Coincidence, Fate, or Conspiracy? You be the Judge

Through the four seasons of LOST we have seen many flashbacks, some flash forwards, and a lot of just odd occurrences. One thing that stands out in most of these flashbacks are the connections the characters seem to share with each other. There definitely has been a lot of crossover which leads me to the title of this entry. Is this coincidence, fate, or the TV world’s biggest conspiracy?

To me it seems a little fishy that so many of the people on Oceanic 815 are connected either directly or indirectly. It could be that TPTB are exploiting the famous “Six Degrees of Separation” idea which has hypothesized everyone on earth is connected by an average of 6 people. This idea is now a part of popular culture has inspired the famous game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” (a game which I suck at). Darlton could easily be trying to make a statement everyone is linked if you really pay attention.

I however think this all just can’t be coincidence. What are the odds that all of those people who are connected just happen to be on the same flight? It also seems a bit coincidental that Abaddon was the one who pushed Locke to go on his walkabout which ultimately made him be on Oceanic 815.

Now we know that the plane crashed because Desmond didn’t push the button in time. This happened because Desmond didn’t get back to the hatch before the clock hit zero because he was too busy confronting Kelvin and eventually killing him. I wonder about this whole situation because it is very convenient. Could Kelvin have lured Desmond out there on purpose so the electromagnetic energy would build up? Could Ben have known about this all along but chose to play dumb to the situation? If Ben didn’t know about this then he is one lucky man because like he said a spinal surgeon fell out of the sky right when he needed it. Maybe the plane crashing was the island’s doing? Could the island have wanted the plane to crash so Locke would eventually take over for Ben? The final possibility I can come up with it that it is exactly what it looks like and is just one giant coincidence. However as we all know, nothing on LOST is exactly what it looks like which is why we love it so much.

Horace, Our Bloody Nosed Friend

Horace is one of the many, many characters that is still pretty much unknown to us viewers. We first met him in The Man Behind The Curtain when he and his wife, Olivia, “stumbled” (more on that later) upon baby Ben and his father and dying mother while driving 32 miles from Portland. Horace was the man responsible for bringing Ben and his father onto the island. Other than the fact that we saw him wearing a DHARMA Arrow patch with the words mathematician under it, we don’t know a thing about Horace. This is why I am writing this. I did a little research to see if any clues could be uncovered. By no means are these confirmed, they are just observations, suggestions and really crazy theories.

Horace has a few possible people that he is named for. The first is British applied mathematician Horace Lamb. Dictionary.com defines applied mathematics as “the branches of mathematics that are involved in the study of the physical or biological or sociological world”. The second I read this definition I thought that DHARMA would need people with this kind of skill and since it did say mathematician on Horace’s uniform it wouldn’t be a stretch for him to be specialized in this particular kind of mathematics. The physical world could apply to anything on the island but I thought of the time issue first (did they have DHARMA physicist?), biological could easily refer to the exotic animals they brought in, and sociological reminds me of the people who lived in the hatch.

Horace could also be named after the Egyptian God Horus who was the God of the sky and sun. The God Horus also had a man’s body with a falcon head. I swear we’ve seen the hieroglyphic for it (it’s the one that looks like a bird) written on the wall that Ben went into. In this God’s youth he was called Neferhor which means “the Good Horus”. Could Ben have thought of Horace as one of the good ones but had to kill him anyways in order to rule the island? He did close the eye’s of Horace’s corpse, something that he didn’t do for the others. Here’s an out there idea: Annie was the daughter of Olivia and Horace Goodspeed and that’s why he had respect for the man, just not enough to let him live.

The station that Horace worked in is also a mystery. The arrow was uninhabited and seemed to be more for storage rather than for mathematical work. They found a glass eye in the Arrow. The God Horus was known for the eye of Horus which was the symbol of renewal. Connection, maybe, but I think I am stretching it :). I don’t think we will get to see much more of the station but there is a possibility that the part of the Arrow we saw wasn’t all of the station.

What do you think of the fact he built Jacob’s cabin. I wonder about the possibility of Horace being Jacob. Why did Jacob take over the cabin Horace built for himself and his wife? Was it just there after the purge and Jacob figured it would be a perfect place for his headquarters? Something is up with this. Horace, our nose bleeding friend, has a roll in the Jacob shenanigans but the question is how?

You Know He Has Four Toes!

Ok, well maybe we don’t know how many toes he has, but it would be a great reveal if he does. I also don’t know if a man has ever looked better while wearing eyeliner. If you really think about it, Richard Alpert might be one of the only people currently on the island who can reveal the island’s secrets. Richard looks like the one character that has seen it all, even more than Ben, and this could be because he doesn’t age normally.

When we first were introduced to Richard in The Man Behind the Curtain, he seemed disheveled, dirty, and for lack of a better term, very old-school looking. He even had long shaggy hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in awhile. He certainly seemed like someone who has been living on the island for a very long time or a clever disguise. Although recently in Cabin Fever we are lucky enough to see Richard in a flashback again. This one predates the Man Behind the Curtain flashback because it took place when Locke was born in 1956. In that flashback he didn’t look anything like he did when Ben first met him. Richard was clean cut, wearing a suit, and definitely not on the island.

What does this all mean? Now that’s the million dollar question. I can come up with two options, both of which could be completely wrong. Richard is either not aging properly or he is time traveling. If I were a betting lady I would put my money on he doesn’t age like the rest of us. The reason for this stems from Ben’s infamous comment to Richard, "It's a birthday present. You do remember birthdays don't you?" The writers have said they meant for this comment to be vague and they certainly got their wish. Assuming this is not a giant red herring, is this a subtle hint of Richard not aging properly?

The reason I suggest the time traveling is because I keep wondering how Alpert could possibly get from the island to the hospital where Locke is using 1950’s technology. How would he know that Locke’s mother went into labor early (Unless he hit her with a car?), as well. This means Richard and the rest of his group are either highly advanced, which is totally likely, or he has the ability to go back in time.

I don’t think I even scratched the surface of the enigma we call Richard Alpert but at the very least it’s a start. Don’t be afraid to chime in with any ideas you might have come up with!

Jin or No More Jin? That is the Question

The fate of Jin was definitely one of the cliffhangers we were meant to ponder during this hiatus. This one is tricky because there are no scientific theories or literary works that we can use to help steer us in the right direction. Instead this decision has to be not only from your gut but what you think the writers would do in order to tell the best story they can.

In the poll I put a few possibilities and I will write any reasons I thought of when I posed the scenarios. If you think of any other possibilities or just agree or disagree with one of them I’d love to know your thoughts.

Scenario 1- Jin is Dead
This is the obvious no brainer and what the writers want us to think. LOST has the tendency to make us over think and over analyze everything that we are introduced to so it’s a given we would do this with Jin. However, maybe this is the time a spade really is a spade and Jin is dead. Jin being dead could give some pretty good twists with his grieving widow. Like we saw, Sun has made contact with Widmore. What we don’t know yet is why. Is she aligning herself with him to get revenge on Ben, the man who technically killed her husband by killing Keamy? Perhaps she is going by the old saying “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”. Personally I think this would be a brilliant move on Sun’s part if she can become friends with Widmore and learns all the secrets he knows about the island. The big question is would Widmore fall for it?

Scenario 2- Alive and will be rescued by the Zodiac
I think that it would be a good solid guess that the Zodiac moved with the island. I think Daniel still has a story to tell and getting rid of him in such a manner just wouldn’t jive with me. I don’t think we have learned all we need to know about Desmond being his constant and wouldn’t it just make a better story if they were separated and needed to get back together again? I got off point. Assuming any survivors and the wreckage were in the area that got moved, it is totally conceivable that Daniel would be the hero of the day and save our Jin. Jin being alive gives Sun a reason to get back to the island and the shock of her life when she finds out he is not dead.

Scenario 3- Alive but will get to the island via different means
Like scenario 2, Jin will make it to the island. This scenario, though, leaves the Zodiac out of the picture because either it didn’t make the trip or just didn’t find Jin in the water. If Sawyer could swim to the island, Jin (as long as he is not really hurt) could float on a piece of the freighter towards shore and then partake in the Dharma rum party (Now why can’t I be invited to that party).

Senario 4- Alive but will not get to the island
What if Jin and the wreckage were out of the scope of things affected by the island’s move? There is a possiblility that Jin is just floating in the ocean hoping for rescue. The flaw I see in this theory is that if Jin gets back to the real world, why not find his way back to his wife and child? I guess this might depend on just who picked him up. If it was someone connected with the freckage in the Sunda Trench, I don’t think they would want him messing up the cover story (even if the story wasn’t made by them).

Don't Buy That Panda Just Yet

There has been a lot of discussion in the comment section of one of the blogs I read daily on the whole infertility/ deadly pregnancy issue. Since I have a degree in the health field, I keep trying to come up with some semi-scientific ideas for why this could possibly be happening. There is always the chance that it can’t really be explained by scientific means or that I am so wrong that it will be amazing but I am going to try anyways J

Juliet says “The problem occurs somewhere during the second trimester, when the mother’s immune system is triggered. The white blood cell count plummets. It’s like the immune system turns on the fetus”. Leukopenia is the term for a low white blood cell count. It is also important to mention to note that white blood cell is a blanket term for a number of different cells of the immune system each have different and complex functions but they all protect the and rid the body of pathogens just in their own special ways. My first hypothesis is loosely based on the way HIV/AIDS works. HIV is a virus that slowly attacks the white blood cell called T Helper Cells. Without the proper antiviral medications, roughly in about 2 years your T Helper Cell count drops so low (this is when it is full blown AIDS) you can no longer protect yourself against even the simplest things like the common cold. These “opportunistic infections” kill you, not the AIDS itself. From what Juliet described whatever is killing these women acts in a similar manner. Could the pregnancy cause the immune system to decrease so much the “sickness” then ravages the fetus and mother? This only works if the “sickness” what Desmond had. Perhaps instead of the sickness all of the electromagnetic energy ravages the fetus and mother instead. Leukopenia can happen because of chemotherapy or radiation therapy so maybe from electromagnetic energy as well?

This leads me to my next crazy scientific theory of the post. The men on the island have a huge increase in their sperm count than a normal off island male would have. Could the EM energy I spoke about above be in play here too? Perhaps it not only causes the sperm count to increase but it also mutates it. This sperm mutation which continues as it impregnates the woman continues until either the woman is removed from the harmful energy or they die. If this is the case I am curious what would happen now that the hatch imploded and the sky turned purple. Maybe Sun would have been just fine because the fail safe key was turned? Any thoughts?

Libby Who?

I’ve been thinking a lot about Libby lately because I think her story hasn’t had the explanation it deserves ( Rousseau is in the same boat). I mean who is Libby? She stands out to me because she has been a pretty big player in some the character’s lives but hasn’t had her back story told or even her last name revealed. All we really know about Libby is that she claims she was a clinical psychologist and was married to a man named Dave who died from an unknown cause. Libby was the reason Desmond got the Elizabeth and was able to sail around the world which would eventually make him end up on the island. She also just happened to be in the same mental institution as Hurley.

Now I could totally be off here but I think Libby has the potential to be important to the story because of the magnitude that she has impacted the two characters she interacted with. First, how many times have you been in a coffee shop and were offered a boat? It is very possible that this was just a plot devise to give Desmond the boat that he needed to get to the island and a way to link characters, but the conspiracy theorist in me likes to think otherwise. Maybe she was hired by Widmore to actively seek out Desmond and give him the boat so he would enter the race and be away from Penny? There are also some who think the sailing race sponsored by Widmore was nothing more than an attempt to locate the island. If a boat didn’t come back and its disappearance couldn’t be explained, then there is a chance it found the island. This could potentially work if Widmore knows as much about the island as we think and was having a hard time locating it before the sky turned purple. However, I digressed.

Perhaps Libby wasn’t hired by Widmore but just affiliated with him and his company? I got bitten by the LOST bug when my boyfriend turned me on to The Lost Experience ARG. In that ARG there was a “character” who we knew nothing about. Do you remember Liddy Wales? I do. She was the only member of the Hanso Foundation listed on the website without a picture. Could Libby be Liddy? This theory isn’t really based on anything other than the fact that both characters are female and have a lot of mystery associated with them, but how cool would it be if this is true? TPTB would have to explain it in a way that didn’t take away meaning from those who did not participate in TLE which makes it a bit more difficult but do-able.

Libby being in the same mental institution as Hurley is interesting. It is also important to note that while she was there, Libby was a brunette. Could she have gotten sick of her blonde hair and wanted a change or was Libby disguising herself from someone? When Hurley met Libby on the island he had a feeling he saw her before but couldn’t place her. She didn’t tell him that she was in the same mental institution that he was and was staring at him, which was probably the reason he felt he saw her before. Instead she lied. Why the lie? If she was there for a legitimate mental health reason then why not tell Hurley? I really don’t think Hurley would judge her because he was in the same predicament she was. This makes me think Libby lied for a reason. What this reason is I don’t know. Again, could she be spying on Hurley, like she potentially did with Desmond? What do you think?

I hope that in one of the upcoming seasons we finally learn Libby’s last name because that could be a huge clue about her background and agenda. The fact that she was brought back to haunt Michael makes me think she has more to tell. Remember, Michael shot and killed two people. Why didn’t they bring back Ana-Lucia? It could be because she refused because of other projects. Although I like to think it’s because her story is finished and Libby’s story only just began…

Now that I have alot of time on my hands...

As a recent college grad now looking for a job, I have some time on my hands. Actually, alot of time on my hands so what better way to pass the time than writing about LOST? Exactly what I will write about is yet to be seen but with a long wait until season 5 I hope I can come up with something :) Feel free to leave a comment with any suggestions or thoughts because I love to hear what everyone thinks!