Welcome to Lost HEMA Theory!

Through the electronic grapevine we've been told that the day after the Season 5 finale airs, we'll all be wondering what they will do next in Season 6, as they won't be able to go back to the same show we've come to know and love over the past five years....  At the tail end of my 4/30/09 "Variable 187" posting last week, I riffed on the previously demonstrated pattern of 'plot inflection' by surmising that one distinct game-changing possibility involved Jack and crew succeeding in changing their fate by landing back on Flight 815, heading into L.A., and debarking at the airport only to find it desolate and deserted....  Welcome back, Jack!  Congratulations.... Now instead of being 'lost' on the island, you're lost on the mainland....!

You know that grand old saw, whispered to you as a child by some elder relative.... "Be careful what you wish for, little boy/girl....  you just might get it!  Hmmmm.... In the Season 5 finale, what if we learn that Alpert was indeed correct from his point of view and, like a big rock thrown into a pond, the explosively spacetime rippling, game-changing Incident followed Faraday's journal-bound laws and changed the Fate of Flight 815.  Like Alpert, will we see Jack et al. disappear right before our very own eyes as they are thrown back to the future of that 2004 flight?

Yes JACK, be very careful what you wish for.... you just might get it!  What if.... what if.... despite all of the hardships, travails, and MISERY we've witnessed Jack and crew experiencing over the past five seasons, what we've seen them go through turns out to be the far lesser of two spacetime FATE evils?  What if the 'daisy chain' of looping, interlocking events played out in Seasons 1-5 are ultimately revealed to us as a comparatively successful and vastly preferred COURSE in steering us away from an inevitable doom as predicted by the infamous VALENZETTI EQUATION?

Yes, this does build on the more recent track record of Jack's attempts to make things better backfiring, and actually making things worse.  Only this time, Jack's acts to restore a preferred course for himself and his compatriots will in no small way be revealed as the ultimate conceit in the eyes of a vengeful Fate/God....  Yes, we may indeed serve witness in the Season 5 finale to Jack's acts actually causing the island to be destroyed, effectively erasing the past as played out during the past five seasons, landing Jack et al. back on Flight 815 heading into L.A....  But all of this, at what cost....?

Yes, what if this game-changing Incident not only flashes them forward from 1977 to 2004, landing them back on Flight 815, but also is shown to set off a far less desirable alternate 'daisy chain' of spacetime effects, including the dire and deadly effects of erasing the island from this Earthly plane of existence, setting off a global panic and a wave of destruction Biblical in its proportions, not at all unlike that presaged in the Stephen King masterwork.... THE STAND....!

Yes, the embedded references in last night's episode to Stephen King's Misery may be tipping us off to Ben's true favorite among the King masterworks, and perhaps Ben has spent many a night pondering what it would be like to wear a dress and role-play this novel by imprisoning and controlling Locke, eventually cutting one of Locke's feet off, wielding the axe with glints and gleams of feverish delight in his eyes....  But as we will see below, the true power of and intent behind the myriad King references on Lost-- from Carrie through The Dark Tower to Misery and beyond-- may ultimately be revealed as signals of an impending Season 6 connection to King's avowed masterpiece, The Stand.... 

Stand By Your Man, Woman, And Child:  Back To The Future, But What Kind?

I can see it now.... Jack and the rest of the Flight 815 passengers sipping their cool cocktails while peering out portholes, gazing at the broad shimmering expanse of brown desert 'sea', below....  Little do they realize the dire wasteland of literal reality that awaits them, foreshadowed by this stark symbol of vast, harsh judgment, on body and soul alike....  Jack cracks one of his patented smirks while mentally replaying scenes from his recent work and love lives, prior to enacting the final/closing scene in his father's own life, namely bringing the body of Christian Shephard back to L.A....  A momentary jolt of turbulence flashes Jack's attention back to the present.... He looks up and surveys a diverse range of personalities, all engaged in a range of different diversions.... Man, that big, hirsute bearded dude's really into the music blaring through his headphones....  Hmmm...  Why do I get the feeling I know these people from somewhere....?

All seems well as the captain informs the passengers that the flight is on time and they will be arriving in L.A. shortly.... Little do the passengers know that the story in the cockpit is an entirely different matter, as all trace of contact with the outside world has been utterly and suspiciously lost, after their encounter with the turbulence.... Flight 815 begins to circle the airport, looking for signs of life and activity below.... but nothing is forthcoming....  Nothing on the ground.... nothing else in the air.... What's going on?  Now running on fumes, the captain informs the passengers they're finally cleared for a landing, and the descent now begins... but what fate awaits them, below....?

As they land and cruise along the tarmac, an eerie atmosphere of fear and dread begins to ripple throughout the cabin, as passengers quite naturally begin to wonder where everyone is.... No baggage handlers... No lightsaber-wielding semaphorians cum tarmac-cops directing you to your final destination....  The captain pulls the plane in closer to a terminal and instructs the flight attendants to make ready to use the emergency inflatable slides as a means of debarkation....

Finally back on terra firma, with pensive, furtive glances and tentative strides, the group makes its way into the stark, desolate interior landscape of the LAX airport.... No phone, no lights, no motor car, not a single luxury, except for some brown/brackish water running down from bathroom faucets left on for who knows how long....  Passing a bank of vending machines, the group peers curiously at the antiquated selections and retro-style packaging, appearing as some sick joke played by devoted followers of the 70's Preservation Society....

Rounding the corner... they see their first signs of life... or what used to be the land of the living.... Piles of skeletal remains, wrapped in that trademark undying cloak of eternal fabric.... polyester, a fiber leisurely well-suited to the task of providing gaudy death shrouds in the Year of Our Lord, 1977....

While Jack succeeded in throwing that veritable 'big rock in the pond' to effect a course-changing shift in the direction of the spacetime Fateline-- landing them back aboard Flight 815 in 2004-- Jack has succeeded so well that he actually did erase the past AND the future as they had come to know it, on (and in and through) the ISLAND....  And yes, the Fateline they traded for is far worse in its consequences for humanity and the planet, as the Incident flashing them back aboard Flight 815 has now shifted the course of the planet in a new direction....

What Jack and the rest of the Flight 815 survivors may find once they land in L.A. is that the fabled Incident in 1977 not only blasted that black-rock-infused-island out of this earthly plane of existence back in that polyester-plagued past but, in so doing, the Incident also unleashed a chain of dire events culminating in death and destruction on a global scale, as Jack's self-serving actions and interests unwittingly led to the very cataclysmic fate predicted by the Valenzetti Equation and fueling the DHARMA Initiative.... 

While Kate suspected as much, what Jack did not realize was that all of the trials, tribulations, and misery experienced by the Flight 815 survivors during the past five seasons on Lost actually entailed the preferred, far less costly Fateline solution to the equation of life on the planet... and that the alternative would plunge the world headlong into full-scale disaster....  What form might this disaster take, and how might the underlying causal relationships play out?  Interestingly enough, a key clue may be found in that classic 70's song played during an earlier episode of this season....

Ride, Captain Ride:  Blues (Image) Clues Regarding The Game-Changing 'Incident'  

To properly sink our teeth into this juicy Blues Image Clues connection, we must first acknowledge the avowed influence of Stephen King's masterpiece The Stand on Lost:

"The producers of the ABC television series Lost have stated that The Stand has greatly influenced it. The Lost character Charlie Pace is loosely modeled on Larry Underwood in The Stand." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand]

Examining the conceptual provenance of this novel yields some intriguing connections to future Lost episodes.  In particular, how interesting it is to consider that King has cited the DUGWAY SHEEP INCIDENT as a key source of inspiration for writing The Stand:

"The Dugway sheep incident, also known as the Skull Valley sheep kill, was a 1968 sheep kill that has been connected to United States Army chemical and biological warfare programs at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Thousands of sheep were killed on ranches near the base, and the popular explanation blamed Army testing of chemical weapons for the incident, though alternative explanations have been offered. A report first made public in 1998 was called the "first documented admission" from the Army that a nerve agent killed the sheep at Skull Valley....  Since its founding in 1941, much of the activity at Dugway Proving Ground is a closely guarded secret. Activities at Dugway included aerial nerve agent testing.  According to reports from New Scientist, Dugway was still producing small quantities of anthrax as late as 1998, 30 years after the United States renounced biological weapons.^[3] There were at least 1,100 other chemical tests at Dugway during the time period of the Dugway sheep incident. In total, almost 500,000 pounds (230 metric tons) of nerve agent were dispersed during open-air tests.^[2] There were also tests at Dugway with other weapons of mass destruction, including 328 open-air tests of biological weapons, 74 dirty bomb tests, and the equivalent of eight intentional meltdowns of nuclear reactors.  In the days preceding the Dugway sheep incident the United States Army at Dugway Proving Ground conducted at least three separate operations involving nerve agents.  All three operations occurred on March 13, 1968. One involved the test firing of a chemical artillery shell, another the burning of 160 U.S. gallons (600 L) of nerve agent in an open air pit and in the third a jet aircraft sprayed nerve agent in a target area about 27 miles (43 km) west of Skull Valley. It is the third event that is usually connected to the Skull Valley sheep kill. The incident log at Dugway Proving Ground indicated that the sheep incident began with a phone call on March 17, 1968 at 12:30 a.m. The director of the University of Utah's ecological and epidemiological contract with Dugway, a Dr. Bode, phoned Keith Smart, the chief of the ecology and epidemiology branch at Dugway to report that 3,000 sheep were dead in the Skull Valley area."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dugway_sheep_incident]

Hmmm.... With the military's demonstrated interest in the island as a site for storing H-bombs, I would not at all be surprised to learn that JUGHEAD was only the veritable tip of the apocalyptic iceberg.  Will we ultimately learn that the military has also used the island as a floating storage and staging ground for chemical and biological weapons?  And surely we would not be surprised to learn that the DHARMA Initiative, with its expressed interest in exploring ways to avert various forms of impending cataclysms-- including biological and chemical varieties-- was engaged in storing chemical and biological agents in the service of learning more about how to neutralize their effects, ala 28 Days Later....  And yes, don't forget the frantic efforts of Faraday, Charlotte, and Juliet to thwart Ben's scheme of gassing the entire island....

So one potential form of apocalyptic destruction that may have been unleashed on the world in 1977 through Jack's acts arises from a more literal adherence to events unfolding in The Stand.  If the Lost creative combine does decide to take this path, then I would not be surprised to hear that the infamous Incident in the Season 5 finale involves an explosive event on the island, inadvertently releasing vast quantities of chemical and/or biological agents into the atmosphere, agents which are subsequently carried aloft by winds spreading a vast sea of destructive force, unleashing a global pandemic or annihilation of truly Biblical proportions....  How ironic that it is this very same destructive chain of events, unleashed by the Incident in 1977, that enables Jack's wish to be granted by landing them safe and sound back aboard the Oceanic Flight 815 in 2004, hurtling to their Fate in L.A....

If the Lost creative combine decides to move the show along this flight/plot path, the Blues Image Clue takes on significant predictive meaning, referencing as it does the riding of a 'CAPTAIN' upon a mystery ship.  Guess what they called the superflu that was unleashed upon humanity in Stephen King's THE STAND?  No kidding... it was called CAPTAIN TRIPS...! 

"Captain Trips is a fictional virus occurring in the Stephen King novel The Stand.

A form of superflu (influenza), it originates in an American biological weapons laboratory under the Mojave Desert in California, commanded by a General William "Billy" Starkey, and is hinted to have been created by breeding a hybrid of influenza and an AIDS-like illness. 99.4% of the human population is vulnerable and the disease is universally and swiftly fatal to those that catch it. Those who are immune to Captain Trips are utterly immune — in one instance, protagonist Stu Redman is unknowingly injected with the virus, only to have his immune system kill it. No medical basis for this immunity is identified in the research conducted, nor is it discovered why some people have immunity (although it is implied that the survivors are chosen by a higher power). The only evident connection between the immune persons that doctors identify is that all seem to be heavy, vivid dreamers.... The plague is released in an unspecified accident....  The spread of the plague is very fast and rapidly fulminant. At one point, a military guard who had been in the presence of Captain Trips patients for only a few hours is shown to have begun displaying symptoms. The virus, which the military denies exists, picks up little attention until it is realized that there are very few survivors. Communications break down and in the final phase before the wasteland period, the few with immunity walk around the deserted country, finding those in the final terminal stages.  The virus remains active after all susceptible characters die. Babies who were conceived prior to the outbreak contract the virus after birth. However, the mother passes enough immunity to her child so that the illness is not always fatal."  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Trips]

Hmmm.... One form of global cataclysm unleashed through Jack's acts might involve the inadvertent release of a 'Captain Trips-like' biological agent into the atmosphere, as the dust and rubble from the island explosion rockets upward and outward into the heavens....  This version of a 1977 island Incident certainly could set a most decidedly dramatic game-changing Season 6 on Lost, paying homage on a deeper subtextual level to The Stand.  

And, of course, to complete the Blues Image Clues embedded within the song's lyrics, Jack and others will be amazed at who is on his Flight 815 trip, when karmic deja vu perceptions inevitably hit and ripple through the passengers in the unfolding course of their mainland interactions once they land at L.A.  Don't I know you from somewhere...?  I swear we've met before, somewhere, somehow...." 

And last but not least re: the Blues Image Clues, the harrowing realization that lies behind the predictive verity of that Fateful line.... "On your way to a world that others might have missed."  Yes, they missed it, indeed..... as most of the world's population was decimiated back in 1977 by the global destruction left in the wake of Jack's acts to put things back the way they were supposed to be....

The chance to establish relationships anew, on a tabula rasa blank slate writ large on the mainland, may be what  some are referring to when they predict that the Incident will open up all sorts of new possibilities....   Yes, it would be interesting to see our 'pigeon-holing' thrown for a (social) loop, as our good 'ol Flight 815 friends are thrown with island-related memories erased into a new chance at enacting the 'Mittelosian' LOST TIME they've experienced since crashing on the island....   Who will befriend whom?  And who will end up falling  in love with whom?  And how will the lines of alliance be drawn in the sand of the Southern California desert?

Island Obliteration, Part Deux: Here Come Those Friendly Beach-Bound Polar Bears-

Another distinctly possible form the destruction may take is a more creative riff on King's novel, this time invoking more literally the effects of blowing up a black-rock-infused, hyper-electromagnetically-charged, anomalous island.  In short, we must now consider the non-trivial effects that such an Incident might have on the magnetic field surrounding the Earth....

Yes, in accordance with Faraday's deleted-scene 'big rock in a small pond' parable, an event or Incident of this magnitude may indeed unleash a rippling chain of physical events across the planet through profoundly disrupting the Earth's magnetic field, catalyzing a cataclysmic POLAR SHIFT in the orientation of said field.... thereby unleashing a huge wave of disruptive and destructive events across the entire planet, including a phenomenon linking directly to the relevance of DHARMA's avowed interests in: (1) exploring how to control the weather, and (2) gene-therapy experiments aimed at acclimating Polar Bears to more temperate climates:

"Regardless of speed, the results of a shift occurring results in major climate changes for most of the Earth's surface, as areas that were formerly equatorial become temperate, and areas that were temperate become either more equatorial or more arctic."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_shift]

Is this the game-changing chain of events foretold by the Valenzetti Equation?  Is this the spacetime Fate/course that DHARMA worked so hard to avert?  And will this provide proof that all along, DESMOND was indeed supposed to be on the island to punch the numbers for years in the Swan Hatch, and that he was supposed to fail in this task at the precise moment he did so, producing a FATED TURNKEY EVENT sending the energetic pulse hurtling upward through the air, bringing down the FLIGHT 815 plane and its passengers.... all of this playing a central role in ensuring that a larger, looming cataclysmic chain of Fateful events would not occur?

Time to get back to the future, namely the 2004 landing of the Flight 815 plane on the tarmac of the L.A. airport....  In the wake of the widespread decimation of the human population arising from the 1977 Island Incident-- biological, chemical, magnetic or otherwise-- as per Stephen King's The Stand, in Season 6 will we witness small bands or 'islands' of survivors clinging to life, spread here and there throughout the world, fighting the good fight on the mainland as the clock strikes Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil?

In the apocalyptic wake of a Captain Trips-like plague or a Polar Shift in the Earth's magnetic field-- mirroring themes in explored in The Stand-- will we witness the Flight 815 survivors landing at a stark, desolate, deserted LAX, with island-related memories erased, learning to live with other anew, embarking on a mainland odyssey to locate others and rebuild some small semblances of civilization...?

"Intertwining cross-country odysseys are undertaken by a small number of survivors...

They are drawn together by their shared dreams of a 108-year-old black woman from Hemingford Home, Nebraska, whom they see as a refuge and a representation of good in the struggle of good versus evil. This woman, Abagail Freemantle (known as "Mother Abagail"), becomes the spiritual leader of this group of survivors, directing them to Boulder, Colorado, referred to as "the Free Zone" (officially "The Boulder Free Zone"), where they begin to reestablish a democratic society; much of this section of the book involves the struggles to create an orderly society more or less from scratch."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand]

Hmmm... Who might the Lost equivalent to Mother Abagail be?  If she is already on the mainland and not a part of the Flight 815 survivors landing at LAX, then one strong candidate for Mother Abagail is ELOISE HAWKING.  And how interesting that as in Lost, The Stand establishes a second group of survivors.  But who is on the side of good and who is on the side of evil?  The second group in The Stand represents the latter, and they are:

".... drawn to Las Vegas, Nevada by Randall Flagg (known as "the Dark Man," "the Hardcase," "the Tall Man," and "the Walkin’ Dude"), an evil being with supernatural powers; he represents the evil, opposite side of Mother Abagail's survivors. Flagg’s rule is tyrannical and brutal, using crucifixion, torture and other torments as punishment for those who are disloyal and disobedient. His group is able to quickly reorganize their society and rebuild the city. Many technical professionals have migrated to the city which explains the swift way in which power is restored in Las Vegas. It is noted in the book that a survivor comments that at Las Vegas, Flagg's group is constantly working and has organized a strong but harsh structure while at the Free Zone, survivors lounge idly and do not work as hard. Flagg's group also has started a schooling system and weapons program with survivor Carl Hough as a helicopter pilot and the Trashcan Man searching the country for weapons." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand]

Boy oh boy oh boy....!  I know what you're thinking.... Yes, BEN most certainly does share some characteristics with that silver-tongued sly-ol-devil RANDALL FLAGG....!   Can you say relishing in the muck and mire of tyranny, brutality, torture, and punishment...?  Yes, Ben, I knew you could....  Organized and harsh structure, with a schooling system and weapons program?  Yeah, Ben's smiling again at how his 'new and improved' DHARMA-purged compound was operating!  Benjamin Linus playing the Randall Flagg role in a Lost Season 6 Stand-homage-plotline....  Yes, I'd tune in for that one, just to see Michael Emerson chewing up the scenery and the disobedient followers....

Another 'Mother Abagail' candidate on the side of good, opposing the Ben/Flagg Brotherhood of the Snakelike evil, is Locke....  Like Locke and Christ, Abagail spent time in the wilderness in a penitent 'walkabout' journey of reflection and reconciliation.  We may serve witness to Locke and Eloise leading their flock of Flight 815 survivors and more, moving on the mainland toward that fateful, inevitable war as predicted by one Charles Widmore:

"The stage is now set for the final confrontation as the two camps become aware of one another, and each recognizes the other as a threat to its survival, leading to the "stand" of good against evil. There is no pitched battle, however. Instead, at Mother Abagail's dying behest, Stu, Larry, Ralph and Glen set off on foot towards Las Vegas on an expedition to confront Randall Flagg. Stu breaks his leg en route and drops out. He encourages the others to leave without him, telling them that God will provide for him. Glen's dog stays behind with Stu. Glen, Ralph, and Larry soon encounter Flagg's men, who take them prisoner. When Glen rejects an opportunity to be spared if he kneels and begs Flagg, he is shot by Lloyd Henreid, on Flagg's direct order. Flagg gathers his entire collective to witness the execution of the other two, but before it can take place, Trashcan Man arrives with a nuclear warhead and a giant glowing hand—"The Hand of God"—detonates the bomb, destroying Flagg's followers and the two remaining prisoners.  Stu, with the aid of Kojak and later Tom Cullen, survives injury, illness, and a harsh Rocky Mountain winter. The three of them arrive back in Boulder soon after the birth of Fran’s baby. Although the baby falls ill with the superflu, he is able to fight it off. In the end, Stu and Fran decide to return to Maine, and the original edition of the novel ends with the two of them questioning whether the human race can learn from its mistakes. The answer, given in the last line, is ambiguous: "I don’t know."  The expanded edition follows this with a brief coda called "The Circle Closes," which leaves a darker impression and fits in with King’s ongoing "wheel of ka" theme. Randall Flagg arrives on a beach and begins recruiting adherents among a preliterate, dark-skinned people." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand]

Is Locke Losts' equivalent to STU, breaking his leg and being cared for by Vincent?  Will Jack play the Trashcan Man role on the mainland, reprising his nuclear delivery and detonation role on the island?  Was I a bit too easy on Ben earlier, casting him in the role of Randall Flagg?  For sheer supernatural power, that role would have to go to JACOB.... Or perhaps we'll see Ben reascending to a throne of FLAGG-like despotism, as Locke succeeds in killing Jacob who, in his last dying breath, imparts crucial dark and powerful secrets to Ben.....

If the Lost creative combine does decide to take a Stand-adaptive plot route in Season 6, how interesting it will be to consider that instead of their prior purpose in getting back to the island, Jack and crew will NOW face the far more daunting challenge of finding a way to 'unerase' the past, to restore the island and send Flight 815 crashing back down on the island, all in the service of restoring a far less cataclysmic solution to the Valenzetti Equation.... If only they knew then, what they know now....!  Is Kate right?  Better to suffer a 'peak-and'valley', misery-punctuated journey as chronicled in Seasons 1-5, than to take what appears to be a safer route ensuring greater personal comfort, all at the expense of quite literally the lives and souls of BILLIONS of people on Earth....

Hmmm... If the island does turn out to be blown up in the Season 5 finale, will the ULURU/AYERS ROCK site turn out to be the ace-in-the-hole providing access to the energy/power that Jack and crew need in order to turn back the clock of spacetime and restore Flight 815 to its rightful fate, crash-landing on the island....

Time will tell....

Dr. Todd J. Hostager

P.S.   A Blast From The Past:  Island Obliteration Or Abomination?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ENDNOTE:

1.  Consistent with my prior postings, one alternative to 'wearable' ancient tech embedded in ancient Egyptian pharoahic garb is embedding such a device in some sort of sarcophagus, ala the Stargate franchise.