed the Others who decided not to follow him.

28. Whispers. The jungle whispers were always a cause of concern; they usually were followed by bad events, such as the Others showing up with guns. This season, we learned from ghost Michael that the whispers are actually dead souls "who cannot move on." This means that the island has trapped dead souls (which sounds like purgatory).

29. Mittelos Bioscience. Like Hanso Foundation, Mittelos was mentioned only in passing as a possible player or power behind the Dharma throne. Whether it contributed anything significant to the current island events is doubtful.

30. Walt. Early on, Walt was the focus of being "special." He was the one of the few survivors who did not want to leave the island. He sabotaged the first raft. He made a connection with John Locke, who also believed in the special nature of the island. When Walt was kidnapped by the Others, he was taken to Room 23. It is unknown what happened to him, but in the end, he was released to leave the island with Michael, his father, in exchange for Kate, Jack and Sawyer. Walt did return as a tall ghost when Locke was shot (and dying or dead) in the purge pit. He told Locke that he had further work to do. (It may have been reference to turning the FDW to stop the island time skips.) How ghost Walt appeared to Locke, or why he was "special" and did not return to the island, are all unanswered questions.

31. Widmore. We know he was once a leader of the Others. We know that he was banished by Ben from the island for his off-island behavior (i.e. having a child, Penny). Widmore became a wealthy industrialist who said he has taken decades to try to find the island again. His relationship with Eloise Hawking is muddled, as Daniel Faraday is their son in the sideways world, and believed to be their son in the island world - - - but why Daniel does not have Widmore or Hawking as a last name clouds the issue. In any event, Widmore has no regrets in sacrificing his teams in order to get what he wants, and according to some, Widmore's only goal on his return to the island is to seize its power.

So, of the 31 main mysteries, we truly only have the answers to only five (5): the Black Rock, the Lists, the Numbers, the Statue and the Whispers. That is only sixteen percent.