REAL TO UNREAL

I never understood why Charlie's character wanted to die. He could have easily saved himself by getting out of the control room, even after Patchy flooded it by exploding a porthole (which is question for another day).

Charlie had much to live for:

1. He wanted very much to protect Claire and Aaron.
2. He wanted to have a family with Claire and Aaron.
3. He wanted to get his career back on track, since the island gave him a second chance at life.
4. He wanted to be a hero, so people would look upon him not as a "one hit wonder," but a real person.

His relationship with Claire was not that unusual. Claire was the damsel in distress after the crash. Who wants to deal with a pregnant woman in shock? But Charlie did - - - instinctively. But initially Charlie felt he did not have the skills to impress and keep her: Jack was the medical savior protecting her baby, while Locke was the hands on guy who could build her shelter and a crib. All Charlie could give Claire was kindness, something that apparently was lacking in her life.

And Claire did not know how to react to Charlie's affection.  She was put off by his imposition of himself into her island situation. She did not have the same feelings for him. Some would say her hormones were all out of whack, and the added stress of the Others wanting to take her child made her mad. But even as frustrated as Charlie got, he never gave up. When she was kidnapped, he went into the jungle to confront the Others - - -  and he wound up hanged by a tree. Jack had to cut him down - - - which brings us to an island tangent: did Charlie actually "die" in that encounter to be reincarnated as a smoke monster or soul seeking forgiveness of Claire for not being able to protect her like he had promised her?

If Charlie was Charlie 2.0 (soul/smoke monster/reincarnation) that would put a whole different spin on "what" the island was . . . . beyond a metaphysical dimension in time or space but a soul proving ground for redemption.

But after Desmond's purple fail safe moment (which like Charlie's hanging should have killed Desmond, who was found naked in the jungle), Claire seemed to gravitate toward Desmond rather than Charlie. It made Charlie jealous.  Then when Desmond told Charlie he could see future visions, including Claire and Aaron leaving the island on a helicopter, Charlie knew he had to make that happen. But when Desmond told him that he also saw Charlie dying - - - they connected the two visions as being a cause and effect. In order to save Claire, Charlie had to die.

There were no "rules" which made that connection true. Charlie's own weaknesses: his low self-esteem, his jealousy, his rejection, his self-pity, all contributed to his suicidal but heroic stance in the control room. In order to radio for rescue, Charlie had to recognize a musical pattern code to unlock the panel. This always seemed to contrived to be true reality. But it made Charlie the "only" person who could figure it out - - - his own supernatural power. But once he got contact established, he found out that Desmond's vision was wrong: it was not Penny's boat coming to save them. It was Widmore's freighter coming to kill them.

So instead of doing anything possible to bring that news back to the island - - - and to protect Claire from the coming harm - - - Charlie decided not to open the control room door. As Desmond pleaded with him to open it, Charlie drowned in what could be considered a senseless death.

The only thing that Charlie's death did was to cause other people, especially Desmond, pain. Dez's flashes were not reality and not true premonitions. Desmond's own personal motivation to get back to Penny clouded his judgment. It cost Charlie his life. It cost Charlie his chance to make things right with Claire.

After Charlie's death, Claire went insane when Aaron was taken away from her. Some believe that Claire may have been killed during that three year period of darkness - - - since she could see "Christian" a smoke monster, she too could have been recreated into one. She did not ask about Charlie at all when she encountered Kate. She did not miss him. Her sole focus was revenge.

So why did Claire rejoin up with Charlie in the after life? There connection was broken on the island when they were not on the best of terms. The sideways was an afterlife plane of existence, but it has the troublesome unreal aspect in which Aaron and Sun's baby have in common:

Why did the island pregnant women give birth to their children in the afterlife if they had already been born in the real world? 

Logically, an afterlife birth would mean that Claire and Sun never gave birth in their real worlds. That would mean the island was not in fact real. Their motherhoods were illusions. Their relationships and interactions with other people were merely dreams. The sideways world was the ultimate "do-over."

Charlie got his second chance with Claire, to experience the birth of Aaron. Claire got a loving partner in return. Their reconnection seems to be the most real of the final pairings, as we still have issues with how Jack and Kate wound up with each other while Locke never reconnected with Helen.

RE-BIRTH

It was a miracle when Aaron was born on the island. First, the baby survived a high altitude plane crash. Second, her mother was a stressed out bundle of emotions. Third, there were no medical facilities. Fourth, the Others "tested" and "injected" him during a kidnap of Claire. Fifth, no trained medical person helped deliver the baby in the jungle.

The next miracle was that Aaron survived on the island. There would have been pests, disease and malnutrition factors. The Others should have kidnapped him because the Others were obsessed with children. Claire would go through some crazy mom postpartum depression.

The next miracle was Aaron's escape from the island. He survived a helicopter crash into the ocean. He survived the blazing sun in the open seas without his mother. Once on the mainland, he survived under the care of the anti-Mother, Kate.

Aaron was one lucky kid. Luckier than even Hurley.

But does this all add up?

Since Claire left the island with Kate, to fulfill her own self-anointed destiny to reunite Aaron with his mother, one must assume that Claire did re-bond with Aaron.  We were led to believe that Claire's mother, Carol, was in an irreversible coma. Christian came to Australia to help pay for the extended care, when Claire berated her father with blame. But Claire was to blame for her mother's condition (the traffic accident). So after the escape from the island, a fully recovered Carol shows up at Christian's memorial service. Is this also a miracle? Or a bad plot device to get Kate thinking about doing something right and noble in her life?

Carol's reappearance does give us the undertone that something is not quite right in the LOST time lines. If she did not make it and her hospital care cut short and she died after Christian's demise (a likely possibility), then the O6 arc is not real but a surreal bridge to the sideways after life realm.

Because if Claire left the island and she was reunited with Aaron, then there was no reason why Aaron would have needed to be "reborn" at the sideways world concert. How can a living human being be reborn in the afterlife? Or was the whole island Claire story a tale of a dramatic false pregnancy? Or a delusion that masked the fact that Aaron died in the plane crash or at birth?

For if Aaron was born on the island, and lived a normal life off the island, he would have been an adult with his own family and not a prop in the sideways conclusion. He was not needed in order to reunite Claire and Charlie at the concert.

But since the pregnant Claire was in the afterlife in that state of unwed, the question is then asked whether the after life is merely a dream state. And if it is a dream state, would re-living a traumatic time in one's life (like emergency child birth) rekindle the "best" time of your life?

The re-birth of Aaron in the sideways world has always been a troublesome plot point. It makes him more a prop than an actual human being.

Or, an alternative explanation: hysterical pregnancy. Though rare in the United States, pregnancies rooted in the mind but entirely absent from the body do happen. Victorian-era doctors referred to them as "hysterical pregnancies." Today, the favored terms are "delusional pregnancy," "false pregnancy" or "phantom pregnancy." When a patient suffers from some or all the symptoms of pregnancy— stomach growth, cramps, loss of period, morning sickness—without a fetus actually being present, it's known as pseudocyesis.

The division between the physiological and psychological aspects of this syndrome isn't always clear. Essentially, the word 'delusional' means the person is ill with a psychiatric disorder of some kind. But pseudocyesis can occur without any psychiatric illness: you can believe that you're pregnant and have signs of pregnancy for any number of reasons. Certain drugs will do it. There have been cases reported where a woman gains weight, starts having other signs like nausea and she starts believing she's pregnant—but she's not mentally ill and she never has been, other than this one area. And so she'll have some trouble being convinced she's not pregnant. 

If Aaron's "double" births were merely vivid hysterical pregnancies of a delusional woman, was the whole series then a collective delusion?

LEVELS OF DEATH

There is still a nagging question about the sideways purgatory stinger. First, it came out of left field and led many viewers to question the first season plane crash as being unsurvivable. Second, it clearly stated that all the characters were in fact dead, but some died long before and others long after Jack did. But Jack realized his death in the church before we saw him actually "die" on the island. Third, the story telling vehicle of flashbacks, flash forwards and leaps in time create an uncertainty of WHEN the characters "died."

If death is the ending, when did the characters actually die?

It is not as simple answer.  For those who steadfastly believe that the characters survived the plane crash, then bear in mind in the scheme of LOST universe, the characters were "alive" in their own perception and interaction with people and objects in the sideways world. It was "real" to them, even though they did not realize it was not the Earth existence we know as life.

As such, there is no prohibition that this perception of a sideways "real" life could extend to the island world, or even to each character's flashback or background events.  In other words, LOST may have been a show about death from the very beginning.

I speculated long ago that deep within the background stories of the main characters, there were chilling life and death moments which we were led to believe each character survived. But what if they did not?

No one knows what happens after death. Many cultures believe a human soul must travel through inter-dimensional portals to find paradise. Some religions believe a soul is judged in hell or the various levels of the underworld before it is cleansed or purged of its sins to be worthy for heaven.

The LOST universe could be a construction of various levels or stages of the after life. If during childhood, the main characters were killed by the accidents or traumatic events in their lives, then those child souls could have been given an opportunity to perceive or "live" a new life in a sideways world like existence. Those could be contained in the recent or adult flashbacks; illusions and dreams of children coming to "life." Once those souls ran their course in their first after life level, they were rounded up and boarded Flight 815 for the next level of spiritual attainment, the island. With themes like sacrifice, trust, redemption and judgment, the island is the ideal place for a religious component or a place where lost souls could get rid of regrets or selfish desires in order to move on to the next level of spiritual existence.

It is probably hard to imagine that the characters who boarded Flight 815 in Sydney were already dead. But it does make sense in reference to the season finale in the church. The characters died at different times in different places and they could not move on without finding each other. The whole series then did not have to follow Earth bound concepts of linear time, physics, time or any form of relativity because it was not of this planet.

Now, the show's creators and writers would dismiss this theory as nonsense because they continue to be adamant that the characters did not die in the plane crash. Again, it may be parsing words, but if they were already "dead" before the plane crash, then it would be true that they would not die in the conventional sense in the plane crash on the island.

For example, Locke's "miracle birth" aftermath was actually the beginning of his soul's first life in the after life. It would have been highly improbable that a premature baby injured in a car collision in rural America in the 1950s would have survived the trauma with limited medical technology. This theory is bolstered by the fact that an immortal, Richard Alpert, visited him in the hospital.

Jacob was then not recruiting human beings but lost souls who were given a second chance to live a normal (abet fantasy) life.

It would also explain why Michael, after he left the island, could not kill himself. Mr. Friendly told him that the island was not through with him; he had work to do. A supernatural place was affecting Michael's suicide attempts; therefore, off-island was also a realm of supernatural actions. They could be classified as one in the same. If the island was a place of death then so to would be the off-island.

And then there is the Aaron problem. How could he be "born" twice? He was "born" just as the series ended in the sideways purgatory where everyone present was already dead (but just not aware of it). Aaron was so born earlier on the island. How could that be when the island did not or could not allow births of babies (if the island is hell or the after life that makes sense: who can bring new human life in the after life that is made up solely of souls). So this gets the trace back to Claire and her auto accident which severely injured and ultimately killed her mother. It could have also killed herself and her baby, leading the moments after the accident her first stage in the after life. Since Aaron was never born, he was always a spirit in the show who would manifest himself when Claire needed him.

This levels of death theory tries to unify the various aspects of a disjointed story line under one single premise: death.

BEST OF TIMES

Here is a new question. If Christian was correct in saying that the main characters in the church died well before and well after Jack, why did they all appear in the church as their "island" selves?

The metaphysical question is what is the physical appearance of the dead in purgatory.

It may not be a bothersome proposition because it was just a television show, and the actors aged only 6 years.  But the show did use other actors to play the main characters roles such as in childhood or as young adults. But TPTB chose to represent the dead LOST cast in the church at their island ages.

Can one infer that when one's soul goes to purgatory, its physical appearance is locked in place? This would seem to match the ancient Egyptian concept of mummification of the deceased body and organs for the reconstruction and rebirth of that person in the after life.

Now, Christian also said that the people in the church waiting for Jack were present because they shared the "most important" time in their lives. He did not say "the best" times. The idea of the shared experience of an airplane crash may be important, and the survival of the plane crash even more important, but there were some characters who should have lived full lives beyond the island crash.

For the church scene to make sense, it would seem that all the characters were "locked" in their physical place based upon the moment they went into island airspace. And in the purgatory world, Aaron becomes the problem child. It is hard to imagine that Aaron, who left the island with Kate and was with his grandmother when Claire was rescued, would not have lived a full life outside the island. But the ending church realm has Aaron being born - - - meaning that he was still a fetus when the sideways world was "created." It also creates the massive logic issue of how can a dead mother, Claire, give "birth" to her child in purgatory? (In some respects that pregnancy issue was at the heart of Ben's island research with Juliet, i.e. evidence that the Island could also have been a purgatory state.) Was Aaron really born on the island, or was that a fantasy?

For if Aaron's physical spirit was locked in as shown in the after life (as a fetus or new born), one would have to conclude that Aaron died in the plane crash or shortly after birth on the Island. Otherwise, it would have been more appropriate to have a grown Aaron with Claire in the church, or no Aaron at all.  The idea that Claire "needed" to have Aaron's birth to "awaken" in the after life to reconnect her feelings with Charlie seems to be an unnecessarily convoluted plot twist. It makes Aaron a mere prop for Claire to accept her own death. A death that may have been caused because of a traumatic child birth (which mirrors Ben's back story birth).

And if Aaron's "most important" life moment was being born on the island, that would mean Aaron had no other life . . . his soul represents only a fixed newborn whose life was measured in weeks not years. One cannot say that the best days of Aaron's life were on the island unless those were his "only" days.

Then again, the Ajira escapees would have lived a long lives after leaving the island. Kate, Sawyer and Claire would have aged before they died "long after" Jack. But again, their appearance in the sideways after life was that of the island time of the plane crash. Kate, Sawyer and Claire had life expectancies of forty years or more. They would have had the opportunity to change, meet new people, forge new relationships and put the island terror behind him. Kate could have reconnected with her husband, the Florida policeman. Claire could have reconnected with Aaron's father. Sawyer could have reconnected with the mother of his child. All those pre-flight bonds and relationships were present when they left the island for good. So, one would then have to assume that none of those mainland reunions ever took place. One could also assume that the Ajira people may have never made it back. Or one could assume no one ever left the island, per se.

The physical appearances of the characters in the sideways church and Christian's vague explanation creates more fundamental questions. The sideways plot premise does not seem to be consistent when one looks at the individual characters, especially post-island time. In fact, it leads us down the path to consider one explanation: that the sideways purgatory was also the island purgatory - - - the lost souls were locked in their spiritual and physical forms when Flight 815 crashed on the island.

But then again, the appearance of Christian in the church is also problematic. He was never on the island. He died in Australia. His body was never on the plane. He only had two connections: Jack and Claire. So if Jack's island friends "created" the sideways world as a purgatory holding pen for their souls until Jack accepted his own death, Christian's soul would not have been part of that collective experience (unless of course, they were all souls passing through the same after life gate and Christian, Eloise or some other guardian angel corralled them in place so they could "move on together.") Christian should not have been the master of ceremonies at the end.

It is hard to imagine that the island time was "the best times" for the main characters. That shared experience was so powerful that their souls would be linked forever. For a character like Locke, that seems counterproductive. The main characters abandoned him to die alone (or at the hands of Ben). Locke's soul would have had a better or stronger connection to meet up with his mother or even Helen in the after life. But he wound up with the 815 survivors in the after life, but sadly, he wound up alone without a soul mate. How cruel is that?

There is also an issue of why all the people in the church needed to be together in order to "move on." Was it some kind of reward for destroying MIB? Probably not, because Christian said the characters themselves created this diversion place. Recall, Jacob told Alpert that he could not resurrect the dead but he could grant some form of immortality. So it was probably not necessary to have the characters in the church to complete their journey. In fact, Rose and Bernard seem the most out of place. They specifically told them they did not want any more part of the island melodramas. They went off on their own to build their own cabin and live out their own lives without anyone else. When Rose and Bernard would have died,  one would have assumed they would have moved on together without the help of anyone else.

The problem with the "happy ending" to LOST is that when one begins to drill down through the smiles, it really cannot be considered a happy ending. There are too many inconsistencies and questions to say that the main characters needed each other in order to have true eternal happiness.

A VICIOUS CIRCLE

It was one of those recent random thoughts that got my attention.

What if LOST never ended?

Ben consoled Hurley when he became the new island guardian with the concept that Hurley could do the right thing and allow an injured Desmond to leave the island and go home. (Besides the philosophic connotation of what "home" could be - - - reality or heaven - - - will be left for another post.)

But we observed that the island had a continual cycle of people coming to the island to be "candidates" in Jacob and MIB's game of human Senet. As stated in previous posts, there is no clear, direct evidence that Jacob or MIB actually ceased to exist when they were allegedly "killed."

At the end of the island story arc, we have only nine main survivors:

Ben, Hurley and Desmond, who are left by the light cave to mourn the demise of their friend.

Frank, Miles, and Alpert are ready to take off on the Ajira plane when they are interrupted by the presence of Kate, Sawyer and Claire running toward them.

Claire told Kate that she won't come with them to the plane because the Island has made her crazy. Kate offered to help her, which convinced her to go with them. The plane is seen flying overhead a dying Jack.

But what are the survivors looking forward to?

Frank has nothing to back to since no one would believe his story about "losing" his plane and passengers on a mysterious island. He is only second person able to escape the island twice (Kate is the other). One would think the island would cause Frank mental problems for the rest of his life.

Claire already acknowledges her crazy state of mind caused by the island. Upon her return, we would assume she would remain crazy. This puts her in the mode of Locke's mother, who was institutionalized when he was a small boy. Perhaps Locke's childhood drawings of the smoke monster and island events were stories past down to him by his mother, who had escaped the island. This would be down the basis of a new theory that the candidates were not randomly chosen by Jacob, but bred or conditioned to come to the island.

Kate returns to nothing. Even if Claire takes back Aaron, she would be in Australia. Kate would be alone, without purpose, stuck in LA pining away for dead Jack? How long would that fact led to Kate being depressed to suicidal like Locke's life prior to meeting his con artist father?

If Kate returns to nothing, Alpert would be transported to an alien world. He has no family, no friends and no place to call home back in the United States. He was an unemployed island minion. We think that his immortality ended with a single gray hair. But what if he is still tethered to the island, like Mr. Abaddon?

Sawyer's life long quest for revenge is over. The whole purpose of his life was completed by the death of Cooper on the island. Sawyer's return has one pending murder investigation in Australia, but it is not likely that case would be solved unless his buddy who gave him the hit confessed that he sent Sawyer to kill that man he thought killed his parents. So Sawyer returns to the states as a "dead man" in more than one way: no job, no family and no future except a return to his criminal ways. If Juliet was the love of his life, would he get over her quickly?

Miles is in a similar situation of Sawyer. He returns to the states the son of island scientist, one of the few people conceived on the island who survived. His ability to listen to the final echo thoughts of the dead may be that native connection to the island itself. One would think that after being on the island, Miles would be haunted by it in future years.

The people on the Ajira flight we saw leave the island all had the seeds of doubt and misery that could have drawn them back into the clutches of the island destiny as it did Locke.

Which may have been the plan all along. Jacob and MIB's human game of Senet spanned thousands of years and countless number of people. It was a chess match with real people and real weapons. A life and death amusement for immortal beings bored with their island existence.

When Hurley, Ben and Desmond presumably left the island, it is possible that Jacob and MIB would wait for the other survivors to "return" to the island to re-populate their game.  As you recall, the game of Senet is "won" when the player removes his last piece off the board (island). Both Jacob and MIB never left the island - - - both "died" on it. That may be the only way the island ceases to exist: when either Jacob or MIB physically leaves the island as the last piece standing. That did not happen. Until that point, when Hurley leaves the island for good, the vicious Jacob-MIB game restarts again.

Claire is the new Locke's crazy mother (to Aaron). Aaron may grow up to believe that he has an island destiny. The same could be true of Walt, who was "special" and of extreme interest to the Others until he escaped with his father. It is possible that Walt's intense father issues would make him the next Jack.

THE AARON PROBLEM

If The End had a major flaw, it would have to center upon the awakening of Kate and Claire at the concert. Many in the Lost community called it "The Aaron Problem."

Now, many posters felt that children were treated on the whole badly throughout the Lost series. For example, plane survivors Emma and Zach were kidnapped by the Others and had no resolution of their plight at the end of the series. The whole story arc with Walt being "special" but having no consequence in the show's conclusion has left many viewers with a bad taste.

So, yes, everyone is in agreement that everyone in the church in The End are dead. Dead dead.

But what about Aaron?

The pro-enders believe that the "re-birth" of Aaron in the sideways world was necessary for Claire "to remember" her island life and her bond with now Egyptian eyeliner Charlie Pace. Except, Aaron was already "born" on the island. It makes no sense to have Aaron born in the dead realm to Claire unless:

a) Aaron, like the other children including sideways David (Jack's son) are just mere illusions or props;

b) Aaron was never truly "born" on the island;

c) the sideways world characters are separate entities living in a parallel dimension from that of the island world, meaning that events in one place had no effect on the other; or

d)  it was a major writing error in the finale.

We were told that Aaron was "alive" in Los Angeles, raised by Kate for three years. Then when Kate returned to the island, Aaron was given to his grandmother. So based upon that information, Aaron is no different than anyone else in the church - - - he was already born, living and breathing in the island world. We do not know when he "died" in the island world - - - whether he lived a brief, or a long life; with his own family, friends, children, grandchildren, etc.

But the sideways world pre-supposes the opposite. For if Christian's statement was true, these people were the most important people in their collective lives (including Aaron's) during their time on the island, which lasted initially about 100 days, then time split for three years, to re-converge for approximately 12 days after Ajira 316 landed on the Hydra Island. The 12 days also seems to coincide with the time line for the sideways events. Christian tied both worlds together so there is no evidence of parallel universes. There is no evidence that the sideways world was an "alternative" place in time or space, but merely a holding fantasy, for souls to remember and re-connect to people that allegedly meant the most to them in their previous existence.

In order to reconcile the condition of the island characters to their sideways doppelgangers, in order to be truly consistent and logical, if he truly lived a "real" life,  Aaron should have arrived at the church either as a three year old boy or an old man when his life ended in the non-sideways world. Everyone else in the church had their same island time line appearances.

Many people do not want to hear this explanation: that Aaron was "reincarnated" in the sideways world. If he was reincarnated as a new born in the sideways world, it means he had a horrible, non-existent "real world" life.

But most believe Aaron did have a life before dying. So how can he be in "two" places at once. (The Christian explanation of the sideways world having no time does not hold water if one believes that a person only has one soul, whether it be living or dead.) So if Aaron went through adulthood, his reward for living was becoming a new born infant in purgatory? Again, that makes no sense. And further, why would Aaron return to his mother as an infant, if she returned to him as a crazy person when Ajira left the island? It would seem Aaron's expected life would be just like poor John Locke's.

Then again, one could argue that this part of the sideways fantasy world was Claire's dream to be with Aaron always so she made him return as a fetus - - - but why, if she did leave the island and was reunited with her three year old son and her mother?

And if Aaron was reincarnated at the sideways concert, what about the rest of the characters? They were somehow also reincarnated into the sideways world.  And if the characters were reincarnated in one place (sideways), then it is just as logical that they could have been reincarnated in the other place (the island). Many fans abhor the idea that the characters were somehow "dead" from the beginning of the pilot episode and throughout the series. But why then, are those fans content with the same reasoning fashioned in the sideways world finale?

How Aaron was depicted in the series is a real series paradox.

Was he just a literary prop to add some tangent drama to a secondary character's story as part of a four season filler arc?

From the after life theorists, for Aaron to be "reborn" in the sideways finale, he would have had to have been killed on or before Flight 815 crashed on the island. One life; one soul.

How Aaron was used in the finale is one of massive contradiction. It raised more questions about the disregard of the first five season plot lines in favor of a final half season white wash sideways explanation to the conclude the characters lives. But Aaron's birth to his dead mother has no explanation in either the island or sideways time frames. It is really one of those plot points that still gnaws some viewers. Claire could have "awakened" in another fashion than using Aaron as a prop doll.