THE STATION UNDER THE CHURCH

In 2007, after Ben murdered Locke, he found his way to Eloise's church. In the basement was the Dharma location station, the Lamp Post.

This has always been an odd set.

Eloise's church was also the same church found in the sideways world conclusion. Open question: whether they are one in the same, meaning in the afterlife time period. If so, then would not Locke been the only one to get to the Dharma location station since he was the only one "dead." Unless of course, death is nebulous concept that we don't fully understand.

Meeting her one night at the church, Eloise urged Ben that he had only 70 hours to reunite them—else "Then God help us all."  Ben brought Jack, Sun and Desmond to the church,  whereupon Eloise escorted them down into the Lamp Post and explained that it was built as the DHARMA Initiative's means of locating the Island. Eloise then supplied them information about Ajira flight and the warning that they must be aboard that flight and must work to recreate the conditions of Oceanic Flight 815 as nearly as possible. She also gave Jack Locke's suicide note and explained that Locke's body would have to be aboard the flight as well, serving as a proxy for Jack's dead father, and would therefore have to carry something of Jack's father on him.

Now, in retrospect, none of that makes any sense. Jacob was the one power that could bring humans to the island, not some mythical, complex "recreation" of prior events. Even MIB confirmed that it was Jacob's power that brought people to corrupt the island. And at the Lighthouse, Jacob himself inferred to Hurley and Jack that he was the sole power on the island as it guardian; that he spied on all his potential candidates prior to bringing them to the island.

Why did everything have to be "re-created" in Ajira to get the castaways back to the island? Clearly, this was false because the passengers and pilot were different on Ajira. And there were "new" survivors of that crash landing.  Then also, how did Ben "know" about the "need" to build the runway on the Hydra Island "years" before the actual event?  Recall, when Ben had Kate and Sawyer in the bear cages, their work detail was scraping the jungle to create a runway.

No, Eloise "story" or "magic spell" elements does not make sense. Sure, it was a con-job to entice the O6 back to the island, but that did not work either considering Aaron never returned with the group. The "substitution" of Locke's body for Jack's deceased father also made no sense since there was no substitute on the plane for Locke.

So why would it be necessary to con the O6 people?

More importantly, when did the "con" start?  It may have started early on prior to the rescue of the helicopter crash survivors and the arrival on Penny's boat. If you try to tie Eloise's church and the sideways church as the same (in time and space), logic would conclude that the O6 never "survived" their helicopter crash. Penny's boat was an illusion - - - the ferryman to carry the lost souls to the after life (the sideways world). Because the Coast Guard, press conference and their "life" afterward (especially Kate's trial) were all messed up fantasy. If the O6 had died, they needed to be brought back to the island to be "reborn."   So the direction was coming from the sideways Eloise from the beginning.

Even today, some theologians are unsure whether heaven or hell exists; and some believe that people living on Earth are actually living in heaven or hell, depending on their circumstances. We just believe that this is Life, but in one respect we cannot prove it one way or the other.

The symbolism of using a church as the Lamp Post (itself symbolic of giving light in the darkness, death) and in the sideways reunion hall is a key clue. When Christian told Jack that some people lived and died well before and well after Jack (and Jack's island's death was still to come) that may mean that Jack died during the freighter story arc with the O6. The reason Eloise wanted Jack and the others to return to the island was simple: to make them "forget" about their deaths caused by the island - - - in order for her to keep up her sideways world illusions of life in the afterlife since she was desperate to keep her son, Daniel, from knowing the details of his own island death. In this theory, Eloise is the supreme puppet master, who created the mythology of the island, Dharma, an evil husband trope and the ability to suspend logic and intelligence in her subjects. But like all lab rats, the characters had retained enough free will to muck up Eloise's plans.

Another factor is that if the island could not be found without the Lamp Post, how did Widmore find it? Eloise must have told him about it since she controlled the station. It also goes to what the island really was: was it a cloaked space craft or a portal to a different dimension in time and space. More evidence seems to point to the latter, as in life and afterlife.

The island was a prison, but for characters that Eloise needed to keep at bay in order to keep her illusion with Daniel alive. That would mean that even Jacob and his brother were pawns in an elaborate scheme - - - tricked into becoming candidates and guardians for eternity. That could mean that everyone on the island had a connection to Daniel and his mother - - - like Dogen at music recitals because Daniel was into that. Or Jacob, Patchy and the Others were former teachers, students, colleagues in business that Daniel had met. The idea of erasing Daniel's past and implanting the perfect sideways memories in him was Eloise's ultimate goal. She turned time and space, physics and energy against the laws of nature and human evolution to make it happen.

THE UNLUCKY ANSWER

As today is Friday, the 13th, a superstitious day of bad luck, we focus on the one character who could have answered all the LOST questions, Daniel Faraday.

Poor Daniel. He was doomed from the start.

His back story was as hazy as his science.

Daniel was born on the mainland (as there is a birth certificate for him) and was the son of Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore,  although he did not know the identity of his father (that was left blank on the birth certificate). This is the first unsolved mystery of this character: who was Daniel's real father?

We know that young Eloise and Widmore were co-leaders of a small Others fraction on the Island. Widmore wanted control of "his" island against any outsider, and Eloise seemed to be more focused on survival. How they both got to the island was unknown. But it seems they were both quite protective of it.

During their early adulthood, the time traveling Daniel appears on the island. Eloise shoots and kills "her son" then realizes her mistake. This sets off one of the most important background characters into action.

We know that both Eloise and Widmore left the island before the Purge. Widmore was banished by Ben because Widmore "violated the rules" by having a child (Penny) with an off-islander. Eloise's departure was not told. (She could have been part of the evacuation, or she may have left after killing her son in the time travel arc.)

It would seem that Eloise's sole goal in the series was to protect Daniel. After Eloise and Widmore's relationship soured, Eloise also changed Daniel's last name to Faraday so Charles could not find him. But we know how powerful Widmore was; he knew and found Daniel.

One could speculate that the falling out between Eloise and Widmore was about Daniel and his special abilities. Daniel had "time traveled" to the island. Widmore wanted to get back to the island and seize it as his own. What better means to do so than "time travel." Likewise, Eloise would want to save the time traveling Daniel from her own actions of killing him. As a result, Eloise may have needed to find a man who was a scientific genius. (Clue to last name: Stephen Hawking.)

Eloise needed to unlock the elements of space-time in order to correct Daniel's destiny. So she forced Daniel to give up music to study extreme theoretical science. So Daniel studied at Oxford, earning his doctorate at the youngest age on record. At that time, his girlfriend Teresa Spencer, was deemed to be a distraction. Soon after, Daniel started unauthorized experiments (funded by Widmore) involving time travel. He created a machine in 1996 that allowed a living creature's consciousness to travel through time. He tested it on a lab rat he named Eloise, which signifies an open hostility toward his mother and her constant pressure on him to succeed in this science.

During that same year, Daniel was visited by a stranger named Desmond Hume. Desmond claimed to know about the machine, Daniel initially believed that a colleague was playing a practical joke on him, but when Desmond mentioned "Eloise,"  Daniel's lab rat, he believed Desmond. In his lab, Daniel tested "the Numbers" Desmond supplied to him. He used the machine on Eloise, enabling her to unerringly complete a maze that she would not be taught how to run for another hour. Daniel's blackboard revealed his interest in the Kerr metric as part of his theory of time-transported consciousness. According to Daniel's theory, a being that undergoes time-transported consciousness must identify a "constant,"  something existing in both periods of time travel that can serve as an anchor for the being's consciousness; failure to find a constant results in instability of consciousness, and the resulting stress can lead to brain aneurysm and eventual death. 

Daniel's success led him to ramp up his experiments.  The experiment apparently resulted in Theresa becoming permanently mentally 'unstuck' in time, with her condition deteriorating to the point that she became permanently bedridden, in a coma-like state as a result of his experiments. (Widmore funded her care for her parents silence.) Soon after this accident, Daniel went to America. Daniel began to study at  DHARMA. It seemed that Daniel started to experiment on himself, which wrecked his ability to connect with his own memory. He constantly wrote notes in his leather journal to remember. 

But while in the United States, Daniel's mental state deteriorated to the point in 2004 where he is under the care of a woman (caretaker or some initially assumed a girlfriend or wife). When the news of Flight 815's crash, with film footage of the wreckage shown on the television, Daniel had a mental breakdown which he could not explain. When Widmore arrived, he told him that the wreckage was a fake. He told Daniel that the real Flight 815 had crashed on a "miraculous island," and offered him the chance to go there, promising that it would "cure" him. Several days later, Daniel was playing piano at his home, trying to remember the Chopin piece he was playing when he was ten, when he was visited by his mother. She persuaded him to accept Widmore's offer and go to the Island, assuring him that she would be proud of him if he did so. Daniel agreed to accept the offer.

Daniel brought several critical (we thought) elements to the LOST mythology. First, he brought with him science explanations for the island's mysteries. Second, he brought with him a window to the people pulling the strings behind the curtain (Eloise and Widmore, shadow villains). Third, he brought in intellectually naive character in the mix of amateur action heroes.

But Daniel's story is really messed up.

First, there are the paradoxes that cannot be put in their places. Young Eloise "kills" her adult yet unborn son on the island. This is a classic time travel problem that should have had radical results. Since Eloise has a son in the future, but kills him in the past, why would she "re-live" this pain by actually conceiving him in the future? Some could argue that an adult traveling back into time to meet their death is not a conventional paradox since Daniel was destined to die "someday," and this was the means of his own demise. But a secondary issue is that if Eloise knew Daniel was going to die on the island, why did she do everything in power after killing him to get him to study time travel and go on the trip to the island?

It would seem that Eloise "needed" Daniel to become a brilliant scientist in order to kill him on the island so her own fantasy sideways world dream family situation would come true. In Daniel's death on the island, Eloise could lead a normal, but rich life in the after life. It sounds insane, but that seems to be the whole motivation for the Eloise manipulation of both Daniel and Widmore.

So Daniel had a bounty on his head before he was even born. He was never going to have a real, normal, human life.

Second, if Daniel's theory of mental consciousness time travel is to be believed, was his research adopted by DHARMA to create the full transformation of physical time travel as demonstrated by the turning of the frozen donkey wheel? When Ben turned it, the island began "time skipping" but only with a few individuals. The idea of someone having a "constant" in real and skip times seems to be moot because people have connections in those worlds (i.e. parents, close friends, spouses, children, etc.). If the salvation key is consciously putting a mental image of a person in both time periods in your mind before you time jump, then that seems superficially a magic chant or spell and not science. (The ancient Egyptians Book of the Dead contained various chants and spells to help souls travel through the dangers of the underworld; perhaps Daniel's theory is like these spells.)

If Daniel was already mentally time tripping in the U.S., then why did he need to go to the island? The only explanation was that he needed to "die" on the island in order for his consciousness (some would call it his soul) to reach Eloise in the after life, so she could repress his memories and not "move on" through the next level of existence. This would presuppose that the island is actually an inter-dimensional gateway between the worlds of the living and the dead. For some unknown reason, people dying on the island have their memories repressed when their souls reach the after life. It is sort of a dream state in the sideways world where people, like in dreams, try to subconsciously work out real world problems through various fantasies. 

If the island allowed full body and mind time travel, then there should be no "mental" only time travel side effects, such as the nose bleeds and death that happened to Charlotte. Daniel was nose bleeding before he was shot, so he was going to also die even though his "constant," Desmond, was on the island and in his original time period. So, since there are two sets of rules at play in one time travel sequence, no clear conclusion could be made on what is truly happening on the island. If Daniel's theory is the control, then everyone on the island was time tripping, in a dream like state, in a forehell to the sideways world. If DHARMA and the island's FDW full time travel machine was the control, then only when you met yourself in both time frames could you be paradoxically removed from existence. But that did not happen to Charlotte or Daniel. In face, some time trippers were reincarnated. 

So it gets back to the big mystery of why, throughout all the trauma and manipulation of Daniel's life, did Eloise want, need, desire or demand Daniel to be on the freighter, come ashore, and be killed by her younger self? The only viable answer was that guilt was making Eloise dream up these actions.

For the symbolism of a young woman killing her "adult" child could represent a psychological trauma of Eloise's young life, such as an abortion. If she aborted "Daniel" or lost him during pregnancy on the island, then the series could evolve around a troubled young woman's lost mental state of delusions and fantasies of having the perfect life with her dead fetus. Eloise could have been haunted by her actions so that she could have been institutionalized as a mental patient. As creepy as that may seem, it allows for the fact that science, sci-fi and any other rational explanations for series events be immaterial and irrelevant. The sole factor was keeping her dead child from realizing that his own mother killed him.

THE POWER OF KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is a treasure but practice is the key to it. - - - Thomas Fuller

I have always said that knowledge was power on LOST. Those characters who knew things could control things.

Eloise was probably the one person who knew the most since she had actual working knowledge of both worlds (island and sideways). It seems that she was able to connect to both worlds (and their seemingly same but different lives) as if the island was a gateway or portal to two dimensions. When Eloise conversed with Desmond in the clock shop, the essence of what she told him was that time was predetermined; that Desmond's life was predetermined; that Desmond's destiny was not to marry Penny but to sail off to his own demise. It was this erasure of a possibility of romance in the real world kept Desmond from awakening other characters, such as Daniel, for whom Eloise tried to shelter (in the after life).

Knowledge that the sideways world was a purgatory time line where people could continue to live out their imaginary dream lives is a powerful tool especially when one can communicate back to the living world to manipulate people to keep the fantasy world's status quo.

As most religions teach, what one does in the world of the living has consequences in judgment in the next world. By manipulating the actions of living human beings in the island world, Eloise could construct an elaborate alternative fantasy world where the characters would not need to rejoin and "remember" their old lives which would destroy the egg shell dream family situation Eloise created in her sideways vision.

But how can Eloise be a puppet master in two worlds. She somehow mentally connected herself with Daniel, her son, in both worlds. This theme of having a "constant" may have actually meant the mental connection between the living and the dead. Eloise was a medium who could actually affect events.

She forced her son to give up music in order to study and master highly theoretical physics, including the manipulation of time. Why? Perhaps so Eloise could go back in time herself to stop her young self from killing her own time traveling son. If Daniel "remembered" that his own mother killed him, that would destroy the happy family sideways dream world Eloise had created for herself. That shattered dream would mean that her "heaven" would be gone, and she would either go to hell or worse, just fade away from all conscious existence.

So the stakes for Eloise would be extremely high. It was her manipulation of Daniel in order to control the island which led to the unintended consequences of her shooting her own son. A lifetime of guilt both in the living world and sideways realm had a mother trying to do anything to make things better. In order to protect her vision of her happy family, she would communicate to her living self - - - which led to Widmore's anger and revenge motivations to destroy everyone on the island. By doing so, those souls would not remember or awaken Daniel from his dream state.

One could say Eloise was trying to maintain a complex dream support system for a critically mentally unstable patient, Daniel.  If this was the unstated premise of the series, I think most fans would have accepted it as a reasonable explanation for Season 6 and tie back the previous five years.

BEST ACTORS

LOST had memorable performances. But in the Mount Rushmore of LOST acting, we must narrow the field down to four individuals:

LOCKE

Terry O'Quinn had the greatest range of situations in which to perform. He did quite well. Received Emmy Award nominations in 2005, 2007, and 2010 in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his portrayal of John Locke.  He won the 2007 award beating out, among other nominees, fellow Lost actor Michael Emerson.

BEN

Michael Emerson came to the series as a guest star, but his performance captured the imagination of the fans and producers to where he became a main character. He won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Drama Series in 2009 for his role as Ben.

DESMOND

Henry Ian Cusick was another guest star who made an impact to become a regular cast member. Cusick, after three guest starring episodes during Season 2, became a series regular at the beginning of the third season.  Cusick was nominated for Outstanding Guest Actor In A Drama Series at the 2006 Emmys for his performance as Desmond in the episode "Live Together, Die Alone, Part 1".

ELOISE

Fionnula Flanagan was an accomplished actress prior to a guest role in the series. However, her portrayal of Eloise Hawking made her a mysterious center piece to future story lines bridging the island, Dharma and the Others. As Ben was seen as evil incarnate, Eloise was a much more sinister and powerful force behind the scenes.  When she was in a scene, you could see the mental gears churning some devious plot.

One can now realize that these four characters were pivotal in the final two seasons of LOST. O'Quinn's character was reborn in the form of Flocke. Ben's power struggle with Jacob and Widmore led to the chaotic final chase to find a final island guardian. Eloise was all knowing in both worlds, and tried to keep them worlds separated so she would not lose her son, Daniel. And Desmond became the bridge between the island and the sideways realms. In some ways, these four actors pushed themselves in the prime, leading roles as the series wound down.

CRACKING THE THOUGHT CODE

Researchers have made interesting inroads into the human brain thought process.

The BBC reported that brain neurons function by sending bursts of electric pulses to parts of the brain, which in turn form the basis of thoughts and memories. Scientists have begun to use these pulse patterns to make algorithm or formulas to determine how the brain functions.

They have used probed rats to run mazes to record the thought patterns of the subjects.


While the rat runs the maze researchers record where it is, and simultaneously how the cells in the hippocampus are firing. The cell firing patterns are thrown into a mathematical algorithm which finds the pattern that best matches each bit of the maze. The language of the cells is no less complex, but now science believes it has  a Rosetta Stone against which scientists can decode the thought process. Researchers  then test the algorithm by feeding the freshly recorded patterns back into the subject, to see if it correctly predicts where the rat was at the point that pattern was recorded.

It doesn’t allow a complete code crack, because scientists still don't know all the rules, and it can’t help them read the patterns which aren't from this bit of the brain or which aren't about maze running, but it is still a powerful tool. For instance, using this technique, the research team was able to show that the specific sequence of cell firing repeated in the brain of the rat when it slept after running the maze (and, as a crucial comparison, not in the sleep it had enjoyed before it had run the maze).

Fascinatingly, the sequence repeated faster during sleep – around 20 times faster. This meant that the rat could run the maze in their sleeping minds in a fraction of the time it took them in real life. This could be related to the mnemonic function of sleep; by replaying the memory, it might have helped the rat to consolidate its learning. And the fact that the replay was accelerated might give researchers a glimpse of the activity that lies behind sudden insights, or experiences where our life “flashes before our eyes”; when not restrained, our thoughts really can retrace familiar paths in “fast forward”. 

This new scientific research plays very well in the LOST universe.

Look at the key reference points: flashes before our eyes, flash forwards, mazes, sleep and memory. These were all critical components in the story lines. So much so that it brings us to a new theory based on this science. 

When one is asleep, one can have vivid dreams. Dreams so vivid that they seem absolutely real. And once one wakes up, these vivid dreams seem like actual memories.

When one is in a dream state, the mind processes information 20 times faster than in one's waking state. This tends to give dreamers the impression that their dreams may last for hours, but in reality the REM sleep was only for minutes. This is a illusion of time displacement in one's mind.

What Daniel's Oxford experiment was similar to was the thought researchers experiment about a lab rat learning a maze. In Daniel's case, learning it before it ran it. But in a certain way, Daniel "programmed" his rat, Eloise, to run the maze by imputing the maze algorithm while at the subject was asleep. Eloise "learned" the maze in a dream state so vivid that she thought it was a real memory when she was put at the starting gate.

And this segment of the story line, glossed over by many viewers, is probably the key to unraveling a better explanation for the series sci-fi foundation. For if one takes the confusing "time travel" and "time skip" elements of the story lines and realize that they are merely metaphors for "thought coding" dreams, then LOST takes a whole different road to understanding.

In all the time travel segments, if one substitutes the fact that no real time travel happened - - - that it was all thought code imparted into a character's mind, then things start to make better sense.

Dharma was a research group looking into various components of mental applications. Room 23 was clearly a mind control chamber. But there is other evidence of mind and thought control. If one imparts new memories into polar bears that they are actually tropical animals, the bears would be more quickly adapt to their new environment. If Dharma found the way to implant new memories into human beings, then that control would be extremely important - - - and possibly a military weapon.

So the island vanishing and time skipping to the 1970s never really happened; the characters merely thought it did because their brains were re-wired with those adventures. The main characters were actually lab rats in some grand experiment on human beings. Perhaps Jacob was not the immortal demigod, but the guardian of the process in which he fed various events into his subjects to determine whether he could actually change a person's free will, good or evil personality or behavior patterns. Or whether those long term personality traits would "corrupt" the new mental programming which would lead to failure (or death). Instead of remembering the actual programmed events, the character's minds could short circuit and take those memories and turn them into twisted nightmares by merging with older memories. 

It also gets back to the unexplained big clue that the characters had to "awaken" in order to move on or be free. Awaken from what? The dream and thought experiments? 

What better way to treat a mental health patient than creating a new, better personality for him or her. For example, Hurley was destined to be a lonely, semi-skilled fast food worker filled with anxiety, self-worth issues and manic depression. But if he was re-programmed to be a lottery winner, a person with new found confidence, a business owner success, could that really change his life? If not, would the programmers ramp up the thought conversion process to shock his mind with an extreme plane crash island survival story in order to "cure" Hurley's mental state? 

It is a good theory but not a complete one because the sideways world makes a mess of most theories. Since the sideways world is death, plain and simple, then which memories are actually the "true" ones? One could say the reason the characters met in the church was that there one great shared experience that bonded them together was the collective thought control experiments - - - which led to actual deaths. But those strong memories were so vivid and clear, that it was those imprints on the characters' souls that matter most in the after life. 

Trouble real characters + failed thought control experiments with fake island events = death = sideways world reunion of souls bonded together by the memories from their experiments.

POWER AND LOSS

"People who have power look for fights. People who don't have power lose everything."  - - - Masashi Kishimoto

Who were the most powerful people in LOST?

Widmore was a powerful businessman who could do just about anything, including "faking" the 815 crash site with corpses. He was ruthless. He showed no mercy. He did everything he could get back control of the island, including sending mercenaries to kill everyone.

Ben was a powerful leader of the Others. He manipulated his followers by a combination of fear and mental brain washing. He also was ruthless and showed little mercy to his enemies. He helped wipe out Dharma compound by betraying his co-workers with nerve gas. That was his first coup; his second was exiling Widmore from the island.

Jacob was the island guardian. He had immense power of an immortal being. He could grant eternal life as he did to Alpert, but he could not bring back the dead to life. He could bring people to his island. He manipulated his followers through surrogates, adding a level hidden control over the people who believed in him. His followers would worship him but never see or hear him.

Eloise seemed to know everything about everyone. She knew the power of the island. She knew how to find the island. She knew how to manipulate people to get to the island. And she was the only person fully aware of what the sideways world was, and that awakening her son who make him leave her. If knowledge was power in the series (as I believe), then Eloise was a very powerful character who used it to her advantage.

But at the same time, Widmore lost his island conquest goal when he was killed by Ben.

Likewise, Ben lost his control and leadership of the Others when he killed Jacob.

And Jacob lost his followers when word spread that he had been killed by Ben and Flocke.

Widmore lost everything material in his life that he acquired under the most brutal means, but somehow he was rewarded with a blissful life in the sideways world.

Ben lost everything in his life, including his family, friends and followers, but he was somehow rewarded with a second chance in the sideways world where he did not have to move on. He was granted a similar reward as Eloise, the knowledge of the sideways world realm, and an opportunity to keep the fantasy world alive in his own mind.

Jacob had lost his family while on the island. He was trapped there as the light source guardian. He spent thousands of years trying to find a way to leave, but the smoke monster kept him imprisoned on the island. When ghost Jacob told the final candidates that when the fire (his light) would go out, he would be no more - - - it would seem that Jacob received no reward for his island service. He lost everything and everyone close to him.

BASIC ELEMENTS REVIEWED

This diagram shows the connections between characters with the same first letter in their names. It is hard to remember that so few letters were used for names. For example, you have Jack, Juliet and Jin; Sawyer, Shannon and Sun.

But two characters pop out alone: Penny and Eloise.

They are related by marriage. Penny is the daughter of Widmore. We can infer from his back story that when he left the island to the main land, he had a child (Penny) which led to his banishment. He later married Eloise and together they had a child, Daniel, the scientific genius for whom Eloise desperately protected in the sideways world.

Penny grew up as part of the privilege class in England. She has aspects of being spoiled, but also has a rebellious streak against her father (as would later turn into her affection for Desmond). Desmond was the anti-Widmore, a man with little ambition, unmarketable skills and lack of commitment. Dez was a drifter, a loner, and man without a cause. Penny never needed Desmond, but when Desmond tried to win her back and lost at seas, he found out that he needed her.

Eloise was part of the plot to get Desmond away from Penny. Eloise was the watch clerk who told Desmond about life's "course correction," people die no matter what events intervene to delay it. Desmond was told he had a great role to play, but he did not believe it. That role was to set sail in a solo race to crash into the island - - - to be trapped there pushing a button that would keep the island in a snow globe.

The reason why Eloise wanted Desmond removed from Penny's life was that she was protecting Daniel from awakening. She knew that Penny had feelings for Desmond, and if Penny re-awakened those feelings in the sideways world, Eloise fantasy after life would be destroyed. So she kept Penny's happiness at bay for the sake of her own selfish goal of being with her son forever.

Her son, if he remembered Eloise killing him in the time travel episode, could have gone off with the other island castaways to the church and into the light, never to be seen again. Sending Desmond to the island prison was a way to prevent that event from happening.

Without that, Eloise would have no bonds to keep her in the sideways dream. Her perfect marriage to Widmore was a ruse since he had not awakened to the island past - - - and their feud/break-up over the island's control. Penny would not be awakened if Desmond was kept at bay, traveling the world at the behest of Widmore (or more likely Eloise's prodding him). Penny would have continued on in a privileged status that she had pre-Desmond relationship, not knowing what she was missing in her life.

If the baseline for the show was love, then the stories of Penny and Eloise demonstrate two sides of the same coin. Penny, in a blissful ignorance and Eloise, in a conning manipulation in the sideways realm. But in the island sphere, it is proactive Penny trying to re-connect to lost Desmond, while Eloise tries to right her wrong caused Daniel. One is a mother's love to an extreme, and the other is a couple's triumph over tragedy.

LEADERSHIP

Let others lead small lives, but not you.. Let others argue over small things, but not you.. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you.. Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, but not you. — Jim Rohn

Leadership was a central theme of LOST. Various individuals wanted to control the island, but they never said what they would do with it. For a few, there was a silence of purpose that was seen in their beady eyes.

Leadership and guardianship are two different concepts. A guardian is a person who takes it upon himself or herself to look after someone, usually a minor child or disabled adult. The guardian is a person with the authority to make decisions on behalf of their ward. The guardian fulfills the role of an interested parent in the welfare of their ward. A guardian provides the basic necessities of life to the ward: food, shelter, security, medical and educational attention. Some guardianships end when the ward becomes an adult, but some guardianships last until death.

Leadership is a broader brush stroke. A leader is a decision maker in a group of people. A leader brings to the group a collective purpose, strategy and a plan in order to for the group to succeed in its goals. Leaders can be in any walk of life: business, charity, religious or even family units. A person needs a strong personality to draw other people to their way of thinking. A leader has various tools to assume power over his followers, such as persuasion, personality, intimidation, fear, or withholding favor such as life's necessities. 

LOST had many strong and clashing leaders. In chronological time, the first leader we actually saw was Eloise when she was a young woman on the island. It was during a time skip when the castaways went to the 1950s to witness the Others capture the atomic bomb from the U.S. military (which in itself is a highly improbable event). But Eloise seemed to have the final word on matters, even overruling Widmore in a challenge to what to do with the strangers. We don't know Eloise's back story, but she is one of the few characters who knows how the LOST universe works, even though she explains it in vague analogies like "time correction" to Desmond. Someone who has the knowledge, the keys to a specific universe that other people cannot comprehend, can weld great power.

Widmore made his leadership mark more in the business world off the island. As a driven personality, Widmore was relentless in getting what he wanted in the real world. As a result, he acquired a vast fortune which he then used to buy loyalty of his soldiers. His leadership in the business world was apparently all for his quest to return to the island and conquer it. Whether Eloise actually indirectly helped Widmore find the island in Season 6 is a subject of debate, but she probably did since she had the sole means of finding it.

We then have the less driven leader like Horus. Horus was the man in charge of the Dharma Initiative on the island. He still reported to someone on the mainland, but he was in charge of the island group. Or so he thought, since Dr. Chang seemed to run the construction and science operations independently of Horus' input. Horus was the man in charge when Ben arrived on the island. Ben would later see weakness in Horus' power structure, which probably led Ben to devise his purge.

Ben was a role model for dictator leadership. He ruled with the iron fist of fear. He got the Others to follow him because he showed them he could kill without emotional strings, such as killing his own father. That act of rebellion seemed to be the new caveat for leadership of the Others, as Locke had to do the same thing in order to oust Ben. And when Locke arrived back at camp with Cooper's body, the Others suddenly had two viable leaders and they began to split (with Alpert siding with Locke; some followers wanted change).

Locke had failed at becoming the leader of the beach survivors. Locke had more success as the Other's leader until his decision making continued to be wrong. In order to stop the island time skips, he was told that he had to reset the frozen donkey wheel, and to die. Locke never understood the meaning of the latter. His death did not do anything to rally any island inhabitant to change or assume the leadership mantel. He was always considered a weak leader.

Another weak leader was Jacob. He was a sideline leader. The Others worshipped him like a god, which allowed their group leaders like Ben to manipulate people by claiming he had spoken to Jacob and this is what Jacob wanted them to do. But Ben never saw Jacob until the confrontation in the statue with Flocke. Jacob did not want to interact with the humans he brought to the island. Whether it was beneath him, like pets or lab rats to amuse MIB, Jacob was clearly disconnected with the idea of making decisions for other people.

In the same way, Jack did not want to make island decisions. He became the beach camp leader by default, as the survivors saw Jack, the Doctor, as an educated, smart and worthy leader because of his professional skills. He was their immediate best hope for survival from their plane crash injuries, physical and mental. But as the burden of leadership grew with Jack, he tried to make hard decisions but was stunned with the amount of push-back from his fellow survivors, including people like Kate. Jack's role as an island was one of convenience. He did not change the fate of his fellow castaways who slowly were killed off by the island events, including missions he led in the jungle. 

Though leadership was a large theme of the series, the role of leader seems to be secondary. There was a large story format of "follow the leader," as in the child's game - - - which could be an explanation of the constant not-well-thought-out mission sequences. Leadership was more a childlike game on the island, possibly because the island was run by a childlike power.

It is possible that leadership was merely a decoy, a ruse, a game of play to keep the island, as a supernatural childlike entity, occupied from tapping its destructive powers that could destroy the entire universe. The island guardian was needed to check the needs and welfare of the island itself, as a living being of vast power, otherwise the island child could go on a cosmic rampage which would destroy all Life on Earth. It is an interesting theory that could have been a light bulb moment for the series if that was the explanation of the show's premise, but sadly it was not the case. The leadership story arcs were merely a tennis match of back and forth power struggles that constitute filler material in the overall story.

DREAMS OF BAD ROBOTS

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Fionnula Flanagan played Eloise Hawking in only 7 LOST episodes. As discussed previously, her character seemed to have complete knowledge of everything both on and off the island, including the unique island properties and time travel.

She also guest starred in Star Trek:TNG in the episode called "Inheritance." She played a scientist, Juliana Tainer, on a planet which has its core that is cooling which would cause the death of all the inhabitants. The Enterprise is sent to the planet to find a solution.  Juliana claims to be the former wife of Data's creator, Professor Soong. 

Data can only find one Juliana in his memory, a Juliana O'Donnell. She explains that protests from her mother caused them to elope. She explains that his early memories were wiped and replaced with memories of the colonists and he was about to be reactivated when the Crystalline Entity attacked.

During the episode, Data observes remarkable qualities about Juliana, and asks Dr. Crusher to examine her medical records. That is interrupted when Data is called to the planet to repair the plasma infusers, the solution to the core cooling problem.  Data and Juliana complete their task and return to the transport point, but find the pattern enhancers have fallen down a cliff. They must jump to safety. When Data jumps, he takes Juliana over the cliff with him. Data lands safely, but Juliana is knocked unconscious and her arm becomes detached from her torso. Data observes a network of circuitry and it becomes apparent that Juliana is an android.

Juliana is unaware that she is an android. After the Crystalline Entity's attack, Juliana was injured so Professor Sooong created a new android and used synaptic scanning to place Juliana's memories into it. After the real Juliana died, Soong activated the android and she awoke believing she was human. She later chose to leave Soong and he let her go (after installing the chip), sadly admitting that the real Juliana would have left him too. Soong pleads with Data to let her have her humanity.

Data replaces the chip. When he closes Juliana's head, she awakens. He tells her that she fell from the cliff and broke her arm, but Dr. Crusher has repaired it, and everything is fine. Data kept the secret of Juliana's humanity.

There are similar elements to this story and the LOST saga. The island survivors were attacked by a smoke monster. Many of them were wounded or killed. Their humanity was put into question: how did they view themselves as persons of faith or science.

This raises a new theory and premise to the show. Just in this Star Trek episode, what if the main characters thought they were human but were not. This goes beyond the idea that the 815 passengers became spirits after the plane crash caused them all to die. What if all these "humans with personal issues" were actually defective robots. Instead of Dorothy teleported to a fantasy world of Oz, these androids were sent to the island, a fantasy world that mimicked the humanity that they were supposed to have been programmed with; a Westworld reconditioning camp for computerized beings.

Human beings are in essence highly complex organic computer systems. It is easy to transfer those elements into a science fiction story world. What are the dreams of androids who don't know they are computer units? What are their fears? What happens when their prime programming gets corrupted? Can they be saved? Or do they get tossed away to be recycled?

If the LOST characters were androids being shipped away from their society, it would be a brand new point of view for the series.

THE MAZE

This was an avatar I used on some LOST community sites. It was a depiction of Eloise the Lab Rat.

Eloise was Daniel Faraday's lab rat at Oxford University's Queen's College Physics Department in 1996. Daniel explained to Desmond that the rat's consciousness was sent forward in time one hour in the future, allowing the rat to run an unseen maze perfectly. The experiment was a success, but later in the day, Eloise died. The cause was unknown, but Faraday hypothesized she had suffered a brain aneurysm. According to his theory, not having any constant, her consciousness couldn't differentiate between the future and the present.

An Oxford janitorial custodian had the job of incinerating Faraday's dead subject rats so that no one would discover the purposes and results of his experiments. One would assume that order was at the direction of Widmore, who funded Daniel's Oxford experiments.

Widmore's only purpose was finding a way back to the island. So funding Daniel's experiments had to be tied to this purpose. Was it an actual means of finding the island, or was it payment to Daniel's mother for her help in finding the island for him?

There was some connection in Daniel's mind in conscious time travel and the island. When he first arrived on the island, he observed that the light was different. He also found that time would physically skip (after the FDW was turned by Ben). It was during one of those time skips where he met his mother, who was a leader of the Others. During that encounter, Eloise killed him. There is a debate whether at that moment Eloise knew she killed her (unborn or) time traveling son. But in later events, it would seem that Eloise was doing everything in her power NOT to awaken Daniel to his island's past when he was in the sideways (dead) world.

One of the problems with the LOST story was that it had no consistent mythology on time travel. The idea of mental time travel, based upon premonition theories, was one explanation to Daniel's research. But then, the characters physically time skipped to different years on the island. And further inconsistency, only some of the characters skipped while others did not. Selective involuntary mental and physical time travel is a confusing bunch of story line rubble.

We do not know the details of Daniel's lab rat maze experiment. One could think Daniel used highly charged electric magnetic energy to induce some mental time travel in his lab rats. If so, how can he get "inside" the rat's mind to teach it a maze if the rat itself was unconscious? It would make more sense that both the rat and Daniel physically time traveled an hour in the future, Daniel taught the rat the maze, then returned to normal time to start the experiment. At one point, Daniel said that he was "out" for 75 minutes "after" the Eloise experiment.

There are several theories on why Daniel's research was important.

First, if Daniel had harnessed the power of the island (i.e. mental time travel to the future to either see or alter present events), then Widmore would not have needed to return to the island. Since Widmore still demanded to invade the island for its power, we must assume that Daniel's machine was a failure (as shown with the vegetable state of his former lab assistant.)

Second, if the secret of the island was mental time travel, then why did only Desmond have known episodes of it? He was the person who unrealistically survived the massive EM explosion of the Hatch. This allegedly triggered his premonitions (though some of them proved false, such as Claire leaving the island on a helicopter). So if Desmond could see the future, but he could not control it, who could?

Third, if Desmond was the only one aware of this secret power of mental time travel, why did physical time travel harm Charlotte but not the others. The reason was she did not have a "constant" in both time periods. But in reality, a person has a constant in all time periods based upon family bonds alone. Unless, the time travel was before she was born then she had no one living in that time period. But if that was the case, the other time travelers should have succumbed to the time travel constant rule. Another explanation was that those time travelers had each other as constants in both time periods. But again, so did Charlotte. (Without a consistent rule, it comes down to the writers looking for red shirts to kill off for dramatic effect without realizing the story line consequences.)

Fourth, the cause of death of the lab rat and the time travelers who bled was that if a person failed to complete the events in where the conscious mind traveled to would cause death. For example, Eloise the lab rat Eloise died because the "future" event (instruction on how to complete the maze) that was to occur did not take place. (However, we were told she did complete the maze. So just the fact one mentally flashes to another time is enough to kill you?) Minkowski on the freighter died because he went to the island. The island somehow split his consciousness. But his mission was just to go see the island, which he fulfilled. Minkowski never indicated afterward in his flashes that he needed to complete some task. He was told he had no constant between his flash periods. But again, he did have family bonds in both time periods so that "ante dote" does not have a factual basis. He was merely randomizing into the state of dementia before dying of a brain aneurysm.

But then again, time travel and its alleged effects were immaterial and irrelevant to the island events conclusions. Desmond, as a weapon against MIB, was a non-factor. It was Jack who reset the island cork in the light cave. It was Jack and Kate who defeated MIB. Time travel or electromagnetic power did not destroy MIB or allow any survivor to escape the island.

Based upon the ending, was the concept of "constants" really the mental bridge between the island world and the sideways after life existence? If so, then that would assume that the person's soul (conscious and subconscious) were somehow split to be somehow "reunited" (i.e. awakened) in the sideways world. Time travel is then not time travel but spiritual realm travel.

But even that is inconsistent in the sideways world. Charlotte is in the sideways world. She hooks up with Sawyer through Miles (and Miles was the constant between the island patrol from the freighter with Daniel and Charlotte.) But Charlotte has no contact with Daniel in the sideways world. It is like Eloise is keeping Daniel's island experiences away from his conscious memory . . . that is why she berated Desmond to leave her and Daniel alone. She was willing to sacrifice Penny to move on in the after life, but not Daniel. It would seem that Eloise's guilt for killing Daniel in the island time skip flashed through to her after life fantasy life. Is the ticking time bomb for Daniel's awakening just the sight of Charlotte? If so, why did it take so long for Charlie to reconnect with Claire? Or Kate not remember Sawyer from her island trysts? Or Jack not recognizing the Locke's O6 death drove him nearly insane?

If LOST was a maze of clues, it had no logical exit point. The feature of the "constant" as being a critical requirement to understanding the physics and dynamics of the island does not hold up to any scrutiny. It was neither the cause or the effect of the events in the sideways world.

CHICKEN OR THE EGG

It is the most basic childhood paradox: which came first, the chicken or the egg?

It is self-contradictory. One needs a mature chicken to create an egg. But one needs a fertile egg to create a chicken. It is an impossible question.

Likewise, the dilemma in LOST is an apparent paradox: which came first, the island time periods or the sideways realm?

It seems simple if one looks at time in a lineal progression. The sideways world is where all the characters arrived as dead souls. So, logically, the sideways world is the end point in time. However, the last shots of the series is Jack apparently still alive, but dying, on the island after the sideways church light engulfs them.

The evidence that the sideways world was created later is Christian's statement that the sideways purgatory was created by everyone present so they could be together in the after life since they shared the most important moments of their lives together. Besides the simple unanswered question of how can mortal humans create a supernatural mirror Earth in the after life, when exactly did the characters "create" the sideways realm?

The main characters had tenuous connections before boarding Flight 815. One could argue that the only event which was the "most important' shared aspect of their collective lives was the plane crash. It has been reported by passengers in plane crashes that time seems to slow down. They claim their lives flash before their eyes. A plane that breaks up at 35,000 feet has about three minutes to fall back down to the ground. The sideways world could have been "created" by the panic, fear and anxiety during that three minute fall.

Or, the collective fear, panic, and personal retrospective (each person's own life flashbacks) could have "created" the island story line prior to everyone being killed in the crash when the plane sections hit the island.

But Christian's church explanation to Jack has a serious flaw. Members of the reunion did not share the most important elements of their lives together. For example, Penny had no island connections.
Further, those who were aware and present of the sideways realm (Eloise, Keamy, Nadia, and even Juliet) were not present when Flight 815 crashed on the island. Another problem is Ben. Why would he have created the sideways world when he was the nemesis of all the people in the church?

A further complication is that sideways people ran around in their new realm oblivious to "the most important" aspect of their lives being suppressed in their memories. How is that logically possible?  If one creates an after life way station while alive, why would you "forget it" after you died until some event in the after life triggers your repressed memory? There are too many puzzle pieces which do not fit this explanation.

Then the last issue with the sideways awakening is that Ben got to "choose" to stay in purgatory world created by the people in the church? Why would the sideways realm continue on if its sole creation was to keep lost souls occupied in a game like logic loop until they all died and wanted to move on to heaven?  The concept that other souls, some awakened like Ben and Eloise, can continue to live a fantasy life in this purgatory world means that Christian's explanation cannot be correct: other people created the sideways world in order for it to continue on after the LOST characters left the church in the finale.

As such, we can conclude that the sideways realm was created well before Christian stated that Jack's friends "made it" for their reunion. That makes sense because Eloise seemed to be aware of both realms (the island world and the sideways world) without being awakened to a difference between them.

LOST itself was edited out of order to create a sense of drama, and a cloud of confusion. It is easy to take things out of context when there is no rational context when they are compared normal human common sense.

Which brings us back to the question: which came first, the island time period or the sideways realm?

It would seem that the sideways world was created first. But then, things get murky. One would assume that the flashbacks were the characters true lives, but there were some aspects which made no sense. Example, Faraday was born in early 1978, but he was killed on the island in July, 1977. In 2004, Faraday became highly emotional when learning of the news of the Flight 815 crash except he would not have any real connection to the 815 folks for months to come. These are clues that the island and flashbacks may not be in order.

It is possible that a plausible explanation of Faraday's memory issues and mental time skips is that he was already in the sideways world - - - and that the island realm was drawing upon his past life as means of giving him a second chance to work through issues he had before his death. Or, the island realm was giving him symbolic clues to what really happened to him in his real life. In the harshest sense, if Faraday's could have imagined his entire flashback "life" as a dream because he was killed (aborted) by his mother, Eloise, six months before he would have been born. This is why Eloise is so protective of Faraday in the purgatory after life - - - and that she does not want him to remember what she did to him (killed him before he was born). Eloise's guilt is the strong force to keep Faraday in the dark in the sideways after life.

In some respects, Aaron would also fit this pattern of denial. Claire was pregnant and in a serious car accident which mortally injured her mother. Claire was also pregnant in the sideways after life. One could make the connection that Aaron and Claire never survived the auto accident. The 815 passage to America was Claire's final dream to give her baby some sort of "real" life (but in an after life fantasy world.)

The sideways world was created by the dark memories of dead people to keep the truth hidden from themselves and others for as long as possible. It is a selfish diversion. In order to protect the sideways dream world, souls were separated from their conscious and subconscious (like ancient Egyptian death rituals) to allow spirits to go back into a re-created past (which is a present fantasy world) in order create an amnesia state in the souls living in the sideways world. 

So it does not matter which came first, the chicken or the egg because the organic nature of reproduction and rebirth is trumped by the spiritual.

THE LAMP POST

One of the few settings that bridged both the island time line and the sideways realm was the church which Eloise told Jack, Sun and Desmond was The Lamp Post, a former Dharma station that contained a pendulum swinging over a global map as an island tracker.  In the fantasy sideways world, the church was created to bring together the 815 island survivors to begin, continue, or move on in the after life. So the church is a key element in trying to figure out what happened to the characters.

 This is the Lamp Post church that part of the O6 visit in order to find a way to get back to the island.

 

This is the same church but in the sideway world at the end of the series.

First, why was this station called the Lamp Post?

By basic definition, a "lamp" is a noun for a device for giving light, either one consisting of an electric bulb together with its holder and shade or cover, or one burning gas or a liquid fuel and consisting of a wick or mantle and a glass shade, for example,  a table lamp.

It also can mean an electrical device producing ultraviolet, infrared, or other radiation, used for therapeutic purposes.
An alternative definition is that of a literary source of spiritual or intellectual inspiration.


The word comes from the Greek, for "torch."  In American lexicon, "passing the torch" is a phrase that imparts the transfer or transformation of some person, business, event to another person. It is the bridge between the past and the future marked by an event in the present.

The basic definition of the noun "post" is  a long, sturdy piece of timber or metal set upright in the ground and used to support something or as a marker.

Alternative uses of the word post include (as with obj. and complement) to  publish the name of (a member of the armed forces) as missing or dead.


It is derived from the Latin for "beam."

If one puts the root for the Lamp Post it could mean "light beam." It is the same church in The End where the characters leave in the white light. So could the Lamp Post church be both the door and exit to the after life?

On a side note, the word "Post" can have a clue or reference to Wiley Hardeman Post (1898-1935), a U.S. aviator.  He was the first man to fly solo around the world 1933, accomplishing this in 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes. He was flying near Point Barrow, Alaska, with Will Rogers as his passenger when their plane crashed and they were both killed. Desmond was trying to win a solo race across the Pacific. And Flight 815 was a famous plane crash within the context of the series.

We were told that the church station was created by Dharma (and possibly with the help of Daniel Faraday.)  The station appears to have been built upon the intelligence gathered by the U.S. Army in 1954, since Jack sees a photograph of the island taken by the military in the pendulum room.

The Lamp Post station was run by Eloise Hawking. She is the one character who appears to know "everything" about the strange events and the island properties, but keeps everyone in the dark about its true nature and purpose.

We know that the only people who visited the Lamp Post church were Eloise, Ben, Jack, Sun and Desmond.

How did they “create” a church in the sideways world that only a few of them saw?

It gets back to the Christian conundrum : everyone created the sideways fantasy, but how and when when none of them remembered their past?

Well, only one person knew about the past: Eloise. She was overly protective of it. She warned Desmond not to wake the others. She feared that if Daniel remembered his island past, he would leave her forever.  So Eloise knew about the church, its purpose, and the concept of awakening which she warned Desmond not to do.

Desmond is the only other person at the church who was awakened in time to create
the place. But his real role was gathering all the souls at the concert so they could finally awaken. Once awakened, they were directed to go to the church, but we are not clear by whom. If we believe it was Desmond, then we can also believe that he was still be manipulated by Eloise to round up the people who could take her son away, and get them out of her current "life."

The sideways arc only took approximately 14 days in sideways time. So logically, it was created on the 14th day before Jack died on the island.

Going back to island time, the sideways world had to have been  “created” at the same time as Ajira Airways Flight 316 experiences a flash of light 10 hours after take off (in the middle of the night in on a Friday in late 2007)  during which Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid vanish and the remainder of the passengers and the plane time shift to daytime in December 2007.  Some speculate that is the similar to the time shift phenomena in "The Constant" that Sayid noted after flying from the Island through severe turbulence to the Kahana with Frank Lapidus and Desmond. He noted they arrived in the middle of the day after taking off at dusk but traveling only a mere 40 nautical miles. The pilot, Frank Lapidus, maneuvers the plane around the suddenly looming Island to emergency land on Hydra Island's runway. It is interesting to note that Frank is a key player in both those airborne "flash" experiences. Was Frank a mere drunken background character with severe guilt, or was he more of a guardian angel able to get people "where they needed to be" (a theme of Eloise throughout the series).

The church is a key clue in trying to understand the significance of the sideways conclusion. It must be symbolic of life and death, the core of all human existence. It must be the means to get from life to the after life since that is where the characters end their journeys. The church could be the elusive portal of unique energy properties (now the white light) which could mirror the green Life Force found in the island cave (which represented life, death, and rebirth).

The church is one of the biggest clues to who was really controlling the LOST characters. Eloise was the only character who understood both the island and sideways realms. She was the one who created and maintained the church, in both worlds.

CHARACTER OF ELOISE

If there was ever a title of the most mysterious woman on Lost, Eloise Hawking would probably take the crown. Even though she did not appear until Season 3, her presence and manipulations are fully interconnected in the character story arcs to conclude that she was an important pivot point to the entire series.

As I have indicated in previous posts (check the archive keyword under Eloise), Eloise Hawking has an unexplained puppet master role.

We know very little about her except she knows a lot about everyone.

We know she was a young woman on the island in the 1950s. During a time flash, she meets Daniel in a time skip. We know that in 1977 she was at odds with Charles Widmore over leadership of the Others. It would seem that the strong personalities of Eloise and Charles pushed Alpert's role into the background. It is during that time skip that she kills her own son, Daniel, in the episode, The Variable. As Daniel fell, he realized that he had been shot by Eloise, and whispered to her that she had "known it the whole time." Confused, she asked him who he was, and he revealed that he was her son, leaving her standing over him, shocked.

We can assume that as an Other, Eloise was fully informed about the Island's properties and the need for its protection. She also knew about its power. And it seems that she did not shy away from gaining power and control over other people. We must conclude that the 1977 time skip had a profound affect on Eloise and her relationship with her son. She forced him into advanced science including electromagnetism and theories of space time.

We know that Daniel Faraday was her son (by blood with Charles Widmore). We do not know why Daniel's surname is not Widmore (could it be Eloise's maiden name?) But we do know that Widmore was banished from the island because he had an off-island affair which led to the birth of Daniel's half sister, Penny Milton, who herself must have kept her mother's maiden name. It is an unusual convex of names: Faraday, a scientist renown for electromagnetic studies, and Milton, whose great work Paradise Lost about the story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is to "justify the ways of God to men" is one of the main themes of the entire series.

In the sideways world (after life), Eloise is in complete control of her situation. She is married to a rich man (Widmore), and has a dolting musical son, Daniel. She has Widmore keeping Desmond occupied with global business meetings. In The End, Eloise met Desmond once again during the concert, aware that he had awakened several people to their former lives. She believed that if her son Daniel remembered his life, he would be able to finally move on, possibly departing from her. At Eloise's request, Desmond agreed not to awaken Daniel.

It is then have the full revelation that Eloise Hawking is the woman behind the LOST curtain.

She is the mastermind behind getting the 815ers “back” to the Island. She is the person who pushed her son, Daniel, into the complex physics of time travel. She convinced Widmore, her ex-husband, to fund the research and expedition back to the Island. She cajoled people to get back to the island to “save the world” or to complete their destiny. Was Jack’s destiny to replace her insane son’s plan to blow up the Swan station before the Incident (which, in theory would have killed Eloise before giving birth to him) in order to re-boot the time line of events where Daniel does not die by Eloise’s hand in 1977? It seems quite convoluted and complex.

Daniel’s Rube Goldberg trap explanation of how is is going to change the future by blowing up the past with members of the future at the event in the past fails to consider Ben’s terse statement “dead is dead” on the island. Daniel believes he can “fix things” and save Charlotte by stopping the Swan incident (massive EM release which would later be contained by the Hatch) by blowing up the pocket of energy with a hydrogen bomb. A bomb that would destroy the island and kill everyone on it - - - including himself, his mother and all the people who should have been on Flight 815. If the characters were truly “time traveling” in space time, they would only have one “life.”  If they are killed in 1977, would they be erased from the future itself? Or is this plan really the ultimate “course correction” of the paradox of time travelers meeting their parents and changing events that had already happened?

The real method to stop the release of energy that downed Flight 815 is found in the fact that Eloise pushed Desmond to the Island, “to save (her) world” meaning that she found a patsy in Desmond to push the button. If he had done his job, Flight 815 would have never crashed; the freighter would have never been launched to the Island; Daniel would have never been time shifted by the FDW, and she would have never killed him in 1977.

So which came first? Eloise’s plan or Daniel’s plan?

There was always a question of whether Eloise’s killing of her time traveling son, Daniel, on the Island in 1977, caused the Island to kill all pregnant women. It is also unclear as to the paternity of both Daniel and Penny. Was Penny a secondary dream to replace Daniel in Eloise’s own mental visions of her future? Was the imprisonment of Desmond on the Island the mental visions of Eloise to “save (her) world” i.e. Daniel from the fate of death at her own hands?

There is another aspect to consider: Lost in Reverse. Sideways is a purgatory wait station. The Island is the hell to test souls fears, sins through relationships, quests, tests, judgment or redemption. The flashbacks are not true memories, but the dream feedstock of the characters main fears and nightmares, because those mental conditions are repeated in Island events to see if the character can change, come to grip with those issues, in order to “move on.” Christian tells Jack that everything that has happened to him was “real.” But reality is a moving target concept. One can dream themselves into sweat filled horror which seems absolutely real. A psychopath can have “real illusions” and act them out in real life, like stabbing an individual who he thinks is a werewolf or zombie. The sideways world was “created” by Jack’s friends in order to wait for Jack’s death. How can you “interconnect” the minds, thoughts, memories and personality of a dozen people to create a whole new world. It sounds like a game platform. It sounds like an MMO. It sounds - - - like a crazy construct.  We know the sideways world is not real, but it had to be created by the memories or dreams of the characters, which differ from their flashback stories. An alternative dream world was created for Jack to return to the group who shared Island based adventures and breakthroughs like group therapy.

Or it could be a layered effect of interlocking Time. The ancient Mayans had three interlocking calendars to keep Time. One was a 9 month “human” cycle. One was the 12 month “harvest” cycle. One was the “cosmic” cycle. High priests could interlock all three calendars to predict future star events or predict the meaning of births.

Lost could represent a layered of “after time” calendars. A character may be “living” in several different “realities” which may or may not overlap. More likely, one parallel life feeds off the memories of an alternative past “after time” cycle. Take Eloise as the prime example of this theory:

Those layered clocks on human consciousness can overlap. It could explain Desmond’s mind flashes to future events. It could explain how Eloise knows the future, and knows how the after life gears of time work. It is why Eloise was so upset that Desmond was "awakening" other Island people in the sideways world. Eloise feared that Daniel would wake up - - - realize what his mother did to him in alternative time lines - - -  and leave her forever.

The critical points in the End can be summarized as follows:

At the Sideways benefit concert, Eloise Widmore joins Desmond, saying that she thought she made it clear that Desmond should stop what he's been doing. Desmond says she did, but that he ignored her. She asks, "And once they know, what then?" and Desmond answers, "Then, we're leaving." With concern she asks if they are going to take her son. Desmond assures her, "Not with me, no."

Jack arrives at the concert after it has ended. Kate is there and he says he is looking for his son. He recognizes Kate and asks where he remembers her from. She tells him that she stole his pen on Oceanic 815. Jack is confused, he says "and that's how I know you?" Kate says that is not how he knows her. She goes up to him and takes his face in her hands telling him how much she has missed him. Jack flashes, seeing images of himself and Kate on the Island, but still resists. She tells him that if he comes with her he will understand.

She takes him to the church, the place Jack was going to have his father’s funeral. This is the same church that the O6 got their instructions from Eloise on how to "return to the Island." It would appear that the church is a nexus point between the sideways and island realms.

When sideways Kate says they are waiting for him “once he is ready.” Jack asks, “ready for what?” Kate responds, “to leave.”

At the sideways reunion with his dead father, Jack comes to the realization that he is dead. Everyone is dead. Christian explains to Jack that they aren't leaving; they're moving on. Jack asks where to, and his father tells him, "Let's go find out."


Once these Island visitors, including Desmond, leave the sideways existence, Eloise's long plan to safeguard her son from "remembering" or "leaving her" comes to her happy ending. It would appear that Eloise would have her son for all eternity so long as he does not remember his non-sideways past. The one element that could have dislodged those hidden memories was Desmond, who is now engulfed in the white light from the church.

If one objectively looks at the dynamic of the End as the solution of Six Seasons of LOST mysteries, only one key plot point was revealed and resolved: Eloise's demands to Desmond to stop what he was doing so Daniel would not be taken away from her. This puts Eloise in the position of the one person who had a major controlling influence on all the other main characters. She was the one pulling all the strings. She was the one that was truly manipulating the characters to reach not their goals, but her one objective: to be with her son in the sideways after life.

Eloise Hawking is the only character that had "full knowledge" of the Island events and the Sideways world consequences. It is quite the simple but straight forward explanation lacking in the convoluted plot twists of the series that everything could truly be explained through the actions, manipulations and motivations of Eloise. The only issue truly resolved in the End was that Eloise did not "lose" her son, Daniel, to the 815ers who were "moving on" into the light at the conclusion of church meeting.

Now some may complain that the show was really all about Jack. But did Jack finally resolve his father issues in the End? No. Did other characters resolve their issues? Sayid and Nadia: the opposite happened. Locke, who was abused in the island world, left without anyone. Michael did not get over his issues with Walt, so he is apparently left with the guilt of an island ghost. The island events were themed by significant "daddy issue" subplots. But in the mirror realm of the sideways world, there is only one clear "mommy issue" plot: Eloise and Daniel.

The simple bridge between the Island and the Sideways world was a simple, personal, introspective "awakening." In the End, the only thing the 815ers did was realize that they were dead and accepting their deaths. Knowing that someone would attempt to "awaken" Daniel (most likely Desmond since Daniel considered him his metaphysical "constant"), Eloise attempted to keep that knowledge from all the characters in the Island realm.

As previously posted, the story premise has to be the Island and Sideways worlds are spiritual planes of existence. After death, one has a reincarnated new life. And in this new life, you may not realize that your human existence is gone because everything seems so "real." Using the concepts of the split between the ba and ka from ancient Egyptian mythology, Eloise could craft or control two separate spiritual planes to stop the characters' ba and ka from reuniting ("awakening") and moving on to a different plane of existence in the after life.

Eloise's role in both realms could be considered the puppet master, a gatekeeper of souls, the wizard behind the curtain, the high priestess of death. Only she knew knew the awakening rule. She confused the lost souls into believing that they were still alive. They were told that their survival depended upon running through a maze of dangerous missions. The Island was really a place that Eloise created to contain any person who could lead Daniel to his awakening in the Sideways realm. Eloise was motivated by the fear that she would lose her son forever.

Eloise was close to Brother Campbell. She used that relationship to get Desmond into a monastery so he could be locked away from Penny, a connection to Daniel. But that plan was ruined when Penny came to pick up wine at the same time Desmond was being kicked out for ill behavior. Eloise used Widmore to continually throw a wrench into Desmond's relationship with Penny. She used Libby to get Desmond the boat that he thought he could use to win a sailing race to "prove" to Widmore he was worthy of Penny.

After Sarah's surgery, and after promising her a "miracle," Jack takes a jog in a stadium. He notices Desmond who is jogging up the staircase next to him. Jack races to catch up to him but rolls his ankle and falls. Desmond comes to Jack's aid. After Desmond asks why Jack was "running like the devil was chasing him," he discusses Sarah's procedure and how he made a promise he couldn't keep. Desmond wonders out loud whether he actually did save her, but Jack tells him it would be a miracle. Desmond also leaves with the foreshadowing quip, "See you in another life."

Desmond takes Libby's boat, but then becomes shipwrecked on the Island. He is put to work pressing the Numbers in order "to save the world." Eloise tells him that his fate is to press the Numbers. But in reality, Eloise sole purpose is to imprison Desmond so he stays out of the life of Penny which could cause the sideways Desmond to awaken and take Daniel to the next level of the after life. That Desmond was told that his sole destiny is to stay in the Hatch "to save the world" (which really meant save Eloise's fantasy world) and forget any notion of being with Penny was the biggest con of the entire series.  For three years, Desmond accepts that role. It is only after he begins to be aware that he is "being conned" by Kelvin, that he fails in pressing the buttons. In that moment, he is aware that he can leave the island and return to Penny. But what stops him? The sudden arrival of new characters, the Others and the 815 survivors, who again, occupy Desmond with obstacles on leaving the Island (and returning to Penny).

It is an elaborate "con" that Eloise attempts to maintain; the only problem is that Desmond and the other characters retain their personalities and "free will" to make choices. The critical choice for Desmond was to use the fail safe key to "die." Even with that sacrifice in his mind, Desmond really did not want to "die," but get back to Penny. The island realm does not "kill" spirits such as Desmond. They continue to live until they accept their death in the real world.

The events then lead Desmond to Penny in the Island world. In order to stop the bridge from forming, Desmond is still "pursued" by Widmore in an alleged attempt to keep Desmond and Penny a part. But Eloise knows where Dez is. She allows him the fantasy of a life with Penny and his "son" in order for him to keep the illusion of living forefront in his mind. By doing so, she risks flashes of the other realm and concepts of death to overwhelm Desmond so that he could awaken and spoil the critical balance Eloise is trying to maintain in the Sideways world.

In the Sideways world, Eloise is queen of the land. She has a doting son, totally under her control. She has got the wealth, status and privilege of society. Charles Widmore is a corralled provider of all her needs, including keeping SW Desmond in check as Widmore's respected, trusted number two man (which is the mirror opposite of Island Desmond whose focus was trying to get the respect and trust of evil Widmore.) She has to keep Penny away from Desmond in the Sideways world. It is too dangerous if they have a relationship in both planes. That is why Widmore has Desmond putting out corporate fires all over the world. It is unintended consequences that lead to Desmond to be in LA at the same time Charlie meets Daniel for the benefit concert.

Look at the constant from both ends of the spectrum: the flashbacks (pre 815) and the sideways world - - - Eloise. In Desmond's back story, she was the one who told Desmond about "course correction" that people cannot change what will occur to them. She also told Desmond that he should not be with Penny. Fans knew that Eloise had special powers and knowledge beyond normal comprehension. In the sideways world, Eloise scolds Desmond not to contact Penny. Why? Because she knows that if Desmond is awakened to his past purgatory cycle with Penny, he would awaken the others, including her son, Daniel and Widmore, which could lead to Daniel leaving her. The whole Eloise story arc could be considered as an after life guardian over-protecting her son for her own selfish purposes (maybe penance for killing him on the island during a time flash.)

If you believe that the show was all about lost souls from the very beginning, LOST makes more sense and all of the blatant inconsistencies, dead end story lines, continuity errors, and open ended questions fade away. Dharma, Jacob, the Smoke Monster, time travel and all the other prop story lines were all mere fantasy tools and props from the characters own imaginations and narcissistic view of themselves of how they thought their lives would be if they were not "dead." In the after life, their collective memories were used to create situations, interact with strangers, overcome adversity and personal fears, with the goal of individual enlightenment.

Eloise's master plan was to stop Daniel from remembering his past. She did everything in her power to make sure that Daniel's after life was a narrow, non-scientific focus that centered around herself. And in the end, Eloise's plan worked: Daniel did not go away with the other Lost characters. So, Eloise was the only character who truly got all she wanted in the end.