A LOST RANT

 ScreenRant listed the 10 worst “answers” of LOST:

10. The Whispers are Souls.

The whispers come from the souls of dead people who haven't "moved on" yet like Michael.
It was an answer that gave evidence to the early purgatory theorists, which the show runner continually deny.

9.  Desmond had Mind Powers because of Electromagnetism

Desmond’s powers were nonsense and caused "electromagnetism" stemming from the hatch implosion makes no sense because there were others near the Hatch who were not affected.

8.  The Sideways Timeline is Purgatory

 
The opening of Season 6 seemed to suggest that Juliet had split the timeline.
In one branch, the island remained and nothing changed. In the other branch, the island was destroyed and the events of LOST never occurred. But then we found out that it was not a branching timeline, but purgatory. It caused a lot of confusion — "they were dead the whole time!" — but even those who weren't confused were left bitterly disappointed and upset with the reveal. Even some tried to salvage the sideways branch as being some sort of “dream” state (before moving on?) but it all comes down to Bad Filler episodes.

 7.  Walt’s Special Powers

 
Walt plays an important role throughout the first season, and to some extent, the second season as well. It's very clear that he has some type of special connection with the island, and has some sort of mental powers. He also showed some sort of teleportation powers in Season 2, as he appears to Shannon right before she dies. But a growth spurt exiled Walt from the series and the disappointing answer for his mysterious powers was that he was "special.”

6.   Revived Locke was Actually the Man in Black

Locke dies midway through Season 5, but we were briefly led to believe that he was revived after returning to the island. Of course, Locke remained dead, and the Man in Black was simply using his corpse to have a corporeal form to split the Others from Jacob so he could try to escape the Island. Of course, a paralyzed Locke crash landing on the island can walk, run and hunt like an Outback warrior, but his remains stay dead without resurrection even though Jack’s dad wanders around it at will?

5.  The Confusing Numbers

The numbers were another major mystery, and they were a part of LOST from the very beginning. In the end, we found out that the numbers correlated to Jacob's numbering system for the candidates to replace him. Why would an island god need to be replaced by a mortal?  As if that wasn't lame enough, it also doesn't answer anything else: Why were they broadcasting from the tower? Why do they bring people bad luck? Why are they seemingly cursed? Why do they constantly recur both on and off the island?

4.  The Smoke Monster’s origins

There were countless theories regarding the Smoke Monster, and it remained one of the most prevalent questions throughout all six years of the show. And then we found out it was just the result of some magical reaction after Jacob’s brother (the Man in Black) fell in the magical glowing light cave.


3. Jacob and The Man in Black

For that matter, Jacob and the Man in Black  remain extremely divisive and controversial figures. "Jacob" was mentioned as far back as Season 3, and while there are various "hints" of their existence throughout the first couple seasons,  most people found their existence a total blindside that ruined the show. The show pivoted abruptly to a supernatural fantasy show with no reason. All the mysteries, questions and Easter eggs were washed away by two god-boys playing with humans (spirits) as pawns. There origin story episode was very good but it should have been shown early in Season 1 if that is the true mythology of the show’s creators (which most people believe was not - - - because they wrote themselves into too many dead ends to rationally explain.)

2.  Magic Island

Perhaps the biggest question of all contained the most disappointing answer of all. "What is the island?" It's a question that permeated LOST throughout all six seasons, as it was clearly evident that it wasn't just a regular island. There were scientific facts thrown at us to analyze, research and theorize. From an alien ship, to a parallel universe time portal to a secret military base, there were viable alternatives to the explanation that the island was just “magical.”  

1.  The Magic Light

But why was the island magical? The explanation was that the island containing some sort of “magical light” that does magical things and keeps evil at bay from doing what exactly? What is the magic light exactly? Was the magic light the cause for all the crazy island stuff?  Locke's sudden ability to walk?  Smoke Monster's origins?  The ability for the island to literally move through space and time?. Electromagnetic properties of the island? The ability to disappear? Magic as being the answer to all the unanswered questions is a cop-out of epic proportions.

TEN YEARS AFTER

As Yahoo UK recently published:

"In the end, it was a Shephard — two of them, actually — who led the lost flock home. Ten years ago this week, the hit ABC series, Lost, brought it’s time-and-reality hopping narrative to a conclusion in the super-sized series finale, appropriately titled “The End.”

The final moments of the final episode feature the show’s hero, Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox), reuniting with his fellow Oceanic Flight 815 castaways in a heavenly dimension as they prepare to move on to whatever realm lies beyond death. “Where are we going?” Jack asks his father, Christian Shephard (John Terry), whose specter had haunted him throughout Lost’s six-season run.

“Let’s go find out,” Papa Shephard replies. At that point, father and son take their place in pews surrounded by the entire cast — even those who died early in the show’s run — and they collectively step into the light.

That may sound final, but “The End” turned out to be just the beginning of the debate over Lost’s place in the pantheon of all-time TV greats. Certainly, the show’s 2004 premiere was a seismic pop culture event, with action that rivalled big-screen blockbusters and ratings to match."

The first takeaway is that LOST was the first epic series that had a complicated mythology and Easter egg fan service to make it the pioneering show for the internet commentary community. Fan sites devoured each episode like an all-you-can-eat buffet.  Fan theories became more complex than the LOST writers best imagination. It was the first interactive television program, some of it in real time chat rooms. Today, some YouTubers live stream commentary during k-dramas, but that pales in comparison to the national media dedicating columnists for weekly recaps.

It was a critical and viewer juggernaut. But as the seasons progressed and the tangential story lines got more convoluted, the show runners hubris took the series down split road to a dead end. The biggest complaint was the land fill sized pile of unanswered questions. When one weaves an elegant story, with mysteries, viewers expected show worthy answers. Rambling into the series finale, Cuse and Lindelof acknowledged there was no way they’d be able to craft an ending that paid off every plot thread and satisfied every viewer.


“We have to have the answers to the mysteries so that there is something to work towards, but what we don't have are the stories,” Lindof said in a 2010 Wired interview.  “J.K. Rowling can sit down and say, ‘Here's how Harry Potter's parents were killed, and here's who killed them,’ but how am I going to reveal that information to the audience in the most emotionally impactful way? So we know what we want to do, but we have very little idea of how and when we're going to do it.”

Second, this confirmed in some people's minds that at a certain point, the writers were making things up on the fly. There was no concrete ending from the beginning. The show drifted on the ocean of fan support. In the end, the show runners confessed they decided to do was to design a finale that emphasized "character over mystery."

 But when you base six years of story on mysteries, many fans thought that was a cop-out. Especially true when the show's producers vehemently denied during the first season that the show was set in purgatory. But the End showed a mixed religious message that main characters had died in the past and the island was some other dimension (further complicated by another universe of the sideways world).

Third, LOST did get into the surreal story writing genre by not only having character flash backs but also "flash sideways," a different  timeline where apparently Jack and the rest of the castaways were back in the real world, albeit leading different lives than what we saw in the flashback sequences that were a major part of previous seasons.

But these did not add a layer of mystery more than one of confusion. A few critics thought this was mere annoying filler episodes. Others thought the writers "stumped" themselves in their original time frame ("painted themselves into a corner") so they tried to "re-boot" the series with another time line.

The evolution of the Man in Black as the personification of dead Locke really did not answer the confinement of Jacob and the Smoke Monster to an island where human beings were used as chess pieces in a sadistic game. But if you look to the religious elements, especially ancient Egyptian culture, one could find a potential answer that the island was the underworld which a soul would have to navigate dangerous tests in order to be judged by the gods in the afterlife.

But the show runners did not want LOST to fall into that realm. They wanted LOST to stand on its own mythology as pure fantasy. They decided that they did not have to answer all the questions or defend their creative choices because enough fans were fully invested (with their own ideas) it did not really matter.

Fourth, there was a sour taste of being hustled by a three card monte boardwalk shark. The End did not tie up loose ends. It made them more tangled as we see Jack "die" on the island while  Hurley and  Ben Linus remain on the island as "new protectors" only to "shut it down" in a hasty DVD epilogue. It did not explain why pilot Frank Lapidus miraculously gets everyone else — including Kate, Sawyer, and Claire off the island. Why were these characters "saved?" What did they do when they returned "home?" How did some find their way to Christian Shephard's church?

In the final scene, Christian opens the church doors to engulf the inside with a bright white light, symbolizing the moment between death and the after life. In the real world, “The End” wasn’t exactly the end that a lot of viewers were waiting for with half the fans found it a comfortable, happy ending while half felt it was a disappointing conclusion in a Hollywood trope way. It did bring to the forefront the debate on whether  the “Flash sideways” universe functioned as a kind of purgatory between life and death — the same theory that was advanced about the island itself when the show first launched. As one commentator put it: “I think the overall lesson is that we're all going to die eventually, so we may as well surround ourselves with as many attractive people as we can.”

Fifth, the LOST legacy may truly be the backtracking by the show runners.  Lindelof heard the criticisms loud and clear, and responded to them in public. “There was a very early perception… that the island was purgatory and we were always out there saying, 'It's not purgatory, this is real, we're not going to Sixth Sense you,’”


But three years later, he said  “Lost was all about mystery and questions and answers and [I wanted] to try to answer a mystery the show hadn't even asked up until that point… A portion of the audience was like, 'Oh, that wasn’t on my list, I'm not interested in that.' But we were.” Even as he stood by “The End,” the online reaction clearly took its toll.

Despite its still-divisive ending, the early success of LOST remains something that TV networks would love to emulate in an increasingly fractured TV landscape. In 2019, ABC hinted that it would not be adverse to rebooting the series.  But do not expect any of the original creative team to return for a potential revival. "I, personally, am not going to be involved with other versions of Lost because we told the most complete version," Lindelof said last year.  "I feel like I spent four years of my life begging them to end it and when they finally said yes, the ending that we did probably should stand as our ending."

LOST was highly entertaining, addictive and mentally stimulating but with all first loves, it had its bad points, questionable choices and nasty arguments.  As a series of intertwined and related episodes, LOST could never handle syndication re-runs because viewers missing episodes would themselves become lost. Syndicated viewers demand self-contained episodes like Star Trek.

It is hard to believe that it has been TEN YEARS since LOST concluded its run. There are very few blogs or sites that still contribute new content to the LOST community. But there are occasional posts of nostalgia about the series. And that is one of the hope's of any television production - - - a nostalgic memory.

DOORS

"There are things that are known and things that are unknown; in between are doors." - - - Jim Morrison.

A good mystery is like a door.

The clues to what lies behind the door (the answers) can be found:

1) by the location of the door;
2) by the type of door;
3) the construction of the door;
4) the kind of latches or knobs;
5) whether it is locked or unlocked;
6) whether it has signage;
7) whether you can hear noises from inside.

Applied to the Island in LOST:

1) it was located in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere north of Australia and west of Fiji.
2) it was a tropical island
3) it contained ruins from past occupants
4) it was very hard to enter the island
5) it was hidden from searcher's view
6) it was so remote that it screamed danger to survivors that washed up on its shore
7) the noises of the smoke monster were loud and horrible.

So what was behind all the island mysteries?

Did we get a clear peak behind the door?

We know the island by its unique physics properties defies both time and space. But we do not know whether it exists in our current earth space-time, or phases in and out, or is another dimension (including but not limited to the afterlife).

We know that throughout the centuries, various people came to the island and built their own structures such as the Egyptian temple to the Dharma laboratories. But we do not know whether these civilizations were necessary to the development of the island or the saving of mankind.

We were told that no one entered the island without the permission of the island guardian. But it is unclear why Jacob would have allowed the US military to come place an atomic bomb on the island then leave it in the hands of power-mad people like Widmore. And if a guardian "needed" people on the island, why were those people's lives so meaningless and subject to frivolous deaths?

We think that the island's defense was the smoke monster and/or the guardian. We are not sure whether the guardian like Jacob was a smoke monster himself, or he had the power to create one. But since Jacob appeared to be immortal (until an unclear change made him give up the guardianship to Jack; perhaps the uncorking of the island), one could presume he was a supernatural being.

We also saw that when Rousseau's crew washed upon the island, the smoke monster was like an attack guard dog - - - killing and possessing them from the moment of landing. However, when the Flight 815 castaways landed on the island, the smoke monster's wrath was tempered to isolated incidents to Ben's "summoning" of the smoke monster by the water device to kill Widmore's men.

Even when the writers opened the door to the island, the interior is still quite dark. Even the answers are shrouded in mystery.

SIMPLE CURE

As public understanding of mental illness grows, it is increasingly old news to point out that telling depression sufferers simply to "cheer up" is not an effective treatment. Most ordinary people believe that mental illness is all emotional or conscious behavior. It is more than that simple notion.

Beyond the basic understanding that depressive symptoms correspond to a chemical imbalance in the neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, modern science still has yet to provide a reliable solution to the multitude of undesirable psychological conditions grouped under the heading of “depression.” 

At best, pharmaceutical aids and psychological counseling can significantly alleviate depression’s effects, but the most effective treatment varies from one individual to another and is generally unpredictable (as well as time-consuming and sometimes costly). A recent study from the University of Warwick, however, suggests a more natural treatment for depression: time spent with friends.

Evidence to support this bit of advice, which isn’t as trite as it initially sounds, can be found in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, where researchers published their peer-reviewed results.

Head researcher Edward M. Hill, a PhD student specializing in public health and infectious disease epidemiology, analyzed data from the 1994-1995 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, which surveyed respondents enrolled in grades 7-12 (roughly corresponding to ages 13-18). During in-home interviews, the respondents listed up to ten friends, five male and five female, and indicated the presence or absence of symptoms associated with depression. 

When Hill and his co-authors modeled the data 10 years later, they found that “adolescents with five or more healthy (that is, non-depressed) friends have half the probability of becoming depressed over a six-to-12-month period compared to adolescents with no healthy friends.” 

For the young respondents unlucky enough to already be exhibiting depressive symptoms, “adolescents with 10 healthy friends have double the probability of recovering from depressive symptoms over a six-to-12-month period compared to adolescents with three healthy friends.” 

In other words, healthy, happy friends were a strong influence in making a healthy, happy individual.

Fortunately, the emotional cause-and-effect seemed to be a one-way street: depressed individuals exerted no negative influence on their healthy friends. However, there is an evident paradox here, in which the individuals most likely to benefit from the cheering impact of time spent with healthy companions are also the most likely to self-segregate, thereby denying themselves an opportunity for exposure to those with more positive outlooks. 

The message, then, is not only that the depressed should seek happiness in the glow of others, but also that healthy friends should do their part to uplift their struggling loved ones, even if doing so simply entails spending more time with them. 

In LOST, one the better themes and life lessons was the power of friendship. Most of the main characters had no true friends. There were workaholics, loners, depressed individuals with no drive, dreams or ambition. We pass these type of people on the street every day. They just blend into the background. 

What friendship was in the series was various unrelated characters coming together in order to survive. In real life, true friends mean daily survival from the depressing daily routine so many people fall into these days. True friends cherish and respect their friends. Their happiness is tied to other's happiness. In a world that is now less personal (through technology that eliminates the need for one on one personal contact or interaction), friendships grow stronger when both parties open and honestly communicate with each other. As a result, this support allows both parties to thrive and overcome the demons that plague everyone at some time during their lives.

CONVERGENCE

Convergence?

One of the worst film and TV tropes  is when a character has a very important piece of information, but refuses to explain what’s going on because “you just have to see it or figure it out for yourself.”

To the average viewer, this proposition is almost never true; it’s just a contrived way of dragging out a scene for a dramatic effect or to stretch story arcs with filler material.  In reality, there are very few events that cannot be explained in one sentence.

How many times during LOST did you yell at the screen telling a character to ask an obvious question to another character?!

In their end chats, the producers are keen to say that part of the appeal of LOST was the questions and not the answers. Well, yes and no. Yes, viewers were captivated by the mysteries and unanswered questions, but no, the vast majority of viewers wanted answers to those mysteries and questions. And the funny thing is, any answer would have been okay.

The collision of two parallel universes with the island as a focal point. Fine.
The collective delusions of a mental institution patient roster. Fine.
The surreality of phasing between realms like heaven and hell. Fine.
The overlapping world of invisible dopplegangers. Fine.
It was all a dream. Fine.

A bad answer is still an answer. It is a matter of subjective opinion.

But not to answer is a matter of objective scorn.

Mysteries and questions create the action which must converge with answers in order to resolve the story plot issues. Otherwise, it is mostly a mental roller coaster ride of nothingness, just the fleeting thrill of the plot twists and turns.

If you want to leave the viewers to figure it all out by themselves, then you must give them actual clues and not dead ends or red herrings to get to the answer. Agatha Christie does not end her books with a a blank page after the sentence, "and the murderer is . . ." LOST gets poor marks from giving clues in context and continuity to paint the final picture for viewers.

Some believe that the "filler" or the roller coast ride so to speak dragged down and altered the LOST experience. The idea of the Other 48 tail section passengers was clearly filler. In the Star Trek universe, they were Red shirts (fodder to be killed off). The back story of the Dharma folks was immaterial and irrelevant to the castaways story of survival. The back story of Jacob and his brother was also not a focal point to move the viewers toward Season 1 and 2 answers. The time travel story arc was a continuity mess and weakest part of the show.

If you strip away the layers of filler paint, what is left on the canvas?

The producers claim that the big picture was The Big Question: life and death.

But they did a poor account of communicating their position on the meaning of life and the purpose of death. There was no moral center in the stories. There was no judgment or punishment for sins. There was no redemptive moments. TPTB that the ending was more spiritual than anything else. But that is not an answer, it is a white wash because spirituality can mean thousands of different things to a thousand different people. How did Jack become "spiritual?" He never did either in life or in death. He had no religious convictions or contemplation of the universe during the series. So it is specious to say that the show was about Jack's spiritual journey.

The only thing that converged in the end was Jack's soul to his body in some after life church. But that does not answer how or why Jack got to that point of existence, or for that matter, what existence Jack had before entering the church.

Perhaps the writing of the show was parallel to early first person shooter video games, that run through various levels of game play (the action) with no real end point or goal.

TOP 7

Yahoo recently named its Top 7 Worst TV Show Endings. Of course, LOST was mentioned:

At this point, "Lost" is synonymous with unsatisfying series finales. After six seasons of intricate plot build-up and a never-ending series of loose ends and questions about the true nature of the island and its inhabitants, the writers revealed they had written themselves into somewhat of a corner.

Instead of answering the audience's questions, the two hour finale "The End" ended up smoothing over most of the show's most important and unresolved problems by explaining that they all were in purgatory, though if they had really been there the whole time, no one knew.

Ask a "Lost" fan about the finale and you're sure to summon rage and frustration years later.

Well, reactions to the finale has been tempered as time has passed since Christian opened the church doors to add a final mystery to the series. Most upset fans have moved on with the viewing lives. But most are still waiting for their next, great adventure show.

Replacing a beloved television show is like trying to replace a family pet. It can happen, but it is never quite the same. You cannot clone the happiness, thrills and excitement of the old show because one tries to impart that impact in advance on the new show (which is not necessarily fair to the new writers and creators). For a short time, TV execs commissioned shows to be "The Next Lost, " but they all failed because no one can re-create the early mysteries and give us all the answers in a brilliant, neat package.

CLUELESS

In the last post, we reviewed probably the four biggest "clues" shown in the series: The Hatch, The Blast Door Map, The Egyptians and The Lighthouse.

All were physical objects that contained highly detailed information we fans thought were vital clues.

The Hatch gave some of the castaways some hope for rescue. It gave a few, like Locke, purpose. It gave the beach camp some needed supplies. But what it did not give everyone was shelter. That was the odd aspect of the story line: the beach camp was surrounded by danger - - - the Others kidnaps and the smoke monster attacks - - - why didn't Jack move everyone underground? Instead, he kept it a secret. And once the rumors spread in the beach about the hatch being opened, why did not the camp people demand access? Instead, they decided to stay on the beach instead of going to safer areas (including the caves). For some reason, the castaways were more comfortable on the beach. Was it because that is where they landed; survived? Was it because they did not want to miss sighting a rescue ship? Was it because to them it was their new "home?"

The Blast Door Map outlined the entire unseen Dharma story arc. Research facilities, the smoke monster, an accident, experiments and unknown island mysteries were all scrawled on the door. The island once housed a large and complex military-industrial complex doing highly theoretical and advanced research projects. And this type of detail spawned viewers into theorizing about worm holes, star portals, parallel universes, space ships, psychological experimentation, mind control, mind manipulation, torture chambers and death. But the vast library of possible science fiction story lines or answers never came to the forefront. The main characters themselves never were too interested in these stations for what they were supposed to do . . . they were merely back drops. One of the worst misuses of these sets was the chemical weapons station, where the computer was set to countdown mode to release the toxic gas . . .  but we all saw clearly at the entrance the power switch to shut down the facility. The "danger" was merely an illusion to test the resolve of Jack and make him trust the Others' spies. But then again, the Others wiped out the Dharma folks for no real reason other than a territory dispute over control of the island. Why the Others felt they were good and everyone else coming to the island was bad was nothing more than a childish refrain developed over centuries of Jacob's laisse faire leadership.

It is hard to imagine that the Others were the children of the ancient Egyptians, the servants who were brought to the fore-hell of their Pharoah's journey into the underworld. In the ancient rituals, kings and queens were buried with their possessions and servants in order for their souls to have the means to navigate the challenges of the underworld journey. This journey was supposed to be a dangerous but magical adventure that only the worthy could successfully complete. In some respects, this description does fit in what some of the characters were doing on the island. There was a theme that the survivors had to work together or die alone. An individual needs group support in order to achieve positive results. It is how the group works together that was important. If you are on the same page, great things can be accomplished, from building the great pyramids to the island's temple. But the ancient culture myths involve the after life, something that TPTB abhorred discussing from Season 1 to the present. LOST was wrapped up in the cloth of life and death story lines, but the premise of a land of death was not acceptable to most.

The Lighthouse gave us Jacob's plan which was to spy on off-islanders to find "candidates" to replace himself as island guardian. Why an immortal with some god-like powers needs human "candidates" to replace him is one of the large unanswered questions of the series. And what Jacob needed to guard and protect was not fully explained, since the light source (life, death and rebirth) seemed to be a stationary fixture. But since the island was cloaked and hard to find, why was a guardian needed to protect something hidden from mankind? And was it not the fact that Jacob bringing people to the island made the the island open to human attack? It is a contradiction easily solved when Alpert landed on the island. Jacob could have given Alpert the guardianship - - - which he would have accepted since he knew he was dead, and this was his punishment for murder (in hell) to remain on the island forever (and away from his wife's soul). But then, where would Jacob go? Is the after life of an immortal so boring that non-existence is a better alternative than life itself? That seems to be a sad and pathetic explanation to the final big story line.

If the four big clues were mile posts in the LOST journey, where did they take us?

One explanation was that it was not the journey, but the relationships between the characters was the most important thing.

A relationship is the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected: the study will assess the relationship between unemployment and political attitudes. It is the state of being connected by blood or marriage; they can trace their relationship to a common ancestor. It is the way in which two or more people or organizations regard and behave toward each other.  It is an emotional and sexual association between two people.

Is that what LOST was about? A patchwork quilt of various relationships: good, bad, ill conceived, short, long, tortured, fractured, weak, cold, angry, manipulative to friendly? A graduate student looking at the raw data of such relationship pairs and sorting them into categories would a) be boring and b) not very productive for gleaning insights into the vast story tangents thrown at us in six seasons. All the clues made a clueless stew of information about relationships but no real conclusions about them.

BIGGEST CLUES

When the series was unfolding, fans went nuts on several things we thought were the Holy Grail of plot clues.

1. The Hatch.

Oh, Locke's epic quest to open the hatch. He himself told his fellow castaways that the answers were down the hatch.  In certain respects, he was right. In other respects, he was wrong (as the plot went down the rabbit hole on the Dharma story arcs).

The Hatch had the potential to be the game changer. It set forth the following points:

a) There was an advanced technological people who inhabited the island in the recent past.
b) The Numbers were embedded in the island's past history through the countdown timer.
c) The hatch computer seemed to control the "unique" electromagnetic properties of the island, which we were led to believe in the end was the Light Source.
d) It gave us the first "orientation video." This was the introduction of the scientific experiments that the Dharma group was conducting on the island. It began the connection between the polar bear, and future stations showing brain washing and human experimentation. Some fans concluded that the island was one large psychological facility (which leads to possible explanations such as the characters being institutionalized and programmed to believe they were on an island.)

2. The Blast Door Map

Instead the Hatch was the treasure trove of set design: the blast door map.  When Locke, the keeper of the Hatch protocols, got trapped under the blast door during a drop, the blue light revealed the details of the island map. This was probably the most focused HD screen shot of the series.

The map gave investigative viewers many great details, such as the smoke monster being a Cerberus, a warning to escape "from hell,""the remedy is worse than the disease," various areas of unstable conditions, a reference to dragons, cosmic coordinates, other science stations, an unknown center, shutdowns, escape areas and "an accident."

3. The Egyptians

There became an overriding set design with Egyptian hieroglyphs during the latter part of the series. One had to see that all the background glyphs were created in extreme and accurate detail - - - so they had to be important to the story line. Many of the Egyptian writings were about life and death, Egyptian burial rituals, and the ancient beliefs in the after life. While the producers-writers dismissed the notion that the characters were in "purgatory," the use of so much Egyptian mythology in the sets, including the temple and its life spring, made many believe that despite what TPTB were telling the world, the filmed episodes clearly represented a potential journey through the after life.

4. The Lighthouse

The last great clue was Jacob's Lighthouse. It also contained hieroglyphs, but this one came with an explanation from the immortal leader. The lighthouse had a dial which could be turned to view the past lives of the "candidates."  The clue that the people who came to the island were not accident victims but intentionally culled and diverted to the island by Jacob alone brought a new realm of theories to the fan community. A candidate is a person seeking to hold a position or office. A candidate who obtains that office usually acquires power or control over something important. This was part of the story arc of Jacob and his brother, both diverted to the island in ancient Roman times by a Crazy Woman who was seeking her own "candidate" to replace her endless guardianship of the island. In the end, Jack reluctantly became the new island guardian to help slay MIB-Flocke from escaping to allegedly "destroy the world." But the final plot never explained the elements, purpose or powers of the guardian had over the island's heart. It also did not explain the sideways world or the show's conclusion.

These four items were the viewer launch points to various show theories which sustained them from episode to episode, series year to year.

RANDOM QUESTIONS

I sat down at a blank computer screen and began to type LOST questions as they came to mind.

The results:

Who were the Others?
Maybe candidates, but not all listed in lighthouse.
Who was Widmore? An Other
Who was Eloise? An Other.
Who was Ben? Son of a  Dharma janitor.
What was Dharma? A research organization.
Why was Dharma allowed on the island? Unknown.
Who was Jacob? Island guardian
What is an island guardian? Unknown.
What does he protect? the light source.
What is the light source? It is life, death and rebirth.
What is it made of? Unknown.
How does the light source work? Unknown
What is the smoke monster? Unknown
How is the smoke monster used? as a security system
Why does the smoke monster attack people? Unknown
Is the smoke monster controlled by someone? Unknown
Who is Desmond? a lost sailor
Why was he chosen? Unknown
Why did Desmond have to push buttons every 108 minutes? Unknown
How did Desmond stop the counter? he used the fail safe key.
What did the fail safe key do? Explode then implode the station.
How did Desmond survive the explosion? Unknown.
Why was Desmond found wandering the jungle naked? Unknown
What was the virus? Unknown
What were its symptoms? Unknown, but may attack pregnant women.
Why did pregnant women die on the island? Unknown.
Who built the Temple? Unknown
What was the Temple used for? Worship, presumably to Jacob.
What was special about the temple waters? Unknown, but brought Sayid back from the dead.
Why did Sayid come back from the dead but other people did not? Unknown
Why did the smoke monster need dead Locke’s body? Unknown
How did time travel work on the island? Unknown
What was the FDW connected to? Unknown
Why did people who turned the FDW turn up in Tunisia? Unknown.
How did the people create a sideways purgatory? Unknown
When did the people create a sideways purgatory? Unknown
Why did people live complex lives in the sideways purgatory? Unknown
What was the island? Unknown
How did it move through time and space? Unknown
What was the purpose of the island? Unknown.
Who built or created the island? Unknown
How did Alpert become immortal? Jacob gave him a gift.
How did Jacob give Alpert immortality? Unknown.
If Jacob was immortal, how did he die? Stabbed by Ben, burned by Flocke.
If Flocke was the smoke monster, how did he die? Shot by Kate, kicked off cliff by Jack.
If Jacob and Flocke were immortal beings, did they really die? Unknown.
Why was Aaron born twice? Unknown
What came first: the island or sideways world? Unknown, but most assume the island world.
Who was the man (or woman) behind the curtain? Unknown, but some suspect Jacob or Eloise.
Why did the island heal some people and let other people die? Unknown.