LOCKE'S ISLAND

Of all the main characters, John Locke appeared to be the most "lost."

Even mentally impaired Hurley had a doting mother, and could have some social friends.

Jack had very few close friends, but he had the respect of his peers (until he went off the deep end).

Kate destroyed her own family, but found one girlfriend who was also running away from her troubles (Sawyer).

Sayid had betrayed much of his past, but he yearned to be reunited with his true love, Nadia.

Sawyer had the single minded avenger mentality to find the man who destroyed his family.

But Locke had nothing to counterbalance his own mental pain.

He had no friends.
He could not keep friends.
He lost Helen, the one person who could have given him a real life and home.
But he could not get beyond his own vision of personal hell.

And this lack of grip led him into fantasy delusions, such as being able to be an outback warrior even though he was confined to a wheelchair.

If the LOST story begins with the boarding of Flight 815 in Sydney, the man in the front of the line is Locke. He would have had an opportunity to view all his fellow passengers in the waiting area. He was the first to be seated by the crew, so he was on the plane to observe each passenger as they found their seats and stowed their luggage. He had the opportunity to make snap judgments on each person.

There is no question that his mental state was of bitterness, frustration and seething because he lacked control over the people and things around him.

And with this information, and his mind wired to play fantasy-strategy games, Locke could have channeled his anger against his fellow passengers. Misery loves company.

Could Locke's unbalanced emotional state have changed the course of Flight 815?
Could Locke's boiling anger explode the fuselage of the aircraft?
Could Locke's dreams of grandeur of himself created the Island as a symbol for what he wanted to be?

In any supernatural mystery, anything is possible.

Locke was the first, and only flight passenger, to have a deep "connection" to the island. He believed that he became one with it. He wanted to protect it from outsiders. He wanted to control it. He wanted to lead everyone through his vision of the present and his future.

As with everything in Locke's life, even this got screwed up by his own behavior. He had the opportunity to convince his fellow survivors that they should follow him because he had the skills to tame the island. But he failed. And once he failed, he began to search for a new island meaning to propel himself back in the spotlight of leadership. Again, he failed.

It would seem like Locke's life is a broken record of failure.

But if one looks at the island, it is a place of grand failure. Jacob was a failure, since Crazy Mother and his brother were killed. Jacob was a failure in bringing over centuries thousands of candidates to the island to watch them fail. Ben was a failure because his leadership dream was destroyed when he killed Jacob. Jack's pinnacle achievement in leadership (saving his remaining friends) led to his death for no apparent reason. Nothing here is noble. Nothing here is sacrifice. Nothing here is true redemption.

If the island is a symbol of failure, then it could be called Locke's Island.

ORIGIN

The origin of the smoke monster.

ONE FRAME

The idea is that one could condense the drama of an entire film into one frame. It is not a new idea; movie posters attempt to capture the essence of the film.

Is there one frame, one image, one picture, that sums up everything LOST?

Is it:

1.  The graveyard next to the beach where many characters were buried?

2.  Desmond turning the fail safe key?

3.  Jack dying in the bamboo grove with Vincent at his side?

4. The smoke monster billowing above the tropical canopy?

5. The wreckage of Flight 815 on the beach?

6. John Locke in the coffin?

7. The imagine of the island deep under water?

8. The large pendulum device in the basement of Eloise's church?

9. Jack identifying his father's body in the Sydney morgue?

10. Flight 815 breaking up in the sky over the Dharma barracks?

In all the advertising posters for the show, the main element had always been The Island.

MYSTERY BOX

"Maybe there are times when mystery is more important than knowledge."— J.J. Abrams

Totally.
Disagree.

In the short term, when a couple begins their relationship, a little mystery goes further than knowledge, but at some point those personal mysteries have to unravel in order to get to know each other much better.

The fascination with mystery boxes is that of a young child several days before Christmas, shaking boxes under the tree. Since you cannot see what is inside the box, it makes one mad to find out. For some, the sole goal is to rip the box open to see what is inside. For a few, it is anticipatory dread that there may be something disappointing inside the box.

Some say LOST was Abrams'  monument to mystery because it left so many unanswered questions. If six seasons were a tribute to his love of magic, wonder, and infinite possibility, what was truly inside LOST's mystery box?

NONSENSE

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living; it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities." - -  Dr. Seuss

 Let's break this statement down.

Nonsense = Good.

Fantasy = Necessary

Good Fantasy = Necessary Nonsense.

That works well in the crazy Dr. Seuss children's stories.

But on the other hand, Bad Fantasy equals Unnecessary Nonsense.

If one pulled Across the Sea out of Season 6 and made that the pilot episode, then the premise that LOST was an elaborate fantasy world could have made viewing Season 6 more palatable. But it still would not have fully explained The End or the sideways story construction. The more we look at the sideways tangent, the more nonsensical it becomes in the overall picture. 

If the real premise of the show was that "someone" had to protect "something" that in itself creates "life, death and rebirth" (which probably needs no protection per se), the main characters being tossed into the struggle for control of the light cave would equate to a simple classic western tale of sheepherders and ranchers fighting over "water rights"  in the valley. So there is no reason that the main characters had to wind up in some sideways world (but not called heaven)  after death in order to have a happy reunion. Further, despite all the events, deaths, missions, statements about the candidates and Jacob's non-ceremonial power transfer, nothing changed with the light cave itself. 

The whole LOST series did spark heated debates in the fan communities on what things meant, and how things were related, to opinions on the grand purpose of the show. But at a certain point, nonsense does not make good drama. 

SCIENCE OF MAGIC?

It maybe the endless debate. Was LOST based on science or magic?  Or neither. Or both. Or nothing.

The initial proposition was that Jack was a man of "science," being a medical doctor and all, would struggle against Locke, a man of "faith."  But Locke never had a background story in either religion or spiritual belief. He took many people's word as gospel, but he constantly got burned as a result. It is hard to tell whether Locke's "new island vision" was a lightning bolt of religious faith or an obsessive need for purpose - - - a second chance to live his dream.

Ben called the island a "Magic Box."  Afterward, Locke's reward for protecting the island was what he desperately wanted: to confront his father, Cooper. The island brought Cooper, who claimed he was in a serious automobile accident but was swept away to the island, to Locke. Then Ben told Locke that in order to be an island leader, he'd have to kill his father (just as Ben himself had done). One could consider the latter ritual as pagan, a form a sadistic worship. But it could be just as well as manipulative fear of the general population of the Others.

After Desmond's fail safe key "save," the series may have jumped the Dharma shark to dismiss both science and faith toward the vague realm of pure magic. Desmond, Charlie and Eko really should not have survived the explosion/implosion of the Hatch. The island should not have been bouncing around in both time and space, let alone controlled by a wooden donkey wheel.

For the writers, magic had one great tool. Magic has no explanation. It is just magic. No science. No faith. No belief system. No connecting the dots to get a result. No, magic is abracadabra; it is what it is and does what it does because it is magic.

Supernatural is not a explanation because one cannot dissect it in order to see how it works. Even a trained magician at a kid's party can teach someone the hidden dove trick. But in a scripted series where the viewer is led down various twisting paths with scientific and religious terminology, one would hope the writers would have taught us their own hidden dove tricks.

A NEW SCIENCE THEORY

One of the things that kept us commentators up all night during the original series run was trying to find an explanation for the island time travel.

It still remains elusive.

The Alcubierre drive or Alcubierre metric  is a speculative idea based on a solution of Einstein's field equations in general relativity   as proposed by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre, by which a spacecraft could achieve faster than light  travel if a configurable energy-density field lower than that of vacuum (example, negative mass) could be created. Rather than exceeding the speed of light within its local frame of reference,  a spacecraft would traverse distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, resulting in effective faster-than-light travel. This is the theory behind Star Trek warp drive.

Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal space time; instead, the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that the object would arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space.  Although the metric proposed by Alcubierre is mathematically valid in that it is consistent with the Einstein field equations, it may not be physically meaningful or indicate that such a drive could be constructed. The proposed mechanism of the Alcubierre drive implies a negative energy density  and therefore requires exotic matter,  so if exotic matter with the correct properties does not exist then it could not be constructed. However, at the close of his original paper.

Alcubierre based some of his ideas on  analyzing traversable wormholes  that the Casimir vacuum  between parallel plates could fulfill the negative-energy requirement for the Alcubierre drive. Another possible issue is that although the Alcubierre metric is consistent with general relativity, general relativity does not incorporate quantum mechanics, and some physicists have presented arguments to suggest that a theory of quantum gravity which merged the two theories would eliminate those solutions in general relativity which allow for backwards time travel of which the Alcubierre drive is one.

If one goes back to look at the numerous community posts on the subject, you would find references to the Casimir Effect, wormholes, warp drive spacecraft, as possible elements to the LOST time travel puzzle.

Dark energy appears to be the unknown substance that is a part of space itself; it is thought to explain why space is always expanding outward. To harness an energy like this is one of the theoretical basis for time travel since the expansion (or contraction) of space is the fundamental element of warp space drive.

The Fermi Lab has been colliding matter for years to create very small exotic matter through the burst of gamma rays. Gamma Rays are the greatest energy concentration force. However, capture, storage and application of gamma rays as an energy source is unproven. However, contact with other matter can generate electromagnetic fields. The faster than light speed could be accomplished when the dark energy or gamma rays come into contact with any other matter; the reaction between the two phases could generate more energy because it would come all the mass of the elements into pure energy.

Black holes have such intense gravity that, once inside their event horizons, not even light can escape. Outside of the event horizon,  the hole's intense gravity draws matter into a disk and raises it to very high energies. The disk emits lots of light on its own and sends out jets of high energy particles that emit even more as they interact with the surrounding interstellar material.

It was thought that the radiation emitted by the black hole starts driving off the surrounding matter, effectively cutting off its own food supply, called the Eddington limit. But now, researchers have found that the Eddington limit isn't an absolute cap on the amount of energy a black hole can emit out into its surroundings. Their observations suggest that this particular black hole sends out almost as much energy in the form of accelerated particles.

In theory, the use of pull of a wormhole or black hole with associated intense energy could create the warp bubble around a spacecraft. However, the math states that the encapsulated craft would need to be shielded from intense heat greater than that our the center of our sun.

If we start to piece together some of these elements, we can possibly see the light (literally and figuratively). The light cave may be in reality a gamma ray generator (natural or alien). The disruptive electromagnetic release (which destroyed the Hatch) is caused by the gamma rays to interact with other matter. The safeguard to keep the gamma ray generator and other matter from coming together could be the efficient placement of a tiny worm hole. A tiny wormhole in front of a spacecraft (or in this case, the island is the craft), could bend space time around these opposing fields to create time travel jumps.

I can guarantee that none of the LOST writers ever thought of this. The series did not dwell on scientific explanations. It relied on vague illusions. Their time skips were thrown out to create "separation" anxieties among the various surviving 815ers.