(FST= Flash Sideways Timeline, OT= Original Timeline)
1. (FST) Jack looks at head X-Ray instead of a mirror... The statue of Christ... is this foreshadowing Jack's CHRIST-turn to come later in the show, dying to save them all? Des wants to return to... the OT?
2. (OT) Sawyer's burning bush reference... Is the Sourcestream LOL cave what we know as 'god'? Hurley reference to YODA, and "I got a bad feeling about this", yes will the FORCE/SOURCE be with them, as they fight the good fight against the darkside....
3. (FST) Hurley drugs Charlie to bring him along to the concert....!
4. (OT) Kate- "Nothing is irreversible...." Flocke's not going down with anything... he does not want to go back to Hell.... Yes, he wants to sink the island. It will be interesting to see if the island is some form of an ancient ship/vessel after all, as some of us have surmised.... And now Flocke and Ben have followed Bernard back to their camp, to get the key... Desmond... Storm's brewing.... Des is definitely channeling Yoda...
5. (FST) Sun's doctor is Juliet.. David's mother... Mirror-twinning sonogram ala the island, and Sun flashes on the OT, more remembrances of the OT...
6. (FST) Operating Room 3, how apropos for Jack/Christ.... the TRINITY....
7. (OT) Alpert's got a gray hair... he's aging and wants to live... now they're going to the other island, and they hit a body, and save flotsam Lapidus, who wants to fly the plane away instead of blowing it up....
8. (OT) Kate shoots Flocke, and Jack lays down the gauntlet, promising to kill Flocke and how he does it is a surprise... while Locke in the FST is getting saved by Jack, mirror twinning, mirror verse....
9. (FST) Juliet's confirmed as David's mother and Jack's ex-wife....
10. (OT) Des as the surprise weapon..... Now they're at the bamboo forest, and Flocke, Des, and Jack to on.... Water's flowing into the LOL cave, and they tie Des, to lower him into the cave... and Des wants to take Jack to the FST... while the FST Des is collecting the party...
11. (FST) And now Hurley's channeling Jacob... but Sayid is resisting the lightside, yes, Hurley's testing Sayid's resolve, and he chooses to intervene and save Shannon... and now they remember the OT... Boone's in on it, with Hurley... setting up the looming mergerverse....
12. (OT) Claire's on Hydra Island, now shooting at Miles, Alpert and Lapidus. Claire's no Dorothy, she doesn't want to go home to OZ....
13. (OT) Des is being lowered into the cave, going where the light is brightest, mirroring what purportedly happens in near death experiences... Is the island a portal/nexus among a myriad of altverses?
14. (FST) Claire and David are at the performance, while Charlotte wakes Charlie for his performance of a lifetime... And Daniel meets Charlotte.... Claire and David meet Des and Kate at Table 23... Charlie sees Claire.... and now, here comes... Aaron...?
15. (OT) There's the Sourcestream LOL healing pool, and Des is nosebleeding again, as he walks toward the CORK, releasing energy.... light going out, water stopped flowing, now.... it's RED... Has DES unwittingly UNCORKED the HELLVERSE, if color-coding is worth anything on Lost, and yes, it is....! We'll have to wait and see if our prior surmises are correct, linking Event Horizon to Lost, showing a literal physical correlate of Hell, Heaven, and the island as a portal/nexus among these realms and more, up and down the Seven Heavens, across a myriad of altverses....
16. (OT) Jack now CAN hurt Flocke, as the LOL energy release has transformed them both to mere mortals....
17. (FST) Eloise is knowledgeable in the FST, as well, a spacetime continuum being ala a Watcher? Or is she an angel..... Touched By An Angel....?
18. (OT) Island rumblings, raining, and Ben's legs are crushed under a tree... Flocke and Jack cliffside, mano-a-mano.... And then, how appropriate... Gene Wilder singing as Willie Wonka... in a commercial!
19. (OT) Back from commercial break, and they're going fast and furious, and the island's crumbling, as Flocke pierces Jack's side, ala Christ's wound on the cross... And KATE's bullet flied true to fakeLocke, as he is mortal, once the LOL energy is released... Jack kicks Flocke's body over the ledge....
20. (FST) More physical cross-verse manifestations ala Jack's neck knife wound... "It worked.... not only can he feel his legs, but ala Juliet's observation.... not only is he remembering the island, but the steps toward the versemerger are proceeding apace, for sure.... WILL THEY ALL GET TOGETHER IN THE FST, to go to the sunken island, and pull a 'Raise the Titanic', with the island dramatically rising to the surface in the FST, as some of us have been predicting?
21. (OT) Sounds like they're making progress.... Jack has to put the cork back in the evil bottleverse, restoring the LOL... but will it be too late, or will Jack's looming Christlike sacrifice 'Raise the Titanic' in the FST, i.e., he will die to save them in the FST, and we will see the island rise to the surface in that verse....
22. (OT) Duct tape! Miles, there actually is an unofficial Duct Tape merit badge for Boy Scouts! Now Kate and Sawyer are pulling a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, jumping off the cliff....
23. (FST)... and OT Sawyer asks Jack where he can get some grub, continuing the Western theme... Sawyer can't get his Apollo bar, and Juliet gives him the GAME RESET TRICK THAT JACK WILL USE ON THE ISLAND.... UNPLUG IT, THEN PLUG IT BACK IN...! Not only is this a legal, rule-following trick for getting your grub from the vending machine, but it is also a way to REBOOT THE ISLAND....!
24. (OT) Jack's passing the baton to Hurley, as some have predicted.... Ben has an empty plastic water bottle for Jack to use in the ceremony, how apropos, flashing as it does on the Season One importance of water to our cherished castaways... now Hurley's like Jack, and Jacob before him....
25. (OT) Lapidus is getting the Ajira plane going, and Jack is descending into.... Hell...? RED light... smoke... heat.... fiery coals.... Yes, after sacrificing his life to RECORK the evil bottleverse, Jack will see Desmond in another life, brutha.... Jack gets the cork back in the bottle, and Ajira wings its way away from the island... Amen....
26. (OT) Here comes the water again, and the LOL is again restored.... The FORCE is with them, again....
27. (FST) Back at the church.... John and Ben.... Ben apologizes... he wanted to be special... and John forgives him... Yes, and now Locke can walk on his own again.... he needs no crutch, no chair...
28. (OT) Jack's watery sacrifice is realized, in the LOL cave, and Hurley takes over, with Ben as his helper.... Yes, indeed.... NOTHING IS IRREVERSIBLE!
29. (FST) Awesome PRISONER reference! Hurley tells Ben he was a good Number 2, and Ben says he was a good Number 1....
30. (OT) Jack crawls out of the LOL cave...!
31. (FST) Yes, they're gathering for a funeral for Christian Shephard, and a chance to leave... Jack touches the coffin, and he remembers... Of course, the coffin is empty, and Christian is there, alive....
32. (FST) The FST as Heaven...? As per my 5/18/10 What They Died For posting, the Earth is a Shadowy representation of Heaven.... Their time together to work things through in the THIRD HEAVEN island of Eden, so they could all collectively climb aloft on the Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment, to the higher planes of heaven.... up to their final resting place in that SEVENTH HEAVEN....
33. (OT) As Jack lays dying in the bamboo... joined by Vincent.... (FST) Christian Shephard opens the door to the bright white light... the pearly gates, and the game of life is over.... but the Viral Learning Game of Lost lives on....
What's It All About, Charlie? The Short Form Of My Third Heaven Theory Of Lost:
1. The island originally was the Garden of Eden.
2. After the Fall of Humanity, Adam and Eve were banished from the Island/Eden.
3. After the Fall, the island was moved from human access and became the THIRD HEAVEN. (The quantumly chaotic movements of the island and its 'cloaked' status are aspects of this 'removal from access'....)
4. Lessons learned (HEURISTICS) and choices made (MATERIAL APPLICATIONS) on the Third Heaven Island helped the castaways make sufficient progress to set the stage for 'moving the lessons learned' on the island to the FST 'Purgatory'. Once they became aware of what they had learned on the island, they were then able to use these lessons to purge their souls and achieve DHARMA in the FST Purgatory, enabling them to finally 'let things go' and 'move their souls' on from the FST Purgatory to the Seventh Heaven. 1
5. Thus, the Department of Heuristics and Research on Material Applications acronym-- DHARMA-- was not far off the mark, after all.... And all it takes is a little Initiative, or Energy...!
Like that classic 1960s televisionary masterpiece--THE PRISONER-- will LOST's legacy provide us with another 'mother lode' narrative gold mine, yielding an inexhaustible shared resource for mining rich new insights into our own lives and the world around us, drawing from a myriad of viral learning references embedded in the show, from science to religion, from political science to philosophy, from social psychology to economics, from pop culture to ancient studies and beyond, for each succeeding generation to come....? 2
Time will tell....
Dr. Todd J. Hostager
P.S. Yes, it would indeed be interesting to see a super-compendium book showcasing a range of different Lost bloggers, recappers, and deconstructors over the years.... One 'take' on this would be to devote a different chapter to each person's contributions to the global Lost community of learners, including Doc Jensen, Joley Wood, Lostisagame, Eye M. Sick, Mike(NY), Doc Arzt, Vozzek69, and others... Of course, I would not be surprised to learn that Doc Jensen is working on his own Lost book and that Joley Wood is doing an update of his prior tome.
Another 'take' on a Lost Compendium with intriguing possibilities is more akin to a collaborative, multi-authored Lost Companion providing readers with a rich and varied learning resource to access before, during, and after viewing Lost episodes. Here I would hearken back to one of my earlier postings-- The Lost Game (3/4/10)-- to propose an idea that would enhance the Lost learning experience while avoiding a massive 1,000+ page epic that would tax even the strongest of coffee tables! As per my 3/4/10 posting, selected key Lost episodes would be covered in chronological order, with the book providing readers with ready access to a set of diverse episode recaps/deconstructions, perhaps with some questions and issues for readers to consider. 3
Readers could use this book as they saw fit, with some choosing to first watch the selected episode, then read and ponder the set of recaps/deconstructions provided by the Lost Companion book. Some might instead choose to read the recaps/deconstructions prior to watching the episode, 'priming the pump' as it were, heightening and honing their perceptual and conceptual acuities to a strong, sharp edge.... And yes, of course, such a book would fit quite nicely into formal and informal, credit and non-credit, teacher and student-driven Lost learning experiences....
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ENDNOTES:
1. For more information on key aspects of my THIRD HEAVEN theory of Lost, please see the following:
Endnote 5 of my 5/4/10 The Candidate posting-
Endnote 2 of my 5/11/10 Across The Sea posting-
And my 5/18/10 What They Died For posting-
5/24/10 Addendum: Here is a Wikipedia excerpt covering key Third Heaven aspects, including its relocation Post-Fall-Of-Humanity in an area beyond human access. Two springs flow in the Third Heaven, mirroring the Light of Life lightside healing spring, and the Light of Red Hell/Gehenna tainted darkside ALE, leading to Clairelike and Sayidlike Hearts (and Minds and Souls) of Darkness. And yes, the Third Heaven also has its version of SMOKEY, in the form of a dragon eating the bodies of those 'spending their lives in evil':
"In the Greek
Pseudepigrapha Apocalypse of Moses the Third Heaven is the paradise where Michael buries Adam to await resurrection. In the earlier section of the myth where Satan transforms himself to an angel of light, and works with the serpent to trick Eve, there is no identification of the Eden paradise as "Third Heaven", which may indicate that Adam and Eve's expulsion from paradise led to paradise being relocated in an area beyond human access. In the later
Pseudepigrapha Book of the Secrets of Enoch, the Third Heaven is described as a location "between corruptibility and incorruptibility" (2 Enoch 8:5) containing the
Tree of Life, "whereon the Lord rests, when he goes up into paradise." (verse 3) Two springs in the Third Heaven, one of milk and the other of honey, along with two others of wine and oil, flow down into the
Garden of Eden, which is also located there. (verse 6) In contrast with the common concept of Paradise, 2 Enoch also describes a place of torment existing in the Third Heaven, "a very terrible place" with "all manner of tortures" in which merciless angels torment "those who dishonour God, who on earth practice sin against nature," including
sodomites,
sorcerers,
enchanters,
witches, the proud, thieves, liars and those guilty of various other transgressions. (2 Enoch 10:1-3)
In the Slavonic version of the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, also known as 3 Baruch, the author is shown a Phoenix, and a dragon residing there is said to eat the bodies of "those that have spent their lives in evil." [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Heaven]
2. A big virtual 'Thank You' card to the entire Lost creative combine and to ABC, for their vision in bringing this televisionary masterpiece to fruition. Special thanks to all of the producers, directors, writers, the cast, the crew, and more....
Thanks also to all of the supporting cast members and guest stars for your considerable contributions to Lost over the years. And last, but not least, a huge round of applause for one MICHAEL GIACCHINO, composer of Lost's soundtrack... As fans of successful series know all-too-well, the music plays an important and integral role in these successes, from Mark Snow's memorable X-Files run to Ron Grainer's classic theme and Albert Elms' soundtrack to The Prisoner, and more.... The marimba-infused, jungle-island-evocative Lost theme by Michael Giacchino set the tone for the series, and the soundtrack will echo in the minds of generations to come....
3. For more information on my viral learning view of Lost, please see: