Congratulations to the Lost creative combine for another rousing adventure in the land of mirror twin, yin/yang alt/verse enlightenment. We'll start with some real-time highlights and commentary on tonight's episode, then proceed to pondering what lies beneath the shadow of future plotlines....
1. Desmond shot by Ben... Now Zoe and Jin are in the Hydra Island generator room... EM power field.... ANGSTROM the rabbit... heh-heh-heh....!
2. Yes, the coil device in there is hauntingly reminiscent of TESLA's ground-breaking works... It will be interesting to see how Desmond's Swan Hatch-blasted body reacts to the device. For more on my prior Tesla-related postings, please see the following: 4/6/07 "Lost Legacy Theory" and 4/12/07 "Psychic Kids". 1
3. Widmore's son (Faraday) died on the island.... Widmore reiterates the need to succeed in his plans, else they be gone from existence, at least on their plane/in their verse.... (More on this, below....)
4. Yes, another EM event is looming, and Des sure does his The Flash role, once again, for as I noted in the Crisis on Infinite Earths (COIE)-related 2/3/10 "LAX" posting, he will play the Flash role in the looming war, with eerily similar powers, namely an ability to travel among different 'verses and dimensions. (More on this, below....)
5. Des now in the Flash Sideways Timeline (FST), Oceanic Flight 815.... Minkowski's picking him up.... Widmore and Des in good stead/graces in the FST, another mirror inversion, of course....
6. Heh-heh.... Yes, the picture of the scale hanging on Widmore's office wall echoes the MA'AT's featherweight scale of judgment.... Des is unmarried! Now he picks up the Pace...
7. Charlie Pace will be playing alongside Widmore's son, Daniel, playing classical piano with Drive Shaft.... Walking through traffic tempting FATE.... Now the car's in the water.... How will FATE deal with Charlie in the FST? Does its icy reach span the OT/FST... YES, as Des sees "Not Penny's Boat" on Charlie's hand, but it's really a flash of consciousness across the verses. Again, as we've been anticipating, we're now seeing how the connections among the OT/FST can be realized/bridged, through consciousness transference, mediated by EM/energy. (HEMA, indeed!)
8. The EM coil device (designed by Faraday?) confirms the PORTAL-related abilities of the island, with its pockets of energy, consistent with my postings to date. Hmmm..... If the Jughead fission-based detonator was associated with the FST, and if such a device can "EM" Desmond to the tangent/FSTverse, both involving SPLITTING APART phenomena, I wonder what the effects of a FUSION-stimulated energy event on the island would have?
9. Yes, as I suspected, Des is now a SPACE/Time warrior, able to flash across space/verses as well as time, as his Penny flashes in the MRI machine confirms. If DESMOND is a cross-verse bridge, a conduit for communicating across the 'verses, then he would indeed be a valuable SPATIOTEMPORAL WARRIOR in the service of Widmore and the light side. (More on this, below.)
10. Hmmm... If Desmond is playing the Flash role in Lost, with Flashlike, splitting-related, 'verse spanning powers, will we later learn that owing to his special ontogenetic status, AARON will have just the right stuff to join the OT/FST verses back together again, since like Alex Luthor in COIE, Aaron is a FUSION-based being, with the right powers to be able to join the split verses back together, from their currently unbalanced light and dark side states, ala my YIN/YANG Theory in the 3/16/10 "Recon" posting....
11. Back to the FST... Des gets to meet ELOISE, who tells him to stop looking for PEN.... Heh-heh-heh.... Eloise is mirror twinning her OT role, of course. Be careful what you wish for. The FST is indeed showing us some important things, in a multiversic manner, as per physicists Max Tegmark, David Deutsch, etc.
12. So what, therefore, will the looming merger of the OT/FST timelines entail? Will this simply be a looping conjoinment, with the spacetime 'versic loops split off by the Jughead/Juliet fission-detonated J2 Incident rejoined by the other EM event mentioned by Widmore, in 2007?
13. Now the Quantum Suicide concept takes on additional daunting implications, as per PHILIP JOSE FARMER's classic RIVERWORLD series, what Darlton and company may be showing us is that there is no perfect MULTIVERSE daisychain of cause-effect relationships....
14. Now there's Daniel.... talking to Des, showing him the Quantum Mechanical journal entries.... YES, there may be different multiversic 'sets' of possible cause-effect relationships comprising the known and possible realms of 'reality'-- i.e., real and imaginary spacetime-- with the ability to move among these 'sets' of relationships imparted through a Nuclear Blast near the island energy pocket, the multiversic portal nexus.... In effect, pulling a 'RIVERWORLD" Quantum Suicide approach to moving one's consciousness and soul between these different, unique, but equally 'real' sets of daisy-chained cause-effect relationships....
15. Widmore will explain his mission to him, as Desmond is able to survive the Quantum Suicide 'verse traversing event, with his consciousness intact.... And this makes him unique and valuable as a Spatiotemporal Warrior in the looming war of good and evil.....
16. Des' success in passing Widmore's test, coupled with Des fainting whilst Pen was running the steps of the stadium, confirms that Darlton now have in play a THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS SPACE-TIME CHESS BOARD, with Des' ability now revealed precisely as the power to flash his consciousness through space and time.... Of course, this ability not only to move (Des') PERCEPTION AND KNOWLEDGE from one 'verse and time to another-- and back again to the war front on the island in 2007-- as well as having Des take ACTION in other verses and times, greatly expands the nature and scope of not only the looming war, but also the number and nature of the myriad fronts on which the battle may be fought.
17. Will they have to nuke the island again, at a selected spot, using another energy pocket, to 'close the loop', merge the OT and FST back together, and finally close off the Evil One's chances for finally escaping the islandcork prison tethering him and holding his evil minions and dark bottleverse at bay? Or will it be Flocke who will try to set off another EM event as he escapes the island, effectively 'uncorking' the islandprison and setting his evil bottleverse free....? Is this why Des' power is so important.... heh-heh-heh....
The Flash Is Before Our Eyes, Once Again: Desmond As Time Scout, Temporal Warrior And More, In A Looming War Telescoped Across Spacetime-
What do you get when you put together: (1) a geophysicist (Zoe), (2) pockets of powerful electromagnetism, (3) a prescient Time Scout who is able to FLASH forward and backward across time, catch fleeting glimpses of Fate's future hand (Desmond), (4) precedent for sending organic and inorganic matter across time (Orchid Hatch experiments), and (5) a mainland empire-builder with deep pockets and access to Faraday's secrets? Yup, you guessed it.... A recipe for one heckuva ride, a crackerjack entertainment presaging a looming war NOT fought on a narrower spacetime venue of linear action in a 2007-limited battlefield, but rather a SPATIOTEMPORALLY-TELESCOPED war of good and evil, leveraging the island's powers and more to expand the battlefield across space and time, fought in a non-linear space- and time-looping manner....
A 'Standard Model' interpretation would indeed have Widmore leveraging Des' known abilities, channeled through the remaining energy pockets and through rebuilt devices-- as well as never-before-seen machinery designed by Daniel Faraday-- to gain competitive advantage on the looming battlefield through obtaining advanced notice of the Evil One's moves, catching flashing glimpses of Dark FATE's intentions for key players on this multidimensional, spatiotemporally-telescoped Through The Looking Glass chessboard....
I would not at all be surprised to see Des employed as a Time Scout, providing lightside, Widmore-funded tactical support through Temporal RECONnaissance. But the advanced preparations for war do not stop there. No, Widmore will also be looking to recreate and improve upon the ORCHID HATCH equipment enabling them to leverage the CASIMIR EFFECT 2 to send organic and inorganic matter across SPACETIME, providing a means of making moves on the full temporal AND spatial range of the multidimensional 'chessboard,' transporting and deploying lightside forces to different places, at different times, dependent of course on the Temporal Reconnaissance provided by their Time Scout.
Yes, WIDMORE may well end up serving as an informed GENERAL in the multidimensional, Minkoskian Spacetime War of Good and Evil. Yes, I'm thinking the same thing you are.... How interesting it would be if the war not only were fought across multidimensional spacetime, but also in a truly Minkowskian manner, with Darlton and Co. returning to that delightful page-rewriting theme.... How would you like to command and deploy forces in a battle in which the field were constantly subject to being changed, with time scouts and temporal looping enabling combatants to rewrite key actions and events in the cascading daisy chain of effects? CHAOS THEORY wargaming meets QUANTUM UNCERTAINTY, anyone....? If Widmore is the General for the Lightside forces, I do not envy him if this turns out to be the case....
In addition to the Tesla device, it will indeed be interesting to see if Faraday has designed another more advanced Orchid Hatch device which enables not only the transport of organic/inorganic matter across spacetime, from the point of origin defined by where the machine is stationed, but also allows for transport from non-local spacetime coordinates, effectively operating as a 'Star Trek' transporter system. This would provide Widmore with a broader range of tactical options, allowing him to 'grab and move' both lightside and darkside warriors and weapons like chess pieces, further complicating Flocke's efforts and game plan. Hmmm..... Yes, it would be interesting but perhaps too easy if Widmore had a device that was able to 'grab' Flocke's matter/energy signature and 'filter' it through a transporter, reconstituting the Evil One as an entity stripped of its Dark Matter/Energy properties....
While a precedent of sorts has been established in the use of Star Trek transporters to filter out undesirable changes from one's prior constitution-- for example, removing a cancer that has developed by using one's previously stored profile-- I suspect this plotpath will not be taken as it would be deemed too easy by the powers that be.... The same sentiment may very well be true for the possibility of using a transporter to 'clean' out unwanted darkside effects on SAYID and others through filtering out the Transmode/ALE virus infecting their hearts, minds, and souls. This could be done by loading a profile for the unwanted virus into the transporter, allowing it to 'strip out' the undesired DNA.
Hmmm.... Will it really be as simple as equipping and deploying lightside forces across space and time, leveraging island energy pockets and Des' Temporal Warrior abilities? From the standpoint of WEAPONS TECHNOLOGY, given Widmore's development and deployment of portable SONIC FENCE technology on the Hydra Island beach, I would not be surprised to learn that he has further adapted this Smokey-staving ability to keep the Dark One at bay through producing a wearable, personal model for use in the multidimensional spacetime battlefield. A personal version of the sonic tech would be a very cool and useful way to project a virtual/sonic shield around oneself, keeping you outside Smokey's reach, perhaps even preventing the Evil One in Flocke form from being able to touch you and grab ahold of you, much better than bathing in a Jacob's Ash Bath ala Schwarzenegger/Dutch in Predator, or having an ash-spewing gun enabling one to quickly generate a protective circle, in the heat of battle....
In prior years I've explored links between Lost and superstring theory, and there just may well be something to the notion of BAD and GOOD VIBRATIONS, from the standpoint not only of how to keep Smokey contained on the islandcorkprison, but also how to do battle with the Evil One, incarnate. One very interesting class of weapons would involve what may well be the next logical step beyond sonic fences, namely, the development of a SONIC GUN, a.k.a. a SONIC DISRUPTOR to blast Smokey/Flocke and dis-integrate him, at least temporarily, through disrupting the integrity of his spacetime vibrational field (signature). Maybe it's as simple as playing Cass Elliot's "Make Your Own Kind Of Music" in a concentrated form/burst whenever the Evil One is present. Or better yet, as this has already proved successful in deterring undesirable riff-raff from hanging around town squares and malls.... how 'bout piping some BARRY MANILOW onto the battlefield.... My oh my, how the Evil One might cringe, on hearing an infinitely-looping aural Hell on Earth in the form of.... Manilow's Greatest Hits....! 'Good Vibrations' in the LOOKING GLASS Hatch, eh Charlie?!
Yes, the 'Good Vibrations' connection is an apt segue to my prior postings regarding the relevance of The Flash to Lost. In my 2/1/08 "Beginning/End" posting I examined some implications of the double-meaning behind the phrase "Flashes Before Your Eyes", i.e., "The Flash Is Before Your Eyes." The latter was strongly implied by the debate among Charlie Pace and Hurley regarding who was faster: Superman or The Flash. In this and subsequent postings I riffed on connections between The Flash and Lost to propose that Superstring Theory-- with its focus on a vibration-based view of the verse-- can help us to understand how a post-Looking-Glass-death Charlie Pace could 'tune' his vibrational signature down in order to appear to Hurley on the grassy knoll of the 'real' world.
In my prior postings, a Flashlike superstring/vibrational view was also applied to understanding how the mainland and the island may be operating on different planes of reality, defined by different superstrung vibrational signatures, striking different 'chords' of reality, as it were. Mastery of Flashlike vibrational powers would therefore confer unto DESMOND (and others?) the ability to 'tune' their vibrational signatures: (1) to flash forward and backward in time, (2) to flash up and down among higher and lower planes of reality ala Charlie Pace (linking to my current multileveled Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment islandcorked game), and (3) to move among a myriad of different alternate, yet equally real, multiverses.
-----------> Yes, we DID see this happen in tonight's episode as Des' consciousness flashed sideways across time and space, to the FST!
With its novel parallel universe theme, this key issue is widely regarded as a landmark in the annals of comic book history, laying the foundation for a range of multiversic stories and sagas for nearly fifty years running, including the Crisis On Infinite Earths (COIE) series. Indeed, as I noted in my 2/3/10 "LAX" posting, in COIE The Flash played a critical role in thwarting the plans of the Flocke-correlate-Evil One-- the ANTI-MONITOR-- through leveraging his unique vibration-based powers:
"The Flash is the only being capable of traversing the dimensions unaided...."
[Wolfman, M., & Perez., G., 2000. Crisis On Infinite Earths, p. 122. New York: DC Comics. Originally published in 1985.)
Thus in addition to Widmore tapping into and unleashing DESMOND's demonstrated ability as a TIME SCOUT-- flashing backward and forward across time, doing 'TEMPORAL RECON' in the process, providing Widmore's lightside forces with tactical advantage and strategic insights in the war of good and evil--
we may very well see Widmore deploying Des as an ALTVERSE WARRIOR, capable of moving between the OT, FST (and other?) 'verses using a Flashlike superstrung vibrational ability....
---------> Yes, tonight we saw Des' consciousness 'flash' between the 'verses, triggered via an EM surge....
Hmmm.... How cool would it be to see the looming war played out on battlefields located not only in different equally real altverses, but also on higher (and lower) planes of existence as per the Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment game? Here I would not be surprised to see Charlie Pace, Jacob, and others being able to appear in a seemingly magical superstrung vibrational manner on lower planes of existence, lending a hand as the lightside forces engage Flocke and his ALEful, zombified Army of Darkness.... And yes, it would be neat to see Ra, Zeus, Odin, and other souls caught up in (and helping to generate) the Island Source Wall, materializing on different planes of battlefield 'game play', perhaps channeled by MILES, whose powers are dramatically enhanced when he is hooked up to another 'FARADAY-designed machine' built and hooked up to an energy pocket by Widmore's team....
Yes, like you I've been wondering if, in the final episodes of the show, the Lost creative combine pulls the ultimate resurrective rabbit out of the hat, enacting a final, fate-sealing act of REVERSIBILITY, through showing one very real and now very alive JOHN LOCKE walking the Earth, once more.... Rising to meet his FAKER... High Noon on the Island..... Locke and Flocke in the ultimate showdown for the fate of the world, the universe(s), in the war of Good and Evil.... Ultimate Redemption Smackdown....? You betcha...! Yes, this would embody a 'riff' on the "Final Island Showdown" scenario I described near the end of my 3/19/09 "Namaste" posting, with lightside and darkside Doppelgangers squaring off in the noonday sun, on the Island. 3
I'm Your Soul, Man: Season 6 Soul-Switching, Leveraging A New Gods Soulful Source Wall-
The soul-switching, body-snatching dynamics among Jacob and MIB certainly adds a complicating set of factors in the tempting tests the Evil One is subjecting players to, in the multileveled Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment game of life and afterlife, playing out: (1) HORIZONTALLY, as players within each game level attempt to make sufficient 'progress' to move up to the next highest level in the game; and (2) VERTICALLY, as players progress up the 'Ladder' of 'Purge-atorial' levels spanning all the way from the bottom of the islandcork (the Evil bottleverse of Hell) up through Heaven, moving ever closer to full enlightenment and complete resolution of Cosmic Daddy Issues, reaching the Heavenly grasp of God/The Father's hand.
Of course, vertical movement across levels in this game is not limited to one direction; Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment is a bi-directional game, allowing both upward ascent toward Heaven and downward descent toward the evil bottleverse Hell.... God is allowing the Evil One to serve as tempter/tester on the islandcork-venued game, a role he has played with relish throughout biblical history, from tempting Christ in the wilderness to Job, and more. But the Evil One, as he is wont to do, wants more... His 'champagne delight' will be to find a way to pop the islandcork, freeing himself and his dark minions from their evil bottleverse prison. (Please see my 3/30/10 "The Package" posting for more, in these regards....)
Hmmm.... I've wondered why it is really necessary to have different groups of people brought to the islandgame, at different times. I know, I know, we've all been told by Jacob that there will be an end to this, and everything up to that point will be progress, strongly implying that the nature of the game is such that it is not merely limited to the tempting/testing of the readiness of INDIVIDUALS to progress to a higher level, but rather it is also focused on providing a litmus test for the readiness of the SPECIES as a whole, in making sufficient progress to move to the next level of existence. But is this all there is to it? Is there not a deeper purpose and agenda in play?
Taken together, the ability of the Evil One to switch souls among bodies and the New Gods concept of a Source Wall serving as an Event-Horizonlike boundary around the island raises some intriguing and chilling plot possibilities (please see my 3/23/10 "Ab Aeterno" posting for more information regarding the latter.) Here I would propose that all along, Doc Jensen and other pundits have been correct in surmising that among other things, the island is able to function as a repository of LOST SOULS.... This links closely to the New Gods concept of a Source Wall:
"The
Source Wall is a fictional structure in the
DC Comics universe... Beyond the wall lies what is known as
The Source, a cosmic essence or being that is the "source" of all that exists. The wall is theoretically passable. However, all those who try have been inevitably trapped in it. Over time it has been made up of the bodies of would-be conquerors and curiosity seekers from all across the universe....The
Death of the New Gods miniseries features The Source Wall extensively, and updates a number of elements in regards to it. In addition to a second Source Wall being created to store the souls of the slain New Gods, the Source itself reveals that it has never truly resided behind the wall, and that only the
Bleed rests beyond the wall. The wall is one aspect of the universe that is preventing the Source from merging with its "other half" that was split in to the Anti-Life entity after an attack by the Old Gods. It ultimately conspires to destroy the Source wall, allowing the Anti Life entity to fully enter our universe and the Source to merge with it, becoming whole once again. At the end of
Countdown, a battered Source wall is shown, with chunks of the wall floating in space."
Consistent with the 'second source wall' noted above-- and the general function of a source wall in serving as a barrier keeping powerful beings in (and out)-- we may yet learn that the island and its surrounding 'wall' serve a similar function. indeed, this may shed some key light on the nature and operation of the boundary wall of the CORK that is the island. In short, it may very well be that in addition to bringing people to the island in order to test the progress of individuals and the species, a second absolutely critical reason to keep bringing people to the island is that it is necessary in ensuring the continued power and integrity of the Soul-Powered Source Wall that is so crucial in keeping the EVIL ONE on the island, and by strong implication, the Evil bottleverse contained....
So the 'Whispers in the Wilderness' heard on the island at various times, by Sayid, Shannon, and others, may well turn out to be not only players on higher levels of the game, but also echoes of the Lost Souls who are not floating around in some aimless, trapped, islandbound state, but rather who are serving in the crucial role of powering and ensuring the integrity of the Island SOURCE WALL Boundary which has to date succeeded in keeping the Evil One on the Island and, through serving as the outer wall/lining of the Islandcork, keeping the Evil bottleverse 'corked'....
One of the more intriguing aspects of the Source Wall concept, with potentially dire consequences for future Lost plotlines, is that Traversing (traveling through) the Source Wall weakens it, and if it is sufficiently weakened, it may break....
"In
Countdown, it is revealed the 52 universes are each surrounded by a source wall, with the Bleed between the source walls of the various universes. The Monitors refer to an impending disaster if they don't act to stop travel between the 52 universes, and in issue #38 of
Countdown, they finally reveal that each time a being passes between universes, they break a little of each universes' source wall. If a source wall is breached too many times, it will collapse and lead to chaos and the destruction of its universe."
Hmmm.... So one dynamic that must have been taken into consideration over the eons of Island operations was achieving a balance in: (1) limiting the number of times the Island wall/boundary is breached to reduce the damage to its integrity, keeping the Evil One contained; and (2) allowing the Evil One to test/tempt individuals and the species, with souls who are moving through the multileveled Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment game helping to power the Source Wall during their game play, and souls of those who remain trapped within the game serving the same function, thereby balancing the damage from island-mainlaind transit with rejuvenative, soulful restoration. We may yet learn that traveling to the island via submarine, through WATER, may avoid or minimize the trauma to the critical Source Wall function.
Bridging to the remaining Lost episodes, the Evil One surely must know about the nature and operations of his Islandcork imprisonment, and coupling this knowledge with his demonstrated abilities and willingness to play the DECEPTION card yields some very interesting prospects for what may lie beneath the shadow of future plotlines. In particular, I would not be surprised to learn that the whole 'LOOMING WAR OF GOOD AND EVIL' is a ruse to divert the attention and resources of lightside forces to a complex, chaotic, quantumly uncertain spacetime battlefront, while all along the goal is to weaken the Source Wall containment field, as Widmore and the lightside forces use Des and Faraday-inspired machinery to tap the power and wisdom of Lost Souls throughout the ages, by so doing diverting the energy and focus of these souls from maintaining the integrity of the Wall, thereby opening gaps in the prison wall enabling the Evil One to slip through with relative ease, breaching the Island Source Wall, escaping and uncorking his Evil bottleverse in the process....
Note the last ominous sentence in the above Wikipedia excerpt.... Is this what Widmore is referring to during his exchange with Jin regarding their shared concern for the safety and continued existence of their daughters? Would Flocke's act of breaching the Island Source Wall containment lead to "chaos and the destruction of its universe", realizing Widmore's concern for their very existence? Yes, this may indeed be one of the very dire consequences (among others), if the Evil One succeeds in breaching the imprisoning wall and uncorking the evil bottleverse.
Heh-heh-heh.... Now THIS would be a really funky O. Henry plot twist, building on my Yin/Yang Theory in the 3/17/10 "Recon" posting.... What if.... What if... We were to learn that: (1) the Original Timeline (OT) involving a seemingly unbalanced Darkside influence-- Hurley's bad luck, etc. as per my Yin/Yang theory-- was in fact the 'red wine' bottleverse contained by the Islandcork, and (2) the Flash Sideways Timeline (FST) was a lightside unbalanced 'verse existing outside the wine bottle.... On this intriguing view, the FST/LAXlanding 'safe', lucky Hurleyverse is what life and the world might look like if Evil were indeed bottled up, held at bay, contained by an Islandcork....
So what may be at stake here is not only the dire threat of the Evil One escaping his Islandcork prison and uncorking his Evil bottleverse, but also the continued existence and nature of the FSTverse, including the very life and existence of one David Shephard.... Now THIS could well be a cause to die for.... Would you be willing to lay down your life for another, especially if you knew that other exists in a different but equally real 'verse? What if that other person were the child you wanted but never had? What will Jack decide to do, once this knowledge more completedly pierces the veil between the 'verses, now that SpaceTimeScout Desmond has returned to the island?
And will it be Desmond, after all, who gets the call due to his powers, and is sent through spacetime via an Orchid Hatch-related device we have yet to see.... Sent willingly, under the precise instructions of Widmore, along with a component that will finally allow them to seal the cork for good, bottling Flocke and his minions forever in the evil 'verse.... And we see Desmond swimming underwater, finally reaching the cavern... He pulls himself ashore and see the Jughead bomb, fusion shell intact, with the fission detonator gone. He rearms the bomb, sets the timer, and swims away.... Quantum Suiciding the island for good, releasing all the remaining energy.... as it slowly sinks to the bottom of the ocean..... Des' consciousness survives the explosion and he flashes back through spacetime to see Widmore's smiling visage..... But has the evil bottleverse been sealed for good?
Time will tell....
Dr. Todd J. Hostager
__________________________________________
ENDNOTES:
1. Here are the links to those postings, from 2007:
2. In this regard, please see my prior postings regarding the Casimir Effect:
3. Please see the "Final Island Showdown" scenario in my "Namaste" posting at: